A Drink Before the War (9 page)

When I got
home, I called Angie across the street. “You heard?”

“Yes.” Her voice was small and quiet. “I called Cheswick Hartman. Did he—?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Look, I'm going to take a shower, get into some clean clothes, eat a sandwich. Then I'll be over. Any calls?”

“A ton,” she said. “But they'll keep. Patrick, are you OK?”

“No,” I said, “but I'm working on it. I'll see you in an hour.”

The shower was hot and I kept turning it hotter, the jet blast pounding into the top of my head, water pellets drumming against my skull. No matter how lapsed, I'm still sort of Catholic, and my reactions to pain and guilt are all tied up with words like “scalding” and “purge” and “white-hot.” In some theological equation of my own making, heat="salvation."

I stepped out after twenty minutes or so and dried slowly, my nostrils still thick with the clogging scent of blood and the bitter aroma of cordite. Somewhere in all the shower steam, I told myself, was the answer, the relief, the purchase necessary to turn the next corner and get past all this. But the steam cleared, and nothing remained but me and my bathroom and the smell of something burning.

I wrapped the towel around my waist and entered the kitchen and saw Angie blackening a steak on my stove.
Angie cooks about once every leap year and never with any success. If it was up to her, she'd trade in her kitchen for a take-out counter.

I instinctively hitched the towel up over my scar and came up behind her and reached around her waist to shut off the burner. She turned in my arms, her chest against mine, and I guess it's the consummate declaration of my state of mind that I stepped around her and checked the rest of the oven for damage.

She said, “What'd I do wrong?”

“I think your first mistake was turning on the stove.”

She slapped the back of my head. “See the next time I cook for
you
.”

“And they say Christmas comes only once a year.” I turned from the stove and saw her watching me the way you watch a baby walking on the edge of a swimming pool. I said, “Thank you for the gesture. Really.”

She shrugged, continued staring at me, those caramel eyes warm and slightly damp. “You need a hug, Patrick?”

I said, “God, yes.”

She felt like everything good. She felt like the first warm gust of spring and Saturday afternoons when you're ten years old and early summer evenings on the beach when the sand is cool and the waves are colored scotch. Her grip was fierce, her body full and soft, and her heart beat rapidly against my bare chest. I could smell her shampoo and feel the downy nape of her neck against my chin.

I stepped back first. I said, “Well…”

She laughed. “Well…” She said, “You're all wet, Skid. My shirt's soaked now.” She took a step back.

“Happens sometimes when you take a shower.”

She took another step back, looked down at the floor. “Yeah, well…,” she said again, “you have a pile of messages over there. And…” She stepped past me, picked up the steak, and carried it toward the garbage. “And…and I still can't cook, obviously.”

I said, “Angie.”

She kept her back to me. “You almost died this morning.”

“Ange—”

“And I'm very sorry about Jenna, but you almost died.”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn't have…” Her voice cracked and I could hear her inhale until she got it under control. “And I wouldn't have handled it very fucking well, Patrick. I don't like thinking about it, and it's got me a little…off, right now.”

I heard Jenna's voice in my head when I told her Angie needed me. “You best hold on to her then.” I took a few steps across the floor and put my hands on her arms.

She tilted her head back so that it nestled under my chin.

The air seemed impossibly still in the kitchen and I don't think either of us took a breath. We stood there, our eyes closed, waiting for the fear to go away.

It didn't.

Angie's head left my chin and she said, “Let's get past this. Do some work. We're still employed, right?”

I let go of her arms and said, “Yeah, we're still employed. Let me change and we'll get to work.”

I came back out a few minutes later in an oversize red sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.

Angie turned from the kitchen counter, a plate in her hand, a sandwich on it. “I think I'm safe around deli meat.”

“Didn't try to cook it or anything, did you?”

She gave me that look.

I got the point and took the sandwich. She sat across the table from me as I ate. Ham and cheese. A little heavy on the mustard, but otherwise fine. I said, “Who called?”

“Sterling Mulkern's office. Three times. Jim Vurnan's office. Richie Colgan. Twice. Twelve or thirteen reporters. Also, Bubba called.”

“What'd he have to say?”

“You really want to know?”

Usually one doesn't with Bubba, but I was feeling loose. I nodded.

“He said to call him next time you go ‘a coon hunting.'”

That Bubba. Hitler might have won the war with Bubba at his side. I said, “Anyone else?”

