No. 22 Pleasure City

by Mark Fishman

  “Fitch, there’s always the police. You didn’t forget that?”

  “It works both ways. Quit threatening me.”

  [ 67 ]

  It was almost closing time, the clock on the wall behind the bar said one forty-five. The bar wasn’t empty, the customers were finishing their drinks, and Violet, sitting awkwardly on a bar stool, tipped back her glass of vodka and swallowed what was left of it and the ice cubes banged against her front teeth.

  The bartender watched her as he cleaned and dried glasses, wiped down the bar and organized the bottles in neat rows one behind the other. She sat self-consciously straight on the bar stool and her eyes opened and closed regularly without staying shut more than a couple of seconds. Her charcoal-gray jacket hung from the back of the stool, her deep-blue shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and when she leaned forward he saw her breasts. Her shiny knees seemed to wink at him each time she swung around on the bar stool as he went past her going to and from the cash register.

  Violet didn’t hear anything from behind the curtain of vodka because there was no sound where she was, there was nothing but thick quiet, and she saw the bartender moving around behind the bar with his feet not touching the floor picking things up and setting them down and wiping the cheap imitation mahogany bar with a rag.

  The bartender had his back to Violet for some moments, then he shut the cash register drawer and turned to look at her, and while he was looking he took a few steps until he was standing across the bar from her.

  He said: “Since the other night I’ve been carrying a lot of weight. In here.” He tapped his chest with a couple of fingers but kept on looking into her bleary green eyes. “I remember you, and I remember the guy that was with you.” He leaned forward against the bar. “Tonight that weight got too heavy for me to carry. I got to find a way to get rid of it. I’m in love with you.” He kept a straight face when he said it, but she couldn’t make out any part of his expression.

  Violet was focused on a point above the bartender’s eyes because the eyes themselves were dancing from left to right and right to left in front of her and she couldn’t catch them long enough to look him straight in the face. His voice floated out of some faraway room and into her head and she heard the words but couldn’t figure out what they meant.

  The bartender stood up straight and now her eyes connected with his eyes and she saw a sparkling light in them that hadn’t been there earlier and the light drew her in and kept drawing her in and suddenly it didn’t matter what his words were telling her because the glow in his eyes said everything. The light seemed to move around in a slow circle and the circle held her and she couldn’t move.

  Words gathered in her mind and formed at the back of her throat and came out of her mouth slurred: “You got any money?”

  “What?”

  “Are you rich?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Maybe I am. But it’s a question.”

  “I’m not asking you if you’re drunk. I’m telling you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, I know I’m drunk.”

  “You want to know if I’m rich?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m considering it, but you’ve got to tell me if you’ve got money.”

  The sparkling light in his eyes went out and the circle that kept her from moving let her go suddenly and she slipped off the bar stool and landed on the floor among crushed cigarette butts with her skirt twisted up around her waist.

  [ 68 ]

  “There’s no happily-ever-after, it doesn’t exist, and it’s ridiculous to think it might exist because you’d be encouraging a completely crazy thought to become reality and there’s no chance of that happening. None,” Fitch said.

  He shut the notebook, put the pen in his pocket, took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth after he said this and hoped that by saying it he didn’t leave any room for her to keep on imagining that she loved him and he loved her and they’d spend their lives together doing what people did when they believed in something as close to a lie as this complete, undiluted bullshit. Fitch was exhausted.

  “I don’t love you,” he added.

  Angela stared at him from her tied-up position on the bathroom floor. The bare bulb gave her pale complexion a yellow hue.

  “You’ve got to get it right in your head,” Fitch said.

  “You’re breaking my heart,” she said quietly. “I’m in love with you.”

  Angela meant what she said, he saw that much in her eyes and heard it in her voice, but he wasn’t going to give up trying to get through to her before he let her go. It was a promise he’d made to himself and he wasn’t going to back down on it. But he felt the pressure of the quiet as she looked sadly at him, as though the lack of sound were something heavier than any sound.

  “I’ve been doing my job too well,” he said. “Don’t you see that? It’s a clinical thing.”

  “I don’t see anything. I know that what I’m saying is right.”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  And then the quiet was heavier.

  “I can’t do it alone.”

  She went on staring up at him from the floor without saying a word, and then a very small voice said: “Count me out.”

  [ 69 ]

  Shimura pulled his car alongside the agency car standing in the shadows on Delaplaine Road with its headlights out and its motor running and Aoyama behind the wheel with Eto sitting next to him in the passenger seat while together they were smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio and watching his car glide toward them and come to a halt in the night.

  “It’s fixed,” Shimura said to Aoyama through the open window. “For tomorrow afternoon.”

  Aoyama turned toward Eto, asked him if he’d heard Shimura. Eto nodded his head and tossed the end of the cigarette out in the street.

  “Go get some sleep,” Shimura said.

