A Drink Before the War (4 page)

I dragged Harold from the bedroom into the dark kitchen and sat him in the chair by the window. The shade was drawn, and on my way out, I flicked on the light. If someone was watching me from the shadows, Harold should pass as me. Although my ears are smaller.

I crept through the back of the house, took my Ithaca from behind the door, and went down the back stairs. The only thing better than an automag for the total firearms incompetent is an Ithaca .12 gauge shotgun with a pistol
grip. If you can't hit your target with that, you're legally blind.

I stepped out into my backyard, wondering if possibly there were two of them. One for the front, one for the back. But that seemed as unlikely as there being one of them in the first place. Paranoia had to be checked.

I hopped a few fences until I got to the avenue, slipped the Ithaca under my blue trench coat. I crossed the intersection and walked past the church on the south side. A road runs behind the church and the school, and I took that north. I passed a few people I knew along the way, gave curt nods, keeping my coat closed with one hand; have gun, will offend the neighbors.

I slipped into the back of the schoolyard, soundless in my Avia high-tops, and pressed close against the wall until I reached the first corner. I was at the edge of the E and he was ten feet away, around another corner, in the shadows. I considered how to approach it. I thought of just walking up on him, fast, but people tend to die that way. I thought of crawling along the ground like they used to on
Rat Patrol
, but I wasn't even positive anyone was there, and if I crawled up on a cat or two kids in a lip lock, I wouldn't be able to show my face for a month.

My decision was made for me.

It wasn't a cat and it wasn't teen lovers. It was a man and he was holding an Uzi. He stepped out from the corner in front of me with the ugly weapon pointed at my sternum, and I forgot how to breathe.

He was standing in darkness and wearing a dark blue baseball cap like they wear in the navy, with gold leafs embroidered on the brim, and gold writing of some sort on the front. I couldn't make out what it said, or maybe I was just too scared to concentrate.

He wore black wraparound sunglasses. Not the best thing to see properly when you wanted to shoot someone in the dark, but with that gun at this range, Ray Charles could put me in the grave.

He wore black clothes over black skin and that's about all I could tell about him.

I started to mention that this neighborhood wasn't known for its courtesy toward its darker neighbors after sunset when something fast and hard hit my mouth, and something else, equally hard, hit my temple, and just before I lost consciousness, I remember thinking: Harold the Panda doesn't fool 'em like he used to.

While I slept
the sleep of idiots, the Hero came to visit. He was dressed in his uniform, carrying a child under each arm. His face was covered with soot, and smoke rolled off his shoulders. The two children were crying, but the Hero was laughing. He looked at me and laughed. And laughed. The laugh turned into a howl just before brown smoke began pouring from his mouth, and I woke up.

I was on a rug. That much I knew. There was a guy dressed in white kneeling over me. I'd either been committed or he was a paramedic. He had a bag beside him and a stethoscope around his neck. A paramedic. Or a very authentic impersonator. He said, “You gonna be sick?”

I shook my head and threw up on the rug.

Someone started screaming at me in high-pitched gibberish-speak. Then I recognized it. Gaelic. She remembered what country she was in and switched to English with a heavy brogue. It didn't make much difference, but at least I knew where I was now.

The rectory. The screaming banshee was Delia, Pastor Drummond's housekeeper. In a moment, she'd begin hitting me with something. The paramedic said, “Father?” and I could hear the pastor hustling Delia out of the room. The paramedic said, “You finished?” He sounded like he had things to do. A real angel of mercy. I nodded and rolled over onto my back. I sat up. Sort of. I hooked my arms around my knees and sat there, holding on, my head swimming. The walls were doing a psychedelic dance in front
of me and my mouth felt like it was full of bloody pennies. I said, “Ouch.”

“You got a way with words,” the paramedic said. “You also got a mild concussion, some loose teeth, a busted lip, and a hell of a shiner growing by your left eye.”

Great. Angie and I would have something to talk about in the morning. The Ray-Ban twins. “That it?”

