by Joshua Corin
Martinelle’s one-bedroom came with its own bathroom, and in its bathroom, beside a shower that featured a floor not of linoleum or tile but of soft gray rubber in case a resident were to slip—in this bathroom, Xana found a pale-orange terry-cloth towel. She was about to place it down on the puddle of mess beside the bed when Konquist snatched it out of her hands and first used it to clean the backs of Martinelle’s thighs.
“My name is Abe,” he said. “What’s yours?”
Martinelle gazed with wonderment at the man beside him and he opened his mouth to reply and he flapped his lips and wiggled his tongue as if he were replying and then he closed his mouth as if he had replied, and Xana, who had been certain she wouldn’t be able to appease Hayley’s request and apologize to the scumbag she had scarred, found herself quite immediately saying, once Martinelle had finished, “I’m sorry.”
She picked up the receiver on the push-button phone beside his bed and followed the printed instructions on the phone itself to call a nurse. Then they waited in silence. A nurse arrived minutes later. She was wearing the flower-print scrubs. Had there been a nurse in the Death House at Jeremiah Stanhope’s execution? Xana and Detective Konquist stepped aside and let the nurse attend to her patient. Hayley would know if there had been a nurse. Hayley would know. No, damn it. Don’t think of Hayley. Not now. Don’t. Don’t. Marcos Martinelle, his cornflower-blue eyes unaged since the 1980s, was staring at the nurse’s breasts, though his look was absent of lust, or longing, or wonderment, or anything, really.
Xana and Detective Konquist returned to his vehicle. They had one more stop to make before lunch, one more suspect to meet, but before that Konquist pulled into the parking lot of the first Starbucks he saw, and there in the parking lot the two of them sat in further silence until finally Xana got out, and then Konquist got out, and they walked into the coffee shop. Soon their brains were awash with stimulants, and the darkness that had taken hold came loose, and by the time they were back on the road, they were once again engaged in the welcome comfort of perfectly insubstantial conversation.
“Tell me about the Edmondses,” he said.
“It wasn’t that long ago. You know who they are.”
“I know what I saw on the news.”
“Fine. OK. Steve and Taryn Edmonds. And their three kids. And their two dogs. 1738 Stoneybrook Circle. Decatur, Georgia. Lovely two-story home. Cape Cod style.”
“Ever been to Cape Cod?” Detective Konquist passed the ramp for I-285. He was taking the streets, taking his time. “I love Cape Cod. Best ice cream in the world.”
“Yeah, no, but are you going to let me answer your question or are we going to talk about how you spent your summer vacation?”
“Can’t we do both?”
Xana wasn’t sure if he was kidding. “The night I met the Edmondses, a little over a year ago now, I left work around seven and headed straight for Ruby’s over on Cheshire Bridge. At the time, Ruby’s was where I always went after work, and sometimes during work, and there was nothing special about it except I’d been kicked out of every other bar in a five-mile radius of the office.”
“Were you drunk the night you were babysitting Marcos Martinelle?”
“Drunk? See, I very, very rarely got drunk. I’m sure I was intoxicated, but you wouldn’t have known it unless you’d known it. They didn’t even run a blood alcohol test on me after the fact. Never even suspected. But I’m sure I was intoxicated. I was always intoxicated. The older I got, the harder it got to hide, and the more it took to get me loaded, but that’s an old story. What you want to know about is if I was drunk the night I met the Edmondses, and the answer to that is yes. Do you drink?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Why do I drink? I don’t know. It gives my right hand something to do during a ball game. Why did you used to drink?”
“Which answer would you like?”
“The truth,” answered Konquist. “Always.”
“I used to think I drank because the world was hard and alcohol softened the edges. You hear that a lot, actually. Diving into a bottle to escape whatever bullshit’s raining down on that day. It was already a cliché by the time the ancient Greeks wrote about it. Plato cautioned against alcoholism in his Symposium and that was written almost twenty-five hundred years ago. I learned that last piece of trivia from my girlfriend. She likes to contextualize.”