  The agency car drove away with its headlights on and turned left at Hartrey Avenue, and as he watched the taillights go around the corner he thought of Tomiko who was waiting for him at his apartment because her flight had come in at eight and now it was nearly ten o’clock.

  Lying in bed next to Tomiko was the single most important thing Shimura had in mind as he swung the car around and headed towards Hartrey and turned right and kept on going without seeing much of the road except what was absolutely necessary to see so he didn’t get into an accident because an accident would slow him down and he didn’t want anything to stop him now. He was waiting to press his mouth between Tomiko’s legs, taste her, and feel her lips against his own when they kissed.

  [ 70 ]

  Pohl sat in a chair at his desk in front of the phone waiting for it to ring. It seemed to him that it was the only thing he’d been doing for days and that the rest of his life would be spent waiting for one thing or another. Shimura had told him he’d call at eleven to let him know what he’d learned from Fitch, whose name he didn’t use since it was against the rules Shimura’d made for himself, and so he referred to him instead as just another source of information.

  Pohl felt the terrible slowness of passing time. It was only tenfifteen. It seemed like he was bolted to the chair, and then suddenly, somehow he was a long way off from the grief and everything because he was working to keep his thoughts as far from the telephone as he could by stretching them like rubber bands until they were taut and thin and might snap. It was a risk, and he knew that once they snapped he’d come back to where he was, which wasn’t a comfortable place to be.

  So then he was wondering what he ought to be thinking about, telling himself that at a time like this it was necessary to think about something more than the weather but nothing to do with sex and it was a matter of finding the right thing between those two subjects that would take him out of the waiting and far from Angela. He wanted something to give him a lift. Despite his initial resolve to keep away from the subject of sex but knowing it would take him away f
rom the desk and the phone he started on the topic of women.

  At first it was women in general because no one face came to mind, it was all women in every shape and size, and everything he found attractive in them, their voices, necks and ears, their legs with muscles showing when they walked, their stomachs and thighs and arms when they wore very little to cover themselves up, every detail he could manage to think of until slowly all the women formed themselves into one woman, and it was Angela, and then he was feeling very low again.

  He folded his arms on the desk, let his head rest against his arms, closed his eyes to the knowledge that life listed him as hooked and helpless and just another morsel to be chewed by bigger fish or swallowed whole with very little fuss.

  Then he was thinking how this city that didn’t rank as high in the same field of perversity as others still had its particular form of magnetism and sorcery that drew the people who lived in it out of their routine and into excess until all they wanted was more until more wasn’t enough. He accepted the fact that he wasn’t different from any of them when he met Angela and knew that he wouldn’t stop chasing her until he got her and that when he did have her it certainly wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him. None of that kept him from wanting more.

  But he wasn’t anywhere near a result that might begin to satisfy him and he figured he might never see Angela again and if he did see her he wasn’t so sure she’d be interested in him since he didn’t have the slightest idea what made her tick. He told himself all of this like someone wrapped in a wet blanket talking to the world. He was still feeling very low. He stood up, paced the room, lit a cigarette and sat down at the desk again. He drummed his fingers on the desk.

  The telephone rang. It was ten fifty-five. He listened to the voice on the other end of the line but didn’t register the words until after he’d put the phone down. He hadn’t said a word, just listened to Violet Archer who said she was at home and wanted to talk to him right away, it was urgent, she couldn’t wait, she’d be right over and it didn’t matter if he was undressed and in bed because that was where she wanted him.

  He shook his head wondering how she’d got his number. She wasn’t drunk, her voice was clear and the things she’d said were organized into a plan and he couldn’t figure out what that plan was except that he knew that he was right in the middle of it. He swept the cigarette ash off the desk in front of him.

  The telephone rang again at fifteen minutes past eleven. It was Shimura.

  “I’ve got good news,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “You want to know, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think I can take any news, good or bad.”

  “Sure you can. She’s coming home.”

  [ 71 ]

  The following morning at nine-thirty Shimura phoned Rand Hadley from the agency to let him know how things stood in the case of the so-called kidnapping of Angela Mason, which was drawing to a close more smoothly and easily than he’d anticipated now with Fitch’s complete cooperation and no pressure on the financial end from Kawamura, who’d given him a free hand.

  “I can’t say which part satisfies me more, Kawamura’s trust or a problem on the verge of resolution,” Shimura said.

  “How’s Pohl taking it?”

  “Nervous as a cat.”

  “Can you do anything for him?”

  “No, he’s got to play the cards as they’re dealt him. I’ll be around when he needs me, you know that, Rand.”

  “Of course you will. Have you got the place staked out?”

  “There isn’t much left to do. Eto’s watching the house. I’m waiting for a call from Fitch.”

  “By this time tomorrow she’ll be tucked safely in her own bed. And you can get a good night’s sleep knowing you’ve done everything possible to help a friend and there’s nothing like that feeling to give us a boost when there isn’t always a lot going our way on the order of satisfaction on the job.”