“No. But Mulkern's office sounded pretty pissed off by the third call.”

I nodded and chewed.

Angie said, “You going to tell me what we're into here, or you just going to sit there and do your village idiot impersonation?”

I shrugged, chewed some more, and she took the sandwich away from me. “I believe I've been chastised,” I said.

“You'll be a lot worse than that, you don't start talking.”

“Ooooh. Tough girl. Scold me some more,” I panted.

She looked at me.

“All right,” I said. “But we're going to need liquor for this.”

I made us two scotches neat. Angie took one sip of hers and poured it down the sink without a word. She grabbed a beer from the fridge, sat back down, and raised an eyebrow.

I said, “We may be in over our heads on this one. Way over our heads.”

“So I gathered. Why?”

“Jenna didn't have any documents that I saw. That was bullshit.”

“Which you half-figured.”

“True,” I said, “but I didn't think it would be too far off the mark. I don't know what I thought she had, but I didn't think it was this.” I handed her the photo of Paulson in his skivvies.

She raised her eyebrows. “OK,” she said slowly, “but still, so what? This picture's, like, six or eight years old,
and all it shows is Paulson, half-dressed. However unappetizing, it's not news. Not worth killing over.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Look at the guy with Paulson, though. He doesn't look like he runs in the same circles exactly.”

She looked at the guy. He was slim, wearing a blue crewneck shirt over a pair of white trousers. He wore a lot of gold—on his wrists, his neck—and his hair looked simultaneously matted and flyaway. His eyes were all sullen reproach, those of the terminally angry. He looked to be about thirty-five.

“No, he doesn't,” she said. “We know him?”

I shook my head. “He could be Socia. He could be Roland. He could be neither. But he definitely doesn't look like a state rep.”

“He looks like a pimp.”

“That too.” I pointed to the cheap chest and mirror in the photo. Reflected in the mirror was a bed, unmade. Beyond that, the corner of a door. On the door were two square pieces of paper. I couldn't make out what they said, but one looked like the rules and regulations of a motel, and the smaller one below it looked like a check-in, checkout time reminder. A Do-Not-Disturb sign hung from the doorknob. “And this looks like…”

“A motel,” she said.

“Ver-ry good,” I said. “You should be a detective.”

“You should stop impersonating one,” she said and flipped the photo back on the table. “So, what's all this mean, Sherlock?”

“You tell me, Spanky.”

She lit a cigarette and sipped her beer and thought about it. “These photos might be the tip of the iceberg. Maybe there're more of them, and they're a lot worse. Someone, either Socia or Roland or—dare I say it?—someone in the political machine had Jenna eliminated because they knew she'd blow the whistle on whatever it is. That what you're thinking?”

“That's what I'm thinking.”

“Well,” she said, “either they're really dumb, or you are.”

“Why's that?”

“Jenna had the pictures in her safety-deposit box, correct?”

I nodded.

“And when someone is murdered, standard police procedure is to get a court warrant and open every can of worms the victim had in her pantry. Of which, the safety-deposit box is definitely one. I assume they've already figured the bank was the last place before she…”

“Died,” I said.

“Yes. So, they're probably on their way down to open it as we speak. And anyone with half a brain could have foreseen that.”

“Maybe they figured she'd taken everything out of there and given it to me.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But that's leaving an awful lot to chance. Don't you think? Unless, somehow, they were positive that she wasn't going to leave anything behind in there.”

“How would they know?”

She shrugged. “You're a detective. Detect.”

“I'm trying.”

“Something else,” she said, putting her beer down, sitting up.

“Pray tell.”

“How'd they know you were going to be there this morning?”

I hadn't given it much thought. “Blue Cap,” I said.

She shook her head. “We lost Blue Cap yesterday. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't think he was hanging around on the interstate this morning, waiting to spot you driving by in a car he doesn't even know you
own.
Then
he tailed you to the Common? Uh-uh. I don't buy it.”

“Only two people knew where Jenna and I were going this morning.”

“Damn right,” she said. “And I'm one of them.”

Simone Angeline's eyes
were ringed with red on the other side of the chain, and fresh tears welled in her sockets. Her hair was matted to one side of her face and she looked like she'd skipped a few decades and turned seventy when no one was looking. Her teeth gritted when she saw us. “You get the fuck off my porch.”

I said, “OK,” and kicked the door in.

