"Martha, I'll be leaving tonight."
"I really appreciate everything you've done." She ran her hand back through her hair. "John, I don't know what to say. I . . ."
"I'm going to Washington to speak to some people in the army. I'm expecting there will be some benefits coming to you."
"Benefits?"
"Yes," I lied, or almost. "As a result of Al's service."
She squinted at me. "Al let his GI insurance lapse." She gave half a laugh. "Al let lots of things lapse."
"Well," I said, "you never know. He saw some combat, and well, that's why I'm going to find out."
She looked skeptical. "Wouldn't the local Veterans Administration be able to answer that kind of question?"
"Maybe."
"Then why go to Washington?"
"Best to start at the top."
She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "John, what is it?"
"What?"
"What you're not telling me. What's going on?"
"Nothing," I said, smiling and raising my hand. "Scout's honor."
"Does it have . . ." She swallowed hard and tears peeked over her bottom eyelids. "Is it because of the way Al died?"
I swallowed too. "Partly. I really can't tell you any more."
"For my own protection?"
I shook my head.
"I'll bet," she said. "For God's sake, John, are we in danger? Tell me!"
"Martha, I don't believe you're in any danger. If I did, I wouldn't leave you and Al Junior alone. But there is something that I can't identify or describe to you that's wrong with Al's death. Also, I just got word that some friends . . . an older couple I'd come to know in Boston, were killed in a fire this morning."
"Oh, John," Martha said, distracted, as are most decent people, from her own tragedy by news of another's. "I'm so sorry. Can I help or . . .?"
"No, no, it's all being taken care of. It's just that—" I broke a weak smile. "It's just that I'm not my usual Gaelic happy-go-lucky self."
She laughed and the tension was gone for a moment. "John," she said, "please be careful. Nothing can bring Al back, and if I thought that you—"
"Not to worry," I said. "I'm just going to see a couple of bureaucrats, that's all."
Fourteen
-•-
"YOU KNOW, AS LONG AS THE SNOW ISN'T FALLING, I think I like Pittsburgh best at this time of year."
The Pontiac bounced over a freeze-thaw pothole and Dale had to wrestle the car back into our lane. A limo with windows tinted black honked an arrogant, unnecessary warning as it blew by us on the left. "Bastard," said Dale with gusto. He turned to me. "It did no good, but it had to be said."
"Yeah." I was running low on small talk. I had already thanked him for driving me to the airport, told him a little about Jesse and Emily, and avoided the subject of the still-AWOL Larry.
"I like it—winter, I mean—best because it's the cleanest and the purest season. Pittsburgh used to have a terrible pollution problem. Air pollution, I mean. Fifteen years ago, you couldn't wear something white outdoors unless you wanted the air to embroider a soot pattern on it. Then the town fathers with, I'm sure, some prodding from Washington, began cleaning things up. In the summer, of course, it's hot and uncomfortable anywhere. But in the winter, with so little pollution and the cold, clear snap of the arctic and sunshine like we had today, well," he said, winding down, "it's just my favorite time."
He made me think back.
"My wife and I used to go to the beach in the winter."
"Caribbean?"
"Oh, yeah, sometimes. But I meant the beach in Massachusetts. North of Boston maybe forty miles is a town called Newburyport. East of the town is an island, a peninsula really, called Plum Island Reserve. The feds run it as a bird sanctuary, and it's still pretty wild, in the picturesque sense. She'd pack a light lunch and a flask of brandy. We'd bundle up against the cold and walk like Eskimos along the shoreline. You don't get much surf in New England generally, but in the winter, on a windy day, you'll see three- or four-foot rollers slamming in on the rocks, scattering sea gulls and jerks like us who'd crept too close looking for tide treasures."
"Sounds delightful," said Dale sincerely, then uncertainly. "Have you been divorced long?"
He caught me 0ff-balance. "No. She died."
"Oh, John, I'm sorry . . ."
"Some time ago."
"It's just that you're so young, I never--"
"Da1e," I said, "skip it. No offense meant, no offense taken. It was a natural enough question. I just didn't . . . see it coming."
