by Joe Clifford
“Nah, he ain’t a faggot. He was just in the Chop Shop, chatting up that pretty girl.”
“Nicki,” his partner said, nice and slow. The way he said her name made it clear he knew her.
“He’s talking to you, boy.”
I didn’t hear a question in there, but “Yeah,” I said, “my friend. Nicki. I mean, I just met her.”
“I think Nicki has enough friends. You got me?”
When they’d first pulled me from the truck and began kicking the shit out of me, I hadn’t processed what I’d done. Didn’t have much time to think through scenarios while getting my kidneys dislodged. Maybe someone robbed the Price Chopper or Qwik Stop. Mistaken identity. Everyone up here drives a truck. Weirder things had happened. Maybe tonight was just the wrong night to be driving a Chevy on this road. All I knew: they had the guns and the badges, and nothing I said was helping my cause. With that warning, though, I had my reason. Just my luck. A jealous ex who also happens to be a cop.
When I didn’t answer right away, I felt the other one close ranks. “He asked you a question.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I got you. Enough friends.”
With the flashlight blazing in my eyes and the searing pain in my abdomen, I couldn’t focus, and I stopped trying. I only knew these cops weren’t like the cops in Ashton. We were on a desolate road, no houses, no street lamps, just bramble weeds and briar patch. I hadn’t seen a car since I’d been stopped. Deep runoff ditches ran the gamut each side, a permanent resting spot for roadkill deer. Let the carcass decompose back to the elements. No one was coming down here looking for the dead.
One of them had my wallet.
“Jay Porter,” he read. “75 Genoa. Plasterville.”
His partner repeated my name and address, the implication clear: they knew who I was and where to find me. I’d pegged that girl for bad news the moment I met her. Could smell trouble on her from ten feet away.
The cop flipped me back the wallet. Of course I wasn’t ready to catch it, and I couldn’t see jack shit anyway. The thing bounced off my chest and flopped to the ground. I didn’t flinch, for fear of a steel-toe boot and fractured eye socket. I stood statue still until the light switched off.
I waited in the darkness as footsteps retreated. Even then, I didn’t move until the squad car K-turned, taking off down the road, in the other direction.
* * *
“What do you think they wanted?” Charlie asked, swiping a chicken wing through the ranch dressing.
After my run-in with the Longmont cops, I’d driven straight over the mountain—or rather around it—to the Dubliner, shaken up and not wanting to be alone. Sometimes walking into a dark, empty house by yourself is more than you can stand.
“No idea.” I didn’t feel like going into my meeting with Nicki at the Chop Shop, which would prompt more questions about my wife and life.
We sat outside on the tiki porch, Charlie enjoying his ice-cold beer in the ice and cold, licking microwaved BBQ sauce off his fingers, savoring flavors like he was dining on grade A, choice cut. I was shivering balls. My stomach muscles ached, throat raw from retching and breathing fire. My attempts to quit smoking had proved as successful as my efforts to play family man. Now back up to over a pack a day, I exhibited no signs of slowing down.
“So they pull you over. Kick the shit out of you. Then let you go?”
“Pretty much.” I regretted mentioning the incident to Charlie, but you can’t show up looking like I did without offering some explanation.
“Weird.”
I fired another cigarette. I couldn’t be certain that cop had dated Nicki. He sure seemed to have a thing for her. Even if it was one-way, Fatal Attraction shit, I wasn’t calling to find out.
“Maybe you should talk to Turley.”
“What for?”
“He’s a cop.”
“Being a police officer is not like being a member of the fucking moose lodge.”
“I know but maybe he can reach out. Y’know, vouch for you.”
“Vouch for what? Being okay to drive through their shit-heel town? Trust me. I’m not going back to Longmont anytime soon.”
“Why were you out there anyway?”
“Favor. For a friend.” I left it there. Charlie didn’t press what or for whom.
After a few minutes, he said, “Isn’t Longmont where your brother stayed sometimes?
“Yeah. They have a Y over there. Your point?”
