I call, he slurred, although, seeing as he hadn’t been awake for at least an hour, he’d not been dealt a hand.
Everyone was in. We turned over our cards. Andrea’s three Queens. The Dane had a flush draw, clubs. The turn was a Two of diamonds-no help to anyone. The river came, and lo, the Eight fell. The Eight of hearts, not clubs. There it was. I’d made my straight. The Dane had busted out. The jar was mine. I leapt up. I crowed. I laughed. I felt a fool.
But there’s nothing like winning.
I stuffed the stash into my jacket pockets. I picked Drunk Jake up by the armpits, dragged him out. I flagged a cab. I managed to elicit just enough inebriated mumbling to figure out Jake’s address. Three blocks from my place. Convenient.
The cabbie smelled of cabbage and chipotle. He’d never heard of Jane Street, and didn’t speak a word of English. I directed him with gestures.
By the time we got there Jake had revived enough to say, Hey, let’s have a drink.
I’m not sure that’s a great idea, I said.
Oh, come on, he said. I had a good nap. Let’s party.
I looked at my watch. Almost four. I shrugged. What the hell. I was already fucked for tomorrow.
Come on up, he said.
Okay, I said. Just for one.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I EXPECTED
his apartment to look like, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what I got. The place was bare. As bare as a place could be and still have an inhabitant. The walls were white. The furniture was black. All of it. Couch. Chair. Table. Kitchen counter. A black-and-white existence. A couple of paperbacks next to the bed. I couldn’t make them out, but they had the look of airport books. Thick, cheap and designed for maximum throughput with minimal effort. In the kitchen, on the counter that served for a kitchen, one plate, one glass, one fork, one spoon.
‘Ascetic’ was the word that came to mind. The only thing missing was the crucifix over the bed.
Jake motioned me to the couch, found a bottle of Scotch somewhere, and another glass.
A plastic glass. I laughed, as though this was a very good joke.
Jake handed me my Scotch, sat on the matching black leather armchair, across from me. He seemed strangely sober.
So listen, man, he said, I think we should talk.
Okay, I said. Let’s talk.
Because, he slurred, we got a connection, you and me. We need to explore it.
Oh shit. I guess he hadn’t sobered up as much as I’d thought.
You got any ice? I asked.
Should be some in the freezer, he said.
I got up to get it.
Listen, he called after me, my life hasn’t been easy, you know.
I did not know that, I said, involuntarily adopting the Johnny Carson inflection.
Yeah, he continued, apparently not catching the irony. Things are all fucked up.
I found the ice. The ice tray was black. It made the ice cubes look dirty.
I mean, he said, there’s stuff you don’t even know.
What do any of us know? I asked.
Jesus on a stick, he said, you got a point.
He pulled out a tin box, rolled a joint. Lit it, toked it, handed it to me. I’d had enough of the stuff already, second-hand. It made me stupid.
My mind would race in circles. But I didn’t want to seem rude. I took a hit. I handed it back to Jake.
You know, he said, sucking in and holding a major lungful, sometimes you got to ask yourself.
Yeah, I said, thinking, Right, sometimes you do, man, and then thinking, Shit, I hate this shit, I just said to myself that I thought that … what? What did he just say? Whatever. I just said to myself that he was right, and I don’t even know what he said. I hate this shit. Get me out of here before I start thinking I know what he’s talking about.
You got to ask yourself, he continued, as my refried brain picked up the thread, what’s better? You tell the truth, you let it all out, or you don’t. You keep it all in.
Right, I said, wondering if he had some Led Zeppelin.
You got some Led Zeppelin? I asked.
Sure, he said, yeah. All right.
He wandered to the stereo, picked through a pile of CDs scattered randomly on the floor, put one in the player. All of this taking an eternity and a half.
‘Black Dog,’ it was, and I sank into it. Yes, this was what you needed, at times like this. Every note and wail crystal clear and powerful, an echoing orgasm of meaning you knew you’d never remember later but it didn’t matter, right there right then. Damn, this was some good shit he was smoking.
Yeah, he said. The thing of it is, do you know, or don’t you know?
What?
Do you know or don’t you know?
Know what? I asked, searching the swirling notes for the genesis of the question. It seemed like so long ago the conversation had started that I’d need an anthropologist to sort it out.
