Borrowed Time

by Tracy Clark

  “What kind of ‘rocky shit’?”

  Marta chortled. “Byson didn’t give you the backstory?”

  I sighed. “Apparently not.”

  “The victim had a few minor scrapes, mostly in high school—possession of marijuana, underage drinking, speeding tickets, trespass. Then there’s his history of depression and anxiety, strike two. Maybe he was bipolar, the brother suspects as much, but Tim was never officially diagnosed. Guess the family didn’t want that hanging over their heads either. Strike three? Tim Ayers was dying of some god-awful kind of cancer, and didn’t have much time anyway. He was still up and on his feet, by all accounts, but his better days were behind him. That’s got to be tough for a guy still in his twenties., which possibly contributed to his state of mind at the time he died.”

  I hung on the line, shocked into silence. Jung hadn’t mentioned that Tim was dying or that he had had a history of depression and anxiety. My grip tightened on the receiver. Here I was feeling guilty for turning him away when it now appeared that that’s exactly what I should have done. I narrowed my eyes. He knew what he was doing, too, didn’t he? I thought. If he’d told me all of this up front, that would have put quite a different spin on Tim’s “accidental” death.

  “I deduce from your uncharacteristic silence that this is your first time hearing any of this?” I could almost see the self-satisfied grin on Marta’s face. I’d seen it before. I knew it well. “My informed opinion, which none of the evidence proves wrong, is that Tim Ayers simply got tired of fighting a losing battle and checked himself out. We didn’t find a note, but that’s inconclusive. Bottom line, there’s no smoking gun. I know because I looked for it, and didn’t find it. Now everybody’s okay with moving on, except for your pal Byson. When he kept harping on about murder and killers, I even asked him, why anyone would go to the trouble of killing a dying man?”

  “What’d he say?”

  Marta chuckled. “He didn’t have an answer for that one, and neither do I.”

  “You trust the brother? He could have been playing you. He and Tim weren’t close.”

  “I don’t get along with my brother, Manuel, either,” Marta said, “but I wouldn’t kill him, at least not intentionally. The brother, Stephen, seemed okay enough, a little stiff in the neck for my taste, but I got the impression all this came as sort of a relief.”

  “Where was he the night Tim died, do you know?” I asked.

  I heard a door open and male voices speaking loudly. Marta said nothing. Then the voices trailed away.

  “You’re in the stairwell?”

  “It’s what you’ve reduced me to,” she shot back. “You’ve worked suicides.” There was a note of challenge in her tone. “How many suspects did you question?”

  I massaged my forehead, just above the eyebrows, where a headache was starting to form. “Is the boat still at the marina?”

  “Far as I know. We had no cause to haul it away. Satisfied now? Or would you like to poach another of my cases? I’ve got a desk full. You can take your pick.”

  “Again, I do not poach.”

  “Yeah, you do. Now tell Byson to get lost.”

  The line went dead. Glowering, feeling put upon, lamenting the time I’d wasted wallowing in guilt and worry for someone I barely knew, I grabbed my jacket and headed to Deek’s to speak to Jung about the virtues of forthrightness. God help the man.

  Chapter 6

  I flew through the door, scanned the place, and found Muna holding up Deek’s counter, sipping coffee out of a mug, the aroma of fried eggs, bacon, and hash browns floating over the tables. The few diners present looked like they’d been sufficiently attended to, at least for the moment, so Muna was taking a break. No sign of Adele. Looked like this time her huffy resignation might stick.

  “Where’s Jung?”

  Muna’s brows lifted. “And hello to you, too, Miss I Was Raised By Wolves.”

  “Good morning, Muna. And how are you this fine, wonderful morning?”

  “Oh, can’t complain.” She spoke as if she had all day to talk about it. “All you can do is hang in and hope it gets better, right?”

  “Right.” I let a beat pass. “Where’s Jung?”

  “Don’t know. But when he didn’t show up this morning, Deek fired him. He left you something, though. I’ve been calling you all morning, kept getting your voice mail.” She pointed behind me, toward a booth. I turned to find a scruffy-looking twentysomething coloring the paper menu reserved for toddlers, a chocolate shake next to him. I turned back to Muna. “He left me a person?”

