Freaky Deaky (21 page)

Today there were young black guys in the alley by the back door to the hall, waiting there, watching Chris coming toward them. Three guys with wide shoulders and skinny pants, wearing Pony sneakers. Their attitude was familiar to Chris but not their faces. A fourth guy, with bigger shoulders stretching his silky green jacket and holding a baseball bat, came out of the row of cars facing the alley. This one was very familiar. He didn’t have to stick out his tongue to be identified.

Chris took a quick look toward the parking lot full of cars. He didn’t notice a red VW.

Juicy Mouth was saying, “This the man let Booker blow hisself up.” Announcing it to the three young guys, who were too cool to do more than appear half asleep.

It gave Chris time to look for a connection and think of Wendell saying there wasn’t one, not between Booker’s bomb and Woody’s. But look at this, there was some kind of connection. Robin and Juicy? That didn’t sound right. Donnell and Juicy?

“Make it easy on you,” Juicy was saying to him now. “No fuss, stick your leg out, your foot on the bumper of that car, we be done and gone.”

“You want to break my leg?”

Juicy held up the bat. “Check it out. What have I got here?”

“For what?”

“Listen, I told the person I do more. They say no, don’t put him away, put him in the hospital a while. That be fine, that do it.”

“What person you talking about?”

“Can’t tell you that, man. Same as like a lawyer won’t tell you shit how he knows something. Check it out, it’s the same thing what I’m saying.”

“Was it Donnell Lewis?”

“Man, I just told you what I ain’t gonna tell you.”

Chris saw Juicy look up and move slowly toward the back of the old building. Chris stepped to the parking lot side and a car crept past them, going up the alley. Juicy came away from the building watching Chris, about twenty feet between them, but said to the young guys, “You get it open?”

One of them said, “I need a tire iron. Something to pop it.”

Chris said, “You think I’m going in there with you?”

He unbuttoned his coat, his hand brushing the big grip of the automatic stuck in his waist, and held the coat open for Juicy. “You see it?” He half turned to the three guys by the door, still holding open the coat. “You see it?” Then said to Juicy again, “Was it Donnell?”

Juicy said, “You not suppose to have that, man. What is that, some kind of gun?”

Chris pulled the Glock from his waist and
looked at the three well-built young guys as he palmed the slide, racked it and the gun was ready to fire. He said to them, “What you do now, you run, fast as you can. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

Juicy, taking his time, was coming toward him now, saying, “Man, is that thing real? That’s a strange-looking piece, man. It shoot bullets or what?”

Chris said to the three young guys, “I’m gonna count to two.”

The three guys stood posed at rest, dull-eyed, slack, hips cocked at studied angles.

Chris said, “One,” raised the Glock and fired at the metal door behind them, past the nearest guy’s head, and they were running as that hard sound filled the alley and Chris said, “Two.”

He saw Juicy duck into the parking lot and went after him down a line of cars, catching glimpses of a moving figure, silky green, came to the exit drive, on the street, and there was no sign of him. An older black guy, the parking attendant, stood in the door of the shack, his office. He kept staring at the gun in Chris’s hand till finally he pointed a direction and stepped back inside. Chris moved along the front of the cars facing the street, past the grill of a Rolls, another car, heard door locks snap closed and saw Juicy behind the wheel of a white Cadillac sedan, Juicy staring straight ahead. Chris
approached on the passenger side and tapped the barrel of the Glock against the window.

“Hey, Juice? Who is it wants my leg busted?”

The guy refused to speak or turn his head, hands locked on the steering wheel.

“You can tell me, it’s okay. Just don’t stick out your tongue. Man, that thing is scary, like it’s something alive, you know what I mean? Living in your mouth. . . . Who was it, Donnell?”

Juicy didn’t answer or move or twitch or anything.

Chris said, “You think I don’t see you? Okay, that’s how you want it.” Chris put the muzzle of the gun flat against the glass and said, “Juice? Look.”

