Lush Life

by Richard Price

  “Whoa, what guy.”

  “Marcus.”

  “The father?”

  “Of his own money,” Matty said.

  “A presser now?”

  “Day after tomorrow, give him time to set up the escrow account.”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get back to you on that.”

  “Boss, let me just say, he’s not asking for permission, he’s asking if we would join him for a stronger message.”

  “What are you, his press secretary now?”

  “Are you kidding me? You got it ass backwards. I’m doing everything I can to corral this poor bastard, keep him out of everybody’s hair. But, hey, if you prefer, I’ll give him your number, let you be the point man, maybe this way I could put in some time trying to solve this fucking thing instead of getting my ear bent all day.”

  “When does he want to do this?”

  “Day after tomorrow. At the crime scene. You don’t take over, move it to 1PP or the Eighth, it’ll be a zoo.”

  “Let me make some calls.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Matty hung up, looked to Billy, sitting hangdog yet eager in the chair opposite.

  “So what’s happening?” His mouth open like a hinge.

  “The usual.”

  “Nothing?”

  “You’re a fast learner,” Matty said. “All right, here’s what I want you to do.”

  “OK . . . I was scared,” Eric began, the cellar air combined with the gram of garbage blow he had test-run purchased in front of Hamilton Fish Park this morning making him sneeze. “Some, some street animals came up on us, shot the guy standing next to me, and me? I just ran. I ran into the building. There was a gun, so you flee. Human nature, OK? But even in hiding, even with the shooter gone, I was so paralyzed that I didn’t even think to call 911. I said I did to the cops but I lied. And at first they thought I was lying to cover up something criminal. Like it was inconceivable to them that someone would be so frightened that they would have to lie about something like that simply out of shame. See, but they know how to tease apart lies, those people. They may not know what’s behind the lie, they may think they do, but at first it doesn’t make a difference to them, they just go after the lie, pick at it, pick at it, just watching me fall to pieces before their eyes, like rooting it on. And, I felt like my life was in danger all over again. And all I wanted was out. I just wanted out of that room.

  “And right up to the end, they wouldn’t grant me my cowardice, it just was too inconceivable. I mean, I guess they pretended they did, towards the end this one cop ripped into me for it in kind of this last-ditch ploy to make me lose it and confess to salvage my, my manhood or something, but you could tell he still thought I was playing them about it.”

  Bree stood there looking at him like there were other people in the cellar and he was monopolizing all her time, Eric thinking, How can people turn on you so fast?

  “But worse than the humiliator?” Eric coked on. “Was the other one, the comforter—”

  “It sounds awful,” she said before he could get to the point, the measuredness of her tone just tearing him up. It was as if their lightning-fast sex tussles down here a few nights ago had been nothing more than a dream.

  “And there’s other stuff, stuff that’s hard to find words for at the present time, so . . .” He trailed off.

  “Jesus.” She winced, her gaze darting right and left like the tail of a cat clock.

  “Anyways,” waving vaguely to the stairs behind her; prisoner released.

  He waited until she disappeared above the line of the low ceiling before doing the last of the gram.

  How could people change up on you so fast?

  An hour after leaving Matty’s office, Billy stood with Mayer Beck again, this time in front of 27 Eldridge, both of them staring at the trace remains of the shrine: nothing there now but some hangdog balloons down to the size of basting bulbs, the increasingly shredded newsphoto of Willie Bosket flapping against the building, and the last rays of sun sparkle coming off a few fragments of colored botanica glass that had been swept to the wall.

  “So.” Beck turned to him, easing a steno pad from his back pocket. “What’s up?”

  Eric waited for the anticrime taxi to roll off from in front of the Lemlich Houses, then walked past the small miniplaza directly across the street: four shabby shops—a pizzeria, a corner store, a Chinese takeout, and a Laundromat—all inset farther back from the curb than the buildings on either side of them, the few extra square yards of pavement a natural arena-lounge for the young men toddling in place there now, most sporting sideways baseball caps and billowing white T’s down past their knees.

  It would be nothing to walk by them later tonight into the pizzeria; it was the coming out with the slice and just standing there like a yuppie piñata that would be the sticky part.

  • • •

  “I told him,” Billy said, worrying the fabric of his trousers as he faced Matty across the desk. “Thursday, one o’clock.”

  “And he knows the deal,” Matty said, “that 1PP’s not on board.”

  “Yeah. He gets it. Totally.”

  “And you didn’t go off?”

  “Off?”

  “On a rant.”

  “No. I, no.”

  “OK. Good.” Matty patted Billy’s hand on the blotter. “You did good.”

  Billy bobbed his head in acknowledgment, continued to sit there.

  “I’ll call you.” Matty made a show of doing something else. “As soon as something jells.”

  “Can I just stay here for a while?” Billy winced. “Not to get in your way.”

  “I think you should go home, rest up for—”

  “Right now?” Billy’s voice started to rise. “All I need to do is look at my bed and I start having nightmares from across the room.”

  Matty hesitated. “All right. Yeah, sure. Relax here, then.”

  After a few moments of head-down paperwork at the desk, Billy sitting there lost in thought, Matty caught Mullins’s eye and hand-signaled, Call me. “You want something, Billy? A soda? Coffee?”