  “Says his name is Bucky T. Something. I’m sure he said more than that, but he tickled me so, I missed the rest of it. He’s been here a couple hours. That’s his third shake and his second kiddie menu. I think the word game stumped him, so he moved on to the coloring portion about a half hour ago. What’s going on?”

  I turned back to the scruffy boy, who appeared consumed by his coloring project. “No idea, but I’m going to need Jung’s phone number and address.”

  “Mr. Byson doesn’t have a phone, but I think I’ve got his address here somewhere. You see to him, and I’ll get it for you. And if Mr. Crayons knows what’s good for him, he better have money for those shakes. Deek ain’t a freebies kind of person.”

  Bucky was short and squat with a prominent widow’s peak and heavily hooded eyelids, which gave him the look of a sloth-like basset hound. I stood at the booth, towering over him, watching as he colored an apple in orange crayon.

  “Bucky T.?”

  He looked up. “Yeah?”

  “I’m Cass Raines. You’re here to see me?”

  His face brightened, his eyes danced. “Oh, yeah, sure am.” He got to his feet, smoothing out his faded Grateful Dead T-shirt and grungy jeans. “Hi. Name’s Bucky T., but my friends just call me Buck.” He reached into his front pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Special delivery from one Mr. Jung Byson, one of my main bros.” He handed it to me, then sat back down and took a long swig of shake. I slid in across from him, watching him work the thick liquid through the red-and-white-striped straw.

  “Go on. Open it,” he said when he came up for air. “Dude was totally jazzed about your getting it ASAP.” He folded his chunky fingers over a paunchy middle, relaxing as though he had all day to wait. He reminded me a lot of Jung.

  “When did he give you this?”

  Bucky snorted. “Whoa. That was like a million years ago. I’d have to think long and hard to remember the deets.”

  I folded my hands on the table, the note in front of me. “Whenever you’re ready.” But instead of starting in on the “long and hard,” Bucky T. just sat there staring at me, a blank look on his face. He frowned. “What’s today again?”

  “Friday,” I said.

  He smiled, nodded. “Right. I knew that. Then yesterday. That’d be Thursday, right?”

  “Jung gave you the note yesterday.” I wanted to be sure.

  Bucky pressed his eyes closed, thought about it. “Yep. Late. He came by, tossed the stones at my window, and I . . .”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “‘Stones’?”

  Bucky blinked, smiled. “The bell’s out at my place. Stones work just as good if you hit the right spot and you’re tuned in to the message.”

  “What? Never mind.” I waved for him to continue. “Go on.”

  “Dude tosses the stones, I heard them, seeing as I was tuned in.” He winked as though sharing a secret. “I opened the door. There dude is. Says he’s got something he wants delivered to you. He hands it over. Says if you weren’t at your office, I was to come here and wait because you’d eventually stop in. Oh, then he said he didn’t want me dicking around with it, pardon my parlance, which I kinda took offense to. I’m all about the follow-through.”

  “I was in my office,” I said. “In fact, I just came from there.”

  Bucky blinked again, nothing seemed to be going on behind his glassy eyes. He shrugged. “I was starved. I figured I�
��d flip it and wait for you here.”

  Jung Byson was weird enough. Now there was Bucky T. to contend with. Where did they grow these kids? “Do you know where Jung is now?”

  “Nah. He dropped the note, turned down some brews and some primo . . . never mind . . . which is so not like the dude, then he booked it. He said he had to get back out there.”

  “Out where?”

  Bucky took another long draw from his straw. He had to really work at it. “Didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I took it in general terms, you know, out there . . . in the world . . . mingling with humanity. Dude seemed committed to it.” Bucky scanned the diner. “This looks like a cool place.”

  “It isn’t.” I unfolded the paper, read it: I thought at least you’d believe me, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll prove I’m right, then you’ll see. If you’ve changed your mind, though, tell Buck. He knows how to get in touch. I groaned. Who knew flaky Jung could plunge the knife so deep?

  “Something heavy?” Bucky asked. “You look a little weirded out.”

