Potter's Field

by Rob Hart

  It feels good to laugh like that, even if it’s hell on my ribs.

  After we’ve calmed down and caught our breath, she asks, “You’re not mad?”

  “Of course not. Just, you know, I would have given it to you if you asked.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t ask.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  I laugh a little more, then slide out of the booth, grab my tray and Lunette’s, dump the empty plates into the trash, and put the trays back on the countertop. As we exit the restaurant, the alarm on my phone goes off. I reach into my pocket for the pill bottles, dry swallow the two I need to take.

  “For the needle thing?” she asks.

  “It’s going to be at least a month before I know.”

  “You know there’s a pretty simple solution to that?”

  “Which is?”

  “Find that guy. Timmy. Find him and ask him.”

  Yeah. I think it’s about time to do that.

  Normally when I’ve got computer work to do I ask Bombay for help. But besides not wanting to get him involved, I figure it’s time I start learning this stuff for myself.

  Not that this was a tough one. I never met Timmy’s parents but I remember how things were in high school. He wasn’t one of the rich kids, but he was well off enough that I can assume his parents were homeowners. When his parents died, there’s a good chance he inherited the house. A lot of things could have happened between now and then, but it’s a start.

  It didn’t take much effort on Google to find the stories about the crash—hit head-on by a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on the expressway. That gives me his parent’s names. Using those, I’m able to play around in White Page listings until I find their address.

  Twenty minutes on a bus and I find myself on a quiet block off the main drag of Forest Avenue. The houses are old, modest, and neat. I wander down the sidewalk, hands in pockets. Catch a blind drawn aside and then falling back. Someone wondering who the figure in the dark jacket is this late at night.

  I probably could have guessed which house belonged to Timmy. It’s tan with green accents, the windows dirty, the lawn dead and not kept. There’s a small pile of supermarket circulars by the front door. Timmy’s car is parked in the driveway.

  No lights. No movement. I give the block a good look, make sure no one is watching, and head into the gloom around the side of the house. There’s a little snow on the ground now, stuck to the grass, so I make sure to stick to the paved areas so I don’t leave any footprints.

  At the back of the house is a small deck leading to a door. I climb the stairs, slide the lock pick set out of my coat, and get to work. It takes a few minutes, and it’s a little louder than I would like, but I manage to get the bottom lock undone. The deadbolt isn’t engaged, I suspect because of the Corona bucket outside the door that’s overflowing with cigarette butts.

  The door opens onto a large, outdated kitchen. I expect the house to be in a state of disarray but it’s actually quite tidy. That stems from the kitchen not being used much. The sink is dry and there are no dishes in the dish rack. The open dishwasher is empty. There’s a pile of delivery menus on the counter, and a couple of garbage bags in the corner. Even in the darkness and through the murky bags I can tell they’re stuffed with takeout containers.

  I move through the house quietly, pressed along the edges of the walls, where the floorboards are less likely to creak. Make my way to the front. Living room is empty. There’s a soft sound coming from the stairs. I stop and listen.

  Music on the second floor.

  The staircase groans under me. No sense in being quiet now. If he’s up, he heard me.

  At the top of the landing there are a series of doors, all of them ajar except one. The one that’s closed has a crack of light coming out from underneath. I choose that one.

  It’s a kid’s bedroom. Lots of bright, primary colors. Posters on the wall for movies and video games. A TV and a series of video game consoles crammed in the corner, controller cords spilling across the floor. Elliott Smith is playing from a clunker of a stereo on the dresser.

  Timmy is lying on the bed, face up, a needle sticking out his arm.

  I kneel on the bed next to him, give him a slap. He doesn’t stir. Press my fingers to his throat. Can’t find a pulse but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m not trained in this shit. I’m also furious at myself, for not hailing a cab, not getting here sooner.

  Next to him is a piece of paper on which he’s scribbled, “I’m sorry.”

  I touch his face again. He’s not cold yet.