Angie came in behind me as Simone made a scramble for the small telephone desk in the alcove. She wasn't going for the phone. She was going for the drawer underneath, and as she opened it, I put my hand behind the desk and brought the whole thing toppling down on top of her. The contents of the drawer—a small red phone book, some pens, and a .22 target pistol—bounced off her head on their way to the floor. I kicked the gun under the bookcase and grabbed Simone by the front of her shirt and dragged her over to the couch.

Angie closed the door behind her.

Simone spat in my face. “You killed my sister.”

I slammed her back against the couch and wiped the spittle off my chin. Very slowly I said, “I failed to protect your sister. There's a difference. Someone else pulled the trigger, and you put the gun in his hand. Didn't you?”

She bucked against my hand and clawed at my face. “No! You killed her.”

I pushed her back again and knelt on her hands. I whispered in her ear, “The bullets came through Jenna's chest
like it wasn't there, Simone. Like it wasn't fucking there. She had so much blood coming out of her body that just the small percentage that got on me was enough to make the cops think I'd been shot. She died screaming in the middle of the morning with her legs spread out in front of her while a crowd of people watched, and the motherfucker who pulled the trigger used a whole clip on her and didn't so much as blink.”

She was trying to head-butt me now, rocking forward on the couch as much as she could manage with my 180 pounds on top of her. “You goddamned bastard.”

“That's right,” I said, my mouth still a half inch from her ear. “That's right. I'm a bastard, Simone. I held your sister in my lap while she died and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, and I earned the right to be a bastard. But, you, you don't have any excuse. You picked her execution spot and stayed out here, sixty miles away, while she screamed her final breath. You told them where she was going and you let them kill her. Didn't you, Simone?”

She blinked.

I screamed, “Didn't you?”

Her eyes rolled back in her head for a moment and then her head dropped, the sobs tearing out of her as if someone was reaching in there and pulling them out. I stepped back because there was nothing left of her now. The sobs grew louder, gasping wracks from her heaving chest. She balled into a fetal position and banged her fists against the arm of the couch, and every time the sobs seemed to have subsided they picked up again, only louder, as if each breath pierced her like something heavy and sharp.

Angie touched my elbow, but I shrugged it off. Patrick Kenzie, great detective, able to terrorize a near-catatonic woman into hysterics. What a guy. For an encore, maybe I'd go back home and mug a nun.

Simone turned on her side, her eyes closed, speaking with half her mouth still buried in the couch. “You were
working for
them
. I told Jenna she was a fool, trusting you and those fat white politicians. Ain't one of them ever gave a damn for a nigger, ain't one of them ever will. I figured as…as soon as you got what you wanted from her, you'd…”

“Kill her,” I said.

Her head stretched out onto the arm and gagging sounds emanated from her throat. After a few minutes, she said, “I called him, because I figured no man could…”

“Who'd you call?” Angie said. “Socia? Was it Socia?”

She shook her head a few times, then nodded. “He…he said he'd take care of it, talk some sense into her fool head. That's all. I figured no man could do…that to his wife.”

His wife?

She looked at me. “She never could have won. Not against all them. Not her. She…couldn't.”

I sat on the floor beside the couch and held up the photograph. “Is this Socia?”

She looked at it long enough to nod, then buried her head back in the couch.

Angie said, “Simone, where's the rest of it? Is it in the safety-deposit box?”

Simone shook her head.

“Then where is it?” I said.

“She wouldn't tell me. She just said, ‘In a safe place.' She said she put just the one picture in the safety-deposit box to throw them off the scent, case they ever follow her there.”

I said, “What else is there, Simone? Do you know?”

She said, “Jenna said they were ‘bad things.' That's all she'd say. She'd get all tight lipped and antsy if I asked her about it. Whatever it was, it shook her up every time she talked about it.” She raised her head and looked past my shoulder as if someone stood behind me. She said, “Jenna?” and began sobbing again.

She was trembling violently and I didn't think she had
much left in her. I'd done my damage, and she'd do the rest to herself in the days and years ahead. So, I let my anger go, let it flush out of my heart and body until all I saw before me was a trembling heap of humanity on a sofa. I reached out and touched her shoulder.

She screamed. “Don't you fucking touch me!”

I pulled the hand back.

“Get the hell off my floor and the hell out of my house, white man, and take your whore with you.”

Angie took a step toward her on the word “whore,” then stopped and closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. She looked at me and nodded.

There wasn't anything else to say, so we left.