  I held up the note, waved it. “Jung says you know how to get in touch?”

  Bucky nodded. “Dude’s renting my cell. I guess I could maybe call it.”

  I took a moment, studied Bucky. “Do you also know where he lives?”

  “Sure.”

  I pointed to the crayons and paper on the table. “Write his address down.” I reached into my pocket and dug out my cell. “What’s your number?” I dialed while Bucky recited it, and then waited while the phone rang. Folded notes, disappearing delivery boys, spacey messengers, there wasn’t this much intrigue in a le Carré novel.

  “Yeah?” It was Jung.

  “Jung, what are you doing? Forget it. Whatever it is, stop doing it.”

  “Did you change your mind? Will you take my case?”

  “Jung, you have no case. Look, I asked around as a favor to you. Your friend’s death was a tragic accident, and you’re just going to have to accept it. But since we’re on it, you conveniently left out a few things about Tim, like the fact that he was dying of cancer.”

  There was a long pause before Jung spoke again. “If I’d told you that, you never would have listened in the first place.”

  I looked over the table at Bucky. He was back to the shake, his cheeks sunken in midway through a long draw, but seemingly mesmerized by the call. “Jung, there is no murderer out there.”

  “You’re wrong. The police are wrong. I told you—”

  I cut him off. “Jung, you are going to get yourself in trouble. Where are you?”

  “No way. If you’re not in, then you’re out, and don’t need to know. I’ve got this.”

  “You’ve got nothing,” I shot back, my voice rising. “Your friend had a history of depression and anxiety, not to mention the fact that he was OCD. Stop and think—”

  Jung interrupted me. “‘OCD’? Who told you that?”

  “It came from someone who ought to know, his own brother.”

  Bucky had almost finished his shake and was sweeping the straw along the bottom of the cup to pick up any last remnants. I glared at him. He stopped. “This is news to you?”

  “I gotta go,” Jung snapped.

  “What? No.”

  The line went dead.

  “Jung!” I dialed right back, but the call went to voice mail and I got Bucky’s dopey message asking me to “leave my digits.”

  “That was some major intensity,” Bucky said. “Mind if I borrow some of that?”

  I glared at him. “What?”

  “I’m an actor. Third year. I positively breathe character.” He eased into his pocket and pulled out a blue flyer. “See? ‘Bucky T. Scanlon, MacGuffins Theatre Troupe, U of C.’ I’m playing the hostess with the mostess in our latest revue. I nail it, by the by.”

  I held my hand out for Jung’s address. Bucky had written it down in purple crayon. Jung didn’t live far, but it was still farther than I wanted to go. I didn’t want to do this. I was tired. I needed to work for real pay, not trail around after Jung. I also had another summons sitting on my desk that I needed to hand off. That was money in the bank. Jung’s little game was a distracting time-suck I literally could not afford.

  Who died and made me his babysitter, anyway? Nobody, that’s who. I scribbled a note on the back of Bucky’s menu in black crayon—a color that matched my current mood. I looked up to catch Bucky grinning like an idiot. “Does Jung have any family in town?”

  “Dude doesn’t have family anywhere. Lost his folks in a car crash some years back and he’s an only kid. I think he mentioned an old uncle once, but don’t hold me to that. Jung’s made his own family. Me too. My folks aren’t dead, but they might as well be. We hang together, along with a few other misfits.” He shrugged. “It’s what we call ourselves. It’s almost as good.”

  I felt like whimpering, not for Jung, for me. Jung was getting under my skin, and I didn’t want him there. That his family history closely resembled mine didn’t help one bit. Little by little, I could feel Jung reeling me into his nonsense, and I was fighting it hard, like a ten-pound catfish caught on a fifty-pound fishing line.

  I handed Bucky my note. “When you see him, give him this. If he calls you, read it to him.” I handed him one of my cards. “All the numbers work. Tell him to use one of them.”

  Bucky read the note aloud. “‘Knock it off. Call me. I friggin’ mean it. Cass.’” He gave me an off-kilter salute. “Roger that.”