  “I’m good,” he said, then, leaning forward, “I had this dream last night?”

  Matty’s cell rang. “Clark.”

  “What do you want?” Mullins asked.

  “Are you serious?” Matty shot to his feet and began scribbling down some bogus address. “I’ll be right there.” Then, to Billy, “Something just came up.”

  “On this?”

  “On something else. We could be gone for a few hours. Let me get you a ride home.”

  Once his slice was gone, he had no idea what to do with his hands, where to rest his eyes.

  At ten in the evening, the foot traffic between that four-shop miniplaza and the Lemlich Houses directly across Madison Street was never-ending, but the group of tent-wearing young men more or less stayed clustered up near the stores.

  The more they seemed to be ignoring him, the more powerfully he felt watched.

  There was no way he’d approach them; or was he supposed to . . .

  After a few excruciating minutes, one of the T-shirts walked away, ambling back across Madison into the Lemlichs, Eric thinking maybe he should take off too; back to Berkmann’s, no way would this end well.

  Then one of the other kids, without ever looking at him, began to slowly waddle-walk in his direction, his oversize T and mannered side-to-side gait making him look like a hard-core penguin.

  “What you need, Officer,” the kid said, still looking off.

  A gold medallion, one of three around his neck, announced his name: David.

  “I look like a cop?” Eric asking for real.

  “Not supposed to.”

  “I’m no cop.”

  “OK.”

  Eric started to walk away.

  “Hey, Officer?” the kid called out, and when Eric turned around,
the whole crew finally came to life, laughing and low-fiving each other.

  “He ain’t police.” Big Dap waved off his brother from his perch on the ramp rail in front of 32 St. James.

  “I don’t know about that,” Little Dap said. He had crossed over from the miniplaza because he didn’t know if that guy from the shooting had come back here to look for him.

  “I know you don’t know,” Dap smirked, then nodded to Hammerhead, one of the older guys always hanging with him: Step to it.

  As Hammerhead broke into a lazy jog back across Madison, Little Dap started to take off too, heading upstairs until this thing was over, but . . .

  “Oh, yo. Get back here, little man. Gotta be in it to win it.”

  “Naw, see . . .” But his brother just waved him quiet.

  “I’m in it,” Tristan said, but as usual, nobody heard him.

  Humiliated but thinking, Better a live asshole, Eric continued down Madison towards Montgomery, then froze as he heard feet coming up fast behind him. “Whoa, whoa,” felt a hand on his elbow.

  The guy pulling his coat was older than the others: mid-twenties, with a soul patch under his lip and so bulge-eyed that his gaze appeared wraparound.

  “Them hoppers don’t know shit. What you need.”

  “Nothing.”

  “How much nothing.”

  “An ounce.” Didn’t mean to say it . . .

  “A what?” his gibbous eyes glistening with surprise. A half block behind them that younger crew waddled in place as they watched the exchange from their two squares of pavement. Eric thinking, Just go, started to walk away again.

  “Ho ho ho, hold it, hold it,” the guy half-laughing, taking Eric’s wrist. “That’s just a lot of product on a spur-of-the-minute walk-up. But that’s OK, can be done. Y’all just come with me,” lightly tugging him towards the Lemlichs.

  “No offense”—Eric went into a slight water-ski crouch to stand his ground—“but I’m not going over there.”

  “Hey. Let me tell you something about me because I realize no way you can know.” He was still holding Eric’s hand, Eric too embarrassed to ask for it back. “I am a fully endowed undergraduate student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, something like six classes shy of accredidation, so . . .”

  “What’s your major?”

  “My what?” Then, “Science.”

  “I’m not going over there.” Eric finally getting his hand back.

  “All right, fine, strip out here then.”

  “Strip for what, a wire?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Look, I don’t even have any money on me.” Turning out his pockets.

  “That’s OK. I don’t have no product. We’re just conversing here, maybe go to the next level if the shit’s copacetic.”

  They compromised on the bathroom of the pizzeria, the two of them walking through the dining area, then past the Bangladeshis kneading dough at the back-room prep table.

  The bathroom was bigger than it had to be but tearingly pungent from the scented urinal cakes.

  The guy squatted on his hams as he carelessly patted Eric down, then took two steps back.

  “Awright, boss, drop them skivvies.”

  “The fuck,” Eric just saying it to say it, then dropping his jeans and looking off, holding down his boxers.

  “Awright, awright.” The guy backed up farther. “I don’t need to see any more than I do.”

  Not that Eric had that much experience in this, but there was something disturbingly insincere about the whole routine.

  “Say again what you want?”

  “I said already.”

  “What.” The guy grinned, his wraparound eyes pulsing. “Y’all want to check me for a wire?” Standing with his arms wide.

  “I said to you already.”

  “You did. You did.” Then, “Ounce a G.”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re done.”

  “OK.” Relieved, Eric reached for the bathroom doorknob.

  “Ho ho ho.” The guy pinched the back of Eric’s shirt. “What did you think it would be?”

  “I was told seven.”

  “Seven?” Laughing. “Who the fuck down here, in this neighborhood, said seven.”

