Chance (39 page)

“You see how it is,” she said during a break in the action. The truth of it was that he was in danger of losing sight, not only of how it was in the here and now, but of any larger picture in which the present might be contained or even made to give an accounting. It was not the first time he had traveled in such a land. He’d visited once before. It had ended in a psych ER in the town of Carefree, Arizona, where there had been a ride in an ambulance, hand restraints, and debilitating drugs, a suicide watch lasting the better part of a week.

“You should cop to everything,” Chance told her at one point. He was naked, standing at the foot of the bed, seemingly on his way to the bathroom when the thought occurred.

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you know,” he said. “Come clean, plead self-defense in concert with diminished capacity. He won’t survive that. You will. I’m a doctor who spends half his life in court and I see these kinds of things all the time and believe me you will do minimum time in either some minimum security prison or in a state hospital and yes that’s a drag but you’ll be free and I’ll be waiting.”

She gave it a beat or two, studying the curtains that covered the door leading to their balcony, if one could actually call it that. When
she looked back at him her eyes seemed to him as empty as those of a corpse. He found it an alarming observation. “I’m not even going to ask what you’re talking about,” she said. “I just want to know if we’re done.”

Chance just stood there.

“Go to the bathroom,” she told him.

He had no idea what caused him to look finally at the screen of his phone. He had gone to stand above the toilet bowl before a marbled mirror that was beginning to come apart at the edges where water had gotten in between the glass and the drywall. He imagined he had come in hopes of taking a leak, in itself a dicey proposition given what confronted him in the sorry glass, the damage done to his unit not to mention his poor prostate. One could only hope that none of his injuries would prove lasting.

The phone was on the countertop near the sink where he could not remember having left it. The sound had been turned off but the screen now blinked to life signaling the arrival of a text. As this happened, as the little screen lit up before him, he could see that it was in fact filled with messages that had arrived sometime during the past twenty-four hours or so. He could see that, and he could see something else as well. He could see that they were all from his soon-to-be ex-wife. Later he would see that there were also a number from Lucy and would find them bearers of the same sad news. But mainly what he knew, what he was given to understand over and against all else and even before he had read the messages, was that he was once more in possession of that larger present that had so recently threatened to desert him and that it was coming for him . . . right here and right now, very much as the beast in the jungle will come for its prey.

W
ALKING FROM
the bathroom, he found her seated on the bed. Their clothes were strewn about the room, as were any number of hotel towels he could not now account for. The room’s single chair had been overturned. She had opened the drapes to the balcony and the shabby world beyond it and was sitting there naked, braced upon a pillow. The morning light now filling the room was white and harsh and not doing her any favors, nor really was the dye job that had turned her hair to a spiky blue black so that her face seemed pale and drained by contrast and from which her darkened eyes were holding him with a look beyond despair. He was also naked and they were a moment in taking one another in, pilgrims along the road to perdition.

He needed of course to tell her the news. Now, however, that he was faced with actually saying it aloud, he found that he was not quite up to it. He tried once or twice but his throat seemed to knot up and the words wouldn’t come. In their absence he remained in that no-man’s-land between the bathroom door and the king-sized bed, naked in
the unflattering light while a jet plane thundered and the poor, bare maroon carpeting vibrated beneath his feet.

She looked at him a good long while, and then finally, “She’s not coming back, buddy. What can I say?”

“It’s my daughter,” he said and began to cry. Later he would wonder if it had been that way for his father too.

He finally got through to Carla on the room’s phone, the battery having run down in his own. It was the dyslexic personal trainer that had found her, on the floor of her room, saliva running from one side of her mouth. Paramedics had been unable to revive her and she had been taken to the emergency room at UCSF, the same in which he had so recently gone in search of Big D. As she had not yet regained consciousness it was impossible to say on which of the several drugs found among her personal possessions she had actually overdosed. The prognosis was as yet uncertain. Her vital signs were within normal ranges. The lead doctor, a pulmonary specialist Chance had never heard of, had placed her on a tube to ensure her breathing, telling Carla that she would be kept sedated for the next several hours to prevent her fighting the tube then brought round when her stability was ensured. Till then she was being listed as “stable but critical” and kept in the intensive care unit. Until she was able to regain consciousness, the whys and wherefores of it all would remain a mystery. Chance told Carla that he would be there as soon as he was able and hung up. He repeated it all to Jaclyn in fits and starts, working to master his voice.

“Oh my God . . .” she said. She was still in the bed, having drawn the sheet around her breasts and tucked it beneath her arms as one might a towel in a steam room, a stricken expression upon her face.

