Caught Stealing (2004) (6 page)

-You're a funny fucker, Edwin. A fun-ny fuck-er!

-Thanks, man.

-Those fucking tattoos, man. Fun-ny!

-Thanks.

-Ya wanna fight?

-Nope.

-Shit. Nobody wants ta fight. What's with that?

I lift my head from the bar. The bar is empty and all the lights are on. Edwin is stacking stools. I get off mine and start to help him. He looks at me.

-Take it easy, man, I've got it.

-It's cool, I'll help, I can help.

-Just chill. Sit still.

I've got a jacket. I'm not sure if it's mine, but it fits.

-Edwin, this my jacket?

-Yeah, that's it. Just hang on and me an' Yvonne will get ya home.

-Is Yvonne here? When'd she get here?

Yvonne is holding my hand. We're on the curb. Edwin has just climbed into a cab and taken off and now Yvonne is trying to get me into a cab.

-Come on, I'll take you home. You can stay over; I'll make some breakfast.

-Naw, I'm gonna walk.

-Then I'll walk with you till you get home.

Yvonne is such a sweet girl. She loves to look after me, but she just doesn't realize I'm not safe to be around. I mean really, who knows what's waiting for me at home?

-Nah, nah, I'll just walk. I gotta call Rome.

-You gotta call Rome?

-Roman, I gotta call Ro-man. About the fucking cowboys.

-Jesus, are you betting football? I thought you hated football.

-Football is a bitch's sport. Baseball, that's a fucking game. That's a sport.

-Come on, get in the cab.

-Nah, gonna walk home.

-Then I'm coming with you.

-Nah. Gonna walk alone. Safer that way for you.

-I don't need you to fucking protect me from myself, for chrissake. Fucking go home alone. Fucking get home safe, will you.

I'm walking home. It's tricky. I push off with my right foot and drift for a moment, balancing on my left. I swing my right foot out in front of myself and lurch down onto it with a jolt. Then I push off with my left and repeat the process. The walk around the block from Paul's to my building is revealed in snapshots, a picture taken every time I plop down on my front foot. I stutter home and it feels like the very early morning darkness is illuminated by strobe light. I have a picture of my key in my hand, a picture of flipping a light switch, a picture of struggling out of my jacket and a picture of collapsing into bed. And no dreams at all.

I wake up just a few hours later and I feel wrong. I'm not sure where or who or what I am. Bud is meowing up a storm. I look over the edge of the bed and am pleased to see I didn't throw up on the floor in the middle of the night. I'm wearing all my clothes and the lights are on and something about my pants and the way they fit is off. I don't need to look. I can feel it. I've pissed myself in my sleep. I've pissed myself and crapped myself.

I try to get up without sitting. I try to roll off the bed because I don't want to sit in the crap in my pants. I roll off and stand. I'm half-drunk and half-hungover. My stomach is a pile of nausea and my head feels like it's floating painfully a foot above my shoulders. I stumble to the shower and get in with my clothes on. I run the water hot and strip off my filthy pants and underwear. I push my clothes into a pile in a corner of the shower and clean myself in the scalding water. Then I turn the water to cold and stand in the icy blast as long as I can. Shivering badly from the booze and the cold, I towel off. Bud is still making a racket while I dress in clean jeans and a sweatshirt. The blankets on my bed are untouched, but the sheets are urine stained. I strip them off. I bundle the sheets into a black plastic garbage bag and stuff my dirty clothes on top. I pull on some sneakers and limp painfully downstairs to the street.

Outside I dump the bag of filth on the curb with the rest of the garbage. I stand hunched against the bright morning sun and the alien feel of my body. I look around and Jason is standing a few feet away, leaning against a wall mumbling to himself. And the shame I feel overwhelms me. I have no reason, no right, to do this to myself. Life has been good to me. Life has been good to me. I say it out loud:

-Life has been good to me.