“You said you used to think you drank to escape…but you were wrong?”
“Oh, I was very wrong. It was self-justifying and it was—oh fuck. Forgive me. I almost got all program-speak on you. I believe in the program—you know, one day at a time, responsibility, all that—but some of the jargon is…well, I’ve always had a thing against jargon. Unless it’s German. Nobody does jargon like the Germans. No, I drank scotch and schnapps and whiskey and cognac and rum and wine and tequila for the same reason that a fish drinks water. I drank because I drank. I drank because I’m an alcoholic and that’s what alcoholics do.”
“But you’re still an alcoholic and you haven’t had a drink in a year.”
“Three hundred sixty-four days.”
“So how can you…I guess my question is…and, I mean, it’s not like you’re the first, you know, alcoholic I’ve ever met…I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake…but…”
“How can I be a fish and not drink water?”
“Yeah.”
Xana smiled ever-so-slightly and shrugged ever-so-gently and that was her answer to that.
They were on Lavista Road now, one of Decatur’s main west-east drags. Coming up on their right was the Toco Hills Promenade, a sprawling feat of middle-of-the-road commercialism. Nearly every shop and restaurant a franchise. There was a local kosher bakery tucked in among the national brands, but the Kroger four doors down also now had a kosher bakery, so…
They slowed for the yellow light at the intersection of Lavista and North Druid Hills and stopped before it turned red.
“I remember none of this,” Xana told Konquist. “This wasn’t my usual neighborhood. We’re following the path I must have taken to get to where I ended up. Ruby’s is about two miles behind us, not far from where Lavista crosses Cheshire Bridge. And the thing is, I never was a blackout drunk.”
“Unless you blacked those parts out.”
“Ha. No. The day after the…incident…while I was in lockup, I was shown a list of what I’d had to drink the night before. I also was shown the arresting officer’s report. According to his Breathalyzer, I had a BAC of 0.92. He tested it twice because he was convinced the first result had been a mistake. 0.92? That’s insane. People have died of alcohol poisoning from a 0.10 BAC.”
“Yes, but they weren’t fish.”
“True.”
The light turned green. They advanced farther down tree-lined Lavista. They passed a sports bar. They passed a pizzeria. Most of the side roads poured into leafy residential neighborhoods. Xana directed Detective Konquist to turn left into one of them. They had almost arrived.
“My point is,” she continued, “that I didn’t usually drink as heavily as I did that night. And there was nothing special that had happened at work earlier in the day. I wasn’t drowning my sorrows. I wasn’t dealing with a breakup. There was nothing special about that day…until there was. Here’s Stoneybrook Circle on your left.”
Konquist angled his Buick onto Stoneybrook Circle. The houses were all well apportioned, each with enough living space for a family of four and each with a sizable front lawn. Number 1738 Stoneybrook Circle had on its front curb four garbage bags overflowing with raked leaves. Its front yard was otherwise immaculate, and its blue-and-white Cape Cod façade even and unblemished. Not one indication that, almost a year ago, a crime had occurred here.
The mailbox featured the name EDMONDS in fat, bubble-gum-pink letters.
“When I say it was almost a year ago and not exactly a year ago, Detective, it’s because the date is important. Whoever has me targeted has me targeted for tomorro
w. October twelfth. That’s when it becomes a year ago that I, blitzed out of my mind, drove into this house. If anyone is out to get me tomorrow, day three hundred sixty-five, for something I did, it’s these people. And rightfully so.”
Chapter 31
Having decided that he was no safer in his apartment than anywhere else, Ross Berman left the confines of his living space shortly before 8 A.M. and arrived inside the confines of his work space shortly before 9 A.M. Atlantans Helping Atlantans rented a shithole above a shithole in Grove Park, a quadrant of northwest Atlanta where one could find groves and parks but also quite a few corner dealers. Grove Park was a leftover from, and continuation of, the tradition-bound city’s ghettoization of its African American populace. Separate but equal? Separate, yes.
