Salvation Boulevard

by Larry Beinhart

  MacLeod replied, sounding formal and professorial, that she was an adult and could have any kind of relationship that she wanted, but that she could also leave any relationship if she wanted. She was very emotional, and there was a lot about how she used to think it was right and special, even holy, but now she was angry, and she thought it was all lies.

  Her voice grew soft, sweet, and murmuring, but too soft for Ahmad to make out any of her words.

  Then he was able to hear MacLeod say, fairly clearly, “No, no. You’re my special angel, but moving from him to me is the same thing with different labels on it. It’s giving your body to show what a good follower you are. You need to figure yourself out a different way.”

  I didn’t necessarily accept Ahmad’s assessment that the relationship between Nathaniel and Nicole had remained so chaste. Desire persists; temptation bides its time and waits for an open door. Such things have a way of moving on.

  The department chairman, Arthur Webster-Woad, arrived at that point with one of the other professors, and they stopped in the hall, talking about new hires and the squash league. They babbled on forever. Ahmad couldn’t keep up his pretense and had to leave.

  Every time Ahmad mentioned her, you could tell by his tone of voice that he still dreamed about her. And he didn’t even know her real name.

  I was excited. Nicole was no longer just a girl who had been in the choir at CTM and audited a philosophy class at USW. She was a young woman having an affair with an older man.

  My immediate assumption was that it was Plowright. But maybe it was someone close to him, maybe the money man with the hundreds of millions to invest in the City of God. She was trying to leave him, or had left him, and the church too.

  It was an explosive combination.

  She might decide to leave in a glorious blaze of scandal. One that would tear Paul Plowright out of his Pulpit of Glory and Wealth and drag him down to the Hall of Shame, one more hypocrite hanging alongside Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, and Jim Bakker for the secular world to mock.

  47

  Dante, of course, saw things differently. “See that? He’s diggin’ himself in deeper. Now there’s the confession, plus the apostrophe thing,” he said, meaning apostasy. “And now there’s a babe. Come on, let’s close the deal.”

  “What do you mean?” Ahmad asked.

  “The plea,” Dante said. “Time to cop the plea.”

  Ahmad looked to me. I said to Dante, “You don’t understand. You just grabbed the brass ring. This thing, it’s gonna be a circus. The state’s case is a disaster. They’ll be sending in the clowns, and you get to be the ringmaster. When it’s over, you’ll be the white Johnnie Cochran.” Dante looked completely underwhelmed. The extent of his ambition at this point was to get outside and have a smoke. So, I tried to appeal to his sense of financial well-being. “No more taking the state’s thirty-five an hour. You’ll be billing three hundred fifty, four hundred, maybe even New York prices. The top guys there are billing over a thousand an hour.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, like I had predicted that a snowstorm would close the Panama Canal. Then he said to Ahmad, “Kid, take the deal.”

  “Dante,” I said, “he didn’t do it.”

  Mulvaney looked at me like that was the stupidest thing I’d said yet. He knew—and I should know—that short of having hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Manny Goldfarb, backed by a team of associates, jury-selection consultants, unlimited money for investigators, and hired experts, once someone was this deep inside the criminal justice system, innocent was no longer one of the options on the table. He said, “The state’s payin’ me to dispense all my years of wisdom and experience in fifteen minutes. He’s already got almost two hours, not countin’ the travel. You hear what I’m saying.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything. Give me a week, a couple more likely, and I’ll have it all wrapped up for you. Gift wrapped, ribbon on it. All you have to do is walk it into court and unwrap it.”

  “I told ya.”

  “Told me what?”

  “The deal.”

  “What about the deal?”

  “It’s a special, today only.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  He hadn’t. But it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Why?” I asked him.

  “How do I know? They didn’t say. The DA’s mind moves in mysterious ways. Who the fuck cares? It’s a one-day offer.”

  “It’s bullshit,” I said. Ahmad’s eyes went back and forth, watching us play ping-pong with his life.

  “So, you want to tell him to bet on you and your gift wrapping?”

  “What charge?” I asked him. What would it be if Ahmad didn’t take the deal.

  “Cap murder.”

  “They can’t do cap murder on this.”

  “Sure they can. Terrorism.”

  “How can it be terrorism? I mean, come on.”

  “He’s an A-rab with a funny name. Trust me, a funny name can fuck up your whole life.”

  “This sucks, Dante,” I said.

  “It always sucks, Carl. It’s never good. Except, like I said, this deal, this deal is golden.” He turned to Ahmad, “Golden. Take it. Listen to me, kid. I’m your attorney. I’m appointed because I got experience and wisdom. I know what’s what. Just fuckin’ take it.”

  Ahmad looked at me. “Do I have to?” he asked.

  “You know what,” I said. “If you did it, it’s a great deal. If you didn’t . . . ”

  “I didn’t. I swear.”

  “They always do,” Dante said.

  “It’s up to you,” I said to Ahmad. “Your lawyer works for you. If you don’t want the deal, you say no.”

  “I’m insisting,” Dante said, furious and adamant. “For his own good.”

