A Beautiful Place to Die (7 page)

Julie was down the road a piece when I drove out of the parking lot in the Landcruiser. She didn't spot me in the rearview mirror and lead me on a high-speed chase like on TV. Instead, she drove down Circuit Avenue, parked, and went into the Fireside Bar. By the time I found a parking place, she'd been in there awhile.

When I went in, I bumped right into Bonzo. Bonzo wasn't his name, but that's what people called him because he liked Ronald Reagan's last movie so much. Also because he'd blown away a good part of his brain on bad acid and hadn't been too swift since. Not as smart as the Bonzo in the movie, in fact. I'd never known him before he'd popped acid, but I'd heard that he'd been a smart kid. Once I'd taken him fishing and it had been like taking a child. He'd been my buddy ever since. Bonzo earned his
keep by scrubbing floors and doing odd jobs at the Fireside.

“Hi, J.W.,” he said. “Long time no see.” He grinned, showing pretty good teeth for a guy in his condition. His mother probably made him brush every day. Bonzo shook my hand. “Hi, J.W.,” he said again. “Say, when are we going fishing again?”

Just then Julie came out of the ladies' room. In this case it was identified by a stencil of a little girl pulling up her panties. The men's room was adorned with a stencil of a little boy trying to button up his pants. Or unbutton them. It was hard to tell. Julie looked different. Gone was her nervousness. She looked laid back and at ease. She went to the bar and I heard her joke with the bartender. Her voice was low and smooth.

“Later,” I said to Bonzo. “We'll go fishing later.”

I went to the bar and sat beside Julie.

She looked like the all-American girl. Sandy blond hair, unlined face, clean blouse, plaid skirt, and sandals. She gave me a smile of nonrecognition. Her brain was in second gear and shifting down.

“Hi, Julie,” I said. “Billy told me I could find you here.”

“Billy told you?” The light dawned. “Oh, yeah. You're the guy I met in the hospital. Hi, there.” She grinned. She was feeling better all the time. The bartender set a pink drink in front of her. She sipped it through a straw. The bartender looked at me. I ordered a beer.

“I've got to talk to you,” I said. “There's a booth over there. Come on, it's important.”

“Booth? Important? Oh, okay—why not?” Mellow and getting mellower, she smiled. I escorted her and her drink to the booth, went back for my beer, and then sat down
across from her. Around us the noises and smells of the early-evening crowd made a wall. I leaned across to her.

“Billy sent me after you. I need something!” I made my hands tremble and I darted my eyes around. “I just need a little. Just to get me through, you know? He said I could get it from you. That you had it.”

She stared at me with a dreamy look. I let my fingers dance to her arm, then dance away again. I licked my lips and chewed a bit on my lower one.

“He didn't have anything, of course. He couldn't have, because they'd have found it in his clothes, but he'd have given me some if he'd had it, you understand? He said to see you! Look, Julie, I have money. I'll pay you. But I need it now, you know? Please!”

She tried to be intelligent. “Who are you?” She wrinkled her forehead at me and sipped her pink drink.

“You know me. I'm J. W. Jackson. We met in Billy's room. I was just looking for something to calm me down, you know? I mean my main man is off island, that's the trouble. But I knew Billy and he told me I could talk to you.”

“Did he?”

“Call him up, for God's sake! He'll tell you! Here! Here's some change . . .” I fumbled in my pocket. “Just call him, please!” I had a pretty good whine, I thought. Maybe I could make it onstage or the silver screen or on the street with a tin cup.

“Hey, hey,” Julie said, putting her hand on my arm. “It's okay, man. Hey, I believe you. I've been there myself, you know?” Her voice was gentle, concerned. She cared for me or maybe what she saw as my condition. “Not here,” she
said. “Too many people. Most of them look okay, but you never know, you know?”

I wondered how many times the two of us would say “you know” if we were not interrupted for, say, the next hour. A hundred? A thousand? “I've got a car,” I said. “We could use it.”

“Okay,” she said with a gentle smile. “Drink your beer.”

“I don't want any beer,” I said. “I want . . .”

