What Goes Around Comes Around

by Con Lehane

  After an interview with a well-meaning but overworked and jaded social worker type who seemed pleased that my arrest record was limited to a couple of roundups back in the sixties, I sat around for many more hours in a large locked room on benches with a small mob of smelly strangers, almost all of them younger, bigger, and meaner than me. When my name was called, I was walked through a door into a very busy courtroom, where, thank heavens, Peter Finch was waiting for me. Peter was his usual somber, dour self, but I wanted to hug him all the same. With his patrician features, which included thinning blond hair that belied his Irish-American roots, his conservative gray suit, and his well-modulated, precise diction, he seemed lawyerly and confident, which was a good thing, because I dreaded—with a loathing beyond my capacity to describe—the thought of that steel door slamming shut behind me again.

  Peter had some discussions at the bench with a bored gray-haired judge, who in my estimation would never see seventy again, and a wet-behind-the ears prosecutor. They threw around a lot of numbers and letters—the discussion of a one-ninety-fifty notice seeming to draw the most debate—and passed sheets of paper to one another, one of which Peter told me to sign. Finally, after another whispered gathering at the judge’s bench, followed by a mini flare-up over an ROR—whatever that was—the prosecutor, looking as if Peter had beaten him out of his firstborn son, nodded okay, the judge mumbled something to me that sounded like a warning, and Peter nudged me toward the door.

  “I tried to get trespassing. But the cops want to charge you with burglary because the window was jimmied,” Peter said when we stopped to talk in the hallway. “The judge let you out on recognizance because he believed me when I said you weren’t a risk. I’ll talk to the ADA and see what he’s willing to do about the charge. Right now, you’re looking at a Class D felony.”

  I grabbed Peter’s arm in panic. “A felony? I’m not a felon. I didn’t jimmy the window. It was open.”

  “They say it was jimmied.”

  “They’re lying.”

  Peter grimaced. “Why would they do that?”

  I couldn’t think of any reason why they would. Peter listened soberly while I told him all that had happened. “I’ve got a couple of cases in another court,” he said. “Don’t do anything that might get you arrested again, and don’t talk to the cops about anything.”

  “I had no real desire to get arrested this time.”

  After thanking Peter, who ran off to his other case, I headed toward the door to get the subway out to Bay Ridge to pick up Kevin. My ex-wife would love this: his seedy father coming to pick him up after a night in jail.

  “Not so fast,” said a familiar voice from behind me, sharp and loud in the marble hallway. Detective Sergeant Sheehan caught up with me on the stairway.

  “My lawyer told me not to talk to you.”

  Sheehan snarled. “Is that why you had the officer from the Seven-eight call me over here, so you could tell me you weren’t going to talk to me?”

  “I wanted you to help me. I wasn’t trying to steal anything,” I said.

  “Greg Phillips’s apartment.” This was a statement. “What were you looking for?”

  “Him.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “I thought you didn’t know him.” Sheehan stood triumphantly two steps above me on the stairway, looking like the statue of righteousness. “Why should I help you out of a jam if you’re just going to get in my way?”

  “Don’t you believe in justice?”

  He looked at me long and hard. “I believe in good guys and bad guys, McNulty.” In his broad, pleasant face, I saw an uncomplicated intelligence, the kind that was certain of its beliefs, knew right from wrong and good from bad. He was someone, unlike me, whose life revolved around certainties. He shook his head. “I suppose you don’t know what your pals were up to?”

  I didn’t have to feign ignorance. But Sheehan rolled his eyes to suggest he wasn’t letting himself be conned. Even though he didn’t believe me, he sounded protective, in spite of himself. “I’d watch my step, McNulty. You may not be tough enough for these guys.” He looked to the ceiling, then glared at me. “A city full of innocents. You buy your nose candy like you have nothing to do with the bodies strewn from here to Colombia … .” His eyes like the steel cell bars I’d lately left behind, he made a short, quick, hard uppercut motion with his right hand. “A professional hit, McNulty. The way you make a martini, this guy uses a knife—up, under, between the ribs and into the heart—one hole.”