  I looked at the court-appointed lawyer, sweating in the clothes that just didn’t fit right, a button popping over his belly and his belly hanging over his belt. It was hard to imagine him abusing anything but pork chops, layer cake, and tobacco, but he’d been in rehab two times that I knew of. That’s okay—lots of good and capable people have. But Dante couldn’t even get his addictions right. Hooked on cocaine the first time and meth the second time, he’d still gained weight. I could find him an eyewitness that saw someone else kill MacLeod, and he would still screw it up.

  I looked at Ahmad, a skinny college kid, and tried to imagine him surviving even five years inside, holding up a second-hand Koran as a shield, trying to pass for a Black Muslim.

  That prick MacLeod had his hook in me too. What was I going to do, sit by the pool, and say it was God’s will that sent Ahmad this porky archetype of ineptitude to be his lawyer and let the boy drown?

  “For that matter,” I said to Ahmad, doing something I’ve never done before, something totally unprofessional, “if you don’t like your attorney, you can dismiss him.”

  “No, he can’t. Not a court-appointed. You can’t go shopping when you’re taking charity,” Dante said furiously.

  “Would you help me find another lawyer, Mr. Vanderveer?” Ahmad asked. His tone was very polite, almost formal, but quietly determined. He had this one small chance to put his destiny back in his own hands, and he wanted to take it.

  “I can try,” I said, wondering where I would go.

  “You cock-sucking son of a bitch,” Dante yelled at me. “I bring you in, you’re supposed to help me out.” This one time, he was completely right. “When I tell the legal fraternity that you steal clients out from under their lawyers, you’ll never work in this town again.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Ahmad said.

  “I’ll try to find someone good.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I am depending on you. For my life.” Neither begging, nor pleading, he made it a simple statement of fact in that polite way he had, standing straight, filled with courage and dignity.

  “You back-stabbing prick,” Dante said to me. “When he gets the
needle, Carl, it’s on you. It’s all on you.”

  48

  Hello walls.

  The loneliness hit me like a stone.

  I told myself angrily that I had no right to that much maudlin, country music self-pity. Compare the motel room walls to the walls within walls within walls of Nazami’s cell. Plasterboard walls to concrete and bars and a double-thick palisade, curlicues of razor wire, and rifle towers. The annoying sound of a too-loud TV next door, to the cries of rape and hate and the weeping of guilt seeping down penitentiary halls.

  Then I realized what the emptiness all around me in the stale air, on the blank TV screen, and in my heart was. Jesus had left me. Or I had left Him.

  I needed to talk to someone. I picked up the phone to call Gwen, dialed, then hung up before it rang. It couldn’t be that. How could faith fall away so quickly and just be gone on the puzzle of a paradox? A twenty-three-hundred-year-old paradox. Why was there no answer to it?

  As if by themselves, my fingers went to the phone and hit redial.

  “It’s me,” I said when she answered.

  We both said, “I miss you,” at the same time.

  “I want to come home,” I said.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I did something . . . I don’t know . . . . ” I was stumbling, trying to figure out how to explain it to her. “I did something today that I shouldn’t have done.”

  “What?” she asked, guard up. “That woman?”

  “No. About Nazami. He got a terrible lawyer, just like I thought, and the lawyer told him to take a deal, and I told him not to.”

  “Why? Why are you doing this, Carl?”

  “I don’t know if I understand it myself,” I said. “I admit that. Listen . . . . ”

  I wanted to explain the problem of evil to her. It wouldn’t work. It would just circle around to “We can’t understand His ways. If you would only talk to Pastor Paul, he could explain it. He could explain everything.”

  “What?” she said into the silence, caring, I thought, worried about me.

  “Do you remember Rafe? Rafe Halderson?”

  “You talked about him.”

  “The night he . . . shot himself, he called me. And he wanted me to help him. I said he should give himself to Jesus.”

  “Yes, that was the right thing.”

  “No. Don’t you see? He didn’t call on Jesus. He called on me. And all I did was pass it on.”

  “But there’s no true answer except Jesus.”

  “What happens if you call on Jesus, and he doesn’t answer?”

  “He always answers. You know that, Carl.”

  I’d been calling on Jesus regularly, constantly, daily, and all I’d got was Manny Goldfarb. I’d enjoyed his visits, but if I had to bet on it, I’d put my money on hallucinations. “This kid,” I said, “Ahmad, if he gets the needle, and he’s innocent, and he’s a Muslim, or an atheist, or whatever, does he go to hell?”

  “He can come to Jesus if he wants to.”

  “Gwen, I love you. I love you a lot, and I think you love me. I believe you love me.”

  “I do.”

  “What would happen . . . did you ever doubt, Gwen? Did you ever stop believing?”

  “How could I? That’s . . . how can you doubt reality?”

  “What if I stopped believing? What would happen to us?”

  “I would pray for you. I would pray as hard as I could, and I know you would come back.”

  We had become two strangers living on different planets, using words that were in the same dictionary, but when we picked them up and put them together in sentences, they spoke in foreign tongues. I was angry. Deeply, terribly angry, that she would choose . . . that I couldn’t explain without losing her . . . I held my anger . . . I needed her to get into the citadel . . . and I needed her to be there if I ever found my way back. I disliked myself for my weakness and essential dishonesty.

