Another Broken Wizard (23 page)

In the end, I suppose I couldn’t bear the thought of one more thing being out of my hands. Pulling into the parking lot of Hickey’s Liquors, I called Joe.

“Hey, I checked and I got that last payment from work. I can lend you the money.”

“That’s awesome. Thanks a million.”

“Yeah, no sweat. I’m in Shrewsbury, where are you?”

“I’m home, come over. I swear, I’ll get you the whole thing back as soon as I can.”

I passed St. Johns High School and slowed down on my way to do its bidding in the worst possible way. I fortified myself with the memory of Sully’s ambush at the party, with the news of Smitty beaten into the hospital, with the image Joe waiting in an empty Leominster parking lot for a gun. The danger seemed real, but what did I know? Joe had tangled with dangerous people and put himself in dangerous situations before. And he’d always found his way out, if not smiling, then only damaged in temporary ways. The snow on the St. Johns athletic fields was pure and undisturbed.

Joe greeted me at the door. His hair hung loose and he was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt. We went into the kitchen. He was eating pasta with crushed tomatoes out of a Tupperware container. He offered me a plate of it. I said I already ate and asked what was going on.

“Just hurting. Man, work was no fun today. You ever have one of those hangovers where it feels like your bones are broken? That and my boss told me he needed me to, what was it? Yeah, he wants me to ‘take ownership’ of this whole bunch of bullshit busywork scanning old parking violations. I never even wanted to do it and now I have to ‘take ownership,’ whatever that means. It’s not like I’ll ever benefit from it. But I was so zoned out I just nodded. What’s up with you?”

I told him about Serena cancelling, Dad being surly and the live-in nurse being the antithesis of a Spanish girl with big cans. Then I said I had the money for him.

“Just tell me you’re not going to buy a gun with it,” I said.

“I’m most likely not going to. We’ll see what happens. By the way, did you hear about Matt O’Brien?”

“Who?”

“The guy who held horses mouths open for a living and beat me with a chair that one time at Tortilla Sam’s, with the crazy tattoo on his lower back.”

“Yeah, the nut job you kept taunting on the phone.”

“Him, well he killed two guys and almost killed another guy over at the Palladium. I heard he was trying to rob the place, but he shot the manager before the guy could get the safe open. It was after a show and he wanted the gate receipts. So he shot the three guys, couldn’t get into the safe and then couldn’t get out of the club. The cops had him at the door,” Joe said, satisfied and vindicated.

“Jesus Christ. That’s no joke. But, please man, promise me that you won’t buy a gun with this money.”

Joe took me up on this offer to be serious for a moment.

“I promise.”

I gave him the money.

“I promise not to use this money to buy a gun,” he said, holding up the folded bunch of twenties I’d given him. He smiled his devilish grin.

“Just be careful,” I said.

“Careful’s my middle name.”

“It’s more like your fucking antonym.”

It was funny that something as abstract and bookish as an antonym could exist in same lives we were living. We chuckled. For a moment I could forget what I was doing there. I started telling him about my job hunt and the frustration of pleading for so many jobs I didn’t want.

“Well, that’s what it was always seemed like they were pushing us towards. The nuns, St. John’s were all getting you ready to efficiently do things you’d rather not do,” Joe said.

“I guess so. But what else are you going to do?”

“There’s hanging out. There’s getting drunk. There’s getting laid.”

“There’s all that. But it doesn’t add up to much.”

“What’s it all supposed to add up to?” Joe asked. The tone in his voice said he was gearing up for an argument.

“Some sort of purpose or accomplishment, some sense of moving forward.”

“Forward to what?”

“To more responsibility, more authority, more money, to things getting more interesting.”

“And so it’s authority, responsibility and money that make things more interesting?”

“They can,” I said, making a really poor case for how I’d spent the last decade or so, and having a hard time of it. I thought of what it was like for a Praying Indian, just before King Philip’s War, questioned in the woods by an old friend.

“That’s not my idea of interesting,” Joe said, shrugging, putting on the imperturbable smile that was his argument-face.

“Well, I have no choice but to work. And it kills the time,” I joked.

“It kills more than just the time.”

“Well, it’s just civilization. It may not be much, but it seems to have beaten out the competition for now.”

“True, true. I guess that makes us its discontents.”

“Pretty much. They didn’t mention that one at career day.”

“The discontent bit is more like a hobby than a career. I’m too tired after work to do it more than an hour a night, unless I’m drinking.”

This was the Joe I loved—sober, focused and funny. It was one who I had seen less and less of since high school.

Escalita showed up. She had a way of passing through a room, a grace I hadn’t noticed before. She radiated a strange sense that everything, even the things she had no way of knowing about, were as natural as the rain. I rose and she kissed my cheek hello, leaving a wake of sweet perfume behind her. Joe gave her a plate of pasta and poured his own portion on a plate as well. I said I should go, that I needed some sleep. I walked out into the cold and over to my car, feeling terrible, and relieved at the same time.

41.

Parked outside Joe’s house, I called Volpe. He sounded busy and irritated and said he could meet me either in three hours, just after midnight, or on Saturday. I said midnight at the same diner and he agreed.

I drove to Vincent’s and drank at the end of the bar. The whiskey made my face unclench and my mind wander. I followed that impulse until I was more than a little drunk. The patrons were a mix and there was no single answer as to what was going on in that place. In the car, I practiced my sober voice, and then drove to the Boulevard Diner. I ordered some eggs and coffee to mask the whiskey on my breath. Ira Volpe showed up just after the eggs. He looked bone tired and pale, almost yellow. He hung up his coat on the hook over the booth and gestured for a coffee.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I’ve heard some things that I don’t like. If I were to tell you something about Joe, maybe enough to get a search warrant, could you try to keep the charges down to a misdemeanor?”

