Sick Like That

by Norman Green

“Nah,” Al told her. “The hotel leaves that pile of blank tabs next to the register on purpose, it keeps the businessmen coming back and nobody’s paying us to catch those guys stealing. And we don’t tell them the bartender’s robbing them blind, we just report on what we saw, he only rings in about half of the cash transactions and he buys back every fourth drink so he’ll get a bigger tip. And the concierge is the night manager’s nephew, okay, so this time we have a phone conversation with the night manager, nothing in writing. When we come back next month, the guy’s still at it, then we kick it upstairs. I know it sounds funny, they’re paying us to find problems, but you don’t want to find too many problems at once, you’ll lose the account.”

  “Got it.” She thought for a moment. “Is it always this simple?”

  “Sarah. Honey. Most of these guys don’t even see you. They just see your chest. You’re a woman, they don’t expect nothing from you.”

  And so it went.

  In that first week, they photographed a wayward spouse, served two sets of divorce papers, repossessed one sports car, and bagged one crooked purchasing agent.

  Sarah found it all exciting as hell.

  And this was the boring stuff, this was the stuff Al didn’t like doing. “Marty says this kind of business pays your overhead and keeps your door open,” Al told her, “and he’s right, but I hate it. It’s like fixing flat tires, one after the other, all day long.” But to Sarah, it was exhilarating just sitting in the client’s restaurant, eating the client’s food and drinking his booze, keeping her secrets. And it was the first job she’d ever had where she used her head. Marty had hired her to type, but Al was showing her a whole new world.

  She turned the corner and headed up the hill on Bay 19th Street, had not gone more than a dozen steps when she saw him get out of a car and wait for her.

  Before Al, she would have been afraid.

  Frank Waters was six foot four and had the physique of a longshoreman, which he had once been. He might even be a match for Al, Sarah thought, and you are no Alessandra Martillo, you’re a head shorter than her and you’re round and you’re soft. You should be afraid . . .

  But she wasn’t.

  Like the old neighborhood, Frank Waters just didn’t seem quite as impressive as he once had.

  Anyway, she told herself, soft is not always a bad thing, soft can be nice if you know how to use it.

  And Sarah Waters knew what she was good at.

  So did Frankie . . .

  “Sarah . . .” He spread his hands out wide.

  “What do you want, Frankie? Court says three hundred feet.”

  “Do you see a judge anywhere?” He went from wounded and lonely to belligerent, just like that.

  “What do you want, Frankie?”

  A car turned the corner behind her, drove up the hill, and passed the two of them by. Frank deflated as he watched it pass. “I miss you, Sarah,” he said softly, not looking at her. “God, I miss you. Don’t you miss me?”

  Before Al, maybe she’d have told him the truth, because at night, alone in her bed as she lay listening to her mother snore, she did miss him. She ached for the feel of him in the bed next to her, the way his dick woke up before the rest of him when she went for him in the dark.

  Yeah, she missed that.

  The rest of him, not so much.

  “What do you want, Frank? We’re divorced. Dee. Vorced.”

  “Do you remember? You and me, riding the train up to Prospect Park? Doing it in the tall grass? What were we, sixteen? Those were the best times of my life. You can’t tell me you don’t think of me, now and then.”

  She stepped up to stand next to him. She could hear Al’s voice in her head. “Open your eyes. Look at the details. It’s all right there, you just have to see it.”

  Frank hadn’t shaved in at least two days.

  His clothes looked like he’d slept in them.

  The backseat of his car was piled with junk, and something that looked suspiciously like a bag of dirty laundry was featured prominently right on top. And to think she’d been leaning, if he had played her right she’d be going for him right now . . .

  “It’s been a long day, Frank. I have to work tomorrow. Good night.” She walked past him.

  He spoke to her retreating back. “Glad you got a job, Sarah.” And then, louder. “You’re still my wife, Sarah, I don’t care what anybody says. My wife.”

  “Get lost, Frank.” She didn’t like the way he’d leaned on the first word of that last sentence. It’s too bad, she thought. He could be so good sometimes, but he was such an ass the rest of the time.

