Lush Life

by Richard Price

  “I’m waiting on a callback,” Matty said. “Still waiting.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Billy flopped into the chair sidesaddle to the desk.

  “This is four-star foot-dragging, four-star buck-passing.”

  “I don’t know how you put up with it.” Billy closed his eyes, his breath too sweet.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yeah, but I’m OK.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  Matty stared at him assessingly for a moment. “You know what?” Snatching up his desk phone. “Fuck it.”

  “Yeah, hey, boss.” Matty angled the receiver so that Billy could listen in.

  “I was just going to call you,” Berkowitz said.

  “You know I have to say”—Matty eyed Billy—“this guy Marcus is getting good and pissed.”

  “Yeah? What’s his problem?”

  “His problem? He caught a predawn flight to do this and here it is two days later and he’s still sitting on his hands waiting to hear if we’re on board or not.”

  “Well, I just got off the horn with Upshaw about that. Turns out there’s a problem with the reward money.”

  “Oh yeah?” Matty scribbled a gouge into his steno pad. “And what would that be?”

  “His end of it? The twenty? He didn’t set up the escrow account properly. According to the letter of intent it’s in his name, which means he controls the payout. We don’t work that way.”

  “What the fuck?” Billy lunged forward drunkenly, Matty glaring him into silence.

  “The letter of intent, huh?” Matty said, a finger to his lips.

  “At first Upshaw was going to put it through, but then he got nervous, called Mangold, the chief says no press conference. Says, ‘I thought I made myself clear on this one. Let it die.’ ”

  “Let it die?” Billy hissed to himself, Matty thinking, Coffee.

  “I’m being as candid with you as I can,” Berkowitz said.

  “Yeah? Then let me be candid too. The bank letter, the escrow account, it’s all in good faith and you and everybody else in that building knows it.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Look, boss, the guy flew all this way and he wants his presser with us. He wants it done.”

  “Well, he’ll have to deal with it.”

  Matty looked at Billy like he wanted to punch him.

  “You know what? I’m gonna have him call you directly because I didn’t sign up for this, and if he goes and embarrasses the job, I don’t want everybody pointing the finger at me.”

  “Fine, have him call me.”

  “Me?” Billy suddenly looking terrified, then completely checking out, going into an Ike-drift like slipping under the covers.

  Matty took Billy back to the Castillo de Pantera, set him up at a corner table, and plied him with coffee.

  “Here’s what I need you to do. One. Sober the fuck up. Then I need for you to call this guy, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, and tell him you want this to happen. You raised the money and now you want that tipline ringing off the hook. You bring up all those reporters’ cards you have and you tell him how all these vampires ever really want to hear you talk about is how the police have fucked this up from the door on in, but how you’ve never bit on that. You’ve never talked bad, but, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, I wind up doing this presser solo, and I swear to Christ, all bets are off and I am going after you, your boss, the chief of D’s, and the PC, but your name is going to come out of my mouth first, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, just keep saying his name like that, and say it first.”

  “You want me to call him?”

  Matty leaned into the table. “Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am putting my balls in a sling for you right now. Do you get that?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is not part of my job, fucking with these people. Do you understand that?”

  “Then why are you doing it?” The question popping out of Billy’s mouth like a frog.

  Matty hesitated just a hair before saying, “For your son.”

  Hesitated just long enough for Billy, even in his frightened and boozy daze, to pick up on the hollowness of the declaration.

  But Matty picked up on it too; hustling the dead kid’s father like that . . .

  “You know what?” Matty said more softly. “All due respect to your son and hopefully this’ll work in his favor, but it’s just that they have been fucking with me on this since day one, and I am so very, very tired of it. I just want to do my job.”

  “I can see that,” Billy said evenly, and once again his refusal to be judgmental reinforced Matty’s wanting to go the extra mile.

  “Look,” Matty said, “do you want to just blow this whole thing off?”

  “No.” Billy gulping down coffee.

  “Do you want me to go over everything again?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “All right, brother.” Matty dialed Berkowitz for him, then slapped the cell phone into the guy’s hand like a gun. “Show me what you got.”

  But when Berkowitz came on the line, Billy was so frightened that the first thing out of his mouth was a complete hash.

  “Mr. Berkowitz, I would really like you to join me at this press conference. If I’m up there by myself, I have no idea what to say,” then closing his eyes in self-disgust.

  “Well, look, Mr. Marcus,” Berkowitz said, his voice coming through to Matty tinny but clear, “first off let me say how sorry I am for your loss.”

  Billy seemed grateful for the smooth and sober voice coming back at him. “Thank you.”

  He should have better prepared him for this; did the guy really think Berkowitz would have come at him like some animal?

  “I have two sons myself and I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through right now.”

  “Thank you,” Billy said softly, looking at Matty.

  “And from what everybody tells me, Ivan was a great kid.”

  “Ivan?”

  “A real comer.”

  “Ivan?”

  Matty either imagined or actually heard the rustle of papers on Berkowitz’s end.

  “Mr. Marcus, is there a number that I can call you back?”