Ross was the only Caucasian at Atlantans Helping Atlantans, which sometimes garnered looks of suspicion from visitors or when he traveled on-site, but that just reinforced his resolve. Homelessness was not a race-specific problem, and even if it were, should only those of a particular race be allowed to assist their own? Tribalism. That was the poison. One of many in this city. And if organizations such as his could not hope to cure it, they would at least treat those who had fallen victim to its bite.
Currently, they were battling with the city over an abandoned warehouse in the adjacent zip code of Bankhead. Ross wanted the warehouse to be converted into ersatz housing. The city wanted to keep the warehouse zoned for industry—and therefore unused and wasted—because…why exactly?
“Hope,” complained Michaela, lifting her tinted glasses to scratch an itch above her left eye. Michaela was legally blind. Trashcan, her cocker spaniel, was half deaf. Along with Ross and an effeminate postdoc named Danesh and a professional female bodybuilder named Valentina, this was Atlantans Helping Atlantans. It was Valentina’s hour to make the cold calls for donations. As per ritual, the office phone, on its official plastic plate, had been moved to her desk. They could afford only the one outside line, and cold calls made from personal phones were, for many reasons, discouraged.
“Hope is a good thing,” Danesh retorted. “This complication with the warehouse is the opposite of a good thing.”
They sat across from each other at a pair of booths that had belonged to the McDonald’s across the street before that McDonald’s had burned to the ground. But the booths were in decent condition and their seats even had some cushion, if one sat just so. Getting them across the street and up the stairs had been a bitch, but it sure beat the setup they’d previously had in here, which was four folding chairs. Ahmed, the proprietor of the convenience store below them, allowed them to use his lavatory. In exchange, Danesh, who had his PhD in economics, did Ahmed’s taxes.
Michaela lowered her glasses and whistled a descending series of tones before continuing, “Hope is the devil. Hope tempts. Hope makes people think that life is going to be better than it can possibly be. Hope is promising a kid from the streets that he can become the next Andre 3000 but all he’s got to do is sign over all ownership of his music. Hope is giving someone free admission to college but because their elementary school was overcrowded and underfunded, their middle school was overcrowded and underfunded, their high school was overcrowded and underfunded, they don’t have the educational foundation needed to succeed in college. Hope is keeping a warehouse off the market and out of bounds in case someday, someday, someone will want to use it again as a warehouse. Hope is the worst thing you can give a person. Hope is evil.”
“And you work here why?”
“Suicide is boring.”
“I might have a lead with the warehouse complication,” said Ross.
All eyes turned to him.
He’d been thinking about the problem all morning. He’d been thinking about the problem so intently and intensely because it allowed him to forget about his other problem. His bigger problem. Problems. Because Jessabelle had never showed. She must have been scared off by the police. But she was still out there. And now the police were out there too. All problems he could not solve, but the warehouse complication…
“Wednesday,” he explained, “at the conference, I ran into a guy. Buddy Meeks. He seemed very enthusiastic about wanting to help in any way. We really hit it off.”
“Well, unless he’s the mayor—”
“He’s got money.”
That shut Michaela up. Money always shut people up.
Ross had forgotten the man’s business card in his other pants, but he did know how to use the Internet and quickly found the website for Meeks & Associates. They specialized in—oh nice—acquiring, refurbishing, and selling antique homes all across Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Maintaining traditional architecture while updating the necessary amenities to the twenty-first century. Ross dialed the phone number at the bottom of the home page. He put the call on speaker for all to hear.
“Meeks and Associates. How may I direct your call?”
“Yes, hi. I’d like to speak with Buddy Meeks, please.”
“May I have your name?”
“Ross Berman. I met Buddy the other day at the convention. I delivered the keynote at the luncheon.”
“One moment.”
Their hold music was a Brahms lullaby.
Michaela smirked.
“What?” Ross asked her. “Details are important.”
“Hey. I didn’t say anything.”
“For once,” added Danesh.