“Chris was always getting in trouble. Maybe they knew about you from one of his screw-jobs.”
“Possible.” I doubted it. That beat-down felt far more personal.
“Isn’t that where your brother met that girlfriend of his? What was her name? The one you talked to last year when he went missing? Cat something?”
“Kitty. Katherine. I don’t know her last name. I’m not sure they were dating. She was a junkie, too. Chris met her there though, yeah. What are you getting at?”
“I’m not getting at anything. Just trying to have a conversation with my friend who showed up looking like he’d gone twelve rounds with one of the Klitschkos.”
“Sorry.” I was being a bastard. I still stewed over Jenny and neighbor Stephen, my inability to do a damn thing about it.
“How are things with Jenny?” Charlie asked, picking my thoughts out of the radio waves. “You able to patch things back up?”
“Not exactly.”
Charlie waited for the rest. Clipped answers weren’t going to cut it. I filled him in on my macho bullshit at Lynne’s. How I’d threatened to punch a guy in the head for eating lunch with my wife. Charlie could usually find the silver lining in my storm cloud, fake an attempt that this too shall pass. Not this time.
“Damn,” was all he said before turning away to sift through the bird bone graveyard.
“Yeah, I know. I fucked up. You don’t have to remind me. Having my mother-in-law whispering in my wife’s ear isn’t helping.” Lynne couldn’t come right out and tell Jenny she was better off without me—Jenny, no matter how mad she was at me, would never tolerate her mom openly disparaging the father of her child—but Lynne could still snake the gardens, plant subtle seeds of discontent. Sow enough of them, then she sits back and waits for the things to bloom next time I say something stupid. Which, in my case, was only a matter of time.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie asked.
“What can I do? Jenny ordered me to stay away. I can’t go all caveman clubbing down doors and dragging her back. I can’t let Aiden see me like that again.”
Charlie didn’t say anything.
“I don’t get it. This was all I wanted, man. Jenny and my son. The three of us together. A family. And now that I have it, every move I make just seems to make things worse. Even when I manage to do something right—like breaking this case at work and putting myself in line for a promotion—I still screw it up. I went up there to tell Jenny the good news in person. We can move to Concord, get out of here. Get away from all—” I swept my arm out over the breadth of my hometown “—this.” I drained my pint. “Maybe it’s not meant to be.”
“What?”
“Jenny and me. A contented, regular life. Peace.”
Charlie slapped me on the back. “You want to crash at my place again?”
“No. Thanks, man.” I’d only had the one beer. “I have work in the morning.” I’d burned up whatever favor I’d curried with DeSouza by taking off the whole afternoon. I couldn’t do anything else to jeopardize this promotion.
I wasn’t looking forward to going back to an empty house, any more than I was waking up at the ass crack of dawn and heading back into that claptrap of an office. In fact, when I gazed into my future, all I saw was dread on the horizon. That little light of mine, Concord, wasn’t a perk any longer. I now needed it for the win.
Driving back to Plasterville, a song came over the radio. “Your Love” by The Outfield, this old song from the ’80s that had been a running joke between Jenny and me ever s
ince high school. I used to sing it to her when we first started dating, and later on, too, because it always made her laugh. The song was about the singer’s girlfriend, Jenny, being out of town, and so he invites a younger girl over to spend the night. I’d tease Jenny, belting out the opening line: “Jenny’s on a vacation far away . . .” I have a terrible voice, and Jenny would tell me to stop, the song’s message awful, but she’d giggle anyway. Except when I listened to the words tonight, I realized I’d gotten it wrong all these years. The girl’s name in the song wasn’t Jenny at all; it was Josie. I’d been singing to the wrong girl.
CHAPTER NINE
THE MORNING HAD already gotten off to a rocky start. I hadn’t been able to sleep a lick the night before. Those kicks to my stomach had messed up something inside me. Hurt like hell every time I tried to take a piss. Which couldn’t be good. I contemplated a trip to the hospital, but dismissed the idea. I hated doctors. I didn’t even have a general practitioner, and no way was I visiting the ER in the middle of the night. I’d wait until I literally began pissing blood before I endured that freak show.