  “Not really.” Billy suddenly dead sober.

  “Then maybe we should talk face-to-face.”

  “Maybe we should,” Billy said coldly, Matty finally feeling calm enough to go outside and have a cigarette.

  Billy came out a few minutes later.

  “Where at?” Matty asked.

  “Green Pastures on East Houston?”

  “When.”

  “Hour and a half.”

  “Hour and a half?” Matty startled. “All right, shit, OK . . . First I need for you to go back to wherever you’re staying and get every reporter’s card you have.”

  “He called him Ivan,” Billy said.

  Matty lit another cigarette off the last one. “Don’t forget it.”

  They sat in Matty’s sedan a half block west of Green Pastures, a vegan deli founded by white pioneers in the mid-seventies, situated at the ass end of East Houston, the dying sun tinting their chests and chins orange.

  Billy seemed to be having a hard time breathing, as if the righteous fury in him had been smothered by a mortal stage fright.

  “Billy.” Matty grabbed his biceps. “Listen to me. Are you listening to me? You look like you’re going to have a heart attack, but fuck it. Be pissed. You have every right, you hear me?”

  “No. I know. I just don’t want to fail him, you know?”

  Matty hesitated, fail who, then, “You won’t.”

  Billy nodded briskly, then reached for the door.

  Matty grabbed his arm again. “One more time. Chief of Manhattan detectives?”

  “Upshaw.”

  “Chief of D’s?”

  “Mangold.”
>
  “Commissioner?”

  “Patterson.”

  “Go.”

  But then grabbed him again, Billy looking ready to puke.

  “And where am I?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Berkowitz asks you, ‘Where’s Detective Clark right now.’ You say . . .”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Beautiful. Go.”

  Billy bolted for the door, Matty holding him one last time. “You got those reporters’ cards?”

  “Fuck,” Billy said. “I forgot.”

  Billy left the car and headed towards the deli looking as if he were about to pull his first stickup, Matty feeling like a backstage mother, praying the poor bastard wouldn’t fall to pieces in there and blow the play.

  Look at him; Matty watching helplessly as Billy walked right past the deli, then kept going all the way until he ran out of sidewalk at the FDR roundabout.

  A moment later, after he had corrected his course and doubled back, Berkowitz pulled up in front of the deli in his personal car, no driver, and Matty slid down in his seat. The DI stepped out, intercepted Billy with a handshake, walked him around to the passenger side, and opened the door for him as if Marcus were his date, Matty thinking, Christ, I have to tail a DI, but once inside the car, they stayed put and began to talk.

  • • •

  “As I said to you on the phone, Mr. Marcus,” Berkowitz palmed the Pepcid foils lying in the cup caddy between them, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your tragedy.”

  “Thank you,” Billy said. Too nervous to look at the deputy inspector directly, he was staring at a girls’ soccer team walking across the highway overpass to the riverside park at the far end of the Drive.

  “Look, I think it’s great that you have this commitment and interest . . . and I just want to reassure you that we’re doing everything we can to bring this to a close so you can grieve for your son properly.”

  “Properly?” Billy getting a little head of steam off that. “Like I’m sitting here with you right now in order to fend off the grieving process?”

  Berkowitz quickly put his hands up. “I wouldn’t presume to know that.”

  “Because personally?” Billy finally turned to him. “I think I’m grieving great.”

  “All I’m trying to say, Mr. Marcus”—Berkowitz put a hand to his arm—“is that I understand your eagerness for a press conference, but I’ve been working these cases for thirty years, and when it comes to the media, it’s all about timing.”

  “Timing.”

  “For example, OK? If we had done it today like you originally wanted? Page twelve. At best. Are you reading the papers? They found an infant in a dumpster last night behind Jacobi hospital up in the Bronx. Not to sound callous about these things? But it would’ve shoved us into the car ads.”

  “OK.” Billy shrugged. “How about tomorrow?”

  “Depends what happens tonight,” Berkowitz said patiently, “I don’t have a crystal ball.”

  “So, what are you talking about, laying in the cut? You’ve got nothing, and cool gets cold gets frozen. I want a news conference.”

  “You’re not hearing what I’m saying.”

  “I’m hearing every word.” Billy seemed exhilarated by his newfound lucidity.

  “We’re on the same side here.”

  “You know what?” Dry laughing. “The very fact that you think it’s necessary to reassure me of that tells me we’re not.”

  Berkowitz took a moment, studying the traffic building behind them on the northbound FDR.