The lullaby cut off mid-measure and the receptionist from Meeks & Associates came back on the line: “I’m sorry, but Buddy is unavailable at the moment. If you could give me your contact information, I can assure you that someone will return your call by the end of the day.”
Ross gave his contact information and then pressed END.
“You really hit it off,” repeated Michaela.
“Shut up, Michaela,” said Danesh.
His head lowered, Ross ambled toward the stairs. “I’ll get the mail.”
He avoided the mousetrap at the top of the stairs and the roach bait at the bottom of the stairs. The passageway entered the convenience store between the frozen food and the unisex restroom. Ahmed’s little brother, who insisted on being called Froyo, was restocking the cold medicine. Ahmed, as usual, stood behind a thick window of plastic at the cash wrap. The plastic was tagged with the numbers 211 and a large six-pointed star, marking the store as Crips territory.
“The mail come?” Ross asked.
Without glancing away from the soccer game on his thirteen-inch TV, Ahmed slid a small stack of envelopes under the thick window. Ross headed back to the stairs.
“Heads up, my man!” shouted Froyo, and he tossed Ross a wrapped churro that he barely caught. Ross nodded thanks and trotted up the stairs. He gave the pile of bills to Danesh to sort and returned to his seat and enjoyed his churro.
“Sharing is caring,” said Michaela.
So Ross divvied up the remainder of the churro between Danesh and Valentina.
Michaela skulked at them all, muttering, “Assholes.”
“Hold up,” said Danesh. He separated a small manila envelope from the rest. Their organization and address were written in clean black marker. “I do believe we have a milestone. This doesn’t seem to be a bill or junk mail.”
“We’re moving up in the world,” Ross noted.
Danesh sliced the envelope with his car key and emptied its contents, a yellow USB drive, to his desk. There was no note. Curious, he stuck the drive into the side of his MacBook.
“What do you even know about this Buddy Meeks?” asked Michaela. “I don’t want to be some self-serving Republican’s tax write-off.”
“Good thing the money wouldn’t go to you, then. It would go to our bid for the warehouse or to the Prescott Street Kitchen. You actually have running water, Michaela. And a refrigerator stocked with food. Probably locally sourced, am I right? It must be nice to be able to afford all that.”
“You don’t know me, Ross. And besides, I didn’t see you yesterday aft
ernoon building houses with Habitat.”
“No,” he replied. “I was making funeral arrangements for my best friend.”
But then Danesh piped in: “Guys…you need to see this.”
Ross and Michaela went over to his desk and watched the video playing off the USB drive. The image, in black and white, was of the living room of a home. From the angle provided, the camera must have been in one of the high corners of the room. The room was cluttered with dirty T-shirts, pizza boxes. There was a man in the video, pacing back and forth in front of the TV. The man held a baseball bat. From such a high angle, not all of his face was visible, but enough of it was, enough at least to identify the man.
And then a second man entered the frame. Much larger than the first. The two men yelled at each other. The video had no sound.
And then the first man took a swing with the bat and he made contact with the second man’s skull. The second man went down. The first man lifted the bat and connected it again, this time crashing solid wood against the second man’s shoulder.
And then his forearm.
And then his hip bone. And then the hip bone a second time. And then the hip bone a third time.
Danesh and Michaela stopped looking with horror at the video. Instead, they were looking with horror at Ross, their boss, their leader, as Ross, in the video, collided the bat with the hip bone a furious fourth time against Walker Berno.
Chapter 32
Suite 206 was quiet, until it suddenly very much was not. The door from the outer corridor slammed open and Ross Berman stormed inside. His face was red, his cheeks dry riverbeds where tears had recently swum. He looked around the suite like a lost, desperate kitten and then marched toward reception.
“Where is she?” he asked, somewhere between a growl and a gasp. “Where is Jessabelle?”
The receptionist, unfazed, handed Ross a clipboard. On it was a pen and a form.
Ross promptly frisbeed the clipboard across the room. It smacked against a potted fern.
“It’s policy,” the receptionist replied, and he shuttered the partition.