The Duration (30 page)

I thought about Ava's face if I showed up with Chick and explained that my weekend there had all been part of a ruse to infiltrate Head-Connect's inner sanctums and then raid them.

“We can't do that to her,” Chick said. “Plus, she'd never go for it.”

He was right on both counts.

“It's got to be us,” he said. “We're the ones who know. We're the ones who've always known. These fucking thieves. Think about what they did to that thing, that poor scared bastard. They used him for their own amusement. Then he fights back and they cut his horn off.”

Yeah, I thought, nodding. That would suck.

“Least the rhino was already dead, though, right?” I said. “When they took the horn?”

Chick shook his head.

“Yeah, cuz the dude fucking shot it.”

He was feeling it, feeling the truth.

“A thousand sins, going back all the way,” he said. “They've all led us to here.”

He looked out the window at the warehouses of east Sink City, then back at me. He smacked his hand against his thigh.

“We are the avengers. We're the wrath.”

He gave me a righteous look, then broke into a smile.

“Shit,” I said. “And here I thought we were just a couple of guys who went through some shit together as kids.”

Chick smiled wider.

“We only went through it together because we're friends.”

At this point it was too late, but I took a last shot at mitigation.

“Listen, we cannot steal the horn. And by ‘we,' I mean you. That's real trouble, long-term trouble. I need you to work with me on this. There are people, people with resources. Maybe we should call, like, the Sierra Club, or PETA. Get them to come in and take up the cause. Or the
Franchise
. They'd do it.”

Chick looked out the window. I wasn't sure if he was listening. I was parked at a corner and we could see down a rolling avenue across the canals to long brick warehouses. Most of the windows were boarded up, but some of them weren't, and the glass looked new, and some of the doors showed signs of fresh paint. Maybe it was possible. Sink City by its bootstraps.

But maybe I was projecting.

“So, how about this?” I said. “I go in, you meet me at the back of the building. I show you the horn. Then we leave. We leave, we call in the reinforcements, make a big deal out of it with the newspapers, human interest stuff, get them to, like, find the rhino, excavate it or something, do a whole ceremony. A nice thing. Head-Connect has the money for that. They could spin it, make it marketing. Can you get behind that?”

Chick was still looking down the avenue.

“That would take months,” he said.

“You're right. Months of sobriety too. But it'll be spring, at least. Not too hot. Blossoms and shit. And then in the summer we can hang out with Unsie, hit the Bowl, go canoeing.”

Chick took a deep breath and looked out the front window. He seemed to resign himself to something. Then he nodded.

“That sounds good, man.”

“Right?”

He nodded.

I nodded back.

“So we're good? We're going to do this?”

He nodded again.

He was nodding too much.

“Guy, I need to hear you say it.”

“We're good,” he said. “We're going to do this.”

Now we were getting somewhere. I reached out and tapped him on the knee.

“Keep it together,” he said.

He slept most of the ride back. I took the Pike again. This was no time for introspection, this was time for focus. In and out. No hassle. I called my office. This time, one of the partners got on the phone. Don Huey, who was a big deal at Huey Huckle, especially since Bill Huckle was dead.

“What's going on, Mr. Johansson?” he said.

It took me a minute to figure out who it was, and then to tame my sense of being betrayed by my assistant. I rarely heard Don Huey speak. I'd once stood next to him at the urinals in the men's room and came away convinced I'd pissed on his shoes, but after a few minutes of reflection I concluded that it was unlikely.

“Mr. Huey,” I said. “Nice to speak with you.”

“It's nice to speak with you too,” Don Huey said. “I understand that you're out in western Massachusetts?”

I nodded reflexively. “That's right.”

“Never liked western Massachusetts,” Don Huey said. “Prefer the Cape.”

That's what everybody in Boston said.

“It's God's country out here,” I said. “We should open an office.”

Don Huey snorted, apparently a connoisseur of gallows humor.

“Maybe we will,” he said. “Tell me, what specifically brings you out there? I understand there was a hearing on Monday?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Uh, it's the Van Nest estate.”

I let that hang. I wasn't sure how well Don Huey knew the open matters in the office, or if he knew that the Van Nest estate was not one of them.

“How did the hearing go?”

I felt like I was talking to a spider.

“Went pretty well,” I said. “We have some work to do, but things look good.”

“Will you be in the office tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I think so. I'd hoped to be back today but some things came up,” I said, as vaguely as I thought might be tolerated. “Should be back by noon.”

“Well, listen,” said Don Huey, a pleasant enough spider but a spider all the same. “I suspect a large part of this is bullshit, but I'm going to let it ride. I'd like you to stop by my office, though, when you get here tomorrow at noon, so I can get a clearer picture.”

