“She’s not answering my calls. All I did was transfer her the money I owe her, I thought she would be impressed.”
“I’m sure it’s no big deal. Come on, Nick, this is a good day: You did it. You got Haley’s movie pulled.”
“I’m worried she’ll take Katie away.”
“I’m sure she’ll calm down. Listen to me, Nick: Maybe you haven’t heard? I just got off the phone with Ed Brand. You did it. Haley is calling funders with some crazy story about how Alice left New York suddenly this morning. It’s a lame excuse; Alice left because Willem is on to her mental health issues. The movie is obviously fucked. I was so excited I had to bike twelve miles.”
“She won’t calm down.”
Richard looks at you blankly for a second. “Oh, you’re still talking about Lindsey.” He sighs and pats his knees and stands up. “Okay, we’ll talk about your problems first, as usual.” He walks over to his liquor cabinet. “You don’t mind, do you? I’m about to explode.” He takes a shot of bourbon, then looks at you. “Do you wanna join me? Make an exception?”
You clench your fists and shake your head. He pours himself a second drink and walks back over to sit across from you. “Okay. What happened.”
“I transferred six thousand dollars to her. I was excited about it. Paying off the rest of my support. I was thinking I’d get to start seeing Katie every week.”
“And why is she mad?”
“Apparently she’s trying to buy an apartment. An unexplained cash influx in her bank account sunk the deal, or something? I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yeah, shit, man. The mortgage companies are sticklers about bank statements. Unexplained cash is a doozy.” Richard puts a hand on your shoulder; the smell of bourbon hits you like a blown kiss. “It’ll be fine. If she’s buying a place, she’s stressed. She’ll figure things out. Lindsey is smart. And she’ll come around when she calms down.”
“I don’t think she will.”
He shrugs. “Then you can sue her for custody.”
You get a vision of Lindsey, weeping in court. You get a vision of her screaming at you. “I can’t do that.”
“This is your problem!” Richard says. “You wait for other people to do things for you. You’ve always been kind of a victim that way. You don’t take what’s yours.”
You look at him steadily. “Also: you lied to me.”
Richard blinks but keeps smiling. “What about?”
“The tapes in Haley’s movie. It’s you on those ten hours of tapes.”
He blinks and laughs. “That’s crazy!”
“Fuck off, Richard. I can tell when you’re lying.”
He keeps smiling, finishing his drink. He carefully sets the glass down, then folds his hands and looks you in the eye. “So Haley told you.”
You nod. “And that’s why you didn’t want me to talk to her.”
“No, I didn’t really care if you talked to her. Like I said: she would have buried the file. It had to go right to Willem.”
You lie back and put your hands on your face. You hear Richard standing back up; you listen to him walk back to the liquor cabinet.
You say, “Actually, I will take a drink.”
“I figured,” he says. After a minute, you hear the solid clack of the glass on the coffee table in front of you.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Richard says. “You’re missing the big picture here: You solved this case. You pulled off an incredibly elegant job in, what, four days? This is a huge accomplishment, my friend. I think this is the start of a new chapter in your life.”
You pull your hands off your face and look at the glass of bourbon. If you sit up, you can reach it. “You lied to me about those interviews.”
“If I’d told you all that, you wouldn’t have helped,” he says.
You see Lindsey again, screaming at you in court. But now she’s not yelling about child support. You discredited a girl who tried to kill herself in high school? she yells. What is wrong with you, Nick?
“I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure you’d be able to find something,” Richard says. “But you did it!”
“Why did you hire me, then?”
Richard smiles. “Because you’re my oldest friend.”
“But you didn’t even trust me,” you say. “You had me followed.”
You watch Richard’s face and know that you’re right. You lean back and cover your face with your hands again.
“He was just an insurance policy. Listen, I’m sorry he gave you that black eye—he wasn’t supposed to do that. I just had to get the medical file to Willem! You were going to take it to Haley, Nick—how naive can you be? If Haley had seen that file she’d have gotten a team of PR people to kill it in thirty minutes. No, we had to get it right to the press. And I tried to tell you that! You did half the job but you were too sentimental to finish. Think of it like teamwork.” Richard starts pacing as he adds, “I really am sorry about the black eye.”
You sit up and reach for the glass of bourbon. You hold it, looking at it, as Richard says, “I don’t think you understand how important this was to me, Nick. You don’t know how I’ve suffered this week.”
“You didn’t have to go find her in the first place.” You hold the bourbon under your nose and inhale. The familiar smell floods you with queasy guilt.
“I felt bad, okay?” he says. You set the glass of bourbon back down on the table. You let it go. You stand up.
“Then you could have just apologized.”
He spreads his arms as if for a firing squad. “I don’t have anything to apologize for!”
Richard walks over to you. He puts both hands on your shoulders and looks you square in the face. “You were part of this, Nick,” he says. You feel yourself tensing. Your fists clench. “I’m sorry, I know you feel bad now, but you’ll get used to it.”
