My Detective

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “I’m short this week.”

  “Short on cash and no scotch? What good are you?” She laughs, orange cap bobbing in the night. But quickly her eyes sharpen and her words get tight. “What’s it like in that building you live in over there?”

  “It’s an old subway station. Built back in the nineteen-twenties.”

  “They got tracks inside?”

  “Way underneath.”

  “Something about that building,” she says, one eye squinting at me, her voice dropping. “I think that building’s got monsters in it. Creatures. I watch it at night. I see them crawling out windows. Over walls. Seen one on the roof, dancing. You see ’em? Not always. Monsters don’t show you always. But sometimes. At night, mostly. I see ’em. You a monster?” She turns her narrow face and looks at me. She has slipped to that other place. “Maybe you change into one. Go from man to monster. I see ’em. Up there. In your building.”

  “I’m …”

  “I used to know Jesus songs. Forgot ’em all. What’s that one, ‘Quiet Night’?”

  “‘Silent Night.’”

  “Yeah. That one. Bunches more. Forgot ’em all. Jesus keeps the monsters away. The mission priest said so.”

  “Maybe you should sing more.”

  “Tell me a story. A nice one. No monsters. You know what I do when I see them? Count. Close my eyes and count. One, two, three, four, five, five, six, eight, eleven … I keep counting and counting and counting, and when I open my eyes, they’re gone. That’s the trick with monsters. If you don’t see them, they don’t see you.” She sips her tea, rubs her face, scratches her head, her cap going back and forth. She stills. “My daddy taught me that. Long ago. Dead. I see him sometimes over on San Pedro. At the shelter or outside that raggedy-assed tavern—you know the one. Where the dead go. We wave, but he’s not the same. The dead aren’t the same as us. They ain’t got that thing inside. That white, shiny thing. What’s it called? That thing that floats? I don’t know. But the dead are here. Can’t just ignore them.” She starts to cry. She wipes her eyes and nose with a sleeve, opens her mouth in silent anguish, scratches her cheek. Shakes her head side to side, like a million nos. She stills again. “Tea’s cold. You got any whiskey? How about ten dollars? Look.” She nods toward my building. “I think I see one. Up there. See him? In that window. He’s watching us.” She pulls the plastic cover up to her nose. She closes her eyes. “One, two, three, four, five, six, eighteen, twenty-three, seven …”

  I listen. She doesn’t stop. Her eyes clench shut. I try to figure out the pattern of the numbers, the sequence she chooses. There is none. She doesn’t know I’m beside her anymore. I stand and look at my building. Maybe there are monsters. I walk toward the corner. Two women, teetering from a night of cocktails at the Perch, run across the street in heels. Two men follow. I turn the corner and head toward the Little Easy.

  “There he is,” says Lenny, standing at the far end of the bar, loosening his bow tie. “Man of the hour.”

  “Why do you even bother with that thing?”

  “Owner wants us to look presentable. You don’t like my bow tie?”

  “It never seems quite right. Perpetually crooked.”

  “Fuck it,” he says, pulling it off and setting it on the bar.

  “Quiet tonight.”

  “Oddly so.”

  He pours me a scotch and leans on the bar so he’s face-to-face with me, the priest to my penitent.

  “Another architect, huh?”

  “Two down.”

  “In a week.”

  “I’m thinking it’s over contracts, something, you know, professional.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Seems the most natural to me. These guys are at the center of what’s happening, the change. They’re designing what we’re going to look like. The new city. Lot of power in that. Lot of bad little nasty things, I bet.”

  He pulls back, taking his Old Spice scent with him.

  “C’mon, Lenny. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “That’s all I got. Is it true he was found naked, with a finger missing?”

  I wink and sip.

  “Damn.”

  “Let’s talk about something else, Lenny.”

  His eyes narrow, hand to chin.

