Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  When he got to his desk, he found Hennessey waiting. No smiling Irish eyes this time, he’d drawn a short straw, been sent on a bad news errand. Concerning me, Murchison guessed.

  “Hey, Murch.” The words came out barely loud enough to be heard above the noise. “How ya doing?” His big body sat perched on the corner of the desk, so Murchison couldn’t get past him to sit.

  “There a problem?”

  “No no no. No problem. I just …” His voice trailed away and bumped into a sigh on the back end. “Just got something I need … There’s a …” His mouth tightened, he shook his head. “Chief wants—”

  “For God’s sake, Hennessey. If it was really that bad you’d have shot me by now.”

  Hennessey couldn’t make eye contact. “Chief wanted me to tell you that he appreciates your staying on-duty this morning, us being short-staffed and all. But, you know, with the shooting, the usual procedure—”

  “He’s putting me on admin leave.”

  “It’s paid.”

  “I know it’s paid. That’s not the point.” Murchison gestured for Hennessey to stand so he could get to his desk. “Okay, I’m on leave. Now let me get back to work.”

  Hennessey seemed in agony. He didn’t move. “Murch, please.”

  Murchison realized finally he held no cards. It unnerved him. “Please what? Come on, Hennessey, say it.”

  Hennessey uttered a breathy, almost inaudible groan. “I’m just the messenger, Murch, okay?” He stood up finally, placing his hand on Murchison’s shoulder. “I’m supposed to walk you out. Gotta make sure you leave the building.”

  25

  It was Nadya’s turn to lie awake while Toby slept. He’d come upstairs with her, as she’d wished, into a small guest room where exhaustion had finally won out. He lay on his stomach upon the narrow bed, again in his clothes, like this morning in the church basement—not even his shoes removed now, only his glasses. He’d pulled a thick wool blanket across his body. His arms lay flat to either side, his head turned, mouth slightly open as he breathed in, breathed out.

  Nadya watched each breath, envying his tranquillity. Inside her, the relentlessly vile memories continued like a howl of curses, no matter how still she sat, no matter how intent her focus on him, not her. If anything, calming down just made it worse. And, yes, focusing on Toby made it worse.

  Finally, she surrendered, got up, taking care not to wake him, and padded out of the room, carrying her shoes. She ventured into the conference room, sat down at the massive table where Toby’s father’s horn still lay exposed in its red velvet case. As though it were lying in state. She reached out and touched the cool, shimmering brass, the soft leather pads for the keys, ran her finger along the rim of the bell. If you forgive me, she thought, why do I still feel all these terrible things?

  She ventured downstairs, sauntering through the kitchen and the hallway toward the front. From the conference room she heard voices. The detective, Murchison, was here again. He was talking with Francis and Tina. Francis was yelling.

  “That can’t be. It’s wrong!”

  “There’s not much I can do,” the detective said.

  “But the tape. One you played just now. It’s clear as can be.”

  “They don’t see it that way.”

  “Because you didn’t try to make them see.”

  “Francis—” It was Tina.

  “Perhaps.” The detective, his voice, it seemed so defeated. So disheartened. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “And this fixer, this Bratcher guy, he walks.”

  “He’s smart, he’s connected, he plays rough. Everybody knows that. But to pin something like these fires on him, what I’ve got now—”

  “Well, ain’t that the goddamn evening news.”

  “There may still be a way to obtain immunity,” Tina said. “I’m not going to stop believing—”

  “All a fucking joke. Truth? Don’t bother. Worse than that.”

  “I still believe there’s a way—”

  “I don’t,” Murchison said. “Not the way things stand. I wish I did.”

  Nadya drew away, ducking into one of the offices along the hall. She closed the door, needing to shut out their voices. Heart pounding, she found a notepad and pen on the desktop. Sitting down, she began furiously to write.

  Dear Toby,

  It seems that only one of us at a time can find a way to sleep. I hope you dreamed, and hope your dreams were a comfort.