  “No you don’t, motherfucker,” I tell him. I pull a naloxone injector out of my pocket, press it to his nasal cavity, press the plunger. There’s a hissing sound as the drugs shoot into his sinus cavity.

  Nothing happens.

  My heart drops in my chest and bottoms out somewhere around my intestines. I want to cry. Not because the answer to my potential medical condition is suddenly out of reach. Because as much as I want to be angry, as much as I don’t want to feel bad for him—I do. I knew Timmy well enough to know he wasn’t the kind of person who’d sell me out lightly. And it was wearing on him.

  Heavy enough to do this.

  I wonder if I should call an ambulance, perform CPR.

  If I should even be here.

  His eyes flutter open and he breathes in. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his palm to his face as I stand back from the bed. Then he opens his eyes, looks around, and when his eyes settle on me, the tiny bit of color left in his face drains.

  “Oh shit,” he says.

  “Hey dickhead,” I tell him.

  Timmy sits at the kitchen table, a fresh cup of coffee in front of him. He stares into it like he might be able to divine something from the steam curling off the top. He won’t lift his eyes to meet mine.

  I brewed the coffee for his benefit but I pour myself a mug too. It’s getting late and I still feel like my thoughts are dragging a half-second behind my body. I sit across from him and rap my knuckles against the table. He jerks a little, looks at the coffee again.

  “The needle they shot me up with. Was it clean?” I ask.

  “Huh?”

  “Was it a new needle?”

  He raises his eyes. They look like a shattered mirror. Like I can see parts of myself reflected, and it makes me wish he had kept looking at the coffee. After a moment he lifts his chin and drops it back down. Every muscle in my body unfurls and I lean forward, laugh a little, like air releasing from an over-filled balloon. Okay, one issue down.

  Timmy takes a little sip of the coffee. “How are you here?”

  “Spencer. I had a bunch of naloxone in my pocket. He used one on me. I used one on you just now.”

  Timmy pauses, thinks. “Not the first time I got dosed.” He puts his fingers on the bridge of his nose, massaging, trying to soothe his roaring sinus cavity. “It’s not a nice feeling.”

  “I can venture a guess,” I tell him, “but do you want to tell me exactly what you were sorry for, that you figured an OD was the price you had to pay?”

  His looks at me and his eyes mist. “I never thought they’d take it that far. The most I figured they would do was smack you around a bit. Not to say I was endorsing that, you know? But, man, things have been tight. My parents left me some money but most of it is gone. I don’t want to lose the house. They offered me all-you-can-eat for a year.”

  “How did you even know you could sell me out to them?”

  And Timmy walks me through it. Apparently everyone in Brick’s crew is on high alert, given the climate. Some white kid—me—poked around the business, in relation to Spencer, who they knew was working for Ginny. They went straight to DEFCON 1. Eliminate the threat.

  Timmy heard someone talking about the white kid, he put it together. He swears up and down he didn’t offer the info but they smelled it on him and said if he flipped, he’d be taken care of. Hold back and he’d be cut off.

  “What’s the de
al with Spencer?” I ask. “He’s with them, now?”

  “Yes and no,” Timmy says. “He’s there, but he’s not with them. I don’t think he’s there entirely of his own free will, you know?”

  That accounts for the way his face was all banged up.

  “Do you actually know this Ginny person?” Timmy asks. “I’ve been hearing about her.”

  I stifle a laugh. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Remember Paul? I think the three of us were in a math class together. Sophomore year? We had the teacher with the glass eye?”

  He thinks about it, nods. “Yeah, Paul. I remember Paul.”

  “He goes by ‘her’ now.”

  “Wait… so this badass drag queen crime lord everyone seems so afraid of is Paul? That Paul? That guy weighed like a hundred pounds.”

  “People change.”

  Timmy leans back in his seat. “So you’re not going to kill me?”

  “Not how I roll.” I put a little emphasis on the words, hoping they’ll sting. He winces, which means I did my job.