Dale bobbed his head. "Here's our exit." No gusto left.
Dale insisted on coming in with me because he was sure he knew the USAir customer service rep who would be on duty. He did, and got me the best seat on the plane, aisle for leg room, just forward of the wings for ride comfort and ease of exit.
The service rep swung my bag onto the belt behind him while I crushed my ticket folder into my inside breast pocket. Dale and I walked toward the gate. I stopped and spoke. "You know, there's no sense in your waiting with me for the boarding call."
"I know," he said, then with a quick Groucho imitation, "more's the pity."
I laughed and so did he. I gave him a quick bear hug, and he returned it, slapping my back at a shoulder blade with the flat of his hand.
"Take care of Martha," I said.
"We will."
We broke. He sort of waved. I waved back, turned, and walked away.
The airport was virtually empty. At a newsstand, I found a Time magazine behind some "Steel Curtain" and "Love Ya, Steelers" T-shirts. I skimmed it absently at the gate until the flight attendant called us for boarding.
The plane was proportionately as empty as the airport had been. We arrived later than expected at Washington's National Airport. I picked up my Samsonite, grabbed a cab, and got to the Marriott Key Bridge by 9 P.M.
I checked in and was shown by the elevator operator to my room. I bounced on the bed, then picked up the telephone. I called Nancy's number in Boston.
"Hello?"
"Nancy, it's John Cuddy."
"Oh, John, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, I know."
"No, please., I asked Drew Lynch to call his friend at District C and the friend went by the Coopers' house every two hours. He's the one who called in the fire. There'll be a thorough investigation."
"Thanks, Ms. DA."
A little moan on her end. "You're right. You told me in my apartment that they didn't have any family?"
"Not that they mentioned. Jesse was in the marines, Second World War. Emily taught at some private school. There must be records somewhere." I gave her George's name for the funeral arrangements. "Well, tomorrow I'll also call a friend who's a public administrator for Suffolk County. Do you know what—"
"A lawyer who administers estates of people without relatives?"
"Yes, basically. He'll do everything necessary, assuming there's no will around."
"Probably no will." I punched out a breath.
"You sound really beat."
"Battered but unbowed."
"Is there anything else I can do?"
One frame of a happy, future home-movie flickered through my head. "No, thanks. If you can just follow through on the Coopers personally, maybe postpone the funeral, I'll be back tomorrow night or Tuesday. Oh, and keep the cops on Marco's trail."
"Please call me when you get back."
"I will."
"Bye, John."
"Good-bye, Nancy."
I hung up, looked at the comatose TV and the predictable, bland wall-hangings. The view of the Potomac out of the window was postcard quality, but not an evening's worth.
I was tired but not sleepy. I hadn't brought any running or exercise clothes, but their health club and pool would be closed by now anyway. Instead, I changed shirts, got a cab, and headed into Georgetown for some life. Or at least some noise.
I left the cab at M and Wisconsin. I found a saloon tha
t I think said "Clyde's" on it and had a hamburger plate with a couple of Beck's drafts. Most of the life was coming from the Sunday Night Movie over one end of the bar. Unfortunately, most of the noise was coming from three assholes from Akron who asked the bartender every five minutes where the action was.
I gritted my teeth and asked for one more Beck's draft and the check. The bartender took the time to lift away my dinner plate and swab down the bar in front of me. He even replaced my cardboard coaster with a new one to accompany the next Beck's in a fresh glass.
The Akron contingent downed their drinks, one sucking on his ice and then spitting it back into the glass. They clumsily got on their coats and stumbled out, reinforcing each other's clamoring for action. I put a twenty down on my check. The bartender took it, cashed me in, and returned my change.
"I'll bet you just love the tourist trade in here," I said.
He smiled. "Some more than others." He was about twenty-three, maybe a high school pulling guard who had lowered his sights over the last five years.
