Revolver (19 page)

Audrey has no choice but to take the 66 and the El back down to Center City, to Eighth and Spruce, to Pennsylvania Hospital. Dad is probably already there, and she has no car. Nobody can pick her up.
Stop thinking about yourself for once, Audrey,
Jean tells her, kids screaming in the background.
Look, I gotta go.
Yeah, sure, bye, Jean.

None of this makes sense.

On the bus, Audrey reads the news on her phone—short mobile update from a local TV website.

Police Officer Sta
ś
Walczak, the son of retired captain James Walczak, found dead in a Center City hotel room, reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 37 years old.

They mispronounce both names, making it sound like a guy named Stass Wall-Zack killed himself instead of her brother.

The 66 takes forever, crawling up and down Frankford Avenue, wheezing diesel as if unsure if it can make this one…last…trip. Audrey tries Cary again to see if he's learned more but he's not picking up. Hesitates, then tries her dad. No answer there, either.

But back on the Web, a blogger has put together the coincidence that occurred to Audrey right away: two Philly cops named Walczak, killed almost exactly fifty years apart.

Audrey cuts through the throng of reporters and TV cameras outside. The uniform stationed at the door stops her, but she explains that she's family. Uniform doesn't believe her. Audrey pulls out her Houston driver's license, except it says
AUDREY KORNBLUTH.
Exasperated, she tells the uniform that her brother is dying in there. “You want to stop me? Fucking shoot me.” Audrey pushes past him. The doors swish open for her.

Unfortunately, a TV camera catches this exchange.

Fucking wonderful, she thinks.

Everyone's in the main hospital lobby, even though there's nothing they can do except wait.

The first person she sees is Cary, who is a red-faced teary wreck. He won't even look at Audrey. Jean comes over and halfheartedly apologizes for being short on the phone, but everyone is so shocked, and they wanted to get here right away. See, when he was rushed here he was still alive, and the doctors tried to save him, but—

Audrey interrupts. “He's dead.”

Jean nods.

No no no. This doesn't make any sense.

“Is what they're saying true? That he—”

Jean leans in close and whisper-barks at her. “Don't say that. We don't know what happened, okay?”

Audrey doesn't need her shit right now. She needs to find out what really happened.

Will has his arm around Claire, who won't look at Audrey, either.

“Hey, Mom. I'm so sorry.”

Will nods. “Thank you, Audrey.”

Wasn't talking to you, asshat.

“Mom?”

But Claire just shakes her head. Buries her face in Will's overcoat. Apparently she can't deal with Audrey right now. Never mind that maybe Audrey could use a fucking hug or something.

Bethanne is somewhere else—maybe in the room with Sta
ś
. Audrey has never been her biggest fan, but she wouldn't wish this kind of suffering on anyone. Jesus, their kids. Their bratty little kids…

And the Captain is in the corner, talking to a pair of detectives in suits. He does turn to look at Audrey, just once, just for a second, but it's enough. It's an eye-burst of rage and betrayal and hurt. Audrey's the one who flinches first.

She should march over there and demand some answers. She's his baby sister, after all. Not some grubby stranger who wandered in off Eighth Street.

Of course now her brain is flooded with memories of Sta
ś
when he wasn't a complete dick. Holding her arm to guide her the first time she wore roller skates. Picking her up and carrying her inside the first time she fell and bloodied both knees. Covering her ears when loud sirens blasted down the street. Staring down jerks on the block who made fun of her.

What has happened in the time since their last conversation—which, all things considered, was about as chummy as they ever got?

Audrey scans the waiting room again, looking for an opening from anybody (besides Jean) who might want to talk to her. None comes, so she bites the bullet and walks over to her father.

The detectives notice her first, give her the up-and-down. The Captain extends a hand in her general direction. Not for her to hold. He's merely pointing her out.

“This is my daughter, Audrey.”

Mumbled
sorry for your loss
es tumble out of their mouths, and then they resume their conversation.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Audrey says, and all three give her dead cold cop looks. “But I don't even know what happened.”

