A Drink Before the War (6 page)

He looked at me as if I'd just asked what the atmospheric density of Pluto was. “Floors? Uh, two. We got two. Rooming house's upstairs.”

“Two,” I repeated with an air of moral revulsion. “Two floors and the only exits are on the first.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“‘Yeah'? How people on the second floor supposed to get out if there's a fire?”

“A window?” he suggested.

“A window.” I shook my head. “How about I take you up there right now, see how well you land jumping out a fucking window? A window. Jesus.”

Angie crossed her legs, sipping her beer, enjoying this.

Blondie said, “Well…”

I said, “Well
what?
” I gave Angie the get-ready look. She raised her eyebrows and downed her beer happily. “Boy,” I said, “you're gonna learn some shit tonight,” and I crossed the floor to the plywood wall and pulled the fire alarm.

No one in the barroom ran for an exit. No one really moved at all. They just turned their heads and looked at me. They seemed a bit pissed off.

But on the second floor, no one could tell if there was a fire or not. Bars always smell like smoke.

A rather large woman with a rather small sheet over her nude body and a skinny guy with a lot less coverage came down first. They barely glanced at the bar before they hopped out the door like rabbits during hunting season.

Two kids were next. Sixteen or so, both with a little acne. Probably registered as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They flattened against the wall as soon as they cleared the last step, staring at all of us, chests heaving.

Then suddenly, Simone was there, looking very put out, looking to find someone responsible, her eyes working their way from Blondie, around the crowd of hicks, and finally settling on
moi
. I glanced at her but passed by, my eyes slowing and holding at a point just over her shoulder.

On Jenna Angeline.

Angie left my shoulder and disappeared around the corner, on the other side of the plywood wall. I waited, my eyes fixed on Jenna Angeline, hers finally meeting mine. They were eyes that screamed resignation. Old, old eyes. Brown and numb and too beaten to show fear. Or joy. Or life. Something passed through them, briefly, and I knew that she recognized me. Not who I was. What I represented. I was just another form of cop or collection agent or land
lord or boss. I was authority, and I was coming to decide something about her life whether she liked it or not. She recognized me all right.

Angie had found the main cables and the clarion blast bleated away to nothing in one wheezing second.

I was the center of attention now, and I knew I was about to face resistance, at the very least from the Angeline sisters. Everyone except them, the bartender, and a big, going-to-fat, ex-football player type to my right faded slightly behind a haze of gauze. The football player was leaning forward on his toes and Blondie had his hand under the bar. Neither of the Angeline sisters looked like they had any intention of moving without help from a crane.

My voice seemed loud and hoarse when I said, “Jenna, I need to talk to you.”

Simone grabbed her sister's arm and said, “Come on, Jenna, let's go,” and started leading her toward the door.

I shook my head and stepped in front of the door, my hand already in my jacket as the football player made his move. Another hero. Probably a member of the auxiliary fire department. His right hand was heading toward my shoulder and his mouth was open, a gruff voice saying, “Hey, asshole, leave the women alone.” Before he reached my shoulder, my hand cleared my jacket and whacked his arm away and brushed my gun against his lips.

I said, “Excuse me?” and dug the muzzle of the gun hard against his upper lip.

He looked at the gun. He didn't say anything.

I didn't move my head, just kept my eyes on the barroom, looked everyone in the eye who'd meet mine. I felt Angie beside me, her gun steady, her breathing shallow. She said, “Jenna, Simone, I want you to get in your car and drive to the house in Wickham. We'll be right behind you and if you try to take off, believe me, our car's a lot faster than yours and we'll end up talking in a ditch somewhere.”

I looked at Simone. “If I wanted to hurt you, you'd be dead now.”

Simone gave off some sort of body language that only a sister would recognize, because Jenna put a hand on her arm. “We do what they say, Simone.”

Angie opened the door behind me. Jenna and Simone passed by and walked out. I looked at Football Player, then pushed his face back with the gun. I felt the weight of it in my arm, the muscles beginning to ache, my hand stiffening and sweat popping out of the glands all over my body.

Football Player met my eyes and I could see he was thinking about being a hero again.

I waited. I leveled the gun and said, “Come on.”

Angie said, “Not here. Let's go.” She took my elbow, and we backed out of the bar into the night.

“Sit down, Simone.
Please.” Everything Jenna said came out as a weary plea.

We'd been back at the house for ten minutes and had spent all our time dealing with Simone's ego. So far, she'd tried to push past me twice, and now she was walking toward the phone.

“Man don't come into my house, tell me how to act,” she told Jenna, then looked at Angie. “And the man ain't going to shoot me with the neighbors awake upstairs.” She'd started to believe that by the time she reached the phone.

I said, “Simone, who're you going to call? The police? Fine.”

Jenna said, “Put the phone down, Simone. Please.”

Angie looked bored and antsy. Patience is not one of her prime virtues. She walked over and pulled the phone cord out of the wall.

I closed my eyes, then opened them. “Jenna, I'm a private investigator, and before any of us decides to do anything else, I have to talk to you.”