“That's it,” he said, dropping the stethoscope into the bag. “I'd tell you to come down to the hospital with me, but you're from Dorchester, so I figure you're into all that macho bullshit and won't come.”

“Mmm,” I said. “How'd I get here?”

Pastor Drummond, behind me, said, “I found you.” He stepped in front of me, holding my shotgun and the magnum. He placed them gently on the couch across from me.

“Sorry about the rug,” I said.

He pointed at the vomit. “Father Gabriel, when he was in his cups, used to do that quite often. If I remember right, that's why we picked that color pattern.” He smiled. “Delia's making up a bed for you now.”

“Thanks, Father,” I said, “but I think if I can walk to the bedroom, I can walk across the street to my own place.”

“That mugger might still be out there.”

The paramedic picked up his bag from beside me and said, “Have a good one.”

“It's been swell for me too,” I managed.

The paramedic grimaced and gave us a little wave before letting himself out the side door.

I reached out my hand and Pastor Drummond took it, pulling me up. I said, “I wasn't mugged, Father.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Angry husband?”

I looked at him. “Father,” I said. “Please. You have to stop getting illicit thrills from my lifestyle. It has to do with a case I'm on. I think.” I wasn't even sure. “It was a warning.”

He supported me as far as the couch. The room was still
about as stable as quarters on the
Titanic
. He said, “This is some warning.”

I nodded. Bad move. The
Titanic
overturned and the room slid sideways. Pastor Drummond's hand pushed me back against the couch. I said, “Yes. Some warning. Did you call the police?”

He looked surprised. “You know, I didn't think of it.”

“Good. I don't want to spend all night filling out reports.”

“Angela might have, though.”

“You called Angie?”

“Of course he called me.” She was standing in the doorway. Her hair was a wreck, messy strands hanging over her forehead; it made her look sexier, like she'd just woken up. She was wearing a black leather jacket over a burgundy polo shirt that hung untucked over gray sweatpants and white aerobic sneakers. She had a purse you could hide Peru in, which she dropped on the floor as she crossed to the couch.

She sat beside me. “Don't we look beautiful,” she said, her hand under my chin, tilting it upward. “Jesus, Patrick, who'd you run into—an angry husband?”

Father Drummond giggled. A sixty-year-old priest, giggling into his fist. Not my day.

“I think it was a relative of Mike Tyson,” I said.

She looked at me. “What, you don't have hands?”

I pushed her hand away. “He had an Uzi, Ange. Probably what he hit me with.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I'm a little anxious. I didn't mean to snap.” She looked at my lips. “This wasn't done with the Uzi. Your temple, maybe. But not the lips. Looks like a speed glove to me, the way it tore the skin.”

Angie, the expert on physical abrasions.

She leaned in close, whispered. “You know the guy?”

I whispered back. “No.”

“Never saw him before?”

“Nope.”

“You're sure?”

“Angie, I wanted this, I would've called the cops.”

She leaned back, hands up. “OK. OK.” She looked at Drummond. “OK if I take him back to his place, Father?”

“It would make Delia's day,” Drummond said.

“Thanks, Father,” I said.

He folded his arms. “Some security you are,” he said, and winked.

He's a priest, but I could've kicked him.

Angie picked up the guns and then lifted me to my feet with her free hand.

I looked at Father Drummond. “G'night,” I managed.

“God bless,” he said at the door.

As we went down the steps into the schoolyard, Angie said, “You know why this happened, don't you.”

“No, why?”

“You don't go to church anymore.”

“Ha,” I said.

 

She got me across the street and up the stairs, the queasiness steadily evaporating as the warmth of her skin and the feel of the blood rushing through her body reawakened my senses.

We sat down in the kitchen. I kicked Harold the Panda out of my chair, and Angie poured us each a glass of orange juice. She sniffed hers before she drank. “What'd you tell the Asshole?” I asked.

“After I told him what happened, he seemed so pleased someone finally kicked your ass, he would've let me fly to Atlantic City with the savings account.”

“Glad to know some good came out of this.”