I know it's true, but I don't believe it. I look at New York. I don't want to be here anymore, in this city. I'm just tired of it, I'm tired of my life here. I want to go home, and I'm not sure how to do that.

I go to breakfast. I go to the diner and order bacon and eggs and lots of water and OJ. My kidney, the one still there, aches in a hot, swollen way, but I don't know what to do about it. The missing kidney just hurts in an open wound sort of way. I woke too early and now I'm getting the best of both worlds: the nasty end of my drunk and the leading edge of the hangover. Nothing seems quite real; it's all fogged over and I'm having trouble putting last night back together. My food comes and, as I eat, I try to figure it all out.

I panicked. I was very scared and wanted out of my apartment and I ran to Paul's just a block away. I smoked a joint in the can with someone and at some point I just went ahead and had the first drink. But first I talked with Edwin. We talked about the job, but I also asked him a favor. Did I ask him for a loan? No. Did I ask for help finding another job? No. He's doing something for me. I feel in the pockets of my jacket for clues and come up with Detective Roman's card.

Did I call him last night after the cowboys left? Did I tell him about the note? Fuck, was the note still there this morning? I can't remember. I'll have to call him. Fuck, I'll have to call him and tell him I can't remember if I called him last night. That should do wonders for my credibility. Fuck it, I'm gonna call him, I'm gonna call him and tell him about the cowboys and the key and just get this the fuck over with. But first I'm gonna go home and feed Bud because I just realized that's what the little shit was making all the noise about. On my way out I see a paper on the counter flipped open to the box scores. The Giants took another one from Colorado, and New York choked in extra innings. One back, three to go. And as sad as it sounds, that makes me feel better.

When I turn the corner onto my block, I freak out. Down the street, just past my door, two guys are fucking with Jason. The hangover is so bad, everything about my body feels detached and my brain has given the whole day a wash of unreality, but seeing these two cretins pushing Jason around sends a blast of adrenaline into my veins. I pick up my pace and start toward them. As I get closer, I break into a little trot and all I want to do is fling my body onto these guys. I hate cruelty. I hate brutishness. Jason is as helpless as they come and I'm gonna fucking disassemble these dickweeds.

I know I should have a strategy, but I don't. I'm seeing red and any rationality I might usually possess is strangled by the hangover and my rage. I see a bottle on the sidewalk ahead of me. When I get there, I will pick up the bottle and smash it across the backs of their heads in a single brutal swipe. I have a vision: I see the first one's skull dent a little as the bottle smashes down, the scalp tearing as I sweep it across at his friend's head, the jagged rim of the broken bottle lodging in the fat head-skin and ear of the second one. So much for strategy.

I am almost to my door. They are a few yards beyond. They are so engrossed in bouncing Jason off the wall that they have no idea I am almost upon them. I shove my hand in my pocket and dig out my keys, open the door of my building and dodge inside.

They have traded the tracksuits in for baggy jeans and Tommy Hilfiger jackets, but it was them. The Russians.

I don't care about Jason anymore. I care about me. I head down the hall to the foot of the stairs and pause to listen. I don't hear anything coming from my hallway on the third floor, so I start up. At the landing to my floor, I stop to listen again. My breath is heaving in and out and my heart is knocking against my swollen brain, but I don't think I hear anything. I step into the hall. All clear. I move as quietly as I can to Russ's door. The note from Ed and Paris has been torn off, leaving a little corner of paper trapped in the police seal. I try to steady my breathing and listen very closely at his door. Nothing. Relaxing a bit more, I hear someone cough behind me in my apartment.

I start to head back down to the street to get to a pay phone and I remember the creeps outside. I think about Carlos, the super, but he has a day job and won't be home. I think about the three cool Welsh girls down the hall who keep a spare key for me in case I lose mine, but I don't want to get them involved, so instead I head back to the roof. I run up the stairs and everything is drenched in dej vu. I could swear I just went through this. The hangover makes the confusion worse. My body still feels like someone else's, like my bones and skin are detached from anything they actually do or feel.