  She went in the house and headed for her cold bed.

  At its western end Atlantic Avenue was a street where the tide had crested and was now receding. All the signs of recent gentrification were there: brownstones with thermopane windows behind ghetto bars, front doors painted in colors that had been hot five or six years ago, chi-chi little antique shops and restaurants all closed up, names hanging over dusty windows with to let signs stuck to the inside of the glass. One old neighborhood bar had survived, looked like the kind of joint where time stood still, a dark and fragrant hole where the bartender knew what you wanted if you asked him for a bat and a ball.

  Things had gotten too hot for Al in her old building. Once the night crawlers have climbed through your window, it’s hard to sleep there, no matter how many locks you install. She’d crashed with a friend in Queens for a while, but that had been a strictly temporary arrangement.

  There are some creatures who must live alone.

  Doesn’t make you a bad person.

  She looked through the doorway at the guys sitting on the barstools. Same guys, she thought, probably been in the same places for twenty years. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed the neighborhood getting gentrified, probably didn’t see it falling apart now. They got what they needed from the barkeep, and from the television high in the back corner.

  White guy behind the stick looked at her when she walked in. The look didn’t say “what can I get you,” it said “what the hell are you doing in here?”

  “Looking for Mrs. Taylor,” Al told him.

  The guy wiped his hands on an off-white dish towel. “In her office,” he said. “Have a seat, I’ll tell her you’re here.”

  Al leaned on the bar and inhaled that bar smell, stale beer and boiled cabbage. The television was tuned to CNN. The sound was down, but the crawl on the bottom of the screen told you what they were talking about: the Dow was off over seven hundred points, and the same talking heads who’d been promising a soft landing last year were now talking about points of no return. Wondering aloud where the bottom was.

  Well, there’s news, Al thought. Thanks for the heads-up . . .

  Mrs. Taylor was a leathery white-haired old woman who moved with a surprising amount of energy. “You must be Miss Della Penta,” she said, and she held out her hand.

  “Alicia,” Al said, and shook her hand. “Al for short.”

  “Nice to meet you, Al,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the room.”

  The street-level entrance was blocked by a heavy metal door. Mrs. Taylor stuck her key in the lock and wrestled with the door for a moment, then the lock opened with a metallic snap and she hauled the door open. The hallway smelled like the bar, but it was clean, ancient marble floors, painted walls, no graffiti on the mailboxes.

  Not horrible.

  One flight up, Mrs. Taylor fought and won the same battle with another metal door, held it open for Al to precede her inside. Didn’t lie when you called it a room, Al thought. Plaster walls, creaky wooden floor, tiny bathroom, minuscule kitchen, one radiator. “Lotta people don’t wanna live over a bar,” Mrs. Taylor said. “They think the noise will keep them up. I’m tellin’ ya, it ain’t that kinda place.”

  “Old guy’s bar,” Al said, thought better of it once the words were out.

  It was hard to tell if Mrs. Taylor was offended by that. “Those folks downstairs,
” she said, “they already fought all the wars they gonna fight. Danced all the dances they gonna dance. It’s quiet here.”

  Great, Al thought. I’m gonna be living upstairs from God’s waiting room.

  “You alone?” Mrs. Taylor asked her.

  Al sighed.

  There was a guy.

  He was TJ Conrad, a musician of some repute. He was a gifted guitar player, and he knew it. Mediocre piano, according to himself. He was smart, opinionated, fun, arrogant, moody, frequently unavailable, had the face of an ancient Bedouin tribesman and the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old delinquent.

  She couldn’t quit thinking about him.

  I am not gonna call him again, she told herself. I won’t, if the sonuvabitch didn’t get my messages, he knows how to find me.

  She remembered his last voice mail, he’d left it on the house phone in her old apartment. Heard, again, his disembodied voice. “Hey, babe,” he said, “listen, I’m sorry I been out of touch lately. I been busy, I been going through some shit. Too many hours. Gimme a couple of days, okay? Maybe we can hang on the weekend, okay? See ya.” And then, just before he disconnected, there was a voice.