Chance sat beside her. He was still only half dressed, in T-shirt and boxers, one sock on, one as yet unaccounted for. She put a hand on his leg. “Is there anything I can
do
?”

“Which one of you?” he asked.

“Don’t be mean,” she said. The light had come back into her eyes and she pressed her head into his chest. “I am so sorry . . .” she began,
but her voice gave way and he was reminded of that first time she had crossed the bay to find him, of their talk in the little café near his office, the late light through low windows, the play of emotion across her face as he talked about his patients. A gentle soul, he’d thought then, and imagined for an instant she’d come back to him after all, that the sudden revelation of impending tragedy had called her forth. A second look into her face was enough to dissuade him. In another age of the world they would have burnt her for a witch. In some future age perhaps they would locate the faulty wiring, the chemical imbalance, they would know what to do. In the here and now he supposed that she would simply have to do as the rest of them, cowboy up and soldier on, hunting her way in a world without light. His reckless invitation of only minutes before seemed a lifetime away. He was back on planet Earth.

“You know he threatened her once,” Chance said. “It was in the Thai joint that night in Berkeley.”

She nodded without meeting his eyes. “
You
need to go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll call a cab.”

“ ‘A predatory species,’ is what he said.”

“Yeah, well . . . he would know.”

“She has a boyfriend. I’ve never met him, just heard about him. He sounds like a bad one. It could be that.”

“If that’s what you think.”

“I don’t know,” Chance said. “I don’t know what I think. If you do, now would be the time.” He rose off her silence and started once more with his dressing then found he was having a hard time with the buttons of his shirt. He seemed to have developed a moderate tremor in his right hand.

She got out of bed to help, the sheet falling way. “Listen to me,” she said. “When you get to that hospital . . . you need to stay with her. Just be there. When she gets better, maybe you should just take her and go away someplace . . .”

He took her by the wrist and looked at her. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you need to be there.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “This can’t be happening.”

“I did tell you not to underestimate him.”

“You’re saying what, this is him, or the boyfriend is some guy he’s gotten to, someone on his payroll?”

“Let me tell you something about
him,
” she said. “That massage parlor? That’s his. He bought it with stolen drug money. He learned the racket from years of shutting them down when he was still in Vice. Now he uses his cop connections to keep out the competitors. He’s partnered up with some Romanian mafioso types. They bring in girls from Eastern Europe, hook them on drugs, force them into prostitution, and those are the lucky ones. They have guys, Romanians mostly but not always, young handsome guys, and that’s what they do, they troll for young girls and they’re good at it. Not around here so much, mainly in Europe but he
knows
these kinds of guys. It’s a shitty business. He’s a shitty guy with shitty friends is what I’m trying to tell you and there’s not much I wouldn’t put past him.”

“Is there any way you could find out?”

“You think I should ask?”

“Clearly you have some connection to this place.”

“
I
have no connection to anything, except you. You’d have to ask
her
about that.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “I really would.”

“And which
her
are we talking about, Jackie Black?”

“Listen to me,” she said. “There’s ones could swallow
her
with a glass of water.”

“Christ I’m tired of this,” he said finally. “Aren’t you?”

“The beat goes on.”

“Why were you there, Jaclyn? Why were you with that guy?”

“I told you,” she said.

“Right. So why was she there?”

“Let’s just say we like to pilfer a john now and then.”

“Both of you?”

“She’s a bad influence. What can I tell you? Drives
him
fucking nuts.”

“And how about Jaclyn? Is she in on it too?”

“Aw . . . your special lady friend.”

Chance was inclined to slap her but stayed his hand. There had been enough of that.

“Jaclyn can do the numbers. She’s good at that.”

“And take a beating now and then.”

“Oh, we all take those.”

“And that guy we ran from?”

“One of the Romanians who brings in the girls. There used to be two of them but I’m guessing maybe you know
some 
thing about that. I mean, if not, why were you even there?”

He declined the gambit, putting forth his own instead—now that they were back in the world with all of its unpleasantries. “And how about Gayland Parks?” he asked, in what must have seemed to her as a bolt from the blue. “What was he, a mark, a client, someone you pilfered?”

She stepped away as from an electrical shock. “Whoa . . .” she said, “look at you! Tou-fucking-ché!” She retrieved the sheet that had fallen, retreating to the bed, where she drew up her legs and rested her forehead upon her knees, a bit of the dramatic posturing that she was so good at.