On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery (12 page)

Instinctively, I followed the jab with a left cross, smashing both his hands and his nose this time. You can’t spend twenty years boxing and not let the cross follow the jab. The punches were automatic, like they couldn’t not come.

Calabreso writhed, moaning like a guy who hadn’t been hit before. I dropped a wicked body shot into his solar plexus. He let out a loud groan, grabbed his stomach, and fell, doubled over on the pavement. His face was covered in blood and he was rolling around on the pavement with one hand on his midsection and the other over his nose. That was probably enough, but then I remembered Sherrie—and a flash of the helplessness and fear she must have felt ran through me.

That was it.

“I wouldn’t mind this on a DVD, asshole,” I said, grabbing him by the neck and slamming his head into his gold-colored bumper. His big head made the sound of a pumpkin getting smashed and he fell backward behind the SUV. He was on his back; his face was a burgundy mess.

“Please, please … ,” he said, in what the great philosopher Mike Tyson once called “womanly noises.”

“Fuck you,” I heard myself say, and I slammed him face first into the bumper again. He fell backwards onto the pavement.

“You know what, asshole?” I knelt with one knee on his chest and grabbed him by his silk T-shirt. “They’re gonna know inside that you beat a little girl. This is what your life is going to be like for the next few years.”

I took his cell phone out of his pocket. He was bleeding all over my jeans, my hands were covered with his blood, and he was gagging every now and then from the bleeding. I called AJ’s.

“AJ,” I said, “put Kel on.” Calabreso didn’t move under the pressure of my knee. Kelley picked up the phone.

“Kel?” I said. “I need you to arrest somebody for me.”

“What?”

“I happened across what I think is some stolen merchandise.” Calabreso groaned a little under my knee. “I’m on Allen, that alley around the corner from Cinderella’s. Oh, and the guy got banged up a little.”

“Duffy—are you fuckin’ nuts?”

“Kel—I think I’m going to get going,” I said. “I probably don’t want to be around here much longer. Can you do something official for me?”

I hung up. Calabreso was unconscious and wasn’t going anyplace for a while, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I hoisted him up fireman-style and loaded him into the driver’s seat behind the wheel. There was a roll of duct tape on the floor, so I taped his hands to the steering wheel and figured it was time to go. I closed the door to the back of his car and headed to the Eldorado. A set of parked headlights had appeared a couple hundred yards down the street. I didn’t know who or what it was, and I didn’t figure it was in my best interest to hang around and find out.

I gunned the Eldorado and headed to the Moody Blue as fast as I could. I turned up the eight-track just as Elvis was finishing up the glory hallelujahs in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was the last part of a song he did called the “American Trilogy.”

We sang it together all the way home.

11

I was almost to
the Moody Blue, with lots of adrenaline pumping through my veins, when I realized Al had been in there alone since I left for AJ’s. That meant that he was alone for the last seven or so hours.

I heard him start to howl and scratch the door as soon as I took the first step up the stairs to the front door. I opened the door and before I got it a quarter open, Al was through the door, jumping up on me, jumping off of me, spinning around, and then repeating this whole circuslike act. I inched my way into the trailer, and it looked like a clip from either the Discovery Channel’s feature on hurricane damage or Animal Planet’s special on neglected dogs living in squalor.

The house was littered with papers, the curtains were down off the windows, crushed Schlitz cans were strewn about the house and Al had chewed the fabric off two kitchen chairs. Apparently, after finishing off the sofa cushions he was bored. The place didn’t smell great, either, and I’ll spare the fine details, but let’s just say Al clearly has no need for added dietary fiber. But I would need to flip my mattress over and change the sheets.

I fed Al and took him for a walk down Route 9R. He needed the walk, and I needed to unwind a bit. I took a Schlitz along with me, though I was going to need a lot more than one to settle down. Al was happy to be out and got busy sniffing every foot of land we covered on our walk, stopping to give extra attention to any vertical object stuck into the ground.

I didn’t feel completely okay with what had just happened. I was okay with the first three punches because he had them coming for a couple of reasons. One reason was the abuse he’d been giving Sherrie and another reason was I had to hit him to subdue him, so he could be arrested. The last reason had more to do with street shit. I didn’t like him mocking my ability to fight and spreading his nose all over his face was something he was asking for by disrespecting me. Different jungles have different rules and he violated one of his own jungle’s rules. If you’re going to sell wolf tickets you have to be prepared for someone to cash one in once in a while.