  To be honest, what kept me awake was remembering your silence when I asked you to tell me you’d never leave, even if it wasn’t true. I should thank you for being unwilling to lie, but honestly, given all that’s happened and how I feel, I find myself hating you for that.

  I feel a lot of hatred, actually. It’s as though a scream is building inside me and when it finally breaks through to my voice I will die from it. What frightens me is that I have begun to look forward to that.

  I can’t expect you to deal with any of this. I’ve given up any hope that what we feel for each other would survive what we’ve been forced to deal with. It would make a pretty story, if that happened, but I’ve lost my capacity for investing hope in pretty stories. I’ll be lucky if I just get through this, and that’s no way to be with someone.

  I spoke of hate. I’ve felt your hatred for me, too. You’ve tried hard to hide it, and I appreciate that, but it’s in your touch, your eyes, your distance. If I were you, I’d feel the same. It’s the guilt, the helplessness. It’s too much, the horror out there, plus all these maddening, disgusting images and sensations and feelings on the inside, too. I assume it’s true for you, as well. I don’t know, you haven’t spoken of it. It would take a saint to endure that and not rage with hatred. We’re not saints. Maybe someday we can sit together, find a bond in that—here we are, two people who wanted so much to be loving and brave but who failed to be saints.

  Nadya

  She found an envelope, sealed her letter inside it, and returned upstairs on tiptoe to deposit it on the floor beside Toby’s glasses. She wanted to kiss him good-bye but feared waking him.

  Downstairs again, she came upon the detective alone in the hallway. He was pacing, a lost look on his face, waiting for Tina, who was arguing plaintively with Francis behind the closed door to one of the offices.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Murchison tottered, as though about to fall over from fatigue. Still, he managed a smile. “How are you? I mean, how are you doing?”

  “I need to ask a small favor.”

  He cocked his head. “If I can.”

  “A ride to the bus station is all. I need to go home.”

  He studied her, no doubt wondering why Toby wasn’t being called upon for the task. A hint of sympathy softened his gaze. “How soon?”

  She shrugged. “When you can.”

  He looked morosely at the closed office door, then all around him, as though trying to find out where he was. Or why he was there. “I’ll take you now.”

  • • •

  Murchison noted she’d brought nothing with her, not even a purse. “You have money?”

  “Yes.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a wad of mangled bills—the way you found them in a junkie’s pocket, except they didn’t look quite so grimy. This was quite possibly the most eccentric young woman he’d ever met. And he’d met some oddballs. He wondered how many times her beauty had spared her being thought of as just a little crazy.

  “I want to apologize for how rough my partner and I were on you yesterday at the hospital.”

  She stuffed her money back into her pocket. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It doesn’t?” Stluka’s dead, I may as well be dead—is that what she meant? “Why not?”

  “I understand what you had to do.”

  “And what was that?” For some reason, he felt testy.

  She looked up at him with helpless eyes. “Your job.”

  “That’s an excuse? My job?”

  “I don�
��t know.” Her voice withered. She surrendered. “I was trying to be kind.”

  Inwardly he chastised himself. Apologize for being rough, then rough her up some more. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  At the waterfront he turned south, toward the Greyhound terminal. The Bay Area buses all picked up there. The streets were eerily empty.

  “I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that I understand a little bit better now, what you went through. With Mr. Carlisle. Finding him like that, trying—” He couldn’t get the rest out.

  She regarded him with a vaguely troubled sympathy. “I wish you didn’t have to understand that. I wish no one did. I heard about your partner. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He felt his heart pounding. His eyes burned. His migraine throbbed. “We don’t get to choose what we have to deal with.”

  “No. We don’t.” She gazed out the window at the vacant streetscape. “I used to believe we at least had a choice as to how we dealt with it, but I no longer even believe that very much.”

  “I understand that, too.”

