Rough Justice (9 page)

I forced a smile at him. Slapped him on the shoulder. We'd reached the city desk.

“Wells …” said Lansing.

“I'll see you guys later,” I said. And walked past them.

A few minutes later, I was standing on the corner of Vanderbilt and Forty-third, my hands in my pockets, my nose lifted to the spring breeze. The business suits were striding up and down the sidewalk. The sweatshirts were pushing dollies. The messenger bikes raced past. The rags sat in the sun against the wall. It was almost twelve. The day seemed to stretch out a long way before me. I shook my head, took a breath. I wandered away from the office, from the terminal. I went down Forty-third to Flanagan's.

The place was empty. The sports figures on the wall swung their bats and passed their balls and posed at the ready, waiting for the lunch crowd to come in and admire them. I sat at the long wooden bar. Michael was on duty. He was standing at the bar's far end, reading his paper. Nice kid, Michael. Tall, round-faced, sharp-eyed. From Dublin originally. Very friendly. Usually comes over with a big smile, a word on the day's news. Likes to hear the inside story and so on.

Today, when he noticed me, I saw him hesitate. He looked at the floor as he came over. When he raised his eyes, he was wearing a small, lopsided half-smile. He looked embarrassed.

“Michael,” I said.

“Mr. Wells,” he said. Then he stood silent, tense. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“A cup of coffee,” I told him. “And turn on the noon news.”

The television was hung high in one corner. He turned it on with a control under the bar. All he had to do was switch to the right channel and there it was. The face from my living-room floor. Thaddeus Reich. Only he'd been alive when they'd taken that picture. He'd been ready to graduate from college, it looked like. His light hair was wavy and gleaming. His eyes were wistful and bright. His smile was broad and eager. He gazed out of the television screen as if at the future. He seemed to like what he saw.

And then there was Molly Caldwell. Standing in front of my apartment building with a microphone in her hand.

I groaned. “Fucking Molly,” I muttered. She never liked me.

She peered at the camera with her great big brown eyes. The breeze toyed with her short black hair.

“… until last night, Thaddeus Reich's life was a success story. A story of hard work and dedication. And finally, of commitment—a commitment to ease the plight of the homeless.”

“Oh, gimme a break, Mol,” I said. But there was no spirit in it. I already knew what she would do. I expected it.

Michael glanced over at me, then back at the TV. He craned his neck to see the picture. He seemed transfixed.

There was another woman now on the screen up there. An older woman with gray hair falling free to her shoulders. Gretchen Reich, the caption said, Thad's mother. She was standing in the doorway of her house, as if the TV guys had tracked her there, coaxed her out. She looked disheveled, her hair windblown, her blouse wrinkled. She looked like she'd been crying.

“No, I … don't know why this would happen,” she said faintly into the mikes thrust before her sagging face. “I can't … Nobody hated Thad. He cared so much for people. Nobody …”

She couldn't continue. They cut back to Molly.

“Reporter Wells has refused to comment on Reich's death,” she said. “Police say the investigation is continuing. Bob?”

As they cut back to the anchorman, I laughed out loud. Helplessness squatted on my shoulder like a demon. I shook my head and laughed sourly. Then I stopped laughing.

Michael was staring at me. His mouth was open. His Irish eyes were wide and grim.

A man is dead. You killed him
, those eyes said.
Someone has to pay
.

I wanted to answer him. I almost did. I almost said:
I
had to do it. It was self-defense
.

But I didn't say it. There didn't seem to be much point. He was right, after all. A man
was
dead. Someone did have to pay. The mind has its own rough justice.

So instead, I said: “Forget the coffee, Michael.” I lit a cigarette. Forced the smoke down past my sore throat. “Make it a Scotch. Make it a double.”

9

Then it was Saturday. Someone was shaking me. Back and forth, back and forth. My stomach heaved and dipped on acid waves. My head felt like a bowling ball with a bolt of lightning trapped in it.

“Wells! Goddamn it! Wells!”

Someone was screaming at me, too. Right in my face. I could feel the hot breath of it. The noise made my teeth ache. And there was a smell. A pretty, delicate smell like lilacs. It was making me sick.

“Stabus, fabus,” I remarked.

But I kept getting shaken. I kept getting sick. And the screaming made that lightning bolt of pain flash and flash again.

I became aware that someone had stepped in dogshit and then scraped his shoe on my tongue.

“Damn it, Wells, wake up! You can't do this. You can't do this now, wake up!”

I stretched my forehead until my eyes were torn open. There was a blur. A bright blur, too bright. It sort of shivered around this way and that, and I could make out glints and colors, shifting in it, like in a kaleidoscope. And there were images in there, images of people, many people, who all looked exactly alike, who all went spinning around a white center. Then, for a moment, all the pictures, all the people, congealed into one.

Why
, I thought,
there's Lansing. And she's yelling right into my face
.

“Damn you, damn you, damn you!” she yelled.

I peered at her stupidly. She looked very beautiful. That delicate porcelain oval of a face, framed with blond hair. Her high cheeks with the faint blush on them. Her blue eyes with their wide black centers. Those rich red lips. It seemed a shame to throw up on her.

I swung my arm wildly. It knocked her back out of the way. I tilted out of my easy chair, pitched forward onto my hands and knees, and vomited onto the floor. Then I collapsed headfirst into the vomit. I could feel it damp and pebbly on my cheek. I could smell it. I wanted to move. But I was so tired. So tired …

Then I was in the chair again, the tatty yellow easy chair in my bedroom. I felt something cool and damp on my forehead. I rolled my head toward it. Opened my eyes.

Why, there's Lansing again
, I thought.
What a coincidence
.

