Every Brilliant Eye (3 page)

“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Mostly I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should blow off the top of my head like Hemingway or just climb into a warm tub and do a vent job on my wrists.”

I gave that all the space it deserved, sipping my drink. “Any of this have to do with Irene?”

“No, I tried her first. When she didn’t bore me to death I figured I was harder to kill than that. Maybe I’m all right. They say people who do it don’t talk about it.”

“They’re wrong as usual. A thing like that generally takes a pep talk. This personal, or you want to make a statement?”

“Forget I said anything. Just another lush in love with his own funeral. Tell Irene I’m okay. Having hot flashes.”

“Irene’s gone.”

“I forgot.”

I was aware then of the room stirring. I’ve gone back over it since and I’m sure the patrons were moving before the first blow. That jungle sense again. Then the noise started, like gunshots, and I went over in my chair, knocking Barry out of his, which took some doing because he was sitting there loose like a sack of mud. But I hit the floor on top of him and clawed my gun out of its belt holster. There was a lot of yelling and running and someone in the room shouted something about the police in a proprietary tone and then I knew the noises weren’t shots but the reports of a sledgehammer striking the heavy door.

“C
AN’T BE A RAID,”
Barry was muttering. “They hit the place last week.”

“You can’t trust cops. Can you walk?”

“Is my leg still on?”

I looked and told him it was. I leathered the gun and untangled my own legs from my folding chair and got a double handful of Barry’s jacket and hauled him up with me. At least he was helping and not short on bones like some drunks I’d handled. The crowd, which had moved instinctively toward the door when the racket started, was now surging in the other direction as shreds of paneling began to fly. We moved with it. A yellow shirt with a Superfly haircut was standing in front of the window with a .45 pistol in one hand and a gold badge in the other, telling everyone to stay in his place and keep his hands in sight. He was one of the bunch I’d come in with. It’s an old trick; get inside and if you’re not out in ten minutes it’s assumed you’ve observed a buy after hours and the time has come to go in with the hammers. He looked at me with Barry hanging on.

“Maybe next time you spend your mornings squeezing cantaloupes in Greektown,” he said.

I said, “I’ve got to get my friend to a doctor. He’s sick.”

He glanced at Barry. The whites of the cop’s eyes were bluish and he had an old burn scar on his right cheek, crackly looking like the skin of a roast duckling. Something fluttered across his features then. Recognition? Barry’s picture appeared atop his column daily. The cop said, “He should do his drinking in better places.”

The door came apart then with a noise like ripping cloth. I saw the bouncer go down with a plainclothesman kneeling on his back and more suits and uniforms tumbling through the torn space. A big sergeant had the bartender spread-eagled on his palms against the wall behind the bar and was reading him his rights with the bartender’s gun screwed into the nape of its owner’s neck. The cop in the yellow shirt moved his eyes that way. I hit him with the room.

It wasn’t bad, considering I’d had to use my left while supporting Barry with my other arm. I caught him square on the corner of the jaw and he dropped like a ripe peach. The leather folder containing his badge flopped to the floor. I picked it up. He was lying on top of his gun but I didn’t need that.

The invaders had fanned out and started breaking the crowd into sections with that combination of arm-wrenching and bellowing through bared teeth that always seems to wind up “proceeded to separate the offenders” on the report. I put Barry’s head through the open window and shoved at his rump with both hands until he got the idea. Climbing over he banged an ankle against the window frame with a loud crack and I winced, but he kept going and I remembered that ankle was fiberglass. I followed him out.

The cool air smelled funny after the smoke and fumes inside. We were standing on a fire escape that still had some red paint clinging to the rust, over an alley with a police cruiser parked in it splashing red and blue light over the brick and asphalt. We started down. Barry supported himself on the leprous railing.

“Freeze! Police!”

I looked at a shiny visor at the bottom of the stairs with a square beardless jaw underneath and a revolver gawking at me in two outstretched hands. I flashed the gold buzzer.

“You in tandem?” I barked.

The barrel pointed skyward. “Sir?”