  Not his voice.

  She had played it back a few more times, just to be sure, but yeah, it was a voice, and no, it wasn’t his.

  Sounded like a chick.

  A very young chick.

  Listen, she told herself, it could have been anyone. I mean, the dude is a musician, he was probably calling from a bar, he spends half his life in them.

  Could have been anyone.

  Oh really?

  Then why didn’t he call your cell? Hah? Because he didn’t want to talk to you, that’s why, he just wanted to leave that bullshit message.

  Men.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s just me.”

  It was just another stinking project building, concrete and bricks, high-gloss enamel paint, one elevator, two stairwells that she was forbidden to enter. Cold day with a stiff breeze. She walked home from sixth grade by herself, an increasingly common occurrence these days. She hated it when she had to make the trip all by herself. It wasn’t fear of what she might run into on the way, she was a Brooklyn kid and the streets did not scare her much. No, it was the change that frightened her, the newness of being on her own. Her mother had always been there, as far back as she could remember, but lately her mother had begun retreating, acting strange, sitting motionless and silent in the darkened apartment, staying in her bed with the covers pulled up high in the mornings and leaving Alessandra to fend for herself. She’ll be all right when Papi gets home, Al told herself, but Papi was gone again, he was far, far away, wearing his uniform, doing his job.

  Al couldn’t get used to it, but she did her best to adapt. After a few hungry days at school she began making her own lunch. She tried to restore the apartment to proper order, she made her bed, cleaned the kitchen, tried to make things look, as well as she knew how, the way they always had. The fear pressed in on her, though, strengthened by her growing awareness that her mother was now as far away as her father had ever been.

  The wind between the project buildings blew hard, leaching the warmth from her body. She shivered, somewhat from the cold but more from fear. Had she forgotten her coat at school? She couldn’t remember, and if she’d left it there it was gone for sure. “You’ve got to take better care of your things!” her mother would howl, fighting not to cry. “Al, honey, we don’t have money to keep on buying things for you just to have you lose them!”

  It had been bitterly cold that morning, she couldn’t have left her coat home.

  Could she?

  Maybe she wouldn’t tell. Maybe she could wear two shirts and her hoodie, maybe it wouldn’t get too cold this year, maybe she’d find another coat . . .

  Maybe her mother wouldn’t notice. She’d been acting so funny lately . . .

  It wasn’t much warmer inside her building. She rode the elevator up, silent and alone, pushed open the door to her floor.

  Funny smell in the hallway.

  Someone had opened a window somewhere and the cold wind was reaching in, feeling for her . . .

  The door to the apartment was open.

  Two firemen and a cop stood just outside, in the hallway. They didn’t notice her until too late, she darted past them, saw her mother lying on the kitchen floor, the skin of her face an unearthly gray.

  Oven door open.

  One of the firemen grabbed her.

  She screamed.

  Alessandra came to, gasping for breath on the floor next to the daybed in her apartment on Pineapple Street. The heat must have gone off again, she was covered with cold sweat, and she was freezing.

  And alone, still.

  She got up shivering, climbed back under the blankets, felt her twelve-year-old self sliding away.

  My last night in this hole, she thought, shaking, and the ghosts have to come out one more time. Maybe they wouldn’t follow her to the new place over on Atlantic . . .

  Yeah. And maybe Prince Charming would come along and make her feel warm all over. She waited for sleep, but it would not return.

  God, she was cold.

  Three

  Alessandra stifled a yawn and tried to focus. The hard plastic chair in the office of Houston Investigations was the only thing keeping her awake, it had been a long night without much sleep. “Al,” Sarah said, “this is Mrs. West. She’s the woman I was telling you about.” Al could not recall any mention of Mrs. West, this was probably just Sarah’s way of making the woman feel comfortable. “We know you here, honey, and we’ve discussed your case.” There was something of the Pied Piper in Sarah, people seemed to trust her. She must remind them of their sister, Al thought, or their favorite aunt, or maybe their first girlfriend from school.