"Look," I said, "is there anyplace around here where there'll be some activity? I'm not"—inclining my head toward the departed trio's end of the bar "looking to join those three. I just attended the funeral of a good friend, and I'd like to go to a place where there are people talking, dancing, and maybe laughing."
He dropped the smile and looked at me hard.
Satisfied that I wasn't just a variation of the Akron syndrome, he spoke. "Two places. One's diagonally across the street. Called the Library. Disco atmosphere, rock and soul music. Young professionals and a lotta foreign nationals, like students and fringe diplos, you know. The other place is called Déja Vu. It's about fifteen blocks up M, take the left fork at the end of the business district." He glanced at his watch. "Probably okay to walk there now, but get a cab to go home. Older crowd, sixties music and swing. Lotta couples."
I thanked him, left thirty percent of the tab as a tip and got up.
"Hey, man," he said, the smile back, "the information's free. I'm a tourist bureau, you know."
I winked at him. "The extra's for the fresh glasses, new coasters, workin' the wipe cloth, you know."
"Have a good evening."
"You, too."
Since it was closer, I first walked across the street to the Library. A bouncer who had about thirty pounds on my bartender greeted me with a smile and opened the door for me. I walked down the flight of stairs in front of me and turned right into the place. It had an elliptical bar on my level and a postage-stamp dance floor a few steps beyond and below the far end of the bar. The ceiling was low. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and, to the casual eye, real books. A rock song came on the stereo system, and twenty or so people got up to dance.
All the men in the place wore jackets. A lot of males were black, wearing continental three-piece suits. Many others were Asian, pencil-thin in dark two-piece gray or brown suits. The women were mainly American, black and white, in their twenties and secretarial in their clothes. I sat at the bar and ordered a screwdriver.
A slim, light-skinned black woman on my right started a conversation with me. Not pick-up, just pleasant. Unfortunately for her, I wanted to be just a spectator and, fortunately for me, she got asked to dance. I found myself thinking how much this place reminded me of other singles bars in New York and Boston. There were nice people, and noise and dancing, but the smiles were like the ones you flashed for a wedding photographer and the laughs like the ones you trotted out at job interviews. I downed my screwdriver and left.
It took me about twenty-five minutes to reach Deja Vu. It looked like a greenhouse someone had tacked onto the Sheraton Hotel it abutted. A clone of the bouncer at the Library welcomed me in, asked if I wished food, drinks, or drinks and dancing, and gave me directions accordingly. I walked through an interior garden, overhung with huge plants of both the flowering and merely multicolored leaf varieties. I could hear swing music coming from around the corner. Benny Goodman plays the Amazonian rain forest.
I turned the corner. The main room was like an airplane hangar. There were twenty or so couples twirling on a huge dance floor. There was a long bar on the right side of the dance area, tables on two other sides, and a wall with a grand piano and sound system on the fourth side. People of all ages, skin tones, and dress codes were arrayed around the outer ring of the door. If I were twenty years older, I think I would have said the joint was jumping.
The swing song ended, people applauded, and the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" came on. There was a whoop from the bar area to my right, and the world changed over, from 1943 to 1965. Probably two-thirds of the swingers left the floor, and their spaces were swallowed up by four-fifths rockers. A college-looking girl asked me to dance. I declined, a guy about my age next to me said he would, and they went stomping out there. I ordered a vodka and orange from a harried but cheerful waitress, and zigzagged into another room to check my overcoat. I came back to the dance room. I stood and watched and listened as the Stones turned to the Temptations, then to the Beach Boys, then back, as my screwdriver arrived, to I think Glenn Miller and Harry James for one each.
As nearly as I could tell, the generation gaps in the place were more apparent than real, and everybody was having a ball. I saw my waitress again, and ordered two more drinks to save her a trip. A thirtyish woman maybe five-nine came up and said I looked like I wanted to dance. I told her she was clairvoyant. We danced three rock tunes when a slow one came on. I told her thank you and turned away. I found my waitress and got the screwdrivers.