  The force of what he said stunned me. “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” I said softly, suddenly afraid of this world where a person stabs someone else with an upward thrust of a knife, under the rib cage, between the ribs, right into the heart. I did want Sheehan to protect me from it.

  “A waitress said two guys stopped to see Phillips the night of the murder. That wasn’t you and the big shot by any chance?” Sheehan’s steely blue eyes bore into my soul.

  “No. Not us. We didn’t go there.”

  “Do you know where the big shot was?”

  “He was with me.”

  “Till when?”

  “I don’t know. After midnight.”

  Sheehan turned to go. “Your lawyer told you not to talk to me? You should listen to him. Better than that, you should stay out of my way.”

  Martha stood in the doorway of her modest East Ninety-first Street brick row house, her favorite expression, disapproval, firmly in place. She wasn’t angry; the bitterness had dissipated over the years. Life had dealt her a bum hand. She’d thrown it in. No hard feelings; they were buried. Maybe they gave her indigestion or ulcers, but she knew how to be a single parent and a divorced woman. I’d taught her to keep her guard up.

  “You’re a wreck, Brian. Can’t you stay sober the night before you pick up your son?”

  “I was sober,” I told her. “I was in jail.”

  A smile began, but she quickly smothered it with indignation. Businesslike and respectable these days, she was no longer the slim girl in bare feet and flimsy summer dresses. Her cheeks were still hollow and her big gray eyes still pretty. Her hair was fluffy now, when before it had been long and straight. “Grow up,” she said.

  “Where are we going today?” Kevin asked, coming up behind his mother. He wore a black Grateful Dead T-shirt and ripped dungarees; his hair had grown over his ears and was flopping over his forehead into his eyes. Deep into the sullen, shuffling, and mumbling phase of a young man’s life, he still had a bit of kid enthusiasm left.

  “To the track.”

  “Good God, Brian, you’ll never change,” said Martha in the scathing tone of a scandalized Lutheran.

  A perplexed and sad expression took the place of the sullenness on Kevin’s face for a moment. As he looked from Martha to me, I could almost hear what he was thinking. Why, he must wonder, couldn’t these two people who were supposed to raise him keep it together? Standing in the doorway, watching Martha hug her son, I tormented myself with the same thoughts. Here was Kevin about to turn fifteen, and I didn’t remember him growing up.

  “I saw Big John,” I told them.

  “Oh,” said Martha. This time, she did smile, looking wistful, sadness in her eyes. “I hope he’s doing well.”

  “He’s a big corporate mucky-muck, now. He’s doing fine.”

  Martha didn’t share my disdain for the ruling class, and she liked John. For a while, years back, when I started seeing Kevin again—with Big John as matchmaker—it looked like Martha and I might get back together. But it didn’t work out. We looked at each other now across those years, realizing in these few seconds of time travel that there was no longer any reason to work anything out. I didn’t tell her about the murder because I was afraid she’d keep Kevin home if I did.

  As usual, Kevin and I stopped off to visit Pop on our way to the Long Island Railroad station at Atlantic Avenue, where we would get the train to Belmont.

  “I
’ve stopped drinking coffee,” Pop said when he opened the door. We usually drank coffee together, and I suppose he wanted to squelch my expectations.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “I’ve burned a coffeepot for the last time.” He ushered us in and we sat down at his ancient oak dining room table. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  “Is that it?”

  “It’s too early for beer.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “No thanks.” He was already suffering from caffeine withdrawal, so I didn’t want to jangle his nerves any further.

  “Good. What’s new? Any trace of that friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been looking?” He was irritated.

