by Tim Willocks
“Dad,” said Grimes. “I’m not an asshole and, believe it or not, I have been listening to you for thirty-odd years. I know the kingdom is corrupt. I know that the judge sending homeboys up to Angola State Pen snorts his coke with his after-dinner mints. I know we’re ruled by grifters and thieves and men without honor. But listen to me: I don’t care.”
George wouldn’t look at him.
Grimes said, “Whatever debt I owe, to you and the things you believe in, I paid off long since. I live my life, I ask no one’s favor and no one pulls any strings for me. If this town, or this whole state, wants to sail to hell on a paddle steamer, that’s fine by me. We’ve gotten the world we deserve. I’m not going to get my balls cut off trying to change something I don’t give a shit about.”
George stopped under a street light. Grimes stopped too. He could sense his father on the verge of an explosion he’d witnessed many times before.
“Then let me deal with it,” said George.
“No,” said Grimes.
With a titanic, and uncharacteristic, effort of self-control George turned away, his thick shoulders clenched, his head bent forward. Beneath the bristly gray hair on the nape of his neck the muscles contracted into two thick straps. His voice, when he spoke, crunched like gravel.
“I want this thing, Gene. I mean …” He shook his head, as if he amazed himself by the violence of his desire. “I want it.”
Grimes slipped his hand under George’s left arm. Beneath his fingers the sleeve of the poplin suit was stretched tight.
“I don’t want you to die either,” said Grimes.
George turned his face, looking up over his shoulder, and said, “Die? You don’t know what the word means.”
Grimes had expected a lecture, a fight, a withering attack on his own gutlessness; he hadn’t expected this. His father’s eyes were haunted by a desperation Grimes had never seen. If it had been in George Grimes to stretch his hands out to anyone and beg, his eyes said that now was the time he would’ve done it. Instead of opening outward, his hands bunched into fisted lumps of bone and ground against each other, knuckle to knuckle, pulled tight into his chest. And because it wasn’t in him either to exploit the pain he was feeling, George turned away again.
Grimes felt stranded. He knew that if each generation hadn’t produced its share of Georges, then the world would be an uninhabitable place. But he couldn’t let an old man rush off to tangle with scumbags high and low. He squeezed the thick arm still in his hand.
“Let’s go home, have a drink,” said Grimes.
George’s body seemed to unstiffen a little. His voice evened out.
“I read a lot, you know that, always did,” he said. “So I get up in the mornings and shave, eat and do some chores, take a walk, maybe see if they’re hiring down the waterfront, get a paper and come home. That gets me as far as ten A.M.”
Grimes brushed away an image of his own squalid timetable. He listened.
“Now, I don’t plan going blind or, worse, watching TV all day, so I read, mainly guys I’ve read before, reread it, find the stuff I missed last time around. And one of’em says, ‘Death closes all.’ “ Now George looked at him. “ ‘But something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.’ ”
Grimes, at his core, trembled—with guilt, sympathy, adoration and Christ knew what-all else. Then a voice in his head said: How dare you lay that old-time-master shit on me at a time like this. These are cars driving pasty not horses. You can get someone killed in this town for two thousand dollars, elect a judge for twenty and stick your dick in anything you can name, breathing or not, for a hell of a lot less than that, state and city tax inclusive. There are no gods to strive with anymore, old man. Then another voice said: That old man fought the Japanese, Taft-Hartley, Joe McCarthy, the FBI and John F. Kennedy and was tear-gassed at Selma when the great unwashed of the campuses thought KKK was a hallucinogenic drug. He^s earned the right to quote whoever he wants to.
George stopped the dialogue for him by saying, “Forget it, son. Let’s go have that drink.”
He disengaged his arm and started to walk away. Just like that.
Grimes felt a surge of anger. “Hey,” he said.
He caught up with him, fell into step.