Someone once told me that the way to survive in a law firm was that whenever a partner asked you a question, any question, you should say, “The answer is twelve,” firmly and with enthusiasm.

“No problem,” I said. “Twelve it is.”

Don Huey hung up and I considered the pretty distinct possibility that I was less than twenty-four hours away from losing the only real job I'd ever had. My link to a world that was starting to effervesce. I looked over at Chickie, who was asleep against the window. We had crossed the gorge and were climbing back up into the hills. It wasn't yet five, but behind us, the Pioneer Valley was already darkening. Clouds were coming up the Hudson, off to the south, bringing snow. The east was still clear.

Chick was still asleep when we got into Gable, so I drove uptown and parked between Asgard and the Heirloom, which felt sort of like the poles of a dilemma—the alpha and omega, the future and the past. Too much? Yeah, I thought so too. And just then who walks out of the Heirloom but Tim-Rick Golack, both of him.

I rolled down my window.

“What's up, buttercup?” I said.

It felt weird talking to him, like talking to someone who's sick, whose prognosis has circulated.

Tim-Rick came over and peered into the truck.

“Ah,” he said. “The prodigal son returns.”

“Me or him?” I asked.

Tim-Rick just smirked.

“What'd you do, tranquilize him?”

I looked at Chick, whose head had sunk into the collar of his coat.

“Hit him with the truck,” I said. “You want to get some shots in?”

Tim-Rick smiled.

“Nah. I'll wait until he wakes up.”

“Might be a while.”

“Is he high?”

I shook my head.

“Not this time.”

We were having an actual conversation.

“How's Ginny?”

Tim-Rick looked back at the Heirloom.

“She's good. I think. She doesn't tell me much.”

“Smart lady,” I said.

He shrugged and turned his collar up against the snow, which had started to fall.

“I don't want to know much, actually. Less the better. The details make me nervous.”

He shifted gears, looked up into the flakes.

“This weather's badass. Almost spring, though.”

I nodded. That seemed like a promising thought, a safe thought. Couldn't quite let the heavier stuff go, though.

“So, like, are you in a good place now?” I asked. I don't know why I asked it. I guess it just felt like I could. He did seem like he was in a good place, relatively speaking, and I was interested in how he'd gotten there. I could use the info for Chick, maybe.

Tim-Rick shrugged. “Pretty good, I guess.”

“You burying hatchets?”

He looked at Chick.

“In anyone I can,” he said, but he was smiling.

“How'd you get there? In a good place?”

Tim-Rick sort of squinted at me. It felt like he was wondering what I knew, how much and from where. Like he was weighing his openness. He waited a second, then shrugged.

“Time. Effort. Love of a good woman, maybe.”

I must have looked doubtful, because he followed up fast.

“And therapy,” he said. “A lot of therapy. You should look into it.”

“Let's not get carried away,” I said, trying to convey some sort of jocularity.

Chick snorted next to me and raised his head. I checked on him, seemed like he was waking up. I turned back to Tim-Rick.

“Listen, dude. I hope things work out for you. Really.”

He looked at me for a second. Then he laughed.

“Appreciate it,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess.”

He kicked the front tire of the Escalade and looked at the darkening sky.

“If I was you I'd hit the road.”

And with that he walked away.

Chick and I drove up the dead-end street on which we'd lived as kids and parked at the top, where the houses met the forest and trailheads snaked off into the woods. Near the road, a big sugar maple wore a skirt of buckets. We sat in the truck. I sipped Gable's version of bodega coffee, a latte with foliage drawn into the foam. Chick had pounded the espresso I bought him. He was distracted, twitchy, his knees bouncing like they used to do before basketball games.

“You remember the way?” I asked.

“Shit yeah,” Chick said. “Back of my hand.”

I went over the plan. Give me an hour. Come through the woods. At eight I'll be in the tub room. I'll open one of the windows. You'll come in, commune with the rhino spirit, then leave. Eyes only. We meet back here and crash at the Horse Head.

The snow was coming down hard, thick flakes falling like stars, and I gave Chick my Head-Connect sweatshirt to wear under his thin black coat. He pulled the hood up. The woods were quiet, the snow starting to dampen everything. I looked around the old neighborhood. I imagined us in our homes, little kids with the world ahead of us, sitting around the dining room table, staring at our broccoli, our mothers staring at us.

“Remember Mrs. Dangle?” I asked, looking at the little cottage next to the space where Chick's house used to be. “Remember how she'd yell at us on Halloween?”

Chick laughed a little.

“She hit me with a wooden spoon once, right on my knuckles.”

“Her grandson threw a rock at me once,” I said. “Because I called him a granddangle.”

“I remember that. I thought it was because you called him Nussbaum.”