She put her hand on mine. “What happened?”

I gave her the rundown from the time she left the office to ten minutes ago.

“Would you recognize him again?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

She sat back, one leg raised and propped beside her on
the chair, the other tucked under her. She looked at me for a long time. “Patrick,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She smiled sadly and shook her head. “You're going to have a hard time getting a date for a while.”

We were just
about to call Billy Hawkins the next day at noon when he walked into the office. Billy, like a lot of people who work in Western Union offices, looks like he just got out of detox. He's extremely skinny and his skin has that slightly yellowish texture of someone who spends all his time indoors in smoke-filled rooms. He accentuates his lack of weight by wearing tight jeans and shirts, and rolls his half-sleeves up to his shoulders as if he has biceps. His black hair looks like he combs it with a clawhammer, and he has one of those drooping Mexican bandit mustaches that nobody, not even your average Mexican bandit, wears anymore. In 1979, the rest of the world went on, but Billy didn't notice.

He plopped himself lazily into the chair in front of my desk and said, “So, like, when you guys going to get a bigger office?”

“The day I find the bell,” I said.

Billy squinted. Slowly, he said, “Oh, right. Yeah.”

Angie said, “How you doing, Billy?” and actually looked like she cared.

Billy looked at her and blushed. “I'm doing…I'm doing all right. All right, Angie.”

Angie said, “Good. I'm glad.” What a tease.

Billy looked at my face. “What happened to you?”

“Had a fight with a nun,” I said.

Billy said, “You look like you had a fight with a truck,” and looked at Angie.

Angie gave it a small giggle, and I didn't know who I wanted to pitch out the window more.

“You run that check for us, Billy?”

“'Course, man. 'Course. You owe me big time on this one too, I'll tell ya.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Billy, remember who you're talking to.”

Billy thought about it. Thought about the ten years he'd be doing in Walpole, fetching cigarettes for his boyfriend, Rolf the Animal, if we hadn't saved him. His yellow skin whitened considerably, and he said, “Sorry, man. You're right. When you're right, you're right.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and tossed a somewhat greasy, very wrinkled piece of paper on my desk.

“What am I looking at here, Billy?”

“Jenna Angeline's reference check,” he said. “Copped from our Jamaica Plain office. She cashed a check there on Tuesday.”

It was greasy, it was wrinkled, but it was gold. Jenna had listed four references, all personal. Under the Job heading, she'd written, “Self-employed,” in a small, birdlike scrawl. In the personal references she'd listed four sisters. Three lived in Alabama, in or around Mobile. One lived in Wickham, Massachusetts. Simone Angeline of 1254 Merrimack Avenue.

Billy handed me another piece of paper—a Xerox of the check Jenna had cashed. The check was signed by Simone Angeline. If Billy hadn't been such a slimy-looking dude, I would have kissed him.

 

After Billy left, I finally got up the nerve to take a look in the mirror. I'd avoided it all last night and this morning. My hair's short enough to make do with a finger comb, so after my shower this morning, that's exactly what I did. I'd skipped shaving too, and if I had a little stubble, I told myself it was hip, very
GQ
.

I crossed the office and entered the tiny cubicle that
someone had once referred to as “the bathroom.” It's got a toilet all right, but even that's in miniature, and I always feel like an adult locked in a preschool whenever I sit on it and my knees hit my chin. I shut the door behind me and raised my head from the munchkin sink and looked in the mirror.

If I hadn't been me, I wouldn't have recognized my face. My lips were blown up to twice their size and looked like they'd French-kissed a weed whacker. My left eye was fringed by a thick rope of dark brown and the cornea was streaked with bright red threads of blood. The skin along my temple had split when Blue Cap hit me with the butt of the Uzi, and while I slept, the blood had clotted in some hair. The right side of my forehead where I assume I'd hit the school wall was raw and scraped. If I wasn't the manly detective type, I might have wept.