But the guy still wouldn’t move.

Chris said, “You know what Mel Gibson would do?” and was anxious to show him as he thought of Mel blazing away with his Beretta. Shit, the Glock held more rounds.

First, though, Juicy had to be looking at him. And second, he had to be careful, not shoot through the car and hit something else, or somebody on the street a block away. So Chris walked around to the front of the Cadillac. He raised the Glock in one hand and stood sideways—not the way Mel Gibson did it, two-handed—Juicy looking right at him now, aimed at the fat top part of the
seat next to the guy and began squeezing off shots—loud, Jesus, they’d hear it at 1300—counting “four” as the shatterproof windshield came apart, counted from five through ten and stopped. Where was Juicy? There, his head showing as he came up, very cautious, behind the steering wheel. Chris fired five more quick rounds into the car before Juicy could move, continued to hold the gun aimed in the silence and said, “Was it Donnell?”

Juicy nodded, up and down.

“Say it.”

“It was him.”

“You feel better now?”

“I don’t owe him nothing. He busted off my tooth one time, was in a Men’s.”

“You could’ve told me it was Donnell before and saved your car getting wrecked.”

Juicy said, “What, this? This ain’t my car.”

Robin used to roll joints Skip said were the next thing to being factory made. She had rolled him one hard and tight he was smoking now, sitting low in her fake-leather chair. Robin had a hip on the edge of her desk, red sunburst still on the wall behind her, watching him as she fooled with her braid.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“All I’m trying to tell you,” Skip said, “I think
he’s the kind of fella we could’ve cut a deal with. Stays out of our way long as we don’t make a lot of noise.” Skip drew on the cigarette and his voice changed, tightened. “I didn’t even want to do it to him, send him over there to be crippled.”

“I guess he could’ve picked up a gun,” Robin said. “But to start shooting—”

“Listen,” Skip said. “I was across the street. These guys come by me like they’re out to set a new four-forty record. He goes after the other guy, finds him and I swear fires twenty shots into that car before he’s through. You see him as some broke dick with his hand out. I saw him holding a gun in it that never stops firing.”

“What did he do then?”

“I told you, I took off. He might’ve gone back to the bar. He
knows
who set him up.”

“You’re saying he might come here.”

“I was him I’d already be here. That’s why we have to clear out. What I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“You have a gun, don’t you?”

Skip said, “You want
me
to do it? You keep changing the plan, come up with different ideas, shit, now you want me to clean up your mess. He comes in, shoot him right here in your apartment. That what you want?” He inhaled and reached out, offering her the joint.

Robin shook her head; she straightened. Skip
watched her step away from the desk but not going anywhere. Inside her head now, still stroking her braid.

Skip said, “I think we better move out to your mom’s for the night.”

“He knows you were there.”

“Then let’s go to a motel.”

She stopped pacing and turned to him and he liked the schemy smile coming into her eyes.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Robin said.

The part Greta played
in the movie they shot in Detroit was
GIRL IN BAR
, filmed in an actual bar, Jacoby’s, on Brush Street. The camera follows an actor playing a detective as he enters and comes over to the bar where she’s standing with another actor. (Both of them had familiar faces, but she didn’t know their names.) The one at the bar says to the one that comes in, “She’s trying to figure out what I do for a living.” GIRL IN BAR: “Don’t tell me, okay?” The guy is wearing a tie with a plaid wool shirt and a suitcoat that doesn’t match the pants. GIRL IN BAR: “You teach shop at a high school, right?” Then there’s the sound of a beeper going off. As the one that comes in takes the beeper from his belt, she sees his holstered gun. GIRL IN BAR: “You’re
cops
. That’s the next thing I was gonna say.”

When she told Chris about the scene he said, “Yeah, then what happens?”