The Captain dismisses her with a curt shake of his head. “Later.”

“No, Dad, how about now?”

One of the detectives runs interference. “Miss Walczak, I'm sorry, but we really need to speak to your father right now. You understand.”

Not a question, but a statement of fact.
Of course you understand
.

But she doesn't.

None of this.

She pushes her way past the reporters and makes her way onto Eighth Street. Have a field day, fourth and fifth estates. Let me know what you find out.

An hour later Audrey is blowing her last twenty dollars on a Bloody at McGillin's. She leaves a fat tip and uses the remainder to purchase sexually suggestive seventies jukebox tunes—much to the dismay of most patrons. The Sweet's “Little Willy.” Slade's “Cum on Feel the Noize.” The Addrisi Brothers' “We've Got to Get It On Again.” The Raspberries' “Go All the Way.” And yes, of course, Starland Vocal Band's “Afternoon Delight.” Audrey is convinced she was born thirty years too late. She should have been a slutty little teen in the seventies, rocking out to this shit.

She's no raving beauty, she knows that. But she can attract attention when she wants from a certain type of man. Especially with one hand on the juke, her hips rocking side to side, sucking down her drink. It's not long before a bunch of middle-aged business guys in ties are surrounding her, totally amazed she knows these songs, offering up dollar bills (“you pick 'em, sweetie”) and, soon enough, drinks. Vodka drinks.

Skyrockets in flight…

She should never have come home.

Should have stayed in her fucked-up situation back in Texas, where at least she was ignored and belittled for a completely different set of reasons.

Where she didn't have to deal with all this death.

As Mac Davis croons “Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me” and Audrey's coming out of the ladies' room, one of the business guys is waiting for her.
How clever of you.
He puts on his serious moves, suggests they go to his Infiniti G35, which is parked in a garage just across the street.
I'll take you wherever you need to go.
Audrey wants to ask,
How about all the way to Houston? I travel light.

When she tries to push past him, he gets pushy in return. Grabs her hips, tries to shove his tongue down her throat. He misses by a wide margin and ends up licking her jaw. Which…ew.

She twists away.
You know, if my brother were here, my cop brother, he'd kick
your ass on the street outside. That is, if he weren't dead.

Guy
really
insists now, embarrassed, probably. Trying to save face. He puts a hand around her throat, pushes her against the wall. Nobody's around; restrooms are on the second floor, and it's late.

She feels fingers dance around her lower belly, feeling for her waistline, looking for passage south.

Yeah, he's going for the magic button that he thinks—in his drunken judgment—will make her change her mind.

She actually hoped this would happen.

Because she feels no guilt whatsoever when she punches his Adam's apple hard and fast, then follows up with a shot to his liver, which drops him to his knees.

She hears footsteps coming up the staircase so she crouches down, too.

“He had a little too much.”

Guy coming up the stairs—a friend of rapey business guy here—nods and smiles, heads into the john.

Audrey feels around the guy's ass for his wallet. Plucks it out. Takes the cash inside. “You even
look
at me again and I'll
annihilate
you,” she whispers hot and heavy in his ear. Then she tucks the money in her pants.

Now she can get on to some proper drinking at some other watering hole.

Annihilate it all.

A little after midnight, just as he's locking up for the night, the man Audrey knows as Pizza Counter Guy spots a young woman passed out in the narrow alley next to the restaurant. Hooker? Maybe. If so, she's new to this neighborhood.

The alley is the width of a small closet. Extend your elbows and you're bumping into brick even before you clear a few inches. So it's probably more like she tilted a few inches in one direction, found the gentle embrace of a wall, then slid down it until her ass hit the ground, knees popped up, boots scraping across the cement until her toes bumped against the opposite wall. Maybe she thought it was a safe place.

Pizza Counter Guy puts down the boxes he's carrying and makes his way up the alley to her. He crouches down, feels her wrist for a pulse. Finds one. He can't see her face because her long dark hair is fanned across most of it. Just as he brushes some of it aside to see if she's bleeding or hurt, her eyes pop open like a horror movie vampire's.