  “Look.” He put his hands together in an attitude of entreaty. “You seem like a hands-on guy. I respect that. I’d be the same way if I didn’t know better, but I do. And what you’re asking for isn’t going to happen. We’ll do this conference when we can get maximum bang for the buck. When thirty years’ experience says, ‘Now.’ ”

  “No.” Billy brushed lint from his pants legs. “That’s when you’ll do your conference. I’ll have mine when I want to. You don’t want to be part of it? Fine. But I swear, I have been praising you people every step of the way, and, well, that’s going to end right here, right now, so when they ask me, and they will, where the hell are the cops? I’m answering as honestly as I can. I’m going to say I had a sit-down with a Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, who I have to assume spoke to me on behalf of Manhattan Chief of Detectives Upshaw on behalf of Chief of Detectives Mangold, on behalf of Police Commissioner Patterson, and according to this Deputy Inspector Berkowitz, the official attitude towards disseminating news of this increased reward here, the official position—”

  “All right, all right.” Berkowitz briefly lowered his head as if taking a quick nap, then came up shrugging. “I get it.”

  From his slouched roost across the street Matty saw the whole thing unfold in pantomine.

  You had to give it to him, Matty thought, the DI was a pro; played his hand, got trumped, switched teams, moved on.

  A moment later they both got out and shook hands, Billy then walking off, Matty suddenly knotty about his making a beeline back to his car under the DI’s gaze, feeling like a jerk as he put a hand to the side of his face and averted his eyes, Billy heading right back to the fucking car, Matty dying until Billy abruptly took the last possible turn before reaching for the door, down Attorney, and with enough presence of mind that he never once looked directly at Matty or the car, Matty wondering if there was any kind of payback in the choreography of that very close call.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, Berkowitz reached him on his cell.

  “Yeah, so listen, we’re gonna do it. I need to make a few calls, set things up, today’s shot, let’s say tomorrow afternoon, one o’clock?”

  “I greatly appreciate this,” Matty said as he trolled Attorney looking for Billy. “As you could probably tell, that guy means business.”

  “Yeah, I sensed that.”

  “Anyways, thank you.”

  “He almost walked right back to your car, didn’t he?” Berkowitz said mildly.

  Matty froze.

  “Just make sure the paperwork’s all in.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “Fuck it,” Berkowitz said, “I would’ve done the same.”

  When he finally found Billy at the corner of Attorney and Rivington, the blind bearish tilt of his stride made it painfully apparent how much this showdown with Berkowitz had taken out of him, and so Matty held off on calling out his name, just rolled parallel to give him some time to deal.

  From working the press to raising the cash to facing down the brass, Billy had come through like a champ, but Matty knew that the victory was a setup; that what Billy was to discover now, if he hadn’t already, was that even though the best of all possible outcomes had been achieved here, there would be no relief for him from that grinding sense of anticipation he’d carried in his gut for the last few days, that no matter what came down the line, what measures of justice were ultimately portioned out, what memorials or scholarship funds established, whatever new children would come into his life, he would always carry in himself that grueling sensation of waiting: for a tranquil heart, for his son to stop messing around and reappear, for his own death.

  Matty trailed him until Billy made it to the corner of Broome, then finally tapped his horn, Billy turning to the noise but not seeing the car, five feet away.

  “Billy.”

  At the sound of his name he stepped to the passenger door, leaned into the open window.

  “Whatever you said to him, brother, you did good.”

  “Yeah?” Billy looked right through him.

  “Seriously.” Matty leaned across and carefully pushed open the door. “You did great.”

  When Matty got home, a message on the answering machine from his ex told him that the Other One was coming down to him in just another day or so and that she’d ring him back as to the exact time and bus line tomorrow. Lindsay called the house only when she didn’t
want to talk to him, otherwise she called his cell. He understood why this news was reaching him like this: she didn’t want to afford him the opportunity to back out.

  He stood in his living room staring at his couch as if it were a puzzle, then pulled it out into a bed. Opened up, it took over the entire room, took over the apartment.

  On the other hand, what did he really need? The kitchen for making coffee, the terrace for drinking it, and the bedroom. He didn’t even watch the TV.

  At eleven that evening, Gerard “Mush” Mashburn, three weeks out of Rikers, sat cuffed in the back of the Quality of Life taxi, Geohagan riding next to him, Daley and Lugo up front.

  When Daley slipped on the baseball glove wedged between the dashboard and the window and absently started pounding its pocket, Mush piped up, “You got to put some tung oil in that thing.”

  “Put what?” Daley twisted around.

  “Oh, fuck me.” Lugo grinned through the rearview. “We got Field of Dreams back there.”

  “Knew a shortstop in high school used bacon grease,” Mush said. “Now that was a glove with some flex to it.”

  “You a ballplayer, Mush?” Geohagan asked.

  “Was. Left field, right, first base, you name it I played it. Junior year? Made all-county honorable mention.”

  “No kidding. What county?”

  “Chemung, in upstate? And we had us some ballplayers ’round there.”

  “So how’d you go from that to this.” Daley mimed shooting up.

  Mush looked out the window, shrugging, Why ask why.

  “You want to come play for Quality of Life?” Lugo asked. “We’re light some big bats this year.”

  “Yeah, that would be good. Make a team out of your collars,” Mush said. “You put your snatch-and-grabbers around the horn, you know, good hands, quick on they feet, strong-arm boys in the outfield, and, yeah, a killer behind the plate, get the batters all distracted and shit.”

  The cops beamed at each other, chucking thumbs at the joker in the backseat.