Lush Life

by Richard Price

  “Just curious,” Matty asked. “How old’s an old-timer?”

  “Well, her, she’s got to be in her thirties by now, mid-thirties. I think at first she was some kind of performance-artist-slash-barmaid. Now she’s just a barmaid. It’s like . . .” Eric cut himself off again.

  “Like . . .”

  “I don’t know, people say they’re one thing or another? Then at some point, they just are what they are.”

  “I hear you,” Matty said.

  “You hear me?”

  “You OK, Eric?” Yolonda said. “Anytime you want to take five, just say so.”

  Eric didn’t respond.

  “So what was her name?” Matty asked.

  “Whose?”

  “The girl.”

  “I’m not sure. Sarah something. Sarah . . . I don’t know.”

  Matty didn’t know her last name either. Grouchie’s was a cop bar, one of the few places on the Lower East Side that made you feel like you were drinking in Queens.

  “She has a tattoo,” Eric added grudgingly. “A cartoon character. One of the seven dwarfs maybe? I’m not sure.”

  “Tattoo where?” Yolonda asked.

  He hesitated. “On her leg, the inside of her leg.”

  “Inside of her leg. You mean like her thigh?”

  “In that neighborhood . . .” Looking away from them.

  “Eric,” Yolonda said, “you know she has Sneezy or Grumpy or whoever ‘in that neighborhood’ but you’re not sure of her name?”

  “I said, Sarah something.”

  “Eric.” Yolonda throwing a sad smirk.

  “What.”

  “What,” she gently aped him.

  “It was one time.” He shrugged. “Over a year ago.”

  “You sound like my husband.”

  “What do you want me say.” The guy suddenly looking pounded.

  Matty remembered her now; she actually had all seven dwarfs, like himself that night, whistling while they worked their way up her leg.

  “Afterwards, when you all regrouped, did anything come up about him being with her?” Matty asked.

  “Come up between who, me and Ike? No. He doesn’t know me. And why would I ever volunteer information about myself like that? To be humiliated?”

  “So he didn’t comment on it at all. Maybe to his asshole buddy Steve. You know, just to brag, make a crack, not realizing that you and her . . . ”

  “No, but even if he did, what would that have to do with anything?”

  They gave it another beat of silence, a little test run to see if he knew where this was ultimately heading.

  “So what time did you leave Cry?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t know if you heard me,” Eric said, some of the first go-round’s anxious alertness returning to his eyes. “What would that have to do with anything?”

  Matty casually looked to Yolonda, who, staring at the table, briefly shook her head no; too early to risk him asking for a lawyer.

  “We’re just trying to get a handle on his personality,” Matty said. “See if maybe he was the type of guy who tended to rub people the wrong way.”

  “So what time did you leave Cry?”

  “What do you think, I just kept checking my watch after every drink?” Eric said in a sulky but retreating tone, as if not quite ready to pursue his suspicions about what was going on in here.

  “Well, how long do you think you stayed there?” Matty asked.

  “All I can tell you is we got to Berkmann’s right at last call. So it had to be two, two-thirty.”

  “What’s that, about a three-block walk?”

  “Three-block stagger. Well, no,” palming his face. “Actually, I was all the way around to sober again. I think Ike was too. And I didn’t have anything to drink at Berkmann’s. I don’t like socializing where I work. And I certainly didn’t want to show up at my own place of business with some shitface already dragging his toes, but Ike sort of braced him up, it was right on the way, they had a nightcap, and that was it. When we left there, we were just going to carry him back to his apartment on Eldridge, then go our separate ways, but obviously . . . ”

  They waited.

  “You know,” Eric finally said, his eyes suddenly shining as if jelled, “I’m probably an alcoholic? But I don’t get incapacitated in front of other people. I don’t make a spectacle or, or a burden of myself. People like that . . . they wreak such havoc and then they go home. Then somebody takes them home. Fucker.” Eric went off somewhere behind his teeth, then came back, his voice a passionate burble. “He’s the one should have caught that bullet.”

  Matty and Yolonda straightened in their seats.

  There was another knock at the door, the cops tensing, Eric oblivious.

  “And you know what?” offering them a livid, teary grimace.

  Yolonda and Matty waited, the blood whistling in their veins, until the knocking became so persistent that Eric finally became distracted and the moment passed.

  “What, Eric,” Yolonda pushed nonetheless.

  “When he wakes up today?” addressing the table. “He won’t even know what happened. No memories, no pictures . . . Not one fucking clue.”

  Matty almost tore the door off the hinges, Lieutenant Carmody on the other side reflexively stepping back.

  “I just got in,” he said. “So how’s it going in there?”

  “Eric,” Yolonda said, when Matty came back in. “We need to do some more legwork. I know you’re beat six ways to Sunday, but do you think you could possibly hang around a little while longer? Money in the bank, we’re going to need to come back to you a half-dozen more times today.”

  “For what?”

  “For anything, look at more photo arrays, view a lineup if we get lucky, or maybe just to clarify a few things here and there. It’s hard to say right now.”

  “Clarify what?”

  “Whatever,” Matty said, rising. “We just need to see where the day takes us.”