Shit, man, he said, his voice getting loud and angry, you can’t tell me you don’t know.
Know what? I asked, feeling strangely as though I’d asked the question before.
About the thing that makes me me, he said, that makes you you, that makes the whole thing so fucked up you won’t even open up to it.
Okay, I thought, the fucker’s off the deep end. He’s hallucinating. Sure as hell he isn’t talking to me. And I don’t see anyone else in the room. Maybe there is, though. Someone only he can see.
I don’t know shit, I said, steering it back onto the epistemological plane.
Yeah, he said. And I can’t tell you, either.
He fixed me with an accusing stare.
One day, though, he said.
The guy was having some kind of psychotic episode, drug-induced or not. And I had enough of that at home, thank you very much.
I got the hell out of there.
WHEN I WOKE UP
next morning, I realized I still had my shoes on.
Does it get any more depressing than this? I thought.
On the other hand, I mused, it was very efficient. Take a piss. Brush the teeth. Pop the pills. Out the door.
Saved time.
The pills didn’t kick in right away. I made a mental note. Check into the effect of vast quantities of booze and cigarettes, and a touch of dope, on the effectiveness of meds.
I amended the note. Forget it. I knew the answer.
Kelly was in the kitchen. I sucked it up. Acted normal.
Where’s Mom? I asked.
My room.
Asleep?
Yep.
Okay.
Kelly busied herself with her omelet. Diced the garlic, the pancetta. Grated Emmental, ground some peppercorns.
Kelly was very particular about her omelets.
She sat down across from me while it cooked.
Dad?
Yes, angel child?
She smiled.
About Mom?
Yes?
You shouldn’t be so hard on her.
Hard on her? Kelly, I’m not hard on her. I do everything for her.
Yes, you are. You’re hard on her.
What are you talking about? Jeez. Do you have any idea what she’s put us through?
A foolish question, I realized at once. Kelly rolled her eyes.
Yes, I do, she said. I do. But she can’t help it.
Well, I don’t necessarily agree with you there. She’s helping herself now, isn’t she? Since she got back? She’s trying really hard.
That’s not what I mean. Of course she’s trying. But that’s just the point. She
wants
to get better. But it’s not easy.
You think I don’t know that?
No. You know that.
Then what’s your point?
The buzzer on the stove rang. Kelly got up to turn off the burner. She put on her cow-shaped oven mitt to put the pan in the oven, to briefly brown the top.
Kelly loved her cows. We’d gotten them on a whim one day, at Ben & Jerry’s. They’d been hanging on the wall, with other oddities for sale. Absurdly overpriced oddities. But we couldn’t resist the cows.
I think I’m very patient, angel child.
You’re patient, Daddy. You’re patient. But your patience shows.
My patience shows.
Yes. It shows. She sees it. She sees you being patient. Holding it in. It’s like she’s some cancer patient and nobody wants to tell her it’s terminal. They whisper about it, thinking she can’t hear. But she hears it. She sees it. It hurts her.
I was taken aback. The truth be told, I’d long ago stopped ascribing ordinary feelings to Melissa. She’d become a task, a puzzle, a conundrum. A burden, a challenge. Anything but a person, really. And Kelly knew it.
I felt ashamed. And angry. God, how much could this life expect of me? As it was, I felt my life was held together with rotting string and brittle masking tape. One trip, one fall, one more jolt and it would fall apart. Like a house of cards.
Okay, was all I could say. Okay. I get you. I’ll try. I’ll try harder.
She hugged me for that. She kissed my cheek.
There was nothing sweeter.
DISGUST.
Guilt.
What had I done?
I must have done something, to make me feel this way.
What was it?
I decided to walk to the office. To purge myself.
The day was cold and windy. Gray clouds and spits of rain. I buttoned my jacket. The cold wind in my face was bracing. I walked down Fifth Avenue. I took in the famous canyon of buildings, stretching all the way to the harbor. It was a magnificent thing, in its way.
Strangely empty at the bottom end.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to that.
I thought of people falling. Husbands, wives, sons and daughters falling.
I thought of the cold water of New York Harbor.
Breathless.