  “Immigration. That’s the hot topic,” he says. “What do we do? We can’t live without ’em. Whole damn economy would collapse. High-priced fruit. Unpicked vineyards. A national calamity. You know, California’s, like, the fifth- or sixth-largest economy in the world. We’re talking the whole goddamn planet. I think, if I may say, that solving immigration right now is more serious than global warming.” He unbuttons his collar, crosses his arms. Leans back toward me so the old couple a few stools over don’t think he’s wacko. “I can get passionate. I’m just saying there’s got to be fairness involved. But we can’t let every Tom, Dick, and Julio in. They’re eating up entitlement programs. It’s costing us. But still, there’s got to be compassion. It’s the moral dilemma of the age.”

  He shakes his head and polishes a glass.

  “Next,” I say.

  “What do you mean, ‘next’?”

  “Let’s stay out of politics.”

  “Immigration’s not politics. It’s people.”

  “How about something closer to the soul, something personal? How about music? Who are you listening to these days?”

  He smiles. “Good topic. Motown and the Beatles. Those sounds. My youth. A song can bring you back to when everything was a first. ‘Norwegian Wood.’”

  I get off the stool and take my scotch to the piano—a better upright than mine, but bruised and cracked and out of tune, jammed against the wall. I play “Norwegian Wood.” Soft. Lenny leans at the corner of the bar. He likes it when I play, which is not often.

  “First time I heard it,” he says, “I was at a party, kissing a girl in a closet under a pile of coats. Julie Mason. I was in the sixth grade and I thought, ‘Lord, just freeze me in this moment. Make my mom come late to pick me up. Let this song just go on and on, and keep that damn door closed.’” He laughs. “Did I ever tell you about Julie Mason? My first love. Brooklyn girl. Not the gentrified Brooklyn of today. The old Brooklyn. Her dad was a pipe fitter. Mean fucker. Anyway. We dated on and off through school and we kept in touch when I moved out here. We drifted apart, though. I hadn’t talked to her in years. Then the strangest damn thing. When I got arrested, you know, for running the dope up the coast, she flew out for my hearing. She was married. Had two kids. I walked into the courtroom and there she was, sitting there. She blew me a kiss. Isn’t that something? No words, no touch, just a blown kiss and then I was off in handcuffs. Never saw her again.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Hand to God, Sam. Hand to God.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I thought about calling her when I got out. Reconnecting, you know. But too much time had passed, and I thought even if I did see her again, nothing would be as perfect as that blown kiss.”

  I slide from “Norwegian Wood” to “Her Majesty,” play it slow, coil back through it, expand it a bit, and then pull it tight, letting the last note rise and hang. I close the lid. Lenny pours me another scotch.

  “On the house. I like it when you play, Sam.”

  “Thanks, Lenny.”

  “You’re a more classical guy, though, aren’t you? All those symphonies you go to.”

  “I go a few times a season.”

  “Mmm, seems more often to me.”

  I take a sip and suddenly I’m happy. It’s not the liquor, although that does play a part. It’s being here in this place off Fifth Street, the way the light is soft, how the bottles are arranged, the swipe of Lenny’s rag, the dull gleam of the bar, worn and smooth, the hush of it all, like a church at night. And Lenny’s voice. A coaxing,
pleasant thing, a sound you could build a conspiracy with. I don’t see the dead in here, don’t hear them calling. They’re out there. Like Esmeralda’s monsters. Gallagher. Jamieson. The others. But not here. It’s just Lenny and his story of kissing a girl in a closet. That rushing, splendid moment. How do you make such a thing last? Lenny is saying something about our new president, but I’m still back in “Norwegian Wood.”

  The old couple at the bar, dressed like characters from a movie set, are playing cribbage and drinking lower-shelf cognac. “There’s a shoot over on Spring,” says Lenny, nodding toward the couple. “Some crime or mystery or Cold War thing. Espionage is dead, anyway. As a genre, I mean. I can’t remember what they’re filming. They’re minor players. He told me he’s got one line: ‘I haven’t seen Bill since Chicago.’ Kind of cryptic, huh? We’ve been getting a lot of their kind. Ton of movies being shot down here. Casting director was in the other night, says, ‘We can make LA look like any place in the goddamn world.’ You know, Sam, these architect murders—that’s a movie.”