  After slurping up the last of his shake, he stood. Sheepishly he patted his pockets, posturing as though he’d misplaced his wallet. It was a timeworn ruse, but Bucky T. had misjudged his environment. Deek wouldn’t just make him wash dishes to pay the shakes off, he’d likely feed his compact body into the massive meat grinder he had in the back room, then make hamburger patties out of what came out of the business end.

  “I’m, like, way short here,” Bucky offered apologetically.

  “Go,” I said. “Go quickly, or your friends will never see you again.”

  Bucky double-timed it to the door. Muna walked up with Jung’s address on an index card, though I no longer needed it.

  She eyed the table, and then shot me a look that would have melted Bucky T. down to a puddle of human fluid. “Why am I not seeing any money on that table?”

  I dug a twenty out of my bag and handed it to her.

  She eyed the twenty, eyed me. “No tip? I walked three shakes over here.”

  I added another ten.

  Muna shook her head, tsked, glanced at the door Bucky T. just exited by. “That fool has no idea how close he came to dying today.”

  I sighed. “Not a clue.”

  Chapter 7

  I headed to Jung’s apartment, which was just south of Midway Plaisance, an expansive stretch of dipped lawn running four or five blocks through the U of C campus. You’d have thought with the school being so close to his front door that Jung would have managed to complete his studies in a timely manner and get up and out into the world, yet he seemed hell-bent on matriculating forever. I wondered who was footing the bill.

  No one answered when I rang the bell. None of Jung’s neighbors answered their bells, either. That made it official. Time-suck. And that was it. I was done. Jung was chronologically an adult. If he wanted to do something stupid, I couldn’t stop him. He was just going to have to cinch up his big-boy pants and work it out for himself. I had real work to do.

  * * *

  Just after five that evening, I managed to track down the last target on my list for the law firm. This time I didn’t have to buy balloons, giggle, or run for my life. I just walked up to the guy, tapped him on the shoulder, handed it over, said my bit, and walked away; sometimes simple works. To celebrate a job well done, I took my bike out and did a twenty-mile loop of the Lakefront path at a fiendish clip, hoping the speed and the sweat washed thoughts of Jung and Bucky T. out of my head, then I stopped by my office to work up my final bill for Golden, Sprague, and Bendelson. The sooner they go
t my invoice, the sooner I’d get paid. I added in the charge for Earlene Skipper’s helium balloons, too. I wasn’t in the charity business.

  It was close to seven when I bounded up the stairs to my apartment. No fear of incurring the landlord’s wrath for running in the halls, as I was both landlord and owner of the neat little three-flat, bequeathed to me by my grandparents. It’d been a long day and I needed food, a shower, and sleep, in that order. The first two I could guarantee, the third not so much. I’d been working nonstop for weeks, trying to keep busy, distracted, hoping the more I worked, the less time I’d have to focus on Pop being gone, and on Ted Raines, the runaway father he’d had to step in for.

  You’d think a guy who walked out on a kid of twelve wouldn’t have the nerve to come back half a lifetime later with hat in hand wanting to pick up where he left off, but that’s how it happened. Ted Raines, the stranger who shared my DNA, had stood in my front yard days after I’d lost Pop in the most horrendous way wanting to get to know me, wanting to make amends. It didn’t end well for either of us. How do you make amends for dumping a 12-year-old off on her grandparents a day after her mother’s funeral?

  In the months since, he’d taken to writing me letters, none of which I’d opened. If Pop were here, we’d talk everything through over a game of chess. I’d rail and beat back against the man, his nerve, his encroachment, and Pop would gently guide me into meeting him halfway, moving past the anger, embracing forgiveness. But Pop wasn’t here. Someone evil yanked him from me. I was going to have to punch my way through on my own, like I did with most things, two steps forward, one back, longing for Pop’s calm, quiet counsel.

  I sped past the second floor, avoiding the Kallishes’ door. It was still difficult seeing their apartment empty. That drive-by had been meant to send a message, to warn me off. It failed, but the nightmares it spawned still startled me awake at night drenched in fear and sweat, my mind reeling with what-ifs. The building was different now, quieter with only me and Mrs. Vincent rattling around in it, and I know she hated the feeling of emptiness just as much as I did.