“Oh, for—you got a partner?”

“No, sir.”

“Go around front and give them a hand. I’ve got an injured officer here. Move!”

He hesitated for less than five seconds, then obeyed, his footsteps swallowed in darkness. He was a month out of the academy, tops.

Barry and I skidded the rest of the way down the iron stairs and went up the alley behind the uniform. The usual crowd of civic observers was gathered in front questioning the parentage of the officers escorting the first of the handcuffed parties out the door into the county wagon. I let the folder and badge slide down my leg into the mill of feet and helped Barry into my car on the passenger’s side. I was losing him fast now that the physical part was over. Getting the door closed without sacrificing any more of his limbs involved propping him up with one hand and then withdrawing it and slamming the door fast, like closing a closet full of bowling balls. If the latch didn’t hold I’d be scraping him off the street after the first turn. As I browsed the front of the Olds through the crowd into the traffic lane I glimpsed a big black detective in a green corduroy suit frowning at the car in the rearview mirror. Probably looking for a busted taillight or an expired plate. They are always working.

T
RANSPORTING
B
ARRY FROM
the car into the house was one for the Egyptians. I opened the garage and drove in and left him dozing in the seat while I got the side door open and turned on the lights. He tumbled out when I pulled on his door but I caught him under the arms. I locked my hands around his chest and tugged. He kept saying, “Wait, wait a minute.” I didn’t have a drunk’s minute; no one has, except another drunk. I backwalked him to the door, leaving a double black line from his heels on the concrete. He was ten pounds lighter than I, but he kept wanting to melt through my grip and I had to stop every couple of seconds to hike him up. His jacket and shirt were bunched under his arms. The bee-sting I had between my shoulder blades from the long drive north spread to my discs and the bad Scotch was thrumming in my skull. Walker, you need a vacation.

The trip through the kitchen into the living room was more of the same. I let him down once to rest and get some bedding on the sofa. He was snoring when I came back. Finally I sat him on the cushions and lowered his top half and raised his legs parallel and peeled off his shoes. I had the right one off before I remembered that one wouldn’t make any difference to him. The artificial foot was a glossy flesh color and looked like a shoe tree, attached by a ball and socket to the leg. I wondered if he was in the habit of taking the leg off when he slept, then decided it didn’t matter and spread the blanket over him. Tomorrow I’d start taking home stray cats. The neighborhood brats would call me Crazy Amos and throw things when I pedaled past jangling my bicycle bell.

I popped three aspirins, switched off all the lights and locked all the doors and turned on the shower. My suit smelled of cigarette smoke and Toledo. I hung it up for the cleaners and looked at my face in the clouded mirror and then killed the shower and went to bed. I’d have fallen asleep in the stall and drowned under the spray, but that didn’t worry me half so much as not being able to think of a good reason not to.

It was still dark out when I heard bumping noises in the living room. I lay listening for a while, the way you do. The luminous dial on the electric alarm clock said I’d been asleep forty-five minutes. It didn’t feel like any more than forty-four. I got up and fumbled into my robe and slippers. The light found Barry standing in the middle of the room with his knees against the coffee table and a litter of the usual coffee table junk around his feet. His hair stuck out in spikes and half his shirttail hung down under his jacket like a comic drunk’s in a nightclub act. His eyes weren’t comic. He looked scared as hell.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“That way. Want help?”

He shook his head and turned and wobbled the way I’d pointed. While he was inside I went into the kitchen and plugged in the coffeemaker. It had been perking for a couple of minutes when the bathroom door opened. He had tucked in his shirt and smoothed back his hair and his eyes weren’t so scared. He saw me sitting in the easy chair and said, “I guess we did some talking before.”

“Don’t draw that old gag on me, Barry,” I said. “You remember the serial number on your family’s first television set.”

“Last night’s foggy. Or was it this morning? I thought maybe I dreamed it. Something about a berserk P.I. committing two felonies to spare a friend a night in the house of doors.”

“You got a high opinion of yourself. They weren’t going to lock you in and let me fly.”