Nothing. That was all she did in the movie, the
one scene. Every once in a while she’d imagine being in Jacoby’s and wonder what might happen next if it were real life. If for some reason she’s there alone and the guy with the wool shirt and tie comes up to her and starts talking. . . . It still wouldn’t go anywhere, because she wasn’t
GIRL IN BAR
. Played by Ginger Jones. She wasn’t either of them.

She was Greta Wyatt, resting on her elbows at the kitchen table, the only place in the empty house to sit down, outside of her bed, and she didn’t want to go upstairs yet. The idea of being alone was to have time to look at her situation: see where she was in relation to her goal in life, if she had one, and figure out why she was confused—if it took all night.

As it turned out, she had a revelation in less than half an hour.

Dance Fever
appeared on the black-and-white TV her folks had left for her on the kitchen counter.
Dance Fever
was a talent contest judged by semi-well-known names from the entertainment world. Greta watched couples come out and perform acrobatic dances in sequined costumes that would catch the studio lights and flash on the black-and-white screen. She watched the girls especially, studied each one and thought, Oh my God, she’s a Ginger Jones. Four part-time Ginger Joneses, one after another, with their huge thighs and show-biz smiles locked in place, throwing themselves into their
routines and trusting their muscular little partners to catch them. She had even said to Chris the other night, “You know how many Ginger Joneses there are just in Detroit?” Talking about if she had talent or not. And he said, “There’s only one Greta Wyatt that I know of.”

She realized now a revelation could be right smack in front of you all the time, but so simple you miss it.

Why use a fake name that makes you think of yourself as a third-rate performer?

The movie director had told her she was really good, a natural, as GIRL IN BAR. Greta Wyatt acting, playing a part that wasn’t anything like her. Why give Ginger Jones the credit? Someone she didn’t respect. She’d call up the movie company in Hollywood and tell them she’d like her credit changed to read: GIRL IN BAR, dot dot dot; Greta Wyatt. How many Gretas were there in Hollywood these days?

Next. See Woody and relieve her mind of that part.

Settle with him fairly; accept his original offer. Even if he did rape her, or try to, it didn’t mean she should take advantage of him. Twenty-five thousand was plenty. She didn’t need a car anymore. Or need to get mixed up in what could become a mess, his brother already dead, and find herself caught in the middle. End up being one of those girls that gets her hair done, then opens her door for the
news people, the TV cameras, and acts innocent, holding a hanky to her nose. . . . Or open the door wearing sunglasses and act mysterious, escorted through the crowd to a big car, and the next thing you know Farrah Fawcett wants to play you in the movie.

New rules to live by. One, be yourself. No more Ginger. Two, see Woody and get that over with. Three . . .

Three was still up in the air but seemed okay. What to do about Chris Mankowski. His voice on the message recorder said, “Greta, I haven’t changed one bit,” and it made her feel good, the way seeing him walking around in his underwear made her feel good. She was herself with him, or she could play around acting cute with him and he loved it. Now she missed him and wanted him to hurry up and call. But then thought of the scene in Jacoby’s again and wondered what she would look like on the screen.

She thought of Woody and saw him handing her a check.

Thought of Chris in bed wearing his dad’s glasses.

Thought of the director, the way he looked at her when she finished the scene, the way he put his hand on her arm.

She saw Woody, he was making her take a check
for a hundred thousand, insisting, and saw herself coming out of his house putting on sunglasses.

Greta smiled.

She thought of Chris, his body, the scars on his legs.

And now she was in a dark movie theater, watching titles appear on the screen, waiting for her name . . .

It was after seven by the time Chris got hold of the building manager, back from somewhere with his toolbox, and told him Miss Abbott didn’t answer when he buzzed her apartment. The manager, grim as ever, said when that happened it meant the person wasn’t home. Not trying to be funny. Chris came close to grabbing him by the throat. He held on and said in a fairly nice tone, What he was about to ask, would it be too much trouble to look in her apartment and make sure? The manager said he was already late sitting down to his supper. Standing in that dingy hall by the manager’s apartment Chris said, “I better inform you, you could be charged here with creating an improper diversion, in violation of ordinance 613.404. Carries, I think, up to a year.”