  I explained to Kevin as delicately as I could about Aaron’s murder and Greg’s disappearance. Since he didn’t know Aaron or remember Greg and John was only tangentially involved, he wasn’t all that interested. Then I told Pop about the rest of my adventures, leading up to my arrest.

  “Don’t worry. Finch’ll get you off. All those lawyers and judges are in cahoots; they’ll make a deal. What did you find in the apartment you broke into?”

  “I didn’t break in. The window was unlocked. Anyway, I didn’t find anything, except that Greg has a roommate.”

  “That’s something,” said Pop. “But you might have discovered that by looking at the mailbox. What now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to the track. Maybe I’ll win enough, so I can go away and forget all this.”

  “Yeh,” said Pop. “You and the track.”

  Things at the track went predictably. We won the first half of the double, then lost the second and third races. We skipped a couple of races and won on an eight-to-one shot in the sixth. After collecting our winnings, we went to check out the paddock, which at Belmont has trees and lawns and benches and makes you feel like you’re walking around the old plantation in Kentucky. Jose Garcia was standing in one of the saddling sheds, so Kevin went up close to the fence and hollered out thanks for bringing in our eight-to-one shot. Jose was gracious and pleasant. He glowed with a kind of bronze color and his dark eyes sparkled with the kind of joy about life I’ve always envied. You got the feeling he was one of the lucky ones who did work he loved. He walked over, asked Kevin his name, and shook his hand. Kevin came swaggering back from the fence like one of the horse owners who’d just given instructions to the jockey.

  In the next race, Jose—who, despite his indomitable spirit, was near the bottom of the jockey standings for the fall meet—was riding another eight-to-one shot, this an also-ran, whose odds dropped to nine to one by the time the horses got out of the paddock and onto the track. Kevin and I were near the rail, so when Jose came by and hollered out, “Hello, my man Kevin,” Kevin took this to be insider information. He was so excited, I couldn’t bring myself to bet on the horse I’d doped out, so I put ten bucks on Step-and-a-Half—who by call to post had dropped to eleven to one—and he came in dead last.

  “What the hell,” I said. We bet on our pal Jose in two more races, but he didn’t finish in the money either time. Still, he smiled and waved to Kevin each time he rode onto the track and seemed like he was having a hell of a time.

  Maybe if he took his job a little more seriously … I told myself.

  On the train ride back to Manhattan and then the subway to my apartment on the West Side, I forgot about the track and enjoyed being with Kevin, the brightest light in my life. I liked sitting next to him, wondering what he thought about. I didn’t have to talk to be happy with him, just be near him.

  “Do you want to go out to eat or get Chinese food and go to my apartment?”

  “Chinese is okay, I guess,” Kevin said. “Don’t you ever eat decently?” His tone spoke volumes.

  We were sharing hot-and-sour soup, moo shoo pork, kung po shrimp, and Chinese vegetables when the door buzzer rang. Kevin got to it first. It was Big John, whom he hadn’t seen in years. Kevin’s face lit up, and he danced out to the lobby to open the outside door, catching himself and restoring his sullenness before he actually reached the door. But Big John tousled his hair and lifted him off the ground with a big bear hug anyway, so Kevin couldn’t help smiling.

  There was enough food for all of us. But Big John wasn’t interested. “I don’t eat that Chinese stuff,” he said. “They use cats.”

  “Cats?” Kevin was shocked. “For what?”

  “For meat. They cook ’em.”

  Kevin dropped his chopsticks onto the table.

  “They don’t cook cats,” I said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Big John. “Did you ever see any cats around a Chinese restaurant?”

  Big John had beliefs like this. He believed in old wives’ tales and, despite his business acumen, had the prejudices of a Gypsy. John rarely ate anyway; I think he ate one big meal every couple of days, like one of those wolves who eats a moose and then doesn’t eat again for a week. He’d always been like that. Drinking a beer, he watched us eat.

  “We went to the track,” Kevin said brightly.

  “D’you win?”

  “Nope,” said Kevin.