  She puffed her cheeks, spat out little bursts of air, then said, “Life upon the wicked stage ain’t everything a girl supposes.”

  He dropped her off at a covered shelter outside the terminal. The weather was dry for now, but rain clouds loomed to the west. The wind gusted; leaves and scrap paper whirled in the gutters. Two other riders waited for their buses—a middle-aged black woman in a red watch cap and wool coat clutching a bag of groceries, and a scrawny white teen with limp, long hair chain-smoking as he bobbed on his feet in the cold.

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” Murchison knew the question was too hopeless, too vague, to elicit anything but a false answer.

  “I just need to go home,” she said, and got out of the car.

  The house was empty, and though Murchison had expected that, had no reason not to, it stung in a way he’d not anticipated. Standing in the kitchen, he drank three glasses of cold tap water. The rubbish stank. The counter was smeared with something sticky, jam or honey. He left his glass in the sink and bothered with none of it.

  He couldn’t get himself into the bedroom. In a while he’d pack some clothes, let Joan know she could come back with the girls, stay here while they worked things out. Or didn’t. But he knew he’d never sleep with her in that bed again.

  He sat down on the living room sofa and leafed through a Bible Joan had left out. It was her practice, before taking the girls to church, to have them bone up on the week’s Sunday school lesson. He thumbed through the pages—the paper felt brittle, almost powdery to the touch—looking for something that might make sense of what he’d been through the past forty-eight hours. One came from the Thirty-eighth Psalm: “My friends and my companions stand back.… For I am very near to falling and my grief is with me always.” The other, from Ecclesiastes: “Better the day of death than the day of birth.”

  Shortly, without knowing how or why or when he came to that position, he was lying flat and, finally, dozing. But it was a twitchy, restless sleep. At first, he didn’t so much dream as suffer the same nightmarish thoughts and words and images that had haunted him all day. Jerry, dying. The family of three found gruesomely dead in their tub. The stench of the burning hillside, the crazy old woman tonguing the rain, Raymond Carlisle shot in the back and rolled over by the girl who couldn’t save him—all of it, tinged with other things, worse things he’d seen over the years, thought he’d dealt with, clearly hadn’t—the images lined up, a freak show. Then he heard a dog barking. He saw its eyes, staring out from the dark. He raised his side arm, but the gunshot he heard wasn’t his own. It was loud, far away, like a rocket blast. He ran through a maze, it stank like the garbage in his own kitchen, pitch-black, he stumbled, a door opened, and there he was, lying there. Dying.

  Willy.

  He nearly toppled off the sofa onto the floor. Heart pounding. Stomach ready to heave. He sat up straight, shook the haze from his head, and tried to focus. What the hell was that, he wondered.

  It’s wrong, he thought, any comparison of Willy’s death with Jerry’s. Jerry was my partner, sure, and that’s nothing to belittle. But I never pledged my life to the guy, didn’t even like him all that much. Hated him, sometimes. But respected him, as a cop. Granted. And, sometimes, despite all my groaning about how isolated it felt, being partnered with him, secretly I think I wanted it that way. I like being alone. It feels right. It feels just. And, someday, death will perfect that solitude, won’t it?

  You feel guilty, he told himself, for being there, being unable to save him. Yes. Absolutely. Like he died for me, in my place. Not just Jerry. Willy, too. There, that was it. And not just them. Every stranger whose death had never come out right, since that first young woman in the Monterey hotel room cut to shreds up to this morning, the people burned alive up on Baymont.

  In my place.

  The phone rang. Joan? You’ll have to find something to say, he thought, staggering to the kitchen. He grabbed the receiver from its cradle, put it to his ear.

  “Detective. This is Richard Ferry.”

  Images from his nightmare quickened at the sound of that voice. Hypnotized, he tried to shake off the feeling, couldn’t. At the same time, he realized he’d left the taped confession at Tina Navigato’s office.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “It’s my business, knowing things.” The line hissed and popped with static. “Besides, home phone. Child’s play. Rookie who knows how to talk his way past a door can manage it.”