  The woman glanced at Sarah and nodded. She was a tall woman, and very thin, with long wispy blond hair that tended to float and blue eyes so wide you could see white all the way around the iris. She doesn’t see herself, Al thought, when she looks in the mirror she probably sees what she looked like twenty years ago. Those eyes and that hair made her look somewhat demented. You could see how she might have been fine, once upon a time, but in another ten years she wouldn’t look too out of place riding on a broom. Funny, how youth and beauty can hide the dark spots in a person, but baby, when that tide goes out . . . Mrs. West sucked in a big breath of air as if it would help her tell her story. “I would like you to find my stepson,” she said, looking down at her hands, which she held clenched in her lap.

  She’s fighting for control, Al thought, she’s got her legs crossed, got her fists ready, she’s trying to keep herself very tight and hard in that chair.

  Sarah made eye contact with Al and raised her eyebrows. She’s asking me if we can do it, Al thought, and she nodded. No big deal.

  “Your stepson?” Al asked, let the tone of her voice pose the question.

  Mrs. West nodded without looking up. “Yes,” she said. “My husband . . . Jake is my husband’s youngest son. Jake and his brother were children when I married their father. Jake was twelve, his brother Isaac was thirteen. I thought they would warm up to me in time . . .” She finally raised her eyes and looked at Alessandra.

  “They thought I was a trophy wife,” Mrs. West said. “Maybe I was. I never thought so.” She looked back down at her hands. “My husband was a wonderful man, simply wonderful, but I thought I brought at least as much to the marriage as he did. I had just completed my residency, I had joined a private practice on Madison Avenue. I was not as well off as Thomas, of course, but I certainly didn’t need his money.” Her voice had trailed off to the point where Alessandra and Sarah were both leaning forward to hear her.

  A trophy wife, Al thought, God, do they give a trophy for second place . . . “You’re a doctor?” Al asked her.

  “Psychiatrist.” She glanced up quickly. “Not what you’re probably thinking.” Back on solid ground, her voice gained strength. “Until recently,”
she said, “most of my work has been with incarcerated women.”

  You’d have to be in jail, Al thought, to let a woman looks this crazy mess with your head. But you’re being unfair, she thought. Maybe all she needs is a nice haircut. “Rehabilitation?” Al asked. “We still do that?”

  Sarah held her thumb against the first two fingers of her left hand, shook her hand once, and looked at the ceiling. It was typical Sarah: with one economical gesture and no words at all she told Al she was being an insensitive clod.

  “We have never really bothered with rehabilitation, Ms. Martillo,” Mrs. West said sharply. “We warehouse people for a longer or shorter period of time, we force them to live in conditions you wouldn’t wish upon a stray cat, and when their time is up we turn them loose. And when they get into trouble again we pretend to be shocked.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. West, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Oh, it’s all right, I’m the one who should be sorry. I care deeply about my work, Alessandra, and to tell you the truth it has probably limited my usefulness. I wish I could have been more effective.” She shook her head. “One of society’s lesser problems. I guess we all have so many things to worry about. But if a disadvantaged or abused woman makes one small mistake, more often than not it can have a drastic effect on her entire life, and there’s no need for it, no need at all. It just seems such a waste.”

  “Let me ask you one other question, Mrs. West. You obviously can afford any agency in town. Why us? Why Sarah and me?”

  Something of a hawkish look came into Mrs. West’s eyes. “Caughlan,” she said, and she showed her teeth in what was meant to be a grin. Daniel “Mickey” Caughlan was a former client, currently serving time for tax evasion. “I know his wife very well, we share the same tennis coach. I know how much you did for them. I’ve already paid plenty, Ms. Martillo, looking for Jake. No one has managed to do the job. Daniel Caughlan couldn’t have been an easy man to work for, yet you got the job done. Perhaps you might be able to help me.”

  Sarah cut in. “Mrs. West,” she said, “why don’t you tell us more about your stepson.”