The manager, frowning, thinking about it, said, “Creating a what?”

Chris hunched in close to the guy’s flashing bifocals and said, “Get the goddamn pass key.”

Robin wasn’t home.

He got back in his dad’s car and drove out to Bloomfield Hills. Northbound traffic was light on the freeway and he was able to go seventy or better, feeling an urgent need to get Robin and Skip nailed down, located, under some kind of surveillance. He knew where to find Donnell.

No more fooling around in the gray area, the first one. There was a second gray area now: a white ’87 Cadillac sedan, license number JVS 681. He was thinking about asking Jerry Baker if he’d check with the First Precinct, see if the owner had reported a blown-out windshield and fifteen 9-millimeter rounds in the backrest of his front seat. Or through and through, into the back seat. There might even be a couple in the trunk. At this point Jerry Baker, the gray area expert, might ask, “What’s gray about it?”

It was something to think about driving up the freeway, eight o’clock and still light. Chris imagined a conversation as sort of a rehearsal for conversations to come, a chance to get a few answers straight in his mind, starting with Jerry asking what’s gray about the guy getting his car shot up.

CHRIS: Let’s say it happened in the line of duty. The city pays for the damage, right?

JERRY: But it didn’t.

CHRIS: Looking at it retroactively, it could turn out that it was in the line of duty. That’s the gray area.

Jerry doesn’t understand that. No one would.

CHRIS: Look at it this way. While holding evi-dence until Monday, I’ve put myself in a position to observe the perpetrators, aware of the possibility they could,
A
, show their hand,
B
, fuck up, or
C
, as it happens sometimes with these people, they have a disagreement and go after each other instead of the intended victim, Woody.

JERRY: Or they could go after you.

CHRIS: That’s right. You could get a leg broken. But when the attempt fails and a Cadillac sedan, JVS 681, is damaged in the process, there are two ways to look at it. One, it was a matter of a private citizen defending his life.

JERRY: Who’s the private citizen?

CHRIS: Me. Or, another way to look at it, the car was damaged by a police officer in the performance of his duty.

JERRY: But you’re not a police officer.

CHRIS: I am if they’ll reinstate me retroactively, in consideration of the undercover work I’ve been doing, lining up the perpetrators. All right, that’s done. Or it will be. Then Monday, Homicide throws a full investigation at them. Get them with dynamite in their possession. Then I bring out the evidence I’ve been holding over the weekend, five sticks of Austin Powder. We match it to their dynamite, same lot number and all, and we’re on our way. Maybe Homicide’ll want to go about it a little different, but here’s hard evidence that could lead to a conviction. Get ’em for one homicide, one attempted.

JERRY: You produce the five sticks of dynamite—that’s all? Not the check for twenty-five grand?

CHRIS: I don’t know. That’s still in the gray area all its own, isn’t it?

Jerry doesn’t answer. The gray area expert doesn’t know either. Or won’t say. . . .

In the next hour and a half Chris arrived at Robin’s mother’s house, off Lone Pine Road, pressed close to the windows in all three garage doors and saw a Lincoln and two clean, empty spaces; no red VW. He pressed close to windows along the back of the house, came to a door and rang the bell. If he had
I.D. he’d get the Bloomfield Hills cops to go in. Just checking. But he didn’t have I.D., so he poked his elbow through a pane of glass, reached in and opened the door. Right next to it on the wall was the panel of buttons you punched as soon as you entered, to turn off the silent alarm system. Shit. So he got in his dad’s car and drove back to Robin’s:

Buzzed her apartment and got no answer. Buzzed the manager. . . .