Smashing his head into the bumper was an act of rage. I didn’t have to do it to protect myself or to make sure the cops would get him or even to make the point that he shouldn’t hit a young girl like Sherrie. It left him unconscious and maybe seriously hurt, and that was more than the situation called for. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe it was Sherrie, or maybe I was getting my shit off from my own frustration. It didn’t feel completely right.

It probably is inconsistent with good social work practice as well, but I cared less about that. If I had followed protocol, Sherrie would have taken another beating and a lot of other useless bullshit would’ve gone on, not to help anyone, but to cover a lot of administrative ass. Of course, smashing someone’s head into a bumper probably isn’t the most acceptable therapeutic intervention for couples that aren’t getting along.

It also wasn’t fair to Kelley, who had to go clean up the situation. Clearly, he would have to face questions about how he knew about the situation and how he got tipped off. Kelley could finesse his way around all of that, but that wasn’t the point. He shouldn’t have to do that because his social-work friend wanted to play Robin Hood. I owed Kelley more than a drink.

Al finished sniffing and leaving his own biological calling card along Route 9R, and we headed to the Moody Blue. It wasn’t until that point that I realized my right hand had swollen up. Later, when I washed my hands I noticed I had scraped the skin on my first two knuckles. They were so covered in Calabreso’s blood that I just figured the blood wasn’t mine. I drank another Schlitz and sprayed as much lemon-scented deodorizer around the trailer as I could. Despite the fact that I just made my living space smell like lemony dog shit, I fell asleep hard with Al next to me.

The next day Sam greeted me before I even made it to my cubicle.

“Hey Duff,” he said. “Didya hear about the Polack who wore a condom on each ear?”

“Mornin’, Sam.”

“He didn’t want to get hearing aids.”

Sam moved on, and I sat at my desk to go through my mail, e-mail, and interoffice stuff. Monique poked her head into my cubicle on her way back from getting coffee.

“Did you read the paper this morning?” she said.

“Nah.”

“Sherrie’s boyfriend was busted on stolen merchandise, but not before he took a pretty good beating.”

“No shit?” I said.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, huh?”

“Ain’t that the truth.” I tried not to give it my full concentration.

“When are you seeing her again?” Monique asked. “It will be interesting to see how she handles it.”

“I’m supposed to see her this afternoon.”

“Sometimes women in abusive relationships have bizarre reactions to this sort of thing.”

Monique knew a lot about the dynamics of abuse. I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I believe she had some personal experience with it. I knew she tended to get most of the clients with that kind of background on her caseload. She was comfortable with their issues, and I don’t think she got drunk and drove around town looking to beat up their boyfriends.

I got the office paper and went through the local section. On the second page there was a story about Calabreso’s arrest.

Off-Duty Cop Comes Across Stolen Merchandise

Off-duty Crawford Police Officer Michael Kelley came across a suspicious vehicle last night and made an arrest for stolen property estimated at over $20,000. Charged with possession of stolen property was 24-year-old Michael Calabreso. Calabreso is likely to face additional charges. It appeared as if a deal for the stolen property had gone wrong as Calabreso had been found unconscious and taped to his own steering wheel.

“The alert actions of Officer Kelley have resulted in the recovery of stolen property and the apprehension of one of the city’s kingpins in contraband and stolen merchandise,” said Crawford’s Police department spokesperson, Randy Weiser.

Calabreso is recovering and is listed in stable condition at Good Samaritan Hospital.

That was a relief. I was glad Calabreso wasn’t going to be crippled or brain dead. I was also relieved to read that it didn’t look like Kelley was going to be in any trouble. The fact that he was being made out as a hero wouldn’t please him, and he’d still be plenty pissed, but at least he wasn’t facing any problems on the job.

I headed to the medical center to see Eli and Mikey and to talk to Rudy. The Michelin Woman wouldn’t approve, but I could say I was doing a session within the hospital or I was providing support or some shit. In reality, I wanted to get a handle on what to expect in terms of a prognosis for each of the guys and visit with them. Neither of them had any family and the people they hung out with were the type of friends whose lives centered around drugs and tricking. Those peer groups had a silent code that when you’re gone—gone being in jail, in the hospital, or dead—you’re gone. Taking into consideration the dangers of that type of lifestyle, it was a necessary mindset.