“Forget what? I ask you for some advice because a turd the size of China has been dropped in my lap and you tell me to let you deal with it. Am I supposed to relax now? It’s all okay, my dad’s handling it for me?”
“That’s my advice, you don’t want it, don’t take it. And if you didn’t want to hear it you shouldn’tive shown me the goddamned letter in the first place.”
“All I asked was if you wanted to take a trip with me.”
“You wanna run like a gelded dog, that’s your business.”
Grimes had done his share of battlefield surgery, under fire, in the Nicaraguan highlands and in the killing fields of Salvador. George knew this. Grimes didn’t feel that it was worth reminding him.
Grimes just said, “If they do come looking and don’t find me, they’ll come for you.”
“They’d be doing me a favor. Just don’t let me know where you’re runnin’ to and you’ll be safe.”
The shamelessness of this blackmail took Grimes’s breath away.
“And you had the gall,” said Grimes, “to call me a sneaking bastard.”
Eyes front, George sniffed. “I apologize for that.”
Grimes didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or grab his father by the throat and strangle him. He suddenly realized he hadn’t felt this alive in months. He was walking and talking and waving his arms instead of lying belly-down on a dung heap. As he decided to keep this revelation to himself he saw a car—in the street lights he couldn’t tell what color or make, maybe a Nova—parked on the corner of his father’s street. In the car were two white men, thirties, one in a sweatshirt, beard, the other in a sport coat, reading a paper. The men appeared entirely uninterested in, indeed oblivious to, Grimes’s and George’s noisy approach.
Grimes’s inclination to laugh, along with his fragile sense of well-being, disappeared under a gut-tide of paranoia. He resisted the urge to stare at the men or point them out to George. George walked past the car, with no more evident awareness of its passengers than they had of him, and crossed the cobblestone street to the opposite sidewalk. Grimes kept the pace and tried to look natural. He had no experience of feeling out this kind of situation. Almost without exception all the countless cars with guys in them that he’d walked past in his life had been nothing more than cars with guys in them. That left him with only his most primitive instincts to guide him and at the moment they were heavily prejudiced toward anxiety, suspicion and fear. If a little girl holding a balloon had turned the corner toward them, Grimes would have suspected her of signaling to the characters in the Nova, now thirty feet behind his back.
With that he thought about the girl in Jefferson’s letter, something he’d so far avoided. She’s nineteen years old. Grimes couldn’t recall her name. Ella? The idea of predators moving in on her as well disturbed him, in fact it turned his stomach, but at least he didn’t know her, couldn’t feed his guilt with pictures of her face. It was entirely possible that she was a fiction, that Jefferson’s letter was one last postmortem black joke, dashed off to amuse himself while Grimes had been squirming at his feet on the living room carpet. Jefferson had that kind of mind. The girl’s address was probably a heroin-supply depot manned by Vietnamese gangsters loaded with Mach 10’s and even more paranoia than his own: Dr. Grimes knocks on the door, and it’s goodnight Joanna. Then Jefferson would have another funny story to tell his buddies in hell; or “up there,” as he’d put it.
The ponderous machinery of his mind stalled on a sudden thought: the girl Ella was Jefferson’s daughter. Who else could she be? Why else would he care for her?
George said, “Come on in.”
They’d reached George’s house: a narrow front
door with a single window frame to the left. Inside, the rooms were stacked in a straight line, one behind the other, like compartments in a train. Parked outside, for all the world to see it now seemed, was Grimes’s Olds 88. He beheld its strident conspicuousness with pain. He should trade it in for a Nova soon, or a Hyundai. George climbed the step and opened the front door and Grimes followed him inside.
The door opened direcdy into the living room. George closed it behind them and without switching on the light went straight to the window and peered out, back down the street.
“You made those guys too?” said Grimes.
George stood back from the window and pulled the curtains. Without the yellow light from the street the room was pitch-black.
“They’ve gone,” said George from the darkness. “You can turn the light on.”