At work things were normal. That is to say, depressing. The same complacent, driven faces everywhere. The endless slough of information thick and unavoidable. A fax, red-covered for urgency. Must attend to right away. Don’t ignore. An e-mail, in Alert mode. Must read, respond. Keep the process going. The telephone message slips. Calls from clients, colleagues. The whole preposterous, endless wheel of verbal commerce and pretense converging on my desktop every day again.
I needed a break.
Instead I got a call from Warwick.
Or rather, Cherise, summoning me to His Pomposity’s chambers.
He wanted to know how the Jules case was going. He was meeting with FitzGibbon later. Needed some talking points. Warwick was a fiend for talking points. We often speculated, Dorita and I, whether Cherise prepared him a point-form list of things to say to hookers. Not that we had any direct evidence that he patronized hookers. But he seemed the type. In fact, we wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out that he had a dominatrix stashed away somewhere.
I shuffled and dissembled. I didn’t want to tell him that I had a line
on something. Something possibly exculpatory. That there might be someone with a motive to frame the kid. That it might be the firm’s foremost client. That Kennedy thought he was not just strange but dangerous. Knowledge is a hazardous thing. It would be particularly stupid to put it in the hands of Warwick. So I gave him the bland version: It didn’t look good. The cops, the ADA were treating it as open-and-shut. They’d charge him soon enough. The best that we were likely to do was appeal to sympathy. Emphasize his youth, the circumstances. Plead it down.
Warwick nodded, as though this was what he’d known all along.
All right, he said. We’ve got to manage expectations.
Yes, I said. I think FitzGibbon’s got to be prepared.
Warwick looked at me with uncharacteristic admiration. As though I’d just discovered something deep and interesting.
It occurred to me, at that moment, that Warwick might not be the only one setting me up to fail. That maybe it wasn’t FitzGibbon’s confidence in Warwick, or the firm - certainly not any confidence in me-that had gotten me the assignment. It could be, I thought with alarm, that for FitzGibbon it was the very fact of my inexperience, my presumed incompetence, that recommended me.
Shit.
Yes, Warwick said. Well. Now that I think of it, that’s probably a job for you.
Managing FitzGibbon’s expectations?
Yes.
It figured. If a messenger was going to be shot, it wasn’t going to be Warwick.
I knew I had no choice. I asked the obligatory question.
Do you want me in the meeting?
Yes, that’s a good idea, he said, as though I’d just come up with a brilliant new notion. I’ll make an excuse halfway through. Take an urgent call. Then you can brief him.
Excellent. Not only was he throwing me to the wolves, he didn’t have the stomach to watch the resulting carnage. Afraid his pristine shirt might get splattered with entrails.
Okay, I said. I’ll be there. Three o’clock?
Three o’clock. The Franklin Room.
The Franklin Room it is, I said, with as much good cheer as I could muster.
Good. You can meet the twins.
The twins?
Yes. Ramon and Raul.
He said it with a raised eyebrow. As though I should be intimately familiar with these twins.
I’m sorry, I said. Perhaps I’ve missed something. Ramon and Raul?
FitzGibbon’s kids. You’re not telling me you’ve never heard about them?
No, I don’t believe I have. Ramon and Raul? Ramon and Raul
FitzGibbon?
Yes, he said with a slight smile. Adopted, I think. Kept their first names.
Ah, I said, as though this cleared it all up.
It didn’t clear up a thing.
But it did remind me that I had a case to work. I went back to my office. I called up Vinnie Price. Told him to get me whatever he could on Jules FitzGibbon and Larry Silver. Credit card data, assuming either of those losers had a credit card, which I doubted. Telephone records. Bus tickets. Laundry receipts. Whatever. I gave Vinnie the name of a contact I had at a small PI outfit, in case he needed help.
I knew if there was anything to find, Vinnie would find it. Which would nicely relieve me of the obligation of thinking about it. If he turned up a big pile of paper, I’d send it on to Dorita. It had been her idea, after all.
THE TABLE IN THE FRANKLIN ROOM
was highly polished. The newer leather chairs were neatly arranged around the table. A fine selection of hors d’oeuvres was prettily arrayed on the sideboard. The firm’s best vintage Burgundy reposed in a crystal decanter. Most tellingly, Warwick was already in the room.