  The doorbell rings.

  Timmy tenses up, eyes so wide I can see white all the way around his irises. He jerks his head toward the door.

  “Oh fuck…” he says, barely audible.

  I drop my voice to a whisper. “Who’s that?”

  “Probably Paris and Athena.”

  Panic nearly splits my forehead. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “They promised to keep me flush, you know? Honestly I suspect they’re trying to give me more than I need in the hope I overdose and they don’t have to pay out what they promised.”

  “Can we wait them out?”

  “My car is in the driveway… and...”

  I see it. The thirst. The way his eyes short out, the way his muscles twist under his skin. The thing about naloxone is it doesn’t just stop the overdose. It stops the high. The entire weight of this shit world—all that weight you forgot even existed—comes crashing down in an instant. The first thing I wanted when I got dosed was to go back. I’m sure he feels the same way. Except he’s much further into this than me, which means his ability to control himself is pretty much nil.

  Which is confirmed when he bolts toward the door.

  Fuck. Can’t go through the back door. It’s in line of sight of the front.

  I root around the kitchen for something, anything, I can use to defend myself. There’s a knife block on the table. I pull the biggest one out. Blade nearly as long as my forearm. A little grisly and not really my style, but beggars can’t be all high and mighty about the method that keeps them breathing.

  There are two doors off the kitchen: a small doorway that leads to a hallway that goes to the front, and an archway that goes into the living room. I pick the archway. The lights are off and the floor is carpeted, which muffles my footsteps. Between the foyer and the living room there’s a little wall separating the two, so I post up behind it. Figure if Timmy rats me out, they’ll go straight past him to get to the kitchen, and then I have the element of surprise.

  Timmy says, “Hey…” Trying to sound nonchalant, doing a shitty job.

  “As promised.” Paris. Crinkle of a paper bag.

  “Thanks.”

  “This was a courtesy. We had business in the neighborhood. Next time you come to the hill.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I have to pee.”

  “What?”

  “You got a bathroom, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure…”

  I press myself against the wall. Listen to Paris clomping down the hallway in heavy boots. The bathroom door closes and I see Timmy looking frantically around the kitchen for me. He finally finds me in the gloom of the living room. He waves at me to get down and I hit the floor, climb around the couch as the toilet flushes. Listen to Paris’s footsteps going down the hall.

  Maybe he was lulling me into a false sense of security. Maybe he’s whispering to her that I’m here. Maybe she’s about to pounce. I get on my knees and clutch the knife, ready to dive if I see her. My heart slamming so hard into my ribs I fear she can hear it.

  The front door opens, slams closed.

  I listen for a moment. A car engine engages and roars off.

  When I stand Timmy is looking at the paper bag on the coffee table. I give him a second and then clear my throat. He looks up at me and gives me a weak smile.

  “I hope this shows you can trust me,” he says. “I want to make up for what I did.”

  “This is a start, yeah,” I tell him. “I still want to beat the shit out of you, but I’ll hold off. Now you need to give me something I can use. Where can I find Spencer?”

  He’s not listening. He’s undoing the top of the bag, unfolding it, searching for the prize inside.

  I snap my fingers. “Hey.”

  He looks up but doesn’t let go of the bag. “When we went to Wendy’s afterward, they were talking about some stuff. Not all of it I understand, but it feeds into some rumors I heard. Like, context clues, you know? They have a waypoint. Place the stuff gets held before it goes to processing. A bodega off Richmond Terrance. They bring it in off the water, right across the street, boom.”

  “Right. Forgot you guys jacked me to get fast food.” I add that to the mental list of grievances. “There are dozens of bodegas on the terrace.”

  Timmy raises his shoulders, lets them fall, goes back to the bag. “Best I got.”

  I replace the knife in the kitchen, return to the living room. Peek into the paper bag on the coffee table. It’s stuffed with dime bags, each one of them holding a kiss of white powder. I take a couple of them out.

  “What are you doing?”