Grimes did so. In the sudden brightness he felt foolish.
“For a moment I thought those guys were out for us.”
“They were,” said George, with grim satisfaction.
“How do you know?”
“Experience. Organizing for the union I spent twenty years lookin’ over my shoulder. Company goons and Pinkertons? Hell, I been set up, beaten up, tapped, tailed and photographed more times than Billy-be-jiggered. Why, I was carrying you on my shoulders more than a time or two, but you were too young to know all that.”
Grimes threw his black suit jacket over the back of the sofa. His shirt, he discovered, was wet through.
“So what do we do?” he said.
“I guess that’s up to you,” said George.
“Don’t start,” said Grimes. “We’re not going to get ourselves killed just so you can relive the good old days. These are bad new days. Decide now: Wyoming, Chicago or, if you can’t take the chill, Florida. I need the bathroom.”
“You know where it is.”
Grimes went to the bathroom and took a grateful piss. He closed his eyes. His father was worse than insane. The old days were thirty years gone; he was out of touch. The guys in the Nova were probably scoring grass or conducting some other petty illegality. That’s why they’d given off a vibe. George was showing off. It was natural enough. He just had to get him out of the City for a while until this whole thing cooled off. During his long horizontal meditations Grimes had promised himself a hundred times that when he got well he’d leave this stinking burg. He’d only come here in the first place to be near the old man. Grimes didn’t want to die down South. It would be nice to see snow again, feel cold once in a while. The girl? Ella? She’d survived nineteen years without him. And anyway, if he knocked on her door he was only guaranteed to heap her with the same bullshit he was trying, even now, to get out from under himself. He flushed the toilet and went back to the living room.
George was pouring Wild Turkey into a pair of glasses. As he handed one to Grimes he seemed calmer. He raised his glass and grinned.
“Old times,” he said.
“Old times,” Grimes raised his drink, “you old bastard.”
Grimes drained the shot in one and gasped, his eyes watering. George picked up the bottle and poured refills.
“I spoke some harsh words back there, Gene,” he said. “Will you forgive me?”
“Not till we’re deep down in Florida.”
“You know, I was thinking on what you said about Chicago.”
Grimes raised his glass again. “Chicago it is, then.”
“Chicago,” said George.
They drank again and Grimes started to feel positively human.
Then, for the second time that day, the doorbell rang for Cicero Grimes.
Grimes put his glass down and glared a warning at his father.
“I’ll get it,” said Grimes.
“Wait,” said George.
He disappeared down the corridor into the back of the house.
Grimes paced in agitation. He decided not to peek through the curtains. From the depths of the shotgun house he heard some muffled snaps and clicks. The bell rang a second time. Grimes waited. He slipped his jacket back on and wondered if he still looked like Harvey Keitel. He didn’t feel much like him. When George returned he, by way of contrast, was carrying two automatic pistols. Grimes was no gun aficionado but he recognized them: a Luger 9 mil and a Colt .45. George held out the Luger toward him.
“Locked down and loaded,” he said. “Took this one from a Jap army captain on Tarawa. Had to crawl under the roots of a coconut tree to smoke him”—he hefted the Colt—“with this one.”
Grimes held out his palms, refusing the gun. His felt his saturated shirt drag against his lats.
“Take it easy, Dad.”
“Please yourself.”
George stuck the Luger into the back of his pants. This time whoever was at the door rapped on it with his knuckles. George slid against the wall behind the door, the .45 held loose and easy, no theatrics, and nodded to Grimes. Grimes walked over and opened the door.
Standing on the step was a gangly redhead in a double-breasted suit a size too big for his bones, all freckles and Adam’s apple and milky eyes. Despite the milk there was something in the eyes that was feral and shrewd. Grimes rarely took an instant dislike to someone; when he did the feeling was usually mutual. Perhaps that was why the redhead’s smile seemed unnatural and forced; or maybe he just had that kind of smile; some people did. The more they tried to be likeable the more they made your flesh crawl.