  He winks at me, pours another shot. The door opens. Susan Chandler lets in a crack of night, takes a seat beside me.

  “Jesus, Carver. Answer your phone much?”

  “I’ve been busy, and I’ve got no comment. Don’t you have other things to do? Isn’t the Times interested in other stories?”

  “You’ve got two dead architects and a freaking-out mayor. What other story is there? What are you drinking?”

  “Scotch.”

  “Order me one.”

  Lenny pours, raises his eyebrows, smiles.

  “Lenny,” he says.

  “Susan. How long have you known this guy?”

  “We go back.”

  “Does he return your calls?”

  Lenny doesn’t answer. He drifts to the end of the bar, washes glasses.

  “Naked guy, lipstick, no finger. How do you square that, Carver?”

  “Let me relax, will you? I want to sit here with my drink. Don’t you think the light is soft in here? Soothing. Let’s enjoy it. See that old couple playing cards? Let’s have a little quiet. Take in the atmosphere. It’s feels old, doesn’t it? From another time. Lenny just told me about his first kiss. Things are very nostalgic. That’s what kind of night it is. A peaceful, quiet, remembering night.”

  “Whatever. You a little buzzed, Carver?”

  Susan’s a bit of art in the mirror behind the bar. Sharp face, blond hair falling, almost too Californian, tan and the air of beach and the freedom of knowing the power and limits of beauty. Her hippie real-estate developer parents let her grow with little tending. Some children just know. I may have had too much to drink. I feel warm and a bit blurred. I like her in the mirror. She wrote a profile of me in the Times years ago. I was embarrassed by the publicity, but in two thousand words and a few pictures, she got me right, which is a hard thing to do with a man one superior described as a “reticent soul.” A mischaracterization, but what are you going to do? She shadowed me across downtown, making me into urban myth, a detective who read Byron and had a boxer father. The department liked the story. “It humanizes us,” said Ortiz, “although, Carver, you’re one odd fuck.” It’s disquieting to read what’s written about yourself, how another sees you in the world. A character. Like the old couple playing cribbage. Susan and I almost made love once. In my car in a Santa Monica beach parking lot at about two in the morning after we had drinks at a club, where we met to talk off the record about a case I was working. She sat on my lap and we kissed; I pushed my seat back, but then she said no, it would be unethical. “I can’t sleep with you if I’m covering you. It’s wrong.” She slid off me and sat in the passenger seat. A long quiet passed. Then we laughed and cracked our windows and shared a cigarette until the sun came up behind us and turned the ocean bright.

  She puts her phone on the bar. Sips. Takes a breath.

  “It’s the same doer, isn’t it?”

  “Very different MOs.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “but you got a feeling, don’t you? Two architects, friends, precise demises. Same doer.”

  “Are we off the record?”

  “Listen, Carver, about that.” She finishes her scotch, waves to Lenny for another pour. “Everything’s off the record now. I’m leaving the Times. I took a job with the Post. I’m moving to DC in a few days. I want to write about politics, up close, in the capital. Trump’s a great story. America is a great story. I can’t write about murders in LA. It’s draining me, you know, makes me feel sad for my species.”

  “That’s pretty much how Trump will make you feel.”

  “But there’ll be no chalk marks and blood stink.”

  I take a sip. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. And if you leave, you won’t know.”

  “What?”

  “How it ends.”

  “I’ll read about it when you solve it.”

  “I think it’s a woman.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re definitely not writing about this, right?”

  “I quit the Times yesterday.”

  “I saw her on the surveillance video in Jamieson’s building. She kept her face hidden. Smart, knew where the cameras were. A long coat and a fedora.”

  “Sexy.”

  “It was. In black and white.”

  “Any idea who she is?”

  “No.”

  “Love triangle gone bad?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or she could be a hit woman for someone else.”