  “OK, I heard wrong.” Reaching for the door again.

  “I’ll go nine.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said, “what’s your name?”

  “You hear me ask yours?”

  “OK, whatever. It’s like, I’m going to say seven fifty, you’re gonna say eight fifty, I’m gonna say eight, you’re gonna say eight twenty-five, so OK, eight twenty-five.”

  “Eight fifty.”

  “Bye.”

  “Awright, awright, eight twenty-five. Damn.”

  “OK, then.” Eric feeling trapped by his win. “How soon can you get it?”

  “How soon can you?”

  “Me? The money?”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  “Half an hour?” Just wanting to get it over with, whatever this would turn out to be.

  “Hang on.” The guy raising his eyes to the ceiling, doing the time math. “Make it forty-five.”

  “OK, forty-five.”

  “All right, I’ll see you back here then.”

  “Not here.” Eric thinking, thinking. “I’ll meet you somewheres inland.”

  “In what? What the fuck is inland.”

  “Somewheres near Orchard, Ludlow, Rivington.”

  “Oh. You mean white land.” Laughing. “Just say that. Where at?”

  “Where at?” Eric stalling. “There’s a taco place on Stanton and Suffolk, you know it?”

  “I know Stanton and Suffolk.”

  “There’s a taco place.”

  “Does it say taco on the sign?”

  “I assume so.”

  “Then we’re good.”

  “Forty-five minutes?”

  “Forty-five.”

  Eric faltered, then reached for the bathroom door again.

  “Ey, yo.” The guy turning him around at the last moment. “I can tell y’all nervous and shit?” Pulling a five-pointed badge out of his pocket and grabbing Eric’s wrist. “Y’all had every right to be.”

  Eric stood rooted, half-smiling in shock.

  “Bawwww,” the guy howling as he reared back and clapped his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Showing the badge again, a thin tin saying SUPER SECRET AGENT. “I’m sorry, bad joke, bad joke.”

  “Yeah.” Eric’s forehead creamed with sweat.

  • • •

  The worst part of his being arrested those many years ago up in Binghamton was the day-after-day waiting for it; so when that fucking idiot in the pizzeria flashed the badge in his face, Eric had been flooded with relief. Now, as he walked home from the Lemlichs, he tried to recapture that sensation, as if whatever was to happen had happened already, the piper paid in full.

  This would not end well; he was pretty sure of that, but he felt powerless to stop it.

  Over the last two weeks it had felt to him as if he’d slowly been devolving into one of his own Lower East Side ghosts; and ghosts, he believed, were nothing more than mindless reenactors, in possession of only the faintest sense of déjà vu.

  And so he floated into the vestibule of his walk-up, floated up the five flights of cockeyed stairs and into his denuded apartment like he had only the dimmest memory of ever being under this roof before.

  But when he pulled his accumulated tip-pool skimmings out of a hiking boot in the closet and began to count out $900, $75 going into a separate pocket as an emergency reserve for the inevitable last-minute hustle, something in him shifted; it was as if the blunt value of the bills flicking between his hands lent more substance to him too; substance and confidence, and for the first time all evening he had a glimmer of himself not as some witless shade following a preordained script but as an individual who was in the process of taking control, of turning things around for himself.

  With his jeans front-loaded
with cash, he poured himself a vodka bracer, then just stared at it. Dumped it down the drain.

  Not tonight, my man.

  Feeling lighter and sharper than he had for days, he locked the apartment behind him, tripped down the stairs, got as far as the mailboxes; he could see Stanton Street through the glass of the lobby door, then felt the wind go out of him in a whoof.

  At first he thought he’d stepped into the path of something moving at warp speed, maybe a bullet, maybe the bullet; getting shot, he heard, sometimes felt like that, a massive hammerblow; but when he looked up from the grimy tiled floor into the Lemlich faces, he knew it was nothing more than a punch to his unbraced gut.

  One of them, wearing a bandanna up to his eyes, immediately stooped over and started going through his pockets, looking for the buy money, the kid’s billowing T covering Eric’s head and giving him an intimate view of a taut gut and flat chest.

  Then one of the others hissed, “Hold it, hold it,” and he felt himself being dragged by the ankles along the tiles around to the wedge of space beneath and behind the stairs, out of sight from the street, another punch to close his eyes, his brain a tuning fork, then a scrabbling through his pockets, one of them saying, “Seventy-five? He say eight hundred something,” then another punch, Eric hearing more than feeling something crack beneath his eye, then, “Ho ho ho, here it is right here,” the rest of his roll liberated, then another face close to his, no mask, chewing-gum breath, “We know where you live,” then a final punch, his right eye ballooning in its socket, then the door opening to the street, letting in a slice of oblivious female laughter from up the block, then silence as the door closed again, Eric thinking, This’ll do.

  After fretting all day about sucking Billy Marcus into something for which the guy was completely unprepared, as night came down, Matty also found himself thinking about Minette Davidson again, and so almost as an act of penance he wound up heading over to the No Name to subject himself to his mixologist, practicing saying her name all the way, Dora, Dora, Dora, feeling slightly less of a hound for remembering it this time.