  “Can’t I just go home?” Looking from one to the other.

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “I mean, if I were to get up and walk out the door, it’s not like you can keep me here against my will, right?”

  “Is that what you really want to do?” Yolonda said softly, she and Matty staring at him, the guy somewhere knowing what was going on, but still afraid to let it into the forefront of his brain.

  After sticking Cash with a sketch artist to buy more time on the weapons search, Matty and Yolonda went up to the roof for a smoke.

  It was hot up there, and Yolonda, the mother of two half-Irish boys, pulled off her turtleneck to reveal a T-shirt that read I’M NOT THE NANNY.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I thought we had him for sure.”

  “Can I tell you something?” Matty so tired now that he found the sunlight dancing on the East River oppressive. “I’d feel a lot more solid about this guy if we had that gun.”

  “They’ll find it,” Yolonda said, lighting up.

  Matty rocked his head from shoulder to shoulder, hearing the gristle roll in his neck. “Nice to have a why too.”

  “Three drunks on an all-night bender, the one with a chip on his shoulder’s packing? Why ask why?” Yolonda stifled another yawn. “We got him lying about the call to 911, lying about never hanging out with the vic before, tried to lie about having fucked the same girl but only fucked her once, as in, was probably dumped, so jealous, in general a bitter motherfucker, still hasn’t asked how the dead kid’s doing. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot. Two witnesses.”

  Matty closed his eyes for a second, fell asleep on his feet.

  “Nice to have a why,” Yolonda muttered. “Why’d that Salgado kid get shot last year, remember? Borrowed an iPod, gave it back without recharging it.”

  “C’mon, that was in the Cahans.”

  “Oh. Right. Excuse me. I forgot. This guy’s white. Sorry. What was I thinking.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You’re such a r
edneck asshole sometimes, I swear to God.”

  Matty’s inside coat pocket began to tremble.

  “Clark.”

  “Yeah, Sarge, this is Captain Langolier from DCPI? The chief wants to know where you’re at.”

  “Well, right now it’s either a robbery or a dispute, two wits giving his friend as the shooter, but the guy himself, for whatever it’s worth, is claiming they were jacked at gunpoint.”

  He, killed, him, Yolonda mouthed, Matty waving her off. “We need some time to sort things out.”

  “There’s word they were out there last night tripping the light fantastic?”

  “There was a certain amount of barhopping, yeah,” Matty said carefully. The chiefs in Public Information often got their information as much from reporters calling up to confirm some fact or rumor as they did their own detectives. And when they called down like this to confirm what the reporters had brought them, the circle came complete.

  “Listen, you get anything about the vic having some kind of confrontation with Colin Farrell?”

  “Colin Farrell, the actor?” Matty massaged his temples.

  “The same.”

  “And where would this have taken place?” Matty looked at Yolonda, then to the heavens.

  “We were hoping you could help us with that.”

  “I got nothing on that so far, but I’ll get right on it, boss.”

  “Get back to me.”

  Matty hung up.

  “Colin Farrell?” Yolonda said, flicking her butt off the roof. “He was great in that movie Phone Booth, you see that?”

  “Fuckin’ guy.”

  “Who was it?” Yolonda flicked her butt. “That gimpy kid from the Post?”

  “Who else?” Matty dialing, then, “Hey, Mayer. Matty Clark. Do me a favor, stop calling Langolier and gassing up his head with all the bullshit you hear on the street. He hangs up with you and right away he’s in my ear with every stupid little rumor and it’s like a wrecking ball coming through the window. You have any questions on this, you come to me, not Langolier, or I swear to God anything you need to know I will refer you to Langolier, you hear me? . . . Excuse me? Say again?”

  Matty held out the phone so Yolonda could hear too.

  “Is it true the shooter was an army Ranger in ’Nam?”

  “Jesus Christ . . .”

  “What I do now?” the reporter squawked. “I’m asking you, aren’t I?”

  “Do me a favor, stick to writing about the victim for now, OK?”

  “Fine, what do you got?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Matty hung up and looked out over the neighborhood, could almost see 27 Eldridge if not for a stack of add-on floors going up atop some tenement on Delancey that weren’t there the last time he was on this roof.

  He wanted the gun.

  “OK, so we’ve got people out there, reconstructing the night,” Yolonda said, opening up round three. “Interviewing some of the people at the bars you mentioned.”

  “What would you do that for?” Eric’s voice started to climb. “It was a mugging.”

  “Most likely. But we just want to make sure that no one was staking you guys out, maybe some bartender noticed somebody not quite right, or Ike got into something that you were unawares of.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Well, those neighbors, the Chinese people who were waiting around for that translator? They all pretty much said that when they looked out the window, they saw three people down there, not five.”

  “What? No, no. They must’ve looked out after the gun went off.”

  “Thing is, they all came from different buildings on Eldridge, north of the scene, south of the scene, directly across the street.”

  “They all must’ve looked out after. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Maybe,” Yolonda said faintly.

  “All those eyes, though,” Matty jumped in. “All those angles of vision. The shooter and his buddy, they must’ve been bookin’, huh?”