Even though she’d cautioned me against calling, I still tried phoning my wife. Didn’t matter. Jenny wasn’t taking my calls. And my mother-in-law wasn’t looking to do any favors.
Wet, cold slop filled the roadways, precipitation stuck between solid and liquid states, which only made a mess of things, weighing down the world. A felled tree and knocked-over telephone pole detoured traffic past the lumberyard, and the moron cashier at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through added another half hour to my morning commute. I got to work late. Stepping into the office, pant cuffs stained with rock salt, my socks wet and toes squishy, I got a rude reminder that yesterday’s victory was an apparition, and any celebration short-lived.
DeSouza stood at the gateway, curling a finger for me to follow him into his office. There was no smile this time. My coworkers, so quick to congratulate and praise me just a day earlier, now shuffled with their heads down, noses in their coffee, careful to look the other way.
When I stepped inside the boss’s office, the heavy office door closed behind me with an ominous thud.
“Were you up at the Longmont County Courthouse yesterday afternoon?” The way DeSouza asked meant he already knew the answer.
“Yeah. I told you I had some loose ends to tie up on the Olisky case.”
“Was this before or after you phoned in sick with ‘food poisoning’?”
I wanted to say “before, because that’s how time works, asshole.” But I bit my tongue. I was still hoping that one bullshit sick day wasn’t going to snuff my chances at Concord.
“I got a phone call this morning, Jay. From the Longmont County Courthouse. Where you were yesterday, asking to review confidential court documents. Harassing a clerk into making unauthorized Xeroxed copies—”
“That’s not what happened.”
“As a representative of NorthEastern Insurance, you can’t barge onto state property, demanding—”
“I didn’t demand anything. I went to the courthouse because Donna Olisky—one of our policyholders—called me in a panic, worried about her son.”
“I thought I told you to forget about the Olisky case?”
“Sorry, Andy,” I said, not sorry at all. “Donna Olisky reached out to me, personally, and asked for my help, after the police had picked up her only child. I thought as a ‘representative of NEI’ that it might be in our best interest to go that extra mile for a client. Especially one we’d just denied a claim on. Y’know, because, above all, we’re in a service industry.”
When I said the words aloud I almost bought the excuse myself. Advocating for a client would’ve been the right thing to do. But DeSouza didn’t even acknowledge my stalwart defense or generosity.
“Why were you digging into Judge Roberts’ sentencing history?”
“I wasn’t. Who told you that? I don’t even know who Judge Roberts is. I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” I tried to remember if Nicki had given me the name of the judge who’d sentenced Brian to North River. Judge Roberts sounded familiar.
“I am trying hard to make this work, Jay. I like to believe I’m a fair boss. I may get on an employee when I think they can do better. But I pride myself on being fair. When someone does good work, I let them know.” He made sure he had my attention. “I let you know you did a good job yesterday, didn’t I?”
How magnanimous.
“For this to be a successful partnership, though, it has to work the other way too. A two-way street. Respect. Give and take.” He did that annoying thing where he alternated a finger between the two of us as if we were tied together by an invisible, affirming string. “I don’t appreciate being lied to.”
“I’m not lying to you. I drove up to Longmont because Donna Olisky asked me to check on her son. She was stuck at work. I asked a clerk what happened to Brian. That’s it.”
“Nicole Parker.”
“Huh?”
“The clerk you asked. Her name was Nicole Parker.”
Of course he meant Nicki. I could feel the setup. Nicki. The courthouse. Those shit-kicker cops. The way Donna Olisky’s phone calls suddenly stopped. Now this. I didn’t know the angle just yet. Only that the hook was in, the fix on, and I was taking the fall.
I stared at a huge poster behind his desk, the one with the adorable, mewling kitten dangling from a ball of yarn, clinging for dear life. The caption read, “Hang in There.”