“All right.” She smiled. “Take it easy, man. We'll go.”

We went. She walked as if she were on air, giving me compassionate looks. I wondered what she was on, and ran the cornucopia of popular drugs through my mind. I was five years out of date, but I imagined things hadn't changed that much. Whatever she used, I was going to get some.

“When you feel better, maybe we can come back,” she said, taking my arm. “Billy says the Fireside is a good place. Felt good to me, that's for sure.” She laughed. I hurried us along.

“What's this sort of car?” she asked when we got there.

“Never mind. Just get in. Oh, hell, it's a Landcruiser, a sort of Japanese Jeep.” We got in. We were parked under a tree in the shadow cast by the streetlights. Nobody was around. I fumbled out my wallet and spilled some bills into my lap. “Here,” I said. “Hurry!”

“Hey, take it easy, man. Roll up your sleeve. You want me to do it or do you want to do it yourself?”

“I don't care! I'll do it myself. What do you have?”

She opened her purse and took out a plastic syringe and a needle packaged in a sealed envelope. “Codeine. Look. My old man's a doctor. I get these from his office. Sterile. Neat, huh? You can't be too careful, you know? I only use them once, then I get rid of them.” She got out a vial of
liquid. “You'll be okay in just a few minutes, J.W. Just relax.”

“I'll do it,” I said, taking the syringe and the vial. I took them, looked at them, and put them in my pocket. Julie didn't understand. Then she did understand. She put a hand to her mouth and bit lightly on her finger.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God!”

I tried to look like stone. “Ever been in jail, Julie?”

“Oh, God,” she said. “No. Oh, God . . .”

“Your parents know about this, Julie?”

“No. Oh, God . . .”

Time for the carrot. “They don't need to know, Julie. But I do. You're a nice kid, I think, but I'm not nice. You understand me? Talk to me?”

“A narc,” she said, beginning to cry. “A narc. Oh, God . . .”

I reached across and took her purse. She held on to it for a moment, then let it go. Inside were half a dozen more syringes and another vial. I found her wallet and took out her driver's license. Julie Potter. I put the license in my pocket and flipped through the wallet. A student I.D. card from Brown, pictures of a family of five. Healthy Americans. Julie was the eldest child. Mom and Dad were clean-cut post-preppy types. Behind them was the house. Colonial. A country place. I found her father's card. William Potter, M.D. It had addresses and telephone numbers. I put it in my pocket with the license. Then I took out the other syringes and the vial and added them to my collection. My pockets were beginning to bulge. Beside me, Julie's head was down and her shoulders were shaking.

“I don't think you're in too deep yet, Julie. You still have good skin tone, your hair still has a shine to it, and you've still got meat on your bones. You hear me?”

She nodded, sobbing. I found a little package of tissues in her purse and gave them to her, then put the purse back in her lap. She cried into a tissue.

“You didn't get this stuff on the island, did you?”

She shook her head.

“Where'd you get it, Julie?”

“I won't tell you!” She had a bit of spunk I'd have to get rid of.

“Julie, you just tried to sell me this stuff. Your parents will have to know about it if we charge you.”

She caught the “if” the way a bluefish takes a hook.

“What do you mean ‘if'?”

“I mean that if you talk to me I may not have to bring you into things at all. I mean you're just an amateur, a small-time user. I'll take you in if I can't do any better, but I'm really interested in some other people. Maybe you can help me.”

If I hadn't given up smoking, I could light up right now and blow a few tough smoke rings while Julie suffered. Instead, I just sat there, hoping that she was thinking about scandal at school and at home.

“I . . . I get it at school. How can I trust you? Oh, God . . .”

“You can trust me. Talk to me and I forget I ever met you. You have my word.”

“Your word!”

“My word.”

She cried for a little longer.

“Okay,” I said. “We'll go down to the station, then. . . .”

“No! No. I . . . I don't know very much, I swear. Some of
us use a little now and then, you know? We get it at school. Brown's tough sometimes, and we have to unwind. Weekends. Parties. I smoked a little in prep school. I mean, is there anybody under forty who hasn't at least tried grass? But I'm not really a user. I mean, I've tried this and that, but I don't . . .” She wiped at her face with more tissues.