  “For bargaining purposes,” I tell him. “Just in case.”

  It’s a lie. He knows it’s a lie, the way he looks at me. But he doesn’t stop me, either.

  Bombay is asleep when I come in. I grab my laptop from my room, set it up at the kitchen table, search the fridge for something to eat and find leftover Chinese. Dump pork fried rice and beef chow fun onto a plate and stick it in the microwave.

  As the microwave whirs I check my e-mail and find a note from my mom. She’s getting worried. Wants to know when I’m getting in. I write back that I’m tied up with a flight cancellation and a customs issue and that I’ll be home in a couple of days.

  Apologize profusely.

  Hate myself.

  The food finishes. I pour myself a glass of water and dig in while doing a search of Richmond Terrance.

  It’s six miles, running along the northern edge of the island. As with most urban waterfront neighborhoods, it’s not the nicest area, especially as you approach the western shore. Lots of vacant lots, industrial buildings, ancient homes in various states of disrepair. The kind of place you don’t want to break down or wander around at night.

  There are a dozen bodegas that I can find on Google Maps street view. I rule out the ones closest to the ferry terminal. The foot traffic is too high. Too many people. There’s a police precinct not too far from there.

  The terrace runs close to the water, except in the middle, where there’s a marina and a water processing plant. Too risky to bring stuff onto shore there. Probably eyes around the clock. Cameras. I strike out that area too.

  If it’s true that product comes in from New Jersey, which is what a lot of the news coverage indicates, the Western end would make sense. You could throw it in a kayak and go from shore to shore. There are plenty of leisure vessels in the bay. Probably less so during the winter, but under cover of darkness? It stands to reason.

  That narrows it down to four possibilities. At least on my list. I might be missing a few, but it’s a start.

  There are two close to each other, past the Bayonne Bridge. Both located in places without a lot of nearby businesses, probably don’t have a lot of foot traffic. The kind of places that might need a little extra help staying open. I’ll start with those. Surveillance first. See what I can see.
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  There’s a shuffling sound behind me. I jump up, immediately fall into fighting stance.

  Bombay is standing at the entrance of the kitchen, bleary-eyed, squinting. Bare-chested, in a pair of boxer shorts and big, gray socks with red trim.

  “You’re a little jumpy,” he says.

  “Who wears socks to sleep?”

  “My feet get cold,” he says, opening the fridge. Then, “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “I was saving that beef chow fun, bro.”

  “For two in the morning?”

  “It’s best at two in the morning.”

  “I didn’t eat all of it.”

  “You ate enough of it.”

  There’s still some left on my plate. I offer it to him. He waves it off. “It’s fine.”

  He prepares his own plate, sits down to eat it cold. As he stabs at the wide rice noodles with his fork he asks, “What are you working on?”

  I explain to him about the mysterious bodega, the search for Spencer. Leaving out the part about the attempted-murder-by-OD. When I’m done I eat some more of the food that’s on my plate. Our forks screech on the ceramic. Bombay gets up from the table, gets a beer for the fridge. Offers me one but I shake my head. He sits down with his own and cracks it.

  “You know what you can do,” he says. “If you’ve got a couple you think might be prospects. Go inside. You have to figure if they’re storing it, they probably need space. So if the building is like a hundred feet long but the bodega only goes back fifty, that could be something.” He takes a long pull of beer. “Unless they’re in a basement or an apartment above the store.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I tell him.

  Seeing him pull on the beer makes me wish I had one, except I don’t really want a drink. What I want to do is take a little taste of that heroin in the pocket of my coat.

  I could cook it, I guess. I don’t have any needles but I could get some easy enough. You can get them at pharmacies. There’s got to be an all-night pharmacy somewhere close. As for the cooking, I know the gist: mix it with a little water on a spoon, heat it up, toss in a bit of cotton to filter it. Draw it up, knock out the bubbles, send it home. I don’t know how to hit a vein. It seems hard, but a lot of people manage.