She had pulled the ottoman up next to me. She sat on it, reaching over the chair arm to swab me with a wet cloth. She blurred again and went double as I looked at her. It was becoming a bad habit of hers.

Now, the room around her was tilting and swaying too. I closed my eyes to stop it. It stopped. My stomach tilted and swayed instead. I opened my eyes. I stared hard until the various images of Lansing put themselves back together into one. The one image was crying.

I reached up weakly, caught hold of her wrist. I held it close to my cheek. Lansing raised her free hand to her face, bowed into it, and cried.

“I didn't mean to kill him, Lance,” I said.

She nodded into her palm. “I know that. Don't you think I know that? Everyone does.”

“Watts …”

“Forget Watts. To hell with Watts.”

“It was just so … bad,” I said. “… when he died. Choking. Just a kid, Lancer.”

She wiped her cheeks with her hand. She raised her eyes to me. “Don't do this.”

“I couldn't help him. I wanted to. I wanted to.” I looked away from her. And I saw the boy on the floor. Thrashing on the floor, grabbing at his throat. Making that sound, that quiet, breath-empty sound, in the quiet apartment. Probably what Olivia looked like, what my daughter looked like, sounded like when she hanged herself. I closed my eyes at the thought, but it didn't help. I could still see the image clearly.

I opened my eyes. There was Lansing. Her arm outstretched, letting me press her cool hand to my skin. Still, crying slightly, her lips parted.

“Stop looking at me like that, Lansing,” I said.

She snuffled. She shook her head. She whispered: “I can't. I can't stop. I never could. I wish I could. But I can't.”

So I let her do it another moment. I even looked back awhile. I was beginning to feel sick again. My shirt felt damp and the smell of vomit was like a cloud all around me. The pain in my head was now a steady, rhythmic screek: a cat clawing at the windowpane, trying to get out.

I forced myself to let go of Lansing's hand. I forced myself to push out of the chair. I stood up, and stumbled to one side. Lansing jumped to her feet and caught me by the arm.

“I'm all righ' … All righ' …” I muttered.

I pulled away from her. Crying, she let my arm slide through her hands as I lumbered toward the bathroom. I peeled my shirt off as I went. I dropped it on the floor behind me.

In the can, I pissed and then hovered over the toilet awhile. I thought I might puke again. When I didn't, I moved to the sink. Started the water running. I cupped some in my hands and splashed it up over me. I lifted my gaze to the medicine-chest mirror.

The thing that stared out of the glass looked something like me, only decomposed. The crags in the thin cheeks seemed to have fallen in on themselves. Gray stubble covered the long chin. The flesh on the high forehead was gray, too, and so was the widow's peak which dangled limp and damp above it.

I turned away. Stripped the rest of my clothes off and stepped into the shower. I turned the water on hard. It pulsed out of the nozzle, steaming.

I stood under the steady blast, my head bent, the water pounding me. Fragments of two lost days flashed at me from far away, like glass shards in the gutter. Mostly it was the bars. Cocktail dives way downtown. Places where I wasn't known. Mostly, I caught flashes of the bars and my hand wrapped around a Scotch glass, the smoke of a cigarette stripping my throat, burning my nose.

But there was more. There were other flashes, after a while, as I stood there under the hot spray. There were the papers Friday. The heads on the tabloids. The metro lead in the
Times
. I remembered haunting the newsstands, waiting for them Thursday night. Carrying them back to the bars. Poring over them, my hand gripping the glass.

Those headlines—they were hard to take. But the stories weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. Only the
Post
came after me:
REPORTER KILLS YALE MAN
. With Matt Flamm pegging me the “
Star
's so-called ace metropolitan reporter.” So-called by him. But then, he owed me one for stealing his car that time.

The
Star
went easy, Wilkinson or no. And the
News
put Bronco Nagourney on it, an old friend. Both of them played up the mystery angle, the investigation still continuing, that stuff.
Newsday
did the same and front-paged the Libyans anyway. The
Times
did its usual just-the-facts routine, no jump page. Probably took them a while to find New York City on the map.

The TV wasn't so tough, either, once Molly went home for the day. No one wanted to crucify one of their own, if they could help it. Like the papers, they were poised, waiting for the scent of blood. If Watts got an indictment, they'd be on me like sharks on a wounded shark. I'd have done the same. No big deal.

But there were still the pictures. The pictures of Thad Reich, staring out at me, eager-eyed. A smart kid, working for the homeless. Good son, good husband, good citizen. And the picture of me—my I. D. photo—fuzzy and ragged and worn. Blood on his hands. Even I didn't like him.

And there was still that voice:

A man is dead. You killed him. Someone has to pay
.

Only the booze could quiet that voice. So I drank. And that's all I remembered.

Now, I got out of the shower. Dried myself off, wrapped the towel around my middle. I brushed my teeth, rinsed, spat chunks of vomit into the sink. I started to shave—and cut a thick strip of flesh off just under the jawline. The plastic razor clattered in the sink as it fell from my trembling hand.

I braced my hands on the sink's edges. I bowed my head. My blood dripped down onto the white porcelain. It mingled with the droplets of water there, turning from red to pink. I stood and watched lines of it run down to the drain. I bit down hard on my lip.

Then, after a moment, I whispered: “Christ!”

“Wells.” It was Lansing. She was just outside the door. “Wells, are you all right? We've got to talk.”

I nodded. I couldn't answer.

“Wells?” she said.

“All right. I'm all right. I'll be right out.”

There was a pause. “I'll … I'll make some coffee while you get dressed. Okay?” Another pause. “Wells?”

“I'll be right there, kid.”

I heard her moving away. I looked up at the door, waited until I was sure she'd gone.

“I didn't mean to kill him, Lance,” I said again.