  “Possible.”

  “Maybe she’s an architect. A fight over contracts. Taking out the competition. That seems far-fetched. I mean, we’re talking architects, not mobs or union locals.”

  “I thought you were done with cop stuff,” I say.

  “Yeah, but the scenarios are endless. Always liked the guessing part. The woman, the kid, the strange little man you never figured. My ideas of who kills and why have changed.”

  “Never think you know, until you do.”

  “Is that your best existential detective wisdom?”

  We catch each other’s eyes in the mirror.

  “How long have you been coming here, Carver?”

  “A few years.”

  “It suits you. Disheveled, a touch of class, and dim light. Seductive in a gritty way.”

  “You coming on to me?”

  “Thinking about it.”

  “Any ethical concerns?”

  She smiles. “You want to dance?”

  “Lenny can play us Sinatra,” I say. “But I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “I figured that.” She turns. “Hey, Lenny, can you put on some Frank?”

  A piano and Sinatra’s voice. She steps into my arms. I pull her close, feel her hair on my cheek, smell her soap and scotch, hear her breathing, feel the warmth through her denim jacket. We spin in a slow circle, merry-go-round glimpses in the mirror. Frank is singing, and the old cribbage players are dancing too. Lenny, arms crossed, is watching. I feel as if I were in a David Lynch movie, but it is truer than that. It is real. I feel her hips against mine, her shoes scraping mine. Slow, so slow we go; she kisses me on the neck, a finger in my hair. We spin. I kiss her lips. She tastes like me, and I close my eyes and the world falls away and I am warm and half numb, gliding on Frank and thinking I need this, that for too long I haven’t had the simple thing of a woman in my arms—not just a woman, but Susan, sans notebooks and ethical equations, here before me like a character in a story of my making. It should be like this always. It won’t be; it never is, but when it comes like now, I feel the way Lenny felt kissing Julie Mason under that pile of coats. That is what we get: moments laid into memory, pieces in time we look back on, making us think we were once close to that thing people talk about and Frank sings about, that thing with no words that’s written about so often.
>
  Susan stops and looks at me. She wipes away a tear. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I’ve wanted to dance with you for a long time. I don’t know why. I don’t dance much, either. But it seemed like something we should do.”

  “I’m not very good.”

  “You’re not so bad.”

  We laugh and turn to the bar. Lenny has poured new drinks. We down them and head out the door to Fifth Street, turn at Hill, and go past Esmeralda and across the street to my building. The night guard is in a half slumber. The building is still. I open the door to my apartment. Susan and I kiss down the hall into the living room. We hold each other in the darkness. She steps back and looks around. I turn on a lamp; she goes to the piano. “You play? Play something.”

  “Maybe later,” I say.

  She goes to my records. “I knew you were a vinyl guy.” She puts on George Shearing and Nancy Wilson. “I love the crackle when the needle touches,” she says.

  “You want a drink?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “A cigarette?”

  “No. We both quit, I thought.”

  “Mostly.”

  “You’re bad, Carver.”

  “I try.”

  “Is this your father?”

  “It was taken before a fight in Providence.”

  “He looks like he could hurt someone.”

  “He did his share of damage.” I put the picture back on the bookcase. “There’s a hot tub on the roof.”

  “No, turn the lamp off and dance with me.” She steps toward me. We kiss and slow-spin and I can see down Hill Street. Not a car moving. “Hey, Carver, take me to bed.” I carry her down the hall. “You do it,” she says. I undress her. Denim jacket, white blouse, jeans. “All of it.” She lies naked on the bed and pulls me to her. “We don’t speak until morning,” she says. I sit up and undress and lie back with her. Her profile sharpens in the moonlight; everything is slow and warm and quiet, except for her breaths and the soft gasps she makes in the minutes before dawn. She slips under my arm and curls beside me. We sleep.

  She comes down the hall yawning in her half-buttoned blouse and sky-blue underpants.

  “What’s this?”