  “That’s what used to happen when I went to the track with your old man.” Big John took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Those were good days, though, weren’t they?” His voice had a sentimental lilt. “Who cared if we won? Everything was easy. Now nothin’s easy.”

  Finally getting a word in, I followed up on the “nothin’s easy” theme and told him about my night in the slammer.

  Big John laughed heartily, nodding like an old uncle. “That sounds like something Greg would do, not you,” he said when I finished my tale. “Jesus, I’ve spent my life and picking up after everybody—my father, Greg—and now you’re gonna start?”

  When I told John that Sheehan had asked if we’d been in the club the night of the murder, John banished the idea with a wave of his hand. “You didn’t tell him we saw Greg before that, did you?”

  “No. But Sheehan’s developed a couple of theories of his own.”

  When I told him about the cocaine and the professional hit, John jerked to attention. “Maybe he was just fishing … .” But John didn’t sound convinced and he looked really surprised, sitting for a long time deep in thought. After a few minutes, he came out of it. “You shoulda called my office, bro. The office can reach me no matter where I am.” He stood and stretched. “But it’s okay. I know Greg’s roommate. Let’s go see him. I can have him drop the charges.”

  John started for the door, but I held him back. “I’ve had enough of Greg’s apartment. Besides, Kevin’s staying overnight.”

  “Okay,” said Big John. “I’ll have him come over here.”

  He went to the phone and dialed. “No answer,” he said, then dialed again. He handled the phone like someone who was used to it, the way he’d once handled the bottles behind the bar. This time, someone did answer, so he spoke into the phone like Conrad Hilton on the horn with one of his managers.

  “That’s right. Tell Walter John wants him.” He waited a few seconds. “Hey, bro,” said Big John. “I need to talk to you … . Now.” He waited again. “No, that ain’t good enough. I need to talk to you now, here on the West Side.” He turned to me. “Where the hell am I?” I told him, and he told Walter. “Get someone to cover and come up here as soon as you can,” John said in a tone of easy but unmistakable authority.

  “You know,” John said when he’d gotten himself another beer, “Greg was just about Kevin’s size when I first met him. He was about twelve. We were playing baseball … .” John paused when he noticed Kevin’s troubled expression. After some quick calculations, he figured out his mistake. A true storyteller, John didn’t want to lose his audience. “Now wait a minute.” He scrutinized Kevin. “You’re a lot older than twelve. You must be sixteen or seventeen.” Kevin rolled his eyes, as if to say anyone could tell he wasn’t a twelve-year-old. But he was listening again as John went on with his story
.

  “Greg was a new kid. And he was small, too. This guy George said he was out at second, and he wasn’t. George was big and mean—and stupid. He knew he couldn’t push me around, so he tried Greg. But Greg wouldn’t budge.” John smiled and sat back, relishing both the memory and a healthy swig of beer.

  Kevin, chopsticks poised in front of him—but eating with a lot less enthusiasm than before and sticking pretty much to the shrimp—looked like he was now afraid John wouldn’t finish the story, so he asked, “What happened then?”

  “Well,” said Big John, who had been waiting for such attention, “I had to straighten George out.” John’s expression became solemn as he prepared for the moral of the story. “He wasn’t out; he was safe,” John said by way of explanation. Kevin nodded a bit uncertainly. Big John nodded, too, emphasizing whatever point it was he thought he had made.

  As I stood up to get another beer for John, the phone rang. I answered it absently. A Spanish-accented voice said, “Mind your own business, bartender. Stick to tending bar, or you’re gonna have big trouble.” Then the phone clicked and the line went dead.

  chapter six

  When I told John about the phone message, he looked at me for a moment, then said, “Maybe that’s good advice.”

  The phone call convinced me Kevin should stay at Pop’s apartment for this visit or go home to his mother until life made sense again. He agreed to go to his grandpa’s in the morning, no doubt remembering I’d almost gotten him killed once before.