  I said, “I love you. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  Then I went out for a beer.

  49

  The first sip was almost like the first time. I was eleven. Everyone talked about beer, and the TV told me how it was satisfying and refreshing. So I approached my first can with great expectations. I figured it would be like Dr. Pepper, which I considered the height of beverage perfection at that age, but doubled, or maybe squared.

  After all that buildup, I was shocked and outraged that it tasted like what I imagined cold piss must taste like. But I got used to it then, and in spite of my long layoff from alcohol, I got used to it again. By the middle of the bottle, I knew I was with an old friend. Kickin’ back, chillin’, takin’ the edge off.

  It was an easygoing, friendly place named Donohue & Bazini. Two big rooms. One was just a restaurant doing a family trade. The room I was in had a big square bar in the center, a pool table on one side, and tables around two of the other sides. I’d found myself a spot alone toward the back, just watching how people lived, before I tried to fit myself in.

  Teresa had called four times that day. One of those times, the third, I think, she’d left a message. She said she was entitled to know what was going on. Not the personal things but the business things. That if she had hired a lawyer, or real estate agent, or anybody else, she’d want to know what they were doing. That was my Teresa, always ready with a reasonable reason. We could talk on the phone, she went on, but she’d prefer to speak in person.

  During my second beer, I called her back. She didn’t answer. I waited for the beep and said, “Sure. Let’s do it. Let’s hook up. Call me.”

  I signaled the waitress. When she arrived, she gave me a professional smile. She was barely out of her teens and cute. The evening was young. Indeed, it was happy hour. I decided to imagine it was personal and smiled back, asked her name and where she was from, made some other chit-chat, then ordered a burger and some fries to slow my metabolic rate.

  While I was working, slowly and carefully, on my third beer, Manny showed up. Sitting in the chair to my right.

  “Want one?” I asked automatically, starting to raise my hand to call the waitress back.

  He shook his head. When you’re dead, you can’t drink beer. I should’ve realized that right off.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” I said, then corrected myself. “Did it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What it is . . . when you’re a cop . . . see, you work for an organization. When you live a Christian life you have a Book . . . . ” The table next to me was empty, but one of the people a couple of tables away was starting to look at me funny. Whether Manny was my guardian angel or my hallucination, I figured nobody else could see him, and I wasn’t anywhere near drunk enough not to care if people thought I was talking to myself. I fished around in my pocket, surreptitiously, and took out my Bluetooth and stuck it in my ear. A great invention for people having self-on-self conversations in public. Properly equipped, I got back to it. “You have a book and a church and a pastor to guide you. When I was working for you, all I had to do was go out and get the information, then you were responsible if they went down.”

  “You do the best you can,” Manny said.

  “What kind of answer is that? Is that what you said to yourself? Fuck it. Did the best I could. Poor fuck is doing life without parole, but I did the best I could, so it’s all right?”

  “I gotta admit, no, it still . . . ”

  “Come on, Manny, with where you are, you gotta be able to come up with a better answer than that.”

  “It is better,” he said carefully, “than if you didn’t do the best you could.”

  “See, with Nazami, I can’t lay it off anymore, not on you, not on get-it-all-wrong Mulvaney, not even on poor old Jesus. It’s down to me, Manny. I’m not used to that. I don’t like it. Most of all, I don’t know if I’m up to it.”

  People were staring at me. Bluetooth or not.

  “Can we take this outside?” I asked.

  “Since you’re embarrassed to be seen w
ith me,” he said, “you get the check. I’ll meet you out front.”

  “You’ll be there? You sure?”

  He was gone. I threw enough money down on the table to cover the tab, got up, and headed out the door. My feet worked just fine. Didn’t bump into a single table. Or a person. Or anything. I could have a few beers. No problemo.

  The prick wasn’t there. I looked to the left, to the right. Nowhere. I thought about going back in, but they would all think I was weird, so I headed for my rental car, got in, and started it up. When I turned to look around before pulling out, Manny was in the passenger seat.

  “People talk to themselves in their cars all the time,” he said. “I thought this would be more comfortable for you.”

  “Is that what I’m doing, talking to myself?”

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  “You really want to know? You really want to know?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you in hell, Manny?” He didn’t answer. “’Cause if you’re in hell, I sent you there. I fucked up, big time, with Timley and . . . and

  Rafe. I didn’t help him. Is he in hell? Could you check that for me? He was a hell of a sinner, Rafe, but he was a good guy. Ahmad, if I fuck that up, him too? I got a problem with that, sending all you people to hell.”

  “You didn’t send me to hell,” Manny said.

  “’Cause there isn’t one, is there?”

  He didn’t answer, just sat there, looking at me, waiting for me to work things through.

  “If there were and you got sent, if Ahmad gets the needle and gets sent, and I die, and I go to heaven, just ’cause I stumbled into a church one day and said, yeah, this is it, that wouldn’t be fair. That wouldn’t be justice. That would just be flat out fucking wrong.”