“You been drinking?”

“A little. Is that a problem?”

“No. If I wasn’t on duty, I’d have one with you. This week fuckin’ sucks. You hear about that psycho killed three innocent people at the Palladium?”

“I did. Three?”

“Well, it’s three now, another one just died. My boss is on all of our asses to do something, but he doesn’t seem to know what.”

“I heard about that. It’s a shame. Joe knew that guy, the killer, he used to prank call him.”

“That sounds about right. Your buddy sure knows how to choose his enemies. So tell me, is Joe in enough trouble that it’s worth him getting a record and maybe going to jail for a few months to get him out of harm’s way?”

“It might be. But is there any way he could just get like, a house arrest? Maybe just for a few months. Can you rig that if you were … Well, before I say anything, can we talk off the record?”

“What does that mean, like we say things and then pretend that we didn’t say them?”

“Yeah.”

“It depends on what you say.”

I drank my coffee and decided that being in this far, I might as well continue.

“So say there’s a guy who had about three hundred dollars worth of cocaine. If you knew where it was enough to get a search warrant, could you still look all over the apartment for it before you found it, so he wouldn’t know who told you?”

“I guess so. But if the person who told us was just fucking around and warned his friend, that person
and
his friend would lose
all
of my good will. Is that off the record enough?” Ira asked, more tired than angry.

“Okay. Now, do you know a judge you could talk to who could recommend house arrest?”

“It’s not unthinkable, if the guy didn’t have a record, or if he wanted to give some people up. After this O’Brien nightmare, we all just need to make some arrests out there.”

We negotiated from there. Ira acted more confident about his promise of house arrest with every detail I gave him. So I kept on telling him details, including the locked desk drawer in Joe’s apartment. Ira went out to his car to get some forms for me to sign. I hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to sign anything. I picked at my eggs for what seemed like a long time before he came back into the dining car. He had the carbon-paper forms mostly filled out. I started reading the carbon paper pages, but almost got sick about three quarters of the way down the first page I was supposed to initial. I knew the phrase “Confidential Informant” from cop shows, so that wasn’t what hit me. I flinched when I saw that Volpe had checked a box pertaining to my payment. It said “$30.” After that, I stopped reading and just initialed, initialed, initialed, signed and signed. After that, he gave me a voucher for my payment. Then he got up and put out his hand and we shook.

“You’re doing the right thing here.”

“I hope so. Just hold up your end, please.”

Volpe said he’d try and left. I pushed my plate away and wondered why you can’t ever take back anything you do in this life. I wished I was drunker. I paid and drove through downtown, up Highland Street, then down Park Avenue to an Irish bar. I went in and knocked back a few drinks among the solitary men watching
Cheers
reruns on TV. I watched the bottles until they cleared the place at quarter to two. From there, I drove down the road to Emily’s apartment. When you have problems, make yourself someone else’s problem—it’s an old trick.

I buzzed until her roommate, Aileen, came downstairs. I told her through the door to tell Emily that Jim was there and needed to talk to her. Emily came down, dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe and let me in. On the ground floor, I started to apologize and explain myself, but she disarmed me with a sideways cock of her head and told me to come upstairs. In her apartment, she sat me down on the couch, then went into Aileen’s room to explain things to her. Emily finally sat down next to me on the couch.

“So Jim, what’s wrong?”

I told her everything, starting with my meeting with Volpe, then about Sully, the ambush, Leominster, Willie Brown. I was drunk and full of doubt and rambled on about Olive, about the terrible sense of waste and helplessness that I couldn’t shake. I told her about Serena cancelling, and about all the sounds in the background of her phone calls. She listened patiently.

“I know that waste feeling,” she said. “It’s like there’s something or someone in front of you that you can’t touch. And the more you look at them, the farther you get. I don’t really know what it means.”

For a moment, I felt understood. My nerves, which had been flapping in the breeze all week, grew still. I leaned in and kissed Emily. It felt right. She waited a second or two before laying one of her small hands on my collarbone and gently pushing me away.

“Listen Jim, I’m glad you’re here. And I’m glad you told me all that. But you know us. You know that this isn’t that.”

I nodded and sat back on the couch, by turns befuddled, embarrassed and relieved. Emily left the room for a minute and came back with blankets and pillows and made up the couch for me. She gave me a long hug and said good night.

On the couch, I looked at the window-shaped patches of light on the ceiling and wondered if the world wasn’t a makeshift hospital where the doctors and patients kept changing places.

Part Four—War Town and Worm Town

But a small part of the dominion of my ancestors remains. I am determined not to live until I have no country.

—Metacomet, also known as King Philip

42.

Thursday, January 8

I fought waking until a square of light fell directly on my face. Emily was reading a thick book about Alexander Hamilton at the kitchen table when I sat up from the couch. My whole body vibrated with the ache of hangover. Pretty, in jeans and a big sweatshirt, she looked up from her book without moving. Her roommate wasn’t around and the apartment was very still around her. The dust danced in the sunlight. I got up slow.

“I thought I should let you sleep. You seemed pretty wasted last night.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that, and sorry about the other thing,” I said and hoped I wouldn’t have to say more.

“It’s okay. After all these years, you get a pass.”

“And tell your roommate I’m sorry I woke her up. Am I covered for apologies?”