“Your friend Nicole—”
“We’re not friends. I met the girl yesterday.”
“Whatever you two are, Nicole was caught photocopying sealed court documents. Classified court documents. Red-handed. That is a serious offense. And when they asked her what she was doing, she said the papers had been requisitioned by Jay Porter of NorthEastern Insurance.”
“That’s bullshit. I didn’t ask that girl to unseal anything.”
DeSouza held up a hand. “I’m not interested in excuses.” He walked around his desk, sitting on the front edge, leg draped casual, his man-of-the-people pose, tone dropping to dulcet. “I went to bat for you. The court can discipline its employee how they see fit. For my part, I’m willing to let this oversight slide. This time. It’s obvious you’re going through something right now.” His gaze washed over my disheveled appearance, lingering on the bedhead and stubble I’d neglected to shave. Even after I showered and tended to the wounds, my face still betrayed an ass whooping. “You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night. Is everything okay on the home front?”
My first instinct was to say “None of your fucking business.” But then I recognized a branch being extended to a drowning man. I only had to grab hold and hang on.
“No,” I said. “My wife and I are going through a rough patch right now. This last year has been hard on us.” I drew out the pregnant pause. “She thought when I started this job, we’d be moving down to Concord. The big city. Y’know? A new start.”
DeSouza nodded like he understood.
“She took my son to her mom’s in Burlington. Yesterday when I called you, I was already halfway there. I missed them. I wanted to see my family. I took advantage. I’m sorry for lying to you.”
Which was the truth, minus the sorry part, even though I resented having to be straight up with a tool like DeSouza. Something must’ve struck a deeper chord, because his entire demeanor changed.
“Why don’t you go home,” he said.
“You’re firing me?”
“No, Jay. But I want you to take the rest of the week off, get your head straight. Work out whatever you have to with your wife.” He came over and reached for my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Family is everything.”
I scanned the desk behind him for a Mrs. DeSouza but didn’t see one. The only pictures he had were of other dudes in huge rubber pants, fly-fishing in streams.
“Concord is still a real possibility,” he said. “But we can’t have any more mistakes like yesterday, okay? It�
��s imperative if you want this promotion.” DeSouza clasped his hands in prayer. “Take a breather, sort out whatever is going on at home. Do what you have to do. Then get your head back in the game. We clear?”
“Yeah, we’re clear.” I made to leave.
When I got to the door, DeSouza stopped me. “Do me a favor. If Donna Olisky calls you again, have her contact me at the office. I’ll take it from there.”
I nodded.
“And please no more sniffing around closed cases.”
No problem. Whatever was hidden under that lid stank to high heaven, anyway.
* * *
On my way to the grocery store for beer, I phoned Jenny, who still wasn’t picking up. I left another message, less apologetic, more pissed. We were going on twenty-four hours of radio silence. I knew I’d done something stupid. Still I expected, as her husband—and the father of our child—I’d get the courtesy of a returned phone call.
Back home, I slipped on some sweats, grabbed a cold one, and kicked back with my fat cat, Beatrice. I flicked through cable movie stations, searching for something to numb my brain. TCM was showing Gunga Din, a flick I’d seen so many times I knew the dialogue by heart. The distraction wasn’t working.
With all this time off, my wife and son a state away, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Either Jenny would return my calls or I’d have no choice but to drive back to Burlington. Which wouldn’t end well for me. That was the thing about my wife: you didn’t want to force her hand before she was damn well and ready. She wasn’t ready. But I was losing my damned mind.
Nipping my bottled beer, I abandoned the search for temples of gold on the silver screen, and glanced around this new life I’d carved out for myself, wondering how far I’d really come. Bigger television, nicer couch. More square feet, a garage. Renting a little house instead of renting a little apartment. An upgrade, sure, but at what cost? Because without Jenny and Aiden none of this meant squat. What would Concord really solve? I was seeking relief from something I could never escape. Worse, I’d bought into the fallacy of the geographical cure.