I danced three or four more times and touched up my waitress maybe twice more for two-handers. I know I grew only dimly aware that the crowd was thinning out and that I was no longer being asked to dance. I also know I had a little trouble finding the men's room, a little more retrieving my coat, and still a little more finding the front door as the house lights came up to "the-party's-over" level of brightness. I remember the bouncer asking me if I wanted a cab, but the cold air felt good again, and I waved him off, not quite completing whatever sentence I was saying. Within a few blocks, my eyes grew a little big for their sockets, the sidewalk a tad slippery from the absence of snow or ice. That struck me funny. That's why I was having trouble walking. In Boston, there was so much ice and snow on our never-shoveled sidewalks that I was so used to allowing for it that I just couldn't make the adjustment back to good old unadulterated concrete . . .
I bounced my head off the concrete before I realized I had been hit. I remember only two of them, but later I was told there were three. I was lying on my left side. The first one I saw was the guy who bent down and sent the left jab at my right eye. I twisted my face left and back and took a glancing shot off my right cheekbone. I sent my right hand cupped, fingers stiff, up into his throat, and he pulled away, gagging and coughing.
I levered up on my left elbow and got a wicked kick from behind, just to the left of my spinal column and barely missing my left kidney. The pain approached the paralyzing level. I reached my right hand back and got kicked in my forearm. I forced myself to roll away from the kicker and got my forearms crossed in front of my face just as he delivered his third shot with his right foot. The crotch formed by my forearms absorbed most of the force, but the toe area of his boot caught me just under the chin. I locked my hands around his calf and put my head just outside his right knee. Then I lunged up onto my knees and forward, driving my shoulder below his knee and pulling his foot into my body to dislocate the knee joint. I slipped a little, though, and as he and I went down, I felt his ankle and knee just twist funny. He yelled in pain. I took a couple of kicks to my left thigh from somebody else, which didn't help the cause. Somebody, maybe the new kicker, put an amateurish forearm lock around my throat from behind. I got back onto my knees, and the first kicker rolled and crawled away from me; I whipped my left list up into the forearm's groin area but missed the target, him just releasing and running. I realized a car was pulling up, high beams on and hom honking loud and lo
ng. I also realized that I was alone on the sidewalk with my wallet intact but my clothes and me less so.
"Y'know, ya coulda been dead by now."
I pulled the handkerchief away, and inspected the bloodstain. I licked a reasonably clean comer of the cloth and began dabbing. .
"I appreciate your stopping."
'The cabbie, beefy, bald, and iiftyish, glanced up at me in his inside rear mirror. "You're just lucky those three wasn't good at this yet. No knives. If they'd had knives, they woulda used 'em, and a fuckin' medical convention couldn't a helped you then."
"You're probably right,” I said, looking down at the holes in the knees of my pants.
"You bet I am. I spotted those kids. Maybe an hour ago. They was hangin' around the edge of the retail strip. I knew they was lookin' for a mark, but the fuckin' cops can't do nothing, Used to be the cops would arrest the fuckers or at least roust them. Now, not only won't the arrest hold up, but the fuckin' Soo—preem Court'll let the kids sue the cops. For civil rights violations. You figure it out."
"I can't help you there," I said. My cheek hurt, my chin and knees burned, and my lower back and thigh ached. Worst of all, the adrenaline had sobered me up.
"Ya sure ya don't wanna go to the hospital?" asked the cabbie.
"I'm sure, but thanks."
"Hey, citizens gotta stick together. Ya know, lotsa guys, cabbies I mean, woulda seen you get jumped and turned right around. Mebbe two or three I know woulda radioed the dispatcher to send the cops, but that's it. Me, I think you gotta help. It's no good to complain about things if you don't, y'know. Then we're like animals." He pulled into the Marriott Key Bridge's drop-off area and a doorman, just inside the door, reluctantly put down a magazine and started out toward us.
"Animals," continued the cabbie. "Just like those fuckin' kids that jumped you."
I handed him a twenty. "Thanks, my friend."
"Thanks, buddy," replied the cabbie.
I turned, waved off the blinking doorman, and limped into the hotel lobby.
The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy Page 12