  Ferry sat beneath a palm-fronded palapa atop the pier at the Old Mill Resort, one hand wrapped around a smeary glass of aguardiente, the local white lightning. His other hand held the satellite phone to his ear.

  “I was curious how it went. A confession in hand.”

  “Where are you?”

  The grass-bottomed shallows stretched south beneath a bright sun. Siesta hour, no one walked about. The rustic pier, the old resort, the ramshackle fishing shop, the restaurant, all stood locked up and empty. Ferry risked no one overhearing. A thin veil of sweat covered his skin. The heat, finally, had begun to melt away his tension.

  “That’s a pointless question. I said I confessed. I didn’t say I was turning myself in.”

  “Talk about pointless.”

  “Hardly. You know plenty. Mr. Bratcher—you brought him in for a sit, I hope.”

  “They say it’s bogus.”

  “They as in who?”

  “Everybody. FBI, in particular. They’re convinced the fire was set by the people you meant to hang it on. The rads.”

  Talent doesn’t pay, Ferry thought. Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy. “I got it right, and it turned out all wrong.”

  “Sounds like a song title.”

  “Yeah. But back to Bratcher.”

  “They won’t bite. You worked for him before, three years ago. Your name’s Malvasio, you hire yourself out as a security consultant—lot of that these days—then shake down your employers. Lot of that, too. You killed two bangers in Sacramento, then tried to extort Bratcher.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Let’s talk in person.”

  “Not possible. Who told you that?”

  “Bratcher’s a snitch. Federal. His handlers sent down the info. Agents working the fire got it from them. They vouch for him. Large. No one seems to vouch for you.”

  “That extortion story? It’s horseshit.”

  “Sent pictures, too. You could use a shave.”

  “I gave you an account number, I said get a warrant, check his accounts, his partnerships and LLCs, closely held corporations. He’s got dozens. You’ll find the money trail. Probably more than that.”

  “They’ll just say it was a payoff on your extortion.”

  “Three months ago?”

  “I can’t get a warrant. Got closed down. You’re a bad man.”

  “Bratcher’s more bad. Way bad. Most bad.”
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  “You and I seem to be in the minority on that. Could have something to do with your killing a cop.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  Ferry marveled at the thoroughness. Bratcher had planned this out long ago. It meant he’d probably been more careful about the money than Ferry had realized. A search warrant, even if they got it, would most likely come up empty. No paper trail. And the feds were going to bat for their boy. Devotedly—not so much for Bratcher’s sake as their own reputations. They hated a mess; no surprise, given the recent history of fending off shit storms. The world’s best stonewallers.

  “They tell you the story, about the shooting?”

  “Said you were bent, took out one of the cops who’d rolled.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Had a feeling you’d say that.”

  “Want to hear the truth?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Go ahead and record this if you want.”

  “Had a feeling you’d say that.”

  “Want me to wait?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Nice try.”

  “My phone here says you’re calling from a local line.”

  “It’s a trick. One you won’t figure out in time. You ready?”

  There was another silence. Then: “Sure.”

  Ferry took a sip from his glass. He hadn’t thought about this in a while, except for bits and pieces every single day.

  “I shot a cop. They’re right. His name was Hank Winters, he worked vice. He was leaning on one of his snitches, this pimp on the South Side—utter waste of a human being, king roach of the crack-heads, walked around with his fly open, red-eyed, nasty. His girls were filth.

  “Among other problems, this pimp was staring at a felony bad check beef. Winters was using that, squeezing him, trying to get him to serve up who he paid his protection money to on the street. Pimp wanted no part of that, knew he’d get dealt with if he named names. So Winters made sure the bad check thing sailed through. There was a bench warrant out on the pimp, failure to appear. Winters handed it off to a couple of uniforms to serve.