I got Mikey’s and Eli’s room numbers and they were both on the seventh floor, which I figured was the cancer floor. Like most people, I felt squirrelly in hospitals, but I tried not to let it get to me. Mikey’s room was all the way at the end of the wing, and when I got there, the door was closed. There was a warning on the door.

WARNING! No visitors—Radioactive treatment in process.

I definitely needed to talk to Rudy.

I checked the number for Eli’s room and it was right across the hall from Mikey’s. It had the same sign.

I skipped the elevator and ran down the steps to Rudy’s office. As always, he was sweating in front of his monitor and he had jelly-donut stains on the front of his lab coat.

“Rude—what the fuck is up with this radioactive shit?”

“What happened to ‘Good morning’?” He didn’t look at me and kept typing. “Hang on, just a second.”

He finished up typing with his two fat index fingers and looked up.

“That’s how you treat cancer aggressively. They’re being treated with something called cesium. It’s very powerful,” Rudy said.

“How come no visitors?” I asked.

“This shit is no joke—if you’re around someone who’s radioactive, you can be exposed to harmful levels.”

“So they’re in there alone?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Of course they get their cheery visits from Dr. DAT and a few of his international med students,” Rudy said.

“Gee whiz, now I feel a whole lot better.”

“Yeah, I know, they’re all kind of a Hindu candy striper detail.”

I was back to the office around lunchtime. It seemed bizarre to me that two guys would get beat up in the same park at roughly the same time, require pretty similar medical treatment, and then both be diagnosed with advanced cancer even though they hadn’t complained about anything before. I never quite made it to medical school but, just the same, my instincts told me something wasn’t the way it should be.

Trina buzzed me to let me know that my twelve thirty was here. That was Sherrie, and I could feel the nervousness spread throughout my body as I hung up the phone. I went out to the lobby to greet her.

“Good afternoon, Sherrie.”

“Hi Duffy.”

Sherrie still carried the bruises but her head wasn’t buried under a hat, nor was she trying to hide. We went back to the conference room.

“Did you see the paper?” Sherrie asked.

“Yup—how are you doing with all of that?”

“I’m okay. I’m a little worried about him, but between jail and what we talked about yesterday, I think it may give me the chance I’ve been looking for.”

“How’s that?”

“Look, I wouldn’t have wished him to go to prison or to get hurt, but if that’s the way it’s going to be, then I can make the best of it. I have family in Brooklyn and I think I’m going to head down there.”

“And do what?”

“My Aunt Lena teaches at a business school,” she said. “You know, where you can learn to be a paralegal or something. She’s wanted me to go down there for a while, and she said I could stay with her.”

“That sounds like a decent plan,” I said.

“Duffy, can I ask you something?” She looked at me and smirked.

“Sure.”

“Maybe not, forget it.”

“You sure?” I said.

“Did I tell you that my cousin Rafael is a barback at Cinderella’s?” she said.

“No.”

“He used to be an amateur fighter.” She sat back in the chair and smiled. “He said he saw you there last night. Doesn’t seem to be your kind of hangout.”

It wasn’t really a question so I let it hang.

“Look, if it’s okay with you, I’m not going to waste any time moving to Brooklyn,” she leaned forward in her chair. “I guess that means I won’t be on your caseload.”

“No, we’ll transfer your case to the appropriate place in Brooklyn. I’ll take care of that.”

I hesitated to ask her something because it had nothing to do with her case or her treatment, but I had to know.

“Sherrie, let me ask you something. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” I said.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“When you were in jail, did you hear anything about what happened to Walanda?”

“I can’t say for sure, but I don’t trust those three from Forrest Point. I heard them laughing about her being dead. Sick shit like about her brains spilling out and stuff … it was awful,” she said.

“That’s all you know?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Walanda was on my caseload for a long time and I feel bad.”

“Sorry, Duff.”

“Hey—that day in the group I noticed something. You don’t know what those three had tattooed on their hands, do you?”

“It was a spider’s web, a little tiny spider’s web.”

I felt a chill.

“Duff, you all right?” she asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Nah, just got me thinking, that’s all.”

“Hey, I’m going to run,” she stood up. “Can I get a hug? I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“We only had two sessions, Sherrie.” She hugged me and held on for a moment more than the customary clinical hug.

“Uh-huh, sure,” she said. “Just the same, you were a big help.”

“Well, thanks and good luck.”

“You too, and Duff?”

“Yeah?”

“You might want to ice that hand,” she said.

She winked, smiled, and headed out the door to Brooklyn and what I hoped was a new life.