From 9:30 till 3:00
A.M.
Chris sat in the car parked across the street from 515 Canfield, in the dark. He pictured Robin and Skip in a bar, two ex-cons talking past their shoulders, scheming, grinning at each other as they had fun getting smashed. Seeing them in a bar because he would love a drink. Go somewhere to have a few and get something to eat. He hadn’t had anything since breakfast. A box of popcorn in the show. He should’ve called Greta. He caught a glimpse of Phyllis, the cotton between her toes. . . .

Then saw Greta in her T-shirt now, bending over the stove.

Saw her sitting at the desk in the squad room. Saw her walking, her thighs moving in the skirt. Saw her in his dad’s car, in profile.

And saw Mel Gibson playing the burnout and saw Juicy in the Cadillac, the Glock going off, Jesus, and saw Juicy’s gray tongue in the pink interrogation room.

Greta was alone in that empty house, the phone and message recorder on the bare floor. He should’ve called.

He wasn’t different.

He saw Donnell in the library, that dismal room, it seemed dusty, a gray area of figurine lamps and leather chairs, Donnell getting the checkbook out of the desk, holding it close to him.

Greta, he liked her name. He liked her red hair against the pillow, her mouth. . . .

He saw Donnell and Skip and Robin standing slack, not moving a muscle. They better not. He was covering them with the Glock auto. But where would it happen?

Donnell kept waiting for the man to fall asleep so he could go downstairs a while, have some time to himself. The house would be quiet and Donnell in his room listening would think, Finally. Then would hear the man’s voice from down the hall.

“Donnell?”

And he’d move through the dark to the master bedroom, light showing inside. Three times now, walk out of the room dim, the night light on in the bathroom, come back to it lit up.

“I’m right here, Mr. Woody.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“You keep turning the light on, how can you?”

“But I can’t
see
.”

“That’s the idea. You close your eyes and you have sweet dreams. Think of like you lying in a hammock and this lovely woman, has a flower in her black hair, is holding a banana rum daiquiri, big, big one, kind you love, and you sipping it through a straw.” Give the man some kind of shit his wet mind would recognize and accept. Patient with the man, kindly, that new page for the will downstairs in the desk drawer.

“Put the light on in the bathroom.”

“The night light’s on in there. You see it?”

“I want the
light
on.”

“You got it.”

Donnell stepped over to the bathroom. As he came back the man, the mound under the covers, big curly head against the pillow, said, “I thought I heard you go out.”

“Ain’t I right here?”

“You went out last night. I woke up, I didn’t know where you were.”

What the man meant, he didn’t know where
he
was.

“I told you I had to go out, Mr. Woody. My mother had a dream I died and I had to show her I was fine. Then I had to look in the Dream Book for her, see what number it meant to play.”

That quieted the man. Either give him some shit his mind would accept or, the other way, confuse him, shut him up. “You be fine now,” Donnell said and reached down to touch the man’s toes under the covers, about to tell him good night. What he said to him instead was, “Mr. Woody, you forget to take your shoes off, didn’t you?”

Picking the knots out of the man’s shoelaces woke him up some more. One thirty in the morning he believed maybe a drink would help him go to sleep. Donnell said, “Yeah, that’s what you need”—on top the fifth or more of scotch, the fifth of gin, the half dozen cans of beer the man’d had today—“a nightcap. Why don’t I bring it to your bed?”

And if that didn’t do it, hit him over the head with something.

Donnell went downstairs wishing he had a baby bottle. Fill it with booze and let the man fall asleep sucking on it. There was scotch at the bar in the library, but no ice left from the man’s evening entertainment; the refilled trays in the fridge underneath the bar weren’t half frozen. He’d have to get a couple of cubes from the kitchen. Always something, catering to or picking up after. He turned off the light in the library, walked through the front hall to the dining room turning lights on, pushed through the swing door to the butler’s pantry and was in darkness again edging into the kitchen, running his
hand along the wall. There it was. Donnell flicked the light on, turned and said, “Jesus!” loud, feeling his insides jump.