You say to yourself, Don’t do it.
“But think about it: In the long run, hasn’t your loyalty always paid off?” Richard says.
You do it.
You catch him with a square hit in the center of his face. He yells in surprise and stumbles back, knocking into the coffee table; your glass of bourbon topples over, a brown stain blooming on the carpet.
Richard bends over, holding his nose with both hands. “Fuck!” he yells. He works his nose, then drops his hands by his sides and straightens. You stand looking at each other for a minute, stunned. Then Richard’s eyes go dark. “You are such a deadbeat,” he says, “even when you do something right you fuck it up.” Then he lunges forward.
You both tumble over the couch and onto the floor in front of the liquor cabinet. You scramble on the floor, straining for a leg lock; you get a punch on Richard’s rib, and he kicks a heel into your bad kidney. Finally you separate, scooting away from each other on your asses. You sit a few feet apart, panting.
Richard touches the blood on his upper lip. He laughs, a quick, bitter ha.
You don’t say anything. You scoot farther back so you can rest your head on the wall.
“That was out of line,” he says.
You close your eyes. You hear your phone beep in your pocket.
Richard says, “We can both apologize, right?”
You fish out your phone. It’s a text from Lindsey.
I have to cancel your visit this month. I’m sorry, Nick, but I have no idea where you got that money, and honestly I don’t need your sketchy shit right now. Please stop calling and texting. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks.
“This is a lot for me to say, because I’m really the one being hurt here,” Richard is saying. “This is my life that was being ruined, okay? You’re walking away with twelve thousand dollars.”
You roll forward onto your knees, then get up to your feet. You waver slightly and hold the edge of the liquor cabinet. You look at your phone scree
n again. Cancel your visit this month.
“I know how to apologize. So: I was out of line,” Richard is saying. You look over at him. He extends his hand, asking for you to help him stand up. You fold your phone into your pocket and close your eyes.
“Old buddy,” Richard says, “seriously?”
You turn away and head for the door. “You’re an asshole,” you say—to Richard, to yourself—and shuffle out.
8. Black Eye
It’s dark, Irish, and empty. Your favorite kind of bar.
The bready, soapy musk of spilled beer is almost primitively relaxing; you have to pee as soon as you walk in. The scattered graffiti in the bathroom brings on another wave of nostalgia—meaningless life advice, annotated in pencil over the urinal, hits you so hard you lean on the sink like you’re already drunk. You look at yourself in the mirror. The blood drained out of the lump on your forehead is now brilliant black-purple under your left eye. There’s dried blood crusted on your lip, split from the fight. You look like a monster. You turn away.
You head back out to the empty bar, happy hour stretching out ahead of you. The bartender is at the top of a ladder, pulling a box of wine down from overhead storage; he nods nonchalantly in your general direction, Be with you in a minute. You set your belly right up against the bar and lean forward like it’s the railing of a ship. Bon voyage, you think.
It’s your first drink in four years. It doesn’t taste as good as you remember. It’s not the glorious homecoming you were expecting. It’s a little metallic. It’s fine. But it’s not home.
You take the second sip to dull the disappointment and to stave off the thick wave of guilt you feel rising inside. The second sip tastes a little better. Everything is better with lower expectations. You finish the rest of the glass of white wine in one gulp.
And so you’re drunk later that night when you leave a long message on Lindsey’s voice mail about impossibly high expectations designed to make you fail.
You’re still drunk when you leave a short message immediately afterward: “Sorry sorry sorry, Lindsey. I’m so sorry.”
You’re still drunk the next morning when you stumble home to find an envelope slid under your front door with No hard feelings old friend! handwritten on it. Inside is six thousand dollars cash and a printed-out article from the Times with Willem Connor’s byline. You crumple it up without reading it. You set aside three of the hundred-dollar bills—beer money—then dump the rest into your kitchen sink and light them with a match. They burn orange, smoke, and collapse. You leave the pile smoldering, glad your apartment has no smoke alarms. You carry your brand-new bottle of bourbon over to lie with you on the mattress.
You’re still drunk when you wake up, late that afternoon, but you bring the bottle into the shower with you for good measure.
You’re still drunk later, when you dial Haley’s number. I never check this mailbox, she says, and the machine goes BEEP, and you don’t know what to say. You hang up. You’re still drunk when you call again, and again, but even on the fourth try you can’t speak. You make yourself stop. You grab your jacket and the three rescued hundred-dollar bills and take the subway back to Manhattan. You want a milkshake. You make it a malt. When you’re done you head for another bar. You’re not sure where you’re going. You’re in the mood for something dark and desperate. You’re just going to walk until you find it.
You’re still drunk, so after a few blocks of stumbling, when you get the feeling someone is following you, you don’t care. “Yeah, yeah,” you grumble. “Come and get me, No Neck.”
You amble east. People pass in both directions. The footsteps keep following you. “Fuck it,” you say, finally, and you turn around.