“It’s been a long time since I saw you in action. You looked good.”

“You didn’t. You still don’t.”

He passed it. “Is that coffee I smell? As I recall you brew a decent cup.”

“These days so does everyone. Have a seat.” I got up.

“Can I use your phone? I have to call Irene, let her know where I landed.”

“Irene’s smoke, brother. Powdered. Put an egg on her shoe and beat it.”

He got it then. I wasn’t sure he ever would. “Good for her,” he said. “She took a lot more than she had to.”

“Screw that. Sooner or later every guy gets the Irene he deserves. I’ll fetch the Joe.”

“Joe.” He smiled. “Anyone ever tell you you talk like an RKO soundtrack?”

“Old movies talked like everyone else. I just never changed. I’ve got plenty of aspirins,” I added.

“They’re just candy to me.”

I poured two cups black and brought them out on a tray with napkins. He was sitting on the sofa amid the tangled bedclothes. I took the chair and we sat sipping and not talking. If they don’t want to you can’t make them. Ticking, the old clock made a double knocking noise like a man walking with one wooden shoe. It had been the first expensive present my grandfather had bought for his mother. He had given up a new set of wooden wheels for his Model T to get it. I didn’t know where either of them was buried.

My guest drained his cup and set it down with a rattle. He wasn’t any less drunk, just steadier about it. “I think I can sleep now,” he said. “To hell with all this gab about caffeine. It’s just reverse publicity on the part of Brazil, like Hitler burning the Reichstag and blaming it on the communists.”

There was nothing in that for me, and so I finished my coffee and put the tray away and washed the cups. He was under the covers again when I came back through the living room.

“When you want ears,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I went back to bed. I heard him moving around on the sofa for a little. Then I didn’t.

I woke at ten with the sun in my face and no memory at first of what had happened a few hours earlier. I’m not Barry. It came back to me in little polite waves while I was sitting on the edge of the bed wondering what day it might be and if I should dress for home or the office. Finally I decided it was Sunday and shuffled into the bathroom for a hot shower.

When I came out wearing my old house clothes, the sofa was deserted. Barry had folded the sheet and blanket and stacked the pillow on top of them on one of the arms. The stuff that had fallen off the coffee table had been replaced.

In the kitchen doorway I froze at the sight of the scrap of paper on the table.

The table was cheap gray printed Formica over softwood, admirable for concealing coffee rings and setting off notes like this one and others. One I remembered particularly had been written on yellow stationery with a spray of orange flowers in one corner: “Amos—It didn’t work out. C.” There hadn’t been enough words to make it hard to remember after nine years. Just five, six if you counted the initial. Which were as many weeks as had seen me haunting Detroit Police Headquarters, General Service division, Missing Persons detail, until the summons came. Walker
vs.
Walker. That was gone, but the note was still somewhere in the house, waiting to pop up unexpectedly while I was looking for something else, like a frightening picture in a child’s book that he can’t resist flipping through.

This one was even shorter. It had been written with one of the thick black markers I use for reminders to myself. “Sorry and thanks.” The printing was Barry’s. You learn to print fast when most of your stuff comes in over the telephone and you want to be able to read it later. He had used a white paper napkin that looked as if it had ridden around in a pocket for a while, all sharp creases, with funny pictures on both sides.

I
DIDN’T SEE HIM
again for almost a month. My old angel, Midwest Confidential Life, Automobile, & Casualty, had a lock on my time for most of that period, which I spent babysitting some fairly sophisticated rental surveillance equipment in a utility closet next door to an apartment in Belleville. The woman was claiming permanent disability on an accident involving a top-heavy file cabinet and her back, but you wouldn’t know it by the several hundred feet of film I took of her dancing her way back from the elevators after an all-night date or the eleven hours of taped telephone recaps of erotic encounters with a quality control foreman at the GM assembly plant in Westland. It was strictly leverage. No Wayne County jury in these times was going to find for a Fortune 500 company with branch offices in six states over a fifty-year-old file clerk with a mother in a convalescent home. I was buying my client an out-of-court settlement.