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well. But I have a scar the size and texture of a jellyfish on my abdomen already, and you'd be surprised how your sense of self changes when you can't take your shirt off at the beach. In my more private moments, I pull up my shirt and look at it, tell myself it doesn't matter, but every time a woman has felt it under her palm late at night, propped herself up on a pillow and asked me about it, I've made my explanation as quick as possible, closed the doors to my past as soon as they've opened, and not once, even when Angie's asked, have I told the truth. Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.

The Hero always gave me a dope slap upside the head whenever he caught me looking in the mirror. “Men built those things so women would have something to do,” he'd say. Hero. Philosopher. My father, the Renaissance man.

When I was sixteen, I had deep blue eyes and a nice smile, and little else to take confidence in, hanging around the Hero. And if I was still sixteen, staring into the mirror,
working up some nerve, telling myself
tonight
I'd finally do something about the Hero, I'd definitely be at a loss.

But now, damnit, I had a genuine case to solve, a Jenna Angeline to locate, an impatient partner on the other side of the door, a gun in my holster, detective's license in my wallet, and…a face that looked like it belonged to a Flannery O'Connor character. Ah, vanity.

 

When I opened the door, Angie was rifling through her purse, probably looking for a misplaced microwave or an old car. She looked up. “You ready?”

“I'm ready.”

She pulled a stun gun from the purse. “What's this guy look like again?”

I said, “Last night he was wearing a blue cap and wraparounds. But I don't know if it's like his regular uniform or anything.” I opened the door. “Ange, you won't need the stun gun. If you spot him, lay back. We just want to verify that he's still around.”

Angie looked at the stun gun. “It's not for him, it's for me. Case I need something to keep me awake in cow country.”

Wickham is sixty miles from Boston, so Angie thinks they don't have telephones yet.

I said, “You can take the girl out of the city…”

“But you'll have to shoot her first,” she said and headed down the stairs.

She stayed in the church, giving me a minute head start and watching the street through the lower opening of a stained-glass window.

I crossed the street to what I call my “company car.” It's a dark green 1979 Volaré. The Vobeast. It looks like shit, sounds like shit, drives like shit, and generally fits in well in most of the places where I have to work. I opened the door, half expecting to hear a rush of feet on the street behind me, followed by the snap of a weapon hitting the back of my skull. That's the thing about being a victim;
you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. Suddenly everything looks suspect and any brightness you may have noticed the day before has dissipated into the shadows. And the shadows are everywhere. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.

But nothing happened this time. I didn't see Blue Cap in my rearview as I pulled a U-turn and headed for the expressway. But then, unless he'd really enjoyed last night's encounter, I didn't think I would see him again; I'd just have to assume he was there. I pushed the Vobeast down the avenue, then turned onto the northern on-ramp for I-93 and drove downtown.

Twenty minutes later I was on Storrow Drive, the Charles River running by in copper flashes on my right. A couple of Mass. General nurses lunched on the lawn; a man ran over one of the footbridges with a mammoth chocolate Chow beside him. For a moment, I thought of picking one up for myself. Probably do a hell of a lot better job protecting me than Harold the Panda ever would. But then, I didn't really need an attack dog; I had Bubba. By the boat-house, I saw a group of BU or Emerson students, stuck in the city for the summer, passing around a bottle of wine. Wild kids. Probably had some brie and crackers in their backpacks, too.

I got off at Beacon Street, U-turned again onto the service road, and banged a quick right onto Revere Street, following its cobblestones across Charles Street and up Beacon Hill. No one behind me.

I turned again onto Myrtle Street, the whole street no wider than a piece of dental floss, the tall colonial buildings squeezing in on me. It's impossible to follow someone in Beacon Hill without being spotted. The streets were built before cars, and I presume, before fat or tall people.

Back when Boston was this wonderful mythic world of midget aerobics instructors, Beacon Hill must have seemed roomy. But now, it's cramped and narrow and shares more than a little in common with an old French provincial
town—very pleasing to the eye, but functionally a disaster. A truck stopped for a delivery on the Hill can back up traffic for a mile. The streets are apt to be one-way in a northern direction for two or three blocks, then arbitrarily turn one-way to the south. This usually captures the average driver unaware and forces him to turn onto yet another narrow street with much the same problem, and before he knows it, he's back on Cambridge or Charles or Beacon Street, looking up at the Hill, wondering how the hell he ever ended up down here again, but getting the distinct, if irrational, impression that the Hill itself threw him off.