  “Everything happened so fast.” Eric palmed his heart. “You have no idea.”

  “You told me that they ran south, correct?” Matty asked, looking at his notes.

  Eric closed his eyes, reenvisioning. “South. Yeah.”

  “Because we had our people check all the street-facing security cameras along Eldridge from Delancey to Henry,” Matty said. “We didn’t catch anybody running at that time on any of them.”

  “Maybe they hung a quick left and went west. Or east,” Eric said. “I wasn’t standing around tracking their progress.”

  “Right. You were busy trying to call 911.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking stricken. “What. Was I supposed to chase them or something?”

  “That would have been stupid,” Yolonda said. “By the way, Sarah Bowen was pretty shaken up.”

  Eric looked at them blankly.

  “The tattooed lady that hooked up with Ike at Cry? You know, one minute she’s having sex with a guy, next thing she hears . . .”

  Eric reddened, looked away.

  “And by the way, it seems like she remembers you a lot more than you remembered her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She said you were kind of hung up on her last year.”

  “What?”

  “Kept calling her.”

  “No, wait, hang on. That’s because she kept saying to me whenever I called, tonight wasn’t a good night, like another night would be.” Eric near gobbling his words as he searched their faces. “If she had ever said to me straight up, ‘I don’t want to see you, I am not interested in seeing you,’ that would’ve been the end of it. I mean, what the hell, what did she say, I was stalking her or something? Jesus.”

  “All I’m saying is, when we talked before, you damn well knew right off the bat exactly who Ike was with last night, right? Because you were kind of playing it, you know . . .”

  “I was embarrassed, so . . .” Then, “What’s going on here?” His alarm cranked too high again, the both of them suddenly scrambling to deflect the flow, Yolonda the first in.

  “What . . .” she said down low with a smile. “Afraid we were gonna tell your girlfriend?”

  “How do you even know I have one?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Still lost in consternation, Eric stared at the table as if there were writing on it.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Don’t I what?”

  “Have a girlfriend.”

  “Yes,” he said emphatically. “Of course.”

  “Well, it’s not a gimme or anything,” Yolonda said. “What’s her name?”

  “Alessandra. Why?”

  “She’s from around here?”

  “Yeah. We live together, but she’s in the Philippines now, why?”

  “She’s Filipino?”

  “No. She’s doing research for her master’s over there. Are you going to tell me why you’re asking all this?”

  “We’re just trying to get a fully rounded picture.”

  “Of me?”

  “Sometimes with investigations?” Yolonda shrugged. “There’s a lot of hurry up and wait. Right now, before we can go forward we need for some people to come in from the field. These are just killing-time-type questions.”

  “Master’s in what?” Matty asked.

  “Gender studies. She’s doing research on the movement to organize sex workers in Manila.”

  “Sex workers,” Yolonda said.

  “How long has she been over there?” Matty asked.

  “Nine months or so,” Eric said as if embarrassed.

  “You guys talk much? Or do you e-mail?”

  “A little of both.”

  He was lying, Matty could tell, their relationship most likely pretty thin soup.

  “Excuse me.”

  He got up, left the interview room, and stepped to a detective. “Jimmy, in about fifteen, twenty minutes? Knock on the door, say there’s a phone call.”
/>
  “You got it.” Then, “Hey,” waving Matty closer. “The PC’s driver Halloran called?”

  “And?”

  “The PC wants to know if you’re bringing in Phillip Boulware.”

  “Who?”

  “The father of the drunk kid. Apparently they were on the same high school football team.”

  “Sorry,” Matty said, stepping back inside.

  “So, Eric,” Yolonda said, “we understand you spent some time in Binghamton?”

  “I was born there, why?”

  “OK, don’t take this the wrong way?” She laid a hand on him again. “But we had to do a background check, anybody we talk to in an investigation like this it’s mandatory, and . . .”

  “And you saw I was arrested.”

  “It reads like bullshit,” she apologized. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “That’s completely up to you,” Matty said.

  “Look, again, I’m sorry, I don’t understand, what does this have to do with anything?”

  “I think we just explained what’s going on now, but if you prefer, we can just sit around and stare at each other,” Matty said.

  “Look, it’s not . . .” Eric tried to resist, but once again Matty’s irritation was too much for him. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “What the hell,” Matty said. “Give it a shot.”

  “I don’t know,” Eric began, sounding embarrassed by his inability to hang tough. “Something like fifteen years ago? I went to the same college as Harry Steele up there. SUNY Binghamton. I was a freshman, he was a senior, and he had this idea, he was looking for someone in the dorms who would be willing to convert their room into a cocktail lounge . . . My dad owned a bar and grill in Endicott, one town over, so I kind of grew up around all that, and I said I’d do it. Put in some stock, some colored lights, a few card tables, hired a bouncer from the wrestling team . . .”

  “Are you serious?” Matty sat up straighter, cocking his head.

  “Oh yeah.” Eric tentatively smiled, Matty again sensing the power he had been granted in here, the guy’s mood rising and falling with the tone of Matty’s voice. “Cleared about five hundred a week.”

  “So how long before you got caught?” Yolonda asked.