  “I don’t like to hear that coming from you. You had a lot of good years with the county. When you were lead investigator there were arrests and convictions. But maybe there’s something you’re trying to tell me.”

  “I don’t have any complaints,” Hadley said, scribbling the letter v with a circle around it, then s with a circle around it on a notepad in front of him. “The guys upstairs gave me a pat on the back plenty of times. I got promotions, acknowledgment from the detectives I worked with, and the victims who made it out of a tough spot because of the department thanked me more often in twenty-five years than I can remember, but there’s nothing like the feeling of having done something for the best reason in the world.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “When whatever it is that makes us tick tells us to go ahead and do something right for somebody even if it isn’t by the book, like you’ve done for Pohl, knowing it might not go down the right way with the people upstairs.”

  “Noble principles, Rand — like how things ought to be instead of how they are. After all the years with the county you know that.”

  “And you know I’m right or you wouldn’t have stuck your neck out for him.”

  [ 72 ]

  It was three forty-five in the afternoon when Fitch gave Shimura a call. He was going to Nightingale Lane to give Angela a drug to knock her out and then hand her over to Shimura if he was ready to take the responsibility for her, which was more than Fitch said he was willing to do because he’d had enough of playing out of his league with a nutcase.

  “I’ll take the responsibility all right,” Shimura said. “What time should I be there?”

  “Number four at five-thirty.”

  Shimura put the phone down, looked at his wristwatch.

  Aoyama came to his office five minutes later. Shimura pointed to a chair, Aoyama sat down, crossed his legs, offered Shimura a cigarette.

  “No, thanks.”

  Aoyama lit his cigarette, then sat up straight.

  They sat there for some moments, not saying anything, just looking at the short distance of space between them.

  Shimura smiled at Aoyama.

  “Well,” he said. “Let’s wrap it up.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  Aoyama took a deep breath, thought for a moment, then said: “What about Fitch? Can we count on him?”

  “Of course, we can. He’s had enough of it to last him a lifetime.” Shimura pulled his chair close to the desk. “And he’s honest.”

  “Quit kidding.”

  “I’m serious. He’s one of the few left who’ve got a sense of honor. I told you what he told me last night.”

  “Keep telling me.”

  “If you can’t buy it — ”

  “I’m buying it,” Aoyama said.

  “Good. You know where Eto is, don’t you?”

  “On stake-out. I’m not babysitting Eto.”

  “I know that. What’s eating you?”

  “Sorry. It’s Eto.” He took a hard pull at the cigarette. “His bank account is low and he’s worried and he doesn’t know how to straighten it out.”

  Shimura’s expression became solemn. “He’s gambling, and losing.”

  “Of course he’s gambling.”

  “You introduced him to it.”

  “Maybe I did, but I do it to pass the time, and he does it because he’s got to do it.”

  “His father was a gambler. Maybe not in casinos, but he lost plenty of money.”

  Aoyama put his cigarette out, lit another.

  “So what’s the difference between him and his father?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions,” Aoyama said. “You know as well as I do that they’re the same man, father and son, and it’s only the difference in age that separates them.”

  “That’s right, but I’d like to help him.”

  “I know, but he can’t change overnight.”

  “Don’t make excuses for him.”

  “I’m not making excuses for a
nybody.”

  “And I’m not talking about twenty-four hours,” Shimura said. “It’s a long time that he’s been doing the same thing one way or another and I thought he wanted to quit and he’s in it now just as deep as he was then.”

  “I’m not babysitting Eto,” Aoyama insisted.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He’s got you in a lousy mood, again.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Think about it.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I just wish he’d lay off me.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  “He doesn’t want to hear it. And he owes me money. I can’t piss him off because he won’t pay me back if he’s pissed off.”

  “Then tell me this. Did you have to loan it to him?”

  Aoyama blinked several times. “Let’s see, now — ” He frowned up at the ceiling, then looked at Shimura. “Let’s not go into it, okay?”

  “You’re trying to help him the wrong way, then you get fucked up by it,” Shimura said mildly.

  “Give me a break, will you?”

  Shimura leaned back in his chair.

  “Now tell me this,” he said. “What’s the difference between you and him?”

  Aoyama took another drag at his cigarette.

  “I give up,” he said.

  “This thing with the money is just an idea you got, but it’s not a very good idea. It’s more like an excuse for getting yourself stuck in a problem.”

  Aoyama shook his head, frowning thoughtfully.

  “You can’t help everybody out of everything they get themselves mixed up in,” Shimura said.

  It was just like every other time Shimura had sat him down for a few words meant to straighten him out and Aoyama had listened to what he had to say and knew that Shimura was right and that he’d got himself into a fucked-up situation, and so he felt a bit stupid and embarrassed and at the same time grateful that Shimura was telling him to watch his step because he told him in a way that meant it mattered to Shimura what happened to him.