It's a wonderful place to be a snob. The homes are gorgeous red brick. The parking spaces are guarded by the Boston Police. The small cafés and shops are manned by imperious owners who close their doors whenever someone they don't recognize looks as if he may want to enter. And no one can find your address unless you, personally, draw them a map.

I looked in my rearview as I crested the Hill, the gold dome of the State House peeking out through the wrought-iron fence of a roof garden ahead of me. Two blocks behind me, I saw a car driving slowly, the driver's head turning left and right as if looking for an unfamiliar address.

I took a left on Joy Street and coasted the four blocks down to Cambridge Street. As the light turned green and I crossed the intersection, I saw the same car coasting down the hill behind me. At the very top of Joy Street, another car appeared—a station wagon with a broken luggage rack on the roof. I couldn't see the driver, but I knew it was Angie. She'd busted the luggage rack with a hammer one morning, pretending the flimsy metal was Phil.

I turned left on Cambridge Street and drove a few blocks to the Charles Plaza. I pulled into the parking lot, took the ticket at the gate—only three dollars per half hour; what a bargain—and pulled across the lot until I was in front of the Holiday Inn. I walked inside the hotel like I had business there, turned right past the front desk and hopped the
elevator to the third floor. I walked down the corridor until I found a window and stared down into the parking lot.

Blue Cap wasn't wearing a blue cap today. He had on a white bicycler's cap, the brim pushed back flat against his forehead. He still wore the wraparounds, though, and a white Nike T-shirt and black sweatpants. He stood just outside of his car—a white Nissan Pulsar with black racing stripes—and leaned on the open door while he decided if he should follow me in or not. I couldn't see his license plate numbers from this angle, and from this height, I could only guess at his age, but I put him at twenty to twenty-five. He was big—six two or so—and he looked like he knew his way around a Nautilus machine.

Out on Cambridge Street, Angie's car idled, double-parked.

I looked back at Blue Cap. No point sticking around. He'd follow me into the hotel or he wouldn't. Either way, it didn't make any difference.

I took the stairs down to the basement, opened a door onto a service driveway that smelled of exhaust fumes, and jumped off the loading dock. I walked past a dumpster that reeked of slowly stewing fruit and worked my way down onto Blossom Street. I took my time, but before you could say slick-as-a-wet-goose, I was back on Cambridge Street.

All over Boston, in places you'd never notice, there are garages. It doesn't compensate for a city as short on parking space as Moscow is on toilet paper, but at least the rental fees are exorbitant. I stepped into one between a hair salon and a florist, strolled along the garage until I came to space number eighteen, and removed the slipcover from my baby.

Every boy needs a toy. Mine is a 1959 Porsche Roadster convertible. It's royal blue, with a wood finish steering wheel and a twin cowl cockpit. True, “cockpit” is a term usually reserved for jets, but when I've taken this thing up to a hundred and forty or so, I've gotten the distinct impression that liftoff's only a few more blurred road signs
away. The interior is a rich white leather. The stick shift gleams like polished pewter. The horn has a keen horse emblem on it. I work on it more than I drive it, pampering it on weekends, polishing it, bringing it new parts. I'm proud to say I've never gone so far as to give it a name, but Angie says that's only because I lack the imagination.

It started with the growl of a jungle cat on the first turn of the key. I took a baseball cap from under the seat, slipped off my jacket, adjusted my sunglasses, and left the garage.

Angie was still double-parked in front of the Plaza, which meant Blue Cap was present and accounted for. I waved and pulled out onto Cambridge, heading toward the river. She was still behind me when I reached Storrow Drive, but by the time I got to I-93, I'd left her in the dust, simply because I could. Or maybe, simply because I'm so immature. One of the two.