“Evening,” said the redhead.
He showed Grimes a leather wallet with a photo ID card in it.
“Rufus Atwater, deputy prosecuting attorney.”
He said it as if he were a papal emissary, as if Grimes was meant to kneel and kiss his ring. Grimes held his hand out for the wallet.
“May I see that?”
A beat, the redhead not so much peeved as wounded, then: “Sure. Can’t be too careful these days.”
An upstate accent with a tinge of the City. A poor boy made good. Grimes didn’t allow this to provoke any feeling of kinship. He studied the ID card. Like most such cards it meant as much or as little as you were inclined to believe. Nevertheless, it didn’t have MURDER INCORPORATED emblazoned over it and Grimes felt a little easier. Grimes handed the wallet back and did a quick sweep of the street. The redhead appeared to be alone; but then he would.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Atwater?”
The redhead smiled his pally smile. “I’m looking to speak to Dr. Eugene Grimes.”
“This isn’t his home.”
“I know that, sir. I guess I should say that I’m here on behalf of a private client, not the D.A. I showed you my ID to reassure you that I’m an honorable man.”
“An honorable man,” said Grimes.
“Only thing in this world that counts for a damn,” said Atwater. “Least, that’s the way I see it.”
The words Murder Incorporated started to appear, faintly, beneath the beads of sweat on Atwater’s forehead.
Grimes said, “I’m glad you said that. I’m Dr. Grimes.” He didn’t usually call himself Doctor, but in certain situations it gave him at least the illusion of a certain protected dignity. He held out his hand. Atwater shook it.
“May I come in, Doctor?”
Through the slab of wood to his left Grimes felt the presence of his father, loaded down with what were almost certainly illegal firearms.
“I’m afraid my father’s taken ill,” said Grimes. “Something he ate. I’d rather not disturb him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You said you were here on behalf of a client.”
“That’s right. Miss Magdalena Parillaud. I’m her special counsel, exclusive. You may have heard of her.”
Grimes had some vague memory of having seen the name in the business section as he threw it in the trash. The words rich and reclusive swam into his mind.
“Howard Hughes meets Barbara Stanwyck,” he said.
Atwater looked about to say “Barbara who?” then thought better of it. “Miss
Parillaud would be grateful if you’d come visit her,” he said.
Grimes felt queasy. This was it: the first strands of Jefferson’s web, but from a direction he couldn’t have imagined.
“Why?” said Grimes.
Atwater’s face writhed, strangely, as if he thought it a stupid question and wanted to say so.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The naked sincerity of this answer made Grimes feel better. He almost asked if Atwater had tried any big cases recendy.
Atwater recovered. “She said it was personal. I presume some medical situation. She needs to see you tonight.”
“So it’s an emergency medical situation,” said Grimes.
“I don’t know that I could say that.” Atwater shuffled, then leaned forward, with a guys-like-you-and-me shrug. “You know these big-money types, Doc. Want what they want when they want it. Neurotic, all of ‘em. But you’d know all about that stuff. She’ll pay for your time, naturally. I can take you out there, her driver can bring you back. This time of day it’s a thirty, forty-minute run.” Atwater smiled. “We can talk, you know?”
Even given his dire situation, Grimes could think of nothing more revolting than a forty-minute conversation with this creature. Atwater had probably been the school sneak, the type who’d turn his parents in for smoking grass then sue them for the emotional trauma. Grimes’s mind ordered him to make a decision. If they had hold of him, then at least his father was out of the frame. That alone would halve his adrenaline levels. If he was going to end up with his dick wired to a mobile power generator then it was going to happen. And anyway, a millionairess was unlikely to have too many strangers buried in her basement. There was no point asking why she needed a city prosecutor to fetch her a doctor; he didn’t want to see Atwater’s face writhing again as he tried to invent an answer.