You see a gigantic man. At first you don’t recognize him. He waves, then crosses the distance to you in four quick steps, and his face clicks in your mind.
“Quinn?” you say.
“Where’s Alice?” he says. He grabs both of your shoulders and kind of shakes you. His eyes are wide and wild.
“I don’t know,” you say, and step backward out of his grip.
“I read the article in the Times. She’s in New York,” Quinn says, taking a step toward you. “You have to tell me where she is.”
You take another step backward before you realize you’re emasculating yourself. You set your jaw and take a step forward. You put a hand on Quinn’s chest and push him backward. “I don’t know where she is,” you say. “That job is done.”
Quinn pushes you back. “I gave you her medical file. You were supposed to find her.”
You see a couple people cross the street to avoid you. A stupid bar fight. You’re not drunk enough for this. “I don’t know what to tell you,” you say, and start to turn. “I’m off the job.”
But he grabs your shoulders and pulls you back around. You’re amazed again at the size of his grip. “You were supposed to find her,” he growls.
“I quit,” you say.
The two of you look at each other for a second, searching each other’s eyes. The street around you is empty. It’s like the start of fight in a movie. But you’re not getting into a fight with him—with his size, it would be suicide. You just want to be ready to dodge his punch.
He grits his teeth and you brace yourself. “It’s not that hard to find a woman,” he says.
“Then find her yourself,” you say.
“I don’t want her to know I’m looking for her,” he says. “It’s a surprise.”
You take a step, turning away. “I said I can’t help you. We’re done here.”
“I found your woman, no problem,” he says.
You pause. “I don’t have a woman,” you say.
“Apartment H5,” he says.
The world around you expands into an infinite, silent black space.
He says, “And the little girl, too.”
The world zooms back, contracting to a very small, hot point.
“Don’t you fucking touch them!” you scream, and you run at him. You’re flailing wildly. Quinn catches your wrist and squeezes painfully. You scream and kick at his shins, but he easily holds you at arm’s length. If you weren’t flooded with adrenaline you would be horrified by his size and strength. Instead you just keep kicking at him. “Don’t you touch them,” you spit.
Quinn pulls you forward roughly, knocking you off your feet; he holds you up, puts his face right into yours. “You find Alice for me by tomorrow, or you won’t ever be able to find Lindsey or the little girl,” he says.
He drops you. You massage your sore wrists, for a second you close your eyes in pain; you open them just in time to see Quinn’s punch flying toward your face.
It’s a solid hit. You fall back against a parked car, the car alarm starts hollering. “Find her,” he says, as your vision goes dark and sparkly, your inner ear swims.
You stumble in three directions and then fall back against the still-hollering car. You can just barely see him in the darkness. He’s walking away, halfway down the block.
You want to kill him.
You push yourself off the car and catch your balance. You steady yourself. You touch the blood on your upper lip. You take a deep breath, and your vision sharpens.
You see Quinn at the street corner. He starts to cross without looking. He’s almost hit by a passing truck. The truck roars past, blaring its horn; Quinn barely flinches, lifting his middle finger and continuing on. Like he wouldn’t even care if he got hit by a truck. But maybe you’ll push him in front of the next truck and then we’ll see how he feels about it.
You keep seeing him holding Lindsey by the wrists. You can’t even bring yourself to imagine him hurting Katie. And what about Alice? Or Kyra, falling down in his apartment. You shudder at all the thoughts of the harm this man could do. You push yourself forward. You keep a hand on your head for the dizziness. You walk as fast as you can.
And then you see a metal hatch on the sidewalk, propped open. It’s in front of one of those massage places with a waving cat in the window. It’s on a dark, quiet block.
The moment takes on the intensity of focused attention; it happens the way you jump off a diving board. You don’t think about it. You start to run. At the last minute you lean down and hit him with your shoulder. He grunts, surprised, and stumbles forward two steps and steps directly through the open hatch and keeps going.
You ricochet off of him, stumbling to the side. You see his head hit the edge as he falls. His neck snaps the other direction, his tall body collapsing like an umbrella through the open space and then gone.
For a minute you can’t hear anything but the sound of your own breath.
You look around, staring at the night city. There’s a couple half a block away on the other side of the street, holding each other so tightly they’re like one big creature with four legs. There’s an old drunk on the other end of the block, stumbling with his coat turned up. Otherwise the street is empty.
You take a step forward and finally look into the cellar. You see Quinn at the bottom of the steep metal stairs, his head resting on the bottom step and the rest of his body at strange angles. The floor under him is spattered with blood.
You turn and go. Like there’s a rope attached to your chest. It takes you about three blocks to really understand what you just did. Then you walk a lot faster.
Time passes. You walk until your legs ache.
You didn’t touch him, so you’re pretty sure there won’t be fingerprints. Quinn wouldn’t have told anyone he was following you. Kyra might pick you out of a lineup, but there’s no reason she would connect you to him tonight, no reason you’d be chosen for a lineup in the first place. And nobody saw.
You’re going to get away with it.
True Story Page 24