Simone looked at the phone, then at Angie and me, finally at her sister. She said, “Your bed, girl, lie in it,” and sat down on the couch.

Angie sat beside her. “You have a very nice place here.”

This was true. It was small, and the outside was nothing to look at, and it wasn't like there was a baby grand by the window, but Simone definitely had an eye. The floor had
been stripped, the blonde wood underneath polished to a high gloss. The couch where Simone and Angie sat was a light cream color with an oversize throw pillow that Angie was itching to hug to her chest. Jenna sat in a mahogany shell chair to the right of the couch and I leaned on its twin across from her. Four feet from the windows the floor rose eight inches and a small alcove had been created around the two windows facing the street, cushions on the window seats, a small wooden magazine rack, a hanging plant overhead, and the wooden telephone desk. A bookcase ran the length of the half wall behind Jenna and I saw poetry by Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Amiri Baraka, plus novels by Baldwin and Wright as well as Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Pete Dexter, Walker Percy, and Charles Johnson.

I looked at Simone. “Where'd you go to school?”

She said, “Tuskegee,” a little surprised.

“Good school.” A friend of mine played ball there for a year before he found out he wasn't good enough. I said, “Nice book collection.”

“You just surprised the nigger knows how to read.”

I sighed. “Right. That's it, Simone.” I said to Jenna, “Why'd you quit your job?”

Jenna said, “People quit their jobs every day.”

“This is true,” I said, “but why'd you quit yours?”

She said, “I didn't want to work for them no more. Plain and simple.”

“And when you raided their files, how plain and simple was that?”

Jenna looked confused. So did Simone. It's possible they actually were, but then, if she had stolen the files, looking completely aware of what I was talking about probably wasn't the best idea. Simone said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Jenna was watching me steadily, her hands kneading the fabric of her skirt. She was considering something and, for a moment, the intelligence that entered her eyes swamped
all that weariness like a wave over a rowboat. Then it was gone again and the eyes dulled. She said, “Simone, I'd like to talk to this man alone for a few minutes.”

Simone didn't like it, but after a minute or so, she and Angie went into the kitchen. Simone's voice was loud and unhappy, but Angie has a way with loud and unhappy. You don't live in a marriage of arbitrary rages, unfounded jealousies, and sudden accusations without growing adept at dealing with another's hostility in a small room. When dealing with whiners or ragers of any sort—those who always see themselves as victims of life's vast conspiracy to ruin their day or are unreasonable or choking on some predictable, paltry anger—Angie's gaze grows flat and level, her head and body become as still as a statue, and the whiner or the rager vents until that gaze forces them to sputter, to weaken, to exhaust themselves. You either wither under the calm logic of it, blanch in the face of its daunting maturity, or you lash out against it, like Phil, and negate yourself. I know; I've been the focus of that gaze a time or two myself.

In the living room, Jenna's eyes were fastened firmly on the floor and if she kneaded that skirt any harder the thread would begin pooling at her feet. She said, “Whyn't you tell me why you've come up here for me.”

I thought about it. I've been wrong about people before. Several times. I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead. But every now and then, I think a person has proven himself otherwise, only to discover the shit later, usually in painful ways. Jenna didn't strike me as a liar. She didn't look like she knew how, but often it's people just like that who wouldn't know the truth if it was wearing an ID card on its lapel.

I said, “You have certain documents. I was hired to retrieve them.” I spread my hands, palms up. “Simple as that.”

“Documents?” she said, spitting it. “Documents. Damn.” She stood and began pacing and suddenly she
looked a lot stronger than her sister, a lot more determined. She had no trouble meeting my eyes now. Hers were red and hard, and I realized, once again, that people aren't born weary and beaten, they get that way.

She said, “Let me tell
you
, Mr. Kenzie”—and pointed a stiff finger at me—“that's one hell of a funny word. ‘Documents.'” Her head was down again and she was pacing in a tight circle with borders only she could see. “Documents,” she said again. “Well, OK, call them what you will. Yes, sir. Call them what you will.”

“What would you call them, Mrs. Angeline?”

“I ain't no missus.”

“OK. What would you call them, Ms. Angeline?”

She looked at me, her whole body beginning to quiver with rage. The red of her eyes had darkened and her chin was pointed out straight and unyielding. She said, “All my life, nobody ever need me. Know what I mean?”

I shrugged.

“Need,” she said. “Nobody ever need me. People
want
me, sure. For a few hours or so, a week maybe, they say, ‘Jenna clean room one-oh-five,' or ‘Jenna, run down the store for me,' or real sweet they say, ‘Jenna, honey, come on over here and lie down a spell.' But then, when they done, I'm just a piece of furniture again. Don't care if I'm around; don't care if I ain't. People can always find someone to clean for 'em, or run to the store for 'em, or lie down with 'em.”

She walked back to her chair and rummaged through her purse until she found a pack of cigarettes. “Hadn't smoked in ten years—until a few days ago.” She lit one, blew the smoke out in a rush that clouded the small room. “Ain't no documents, Mr. Kenzie. You understand? Ain't no documents.”

“Then what—”

“There are things. There
are
things.” She nodded to herself, stabbed her cigarette downward into the air, kept pacing.