“Who's your supplier?”

“Nobody. Everybody. It's around.”

“Grass may be around, coke may be around, pills may be around. But this stuff isn't around.”

“Billy,” she said. “Billy has it.”

Billy.

“He brought it around. We liked it. I love him, you know.”

According to her driver's license she was nineteen. As I remembered, it was a hard time to be alive. A lot of passion, mixed-up thoughts, problems. “That's why you came over to see him. You love him. You love your dealer.”

She flamed up. “He's not my dealer! He's just a boy who—” She stopped, furious.

“You said in his room that you'd heard about the accident, but that was a lie, wasn't it?”

“What do you mean?” Her anger was suddenly on hold.

“I mean it's pretty unlikely that you'd just heard about an accident on Martha's Vineyard when you live down in Connecticut. The Connecticut news doesn't include stories like that. No, Billy telephoned you and asked you to come up.”

“All right, all right. What difference does it make?”

“It makes a little difference. You brought him some of your needles and dope, didn't you?”

“No!”

“It'll be easy to check. If he's got the fixings, they'll be right there in his room. The way I see it is this: He's hurting and he's in a hospital room where he can't get anything from his normal supplier, so he calls you to bring him some of the stuff you got from him in the first place. You bring it to him, too, because you love him and you don't like to have him hurt. That's about the way it happened, I imagine.”

“Please . . .”

I waited while she cried some more. Then: “Where does he get his stuff? I mean when he isn't getting it from you.”

“I don't know, I don't know.”

“Billy likes to have people know he's somebody important. He reminds people like the guys who work in the boatyard that his old man has money. That's the way he is. I'll bet that he's dropped a hint or two about his source. Let me help you. His source is on the island, isn't it?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do. Billy lives on the island. His contacts are here. He hasn't been on the mainland long enough to tie into the Providence drug circles, so I know he gets his stuff here. But I need to know a name. Give me a name and you walk.”

“Sylvia, he mentioned Sylvia. I don't know what her last name is.”

“Why do you think it's a woman?”

Julie looked at me with genuine surprise. “What do you mean? Who else but a woman would be named Sylvia?”

It was clear that Julie and her family did not mingle with the Connecticut Portuguese.

“Never mind,” I said. I got out her license and her
father's business card and gave them back to her. Then I dug out the syringes and the vials. “Do you want these?”

“Nobody wants them right after a fix,” she said bitterly. “Everybody's strong then.” She stared at her hands. “You keep them.”

“Get some help. Somebody at Brown can point you to the right people.”

“Sure.”

“Or you might try trusting your father to help you. Whatever you decide, I'd change my circle of friends if I were you. You're young and pretty and probably fairly smart, but you won't be any of those things if you hang around Billy and his pals.”

“Yeah.” She got out and walked down Circuit Avenue. I wrote down the information from her license and her father's card before I forgot it. Then I put the vial and syringes in the glove compartment and drove home.

There I put the drug stuff in a paper bag in the fridge, put on a Willie Nelson tape, and poured myself a Rémy Martin. One of my luxuries. No jug brandies for J. W. Jackson. I wear old clothes and my car is fourteen years old, but I drink Rémy Martin, by God! Sometimes, anyway.

Willie sang about Poncho and Lefty and about fishing and growing old and I thought about my day. I realized that I'd liked it. I'd liked nosing around. It felt good. Natural. It had been six years since I'd done it professionally and I'd never planned to do it again, but today I had and it felt pretty good. I ran everything through my mind, turned the tape over, and thought some more while Willie sang. When Willie was through, I went to bed.

I woke early, thinking of Zee. I got up and made four loaves of Betty Crocker white bread and set it to rise. I took scallops out of the freezer to thaw. I was at the A&P when it opened and bought leeks, onions, ice cream, canned peach halves, frozen raspberries, cream, butter (unsalted, of course), and fresh asparagus. When Al's Package Store opened across the street, I bought a bottle of cherry liqueur and a good Graves.