I dash out onto the roof and trip over the bag of laundry I left here yesterday. I curse. The rest is old hat. I assure myself the door won't be blown shut this time and head for the front of the building. I crawl up to the edge and look down. The Russians have left Jason alone and taken up their spot in front of the tattoo parlor.

This is stupid. I cannot afford to be stupid. The people in this building know me because of the work I did with Carlos and because I'm a nice guy. I have lived here for ten years and am well known and trusted. I will go down to the top floor and start knocking on doors until I find someone home. I will explain through the door that my apartment is being broken into and ask to use the phone. If they refuse to let me in, I will read Detective Roman's number from the card in my pocket and ask them to please call him quickly. I will repeat this process until I achieve success. One of the Russians looks up from the street and straight at me.

I duck. That is, I drop to my belly and squirm back from the edge of the roof. He didn't see me. He could not have seen me. I repeat this to myself for a while until I get my nerve back. I worm up to the edge and peek over the ledge. He didn't see me. They are both as before: Black Hilfiger with White Trim and White Hilfiger with Black Trim, not looking up at the top of my building, pointing at me and hustling across the street. All is well.

Someone grabs me by the ankles and yanks me backward. My hands slip out from underneath me and my face lands in the grit of the rooftop. My staples scream and so do I.

My apartment is small to start with and has been made claustrophobic by the sheer number of toughguys milling about. The Russians are in the tiny kitchen area. Whitey poking in the fridge and Blackie on the cell phone he used to call the guys in the apartment to tell them there was someone on the roof. The huge guy, who looks Samoan rather than Latino and who wears black leather pants and a motorcycle jacket, is using my crapper and I'm hoping he lights a match when he's done because he's been in there for a long time. There's the skinny redheaded Chinese kid in plaid pants, a green polyester disco shirt, and a red vinyl jacket that matches his hair. And then there's the guy in the black suit. He's the scariest one of all because I know his name.

Detective Lieutenant Roman.

The Samoan was the one who grabbed me on the roof. He took me on a ride through the gravel for about ten feet, then he twisted my legs around each other so I flopped over on my back. He's much bigger than the Russians and his hands are dinner plates. He dropped my legs, bent over, grabbed my belt and lifted me to my feet. Then he wrapped one of those hands around my throat and put a finger to his lips.

-Shhhhhhhh.

Then he marched me down here and dropped me on the couch and I held very still and tried not to think about the oozing I could feel coming from my wound. I'm scared shitless. Then I hear Bud.

I can't see Bud, I can just hear him. He's somewhere over in the bedroom and every so often he makes a weak, plaintive meow, the kind of sound I would make if I were a cat in a great deal of pain. I seem to be the only one in the place worried about this, and why not? These other guys are clearly assholes.

Roman has been checking me out this whole time in much the same way he did when I thought he was just your basic supercop rather than your basic supercop gone rotten to the core. Now he sits down in the same chair he used yesterday, picks up a slip of paper from my coffee table and holds it in front of my face. It's the note from Ed and Paris, the two cowboys. I can tell he's going to start asking questions and I'm just praying to Jesus that I know the answers so I can tell him every fucking thing he wants to hear.

-When were they here?

He is clearly referring to the guys who left the note. I am composing an answer, trying to determine what time exactly I woke from the nightmare and what comes out is:

-What did you do to the cat?

I really don't fucking want to say this, but all I can hear is the pathetic sounds Bud is making in the bedroom. The Russians are paying no attention to the drama taking place a few feet away. Whitey has found some cold cuts and now appears to be looking for bread, Blackie is deep in conversation on the phone, speaking what I would definitely now bet is Russian. The Samoan tower is still out of action. So that leaves Red and Roman to look sharply at each other when I ask about the cat.

-Don't worry about the cat. The cat is fine. Right now you need to tell me when the men who left this note were here.

-The cat is not fine. I can hear the cat and that is not the sound of a fine cat. That cat is fucked up and I want to know what you did to it.