I leaned forward in my chair a bit, my head following her like I was at Wimbledon. I said, “What things, Ms. Angeline?”

“You know, Mr. Kenzie,” she said, as if she hadn't heard me, “all of a sudden, everyone looking for me, hiring people like yourself, hiring worse people probably, trying to find Jenna, to talk to Jenna, to get what Jenna got. All of a sudden, everyone
need
Jenna.” She crossed the floor quickly to me, her cigarette poised over me like a butcher knife, her jaw clenched. She said, “Nobody getting what I got, Mr. Kenzie. You hear me? No one. 'Cept who I decide to give it to. I make the decision. I get what I want. I do a little using myself. Send someone to the store for
me
, maybe. See people work for
me
for a change. See them fade into furniture when I don't have no use for them anymore.” She stabbed the glowing cigarette in toward my eye. “
I decide
. Jenna Angeline.” She leaned back a bit, took a drag on the cigarette. “And what I got ain't for sale.”

“Then what's it for?”

“Justice,” she said through a stream of smoke. “And lots of it. People going to be in pain, Mr. Kenzie.”

I looked at her hand, shaking so badly the cigarette quivered up and down like a recently abandoned diving board. I heard the anguish in her voice—a torn, slightly hollow sound—and saw its ravages on her face. She was a wreck of a person, Jenna Angeline. A heart beating fast in a shell of a body. She was scared and tired and angry and howling at the world, but unlike most people in the same situation, she was dangerous because she had something that, at least as far as she was concerned, would give her something back in this world. But the world usually doesn't work that way, and people like Jenna are time bombs; they might take a few people down with them, but they'll go up in the inferno too.

I didn't want anything bad to happen to Jenna, but I was even more certain that I wasn't going to get hit with any
shrapnel if she self-destructed. I said, “Jenna, here's my problem: we call this sort of case a ‘find-and-a-phone-call' because that's pretty much all I'm paid to do—find you and call the client and then go on my merry way. Once I make the phone call, I'm out of it. The client usually brings in the law or deals with it personally or whatever. But I don't stick around to find out. I'm—”

“A dog,” she said. “You run around with your nose on the ground, sniffing through bushes and piles of warm shit until you find the fox. Then you step back and let the hunters shoot it dead.” She stabbed out her cigarette.

It wasn't the analogy I would have chosen, but it wasn't entirely false no matter what I wanted to think. Jenna sat back down and looked at me and I held her dark eyes. They had the odd mixture of terror and resilient bravery of a cat backed into a corner; the look of someone who isn't sure she's up to the task, but has decided there's no other way out but straight ahead. It's the look of the crumbling soul trying to pull it all together for one last worthwhile breath. It's not a look I've ever seen in the eyes of people like Sterling Mulkern or Jim Vurnan or Brian Paulson. I never saw it on the Hero's face or a president's or a captain of industry's. But I've seen it in the faces of most everyone else.

“Jenna, you tell me what you think I should do.”

“Who hired you?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it was either Senator Mulkern or Socia, and Socia'd just have you shoot me where I sit, so it got to be Senator Mulkern.”

Socia? “Is Socia any relation to Roland?” I asked.

I could have broadsided her with a wrecking ball and had less impact. She closed her eyes for a moment and rocked in place. “What you know about Roland?”

“I know he's bad news.”

“You stay away from Roland,” she said. “You hear? Away from him.”

“That's what people keep telling me.”

“Well,” she said, “you listen.”

“Who's Roland?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“OK. Who's Socia?”

Another head shake.

“I can't help you, Jenna, if—”

“Ain't asking for your help,” she said.

“Fine,” I said. I stood up and walked over to the phone. I reconnected it, began to dial.

She said, “What're you doing?”

I said, “Calling my client. You can talk to him. My job's done.”

She said, “Wait.”

I shook my head. “Sterling Mulkern, please.”

An electronic voice was telling me the time when Jenna pulled the phone cord out of the wall again. I turned and looked at her.

She said, “You got to trust me.”

“No, I don't. I can leave you here and walk down to the nearest phone booth and make my call there.”

“But what if—?”

“What if what?” I said. “Lady, I got better things to do than fuck around with you. You got a card to play? Play it.”

She said, “What sort of documents you supposed to be looking for?”

No point in lying. I said, “They pertain to an upcoming bill.”

“Oh, they do?” she said. “Well, Mr. Kenzie, someone been lying to you. What I got don't have nothing to do with bills and politics or the State House.”

Everything has to do with politics in this town, but I let it go. “What do they pertain—No, fuck it. What do you got, Ms. Angeline?”

“I got some things in a safety-deposit box in Boston. Now, you want to find out what those things are, you come
with me tomorrow when the banks open, and we'll see what you're made of.”

“Why should I?” I said. “Why shouldn't I call my client right now?”

She said, “I think I know people pretty well, Mr. Kenzie. Ain't much of a talent for a poor black woman to have, but it's the only one I got. And you, well, maybe you don't mind being someone's dog every now and again, but you sure ain't nobody's bag boy.”