“Don't,” she says.

He tells her to relax, everything will be okay. And it will, because now he recognizes her. This is the young woman who tore up his counter a few days ago. Repairs of which came out of his salary. (The owner was not happy about the slapdash way the panels were reattached to the former bar.)

“My whole family's cops. Don't even think about it.”

Pizza Counter Guy assures her he is not thinking about anything.

“It's me,” he says. “You know, from the pizza shop?”

Audrey locks eyes with him. “Right. Pizza Counter Guy. Heh. Funny running into you here.”

“Uh, I work here. I think you know that.”

“Baby, I don't know a god-
damned
thing.”

Again Pizza Counter Guy admires the ornate tattoos, full sleeves, that cover both of her bare arms. Crows and thorns and roses and something that resembles the flesh of a serpent. Where is her coat? What is she doing out here alone? She exhales and he can smell the stink of booze. Ah, so that's what she's been doing.

“Can you stand?” he asks her.

“Baby, I can't stand anything anymore.”

So this is how it's going to be.

She rolls to one side in an attempt to rise, ping-ponging her way up the walls. Her whole body is shaking. He puts his hands up as if touching her aura, ready to catch her if she suddenly tumbles forward or backward. Slowly, though, she steadies herself. She looks at Pizza Counter Guy. Then she turns away and vomits on the wall. Not a girly kind of vomit, either.

He digs inside his bag until he finds a pack of tissues, pulls one out, holds it out to her. She ignores it, staggers a few steps away, clears her throat, spits a few times, moans, curses. After a small eternity she turns and asks,

“You don't happen to have a car, do you?”

“Yeah. Just lemme grab these pizzas, okay?”

The pizzas are still waiting on the sidewalk—five white, green, and red boxes, stacked neatly, held together with bungee cords.

“Wow, you really do take your work home with you,” Audrey says.

As he tucks her into the passenger seat, Pizza Counter Guy explains that he made a deal with the owner of the shop. Instead of chucking the leftover food into the rusty green Dumpster out back, he boxes up whatever's left and brings it to the clusters of homeless folks around town on his way home. Usually it's a bunch of assorted slices, a little congealed with cheese and grease, but still okay. Sometimes rolls a few days old go in there, and sometimes he even sneaks in a bunch of fresh hoagies.

“What are you going for, the Last Decent Man in Philadelphia Award?”

Pizza Counter Guy shakes his head, closes his door, flips the ignition. “There are a lot of good people here. You just have to open your heart and your eyes a little.”

“Oh Christ. You're religious, aren't you?”

“Well, yeah, I'm a deacon,” he says.

“How divine.”

Pizza Counter Guy insists on driving her home first, but Audrey says no way—people are waiting for their food.

So PCG steers his ancient-yet-spotless Civic (well over 130K on the odometer) and takes off for the Parkway. He explains there's an unofficial rule: police won't bother you between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. as long as you pick up your boxes or mattresses or whatever and move along before the tourists arrive.

“Are you one of those people who walks around saving prostitutes, telling them about Jesus?”

“I talk to anybody who looks like they need it,” Pizza Counter Guy says.

“Captain Save-a-Ho, to the rescue!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me—when a hooker passes out, do you call it a Ho-Down?”

“You weren't looking too good back there yourself, Little Miss Thing.”

Audrey considers this. “You thought I was a junkie, didn't you?”

He smiles. “Well, for a second there…I thought you were a hooker.”

She laughs and it sounds like a bark.

Audrey doesn't know what it is about him—maybe his kind face and easy manners. Maybe it's all that divinity schooling. Maybe it's because she doesn't even know his name. But after the purge of her guts, she begins a purge of her mind. They drive up the Parkway, then to the dark corners beneath I-95, then finally up to Mayfair, but along the way she ends up giving Pizza Counter Guy her life story.