“Never better,” I heard myself say.
“All right then. You snapped real good.”
“Never better.”
“You’re a natural,” he said. “A fucking natural.”
“It was great,” I said. “The look on Quill’s face when I handed him my resignation.”
“Wish I’d seen it.”
“Effective immediately. He asked me why I was leaving.”
“And?”
“I told him school.”
“Whatever you want,” he said. “But his guy Nettle’d hire you in a quick minute.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I think I’m gonna kick Durrell’s ass when I find him. Hainty motherfucker ran us smooth into a trap, thinks I’m the heat or something.”
“That Willie Red,” I said, “he had maroon eyes. Fucking maroon eyes. Did you see that?”
* * *
The persistent, almost rhythmical banging of kitchen cabinets woke me up. I had been dozing on the couch, waiting for Jim to get home. I sat each night in his apartment, reading college catalogues that advertised the fall ’78 semester and waiting for him to come home. Some nights he brought dealers with him. I smoked their dope and laughed with them, and watched, after they were gone, while Jim wrote his reports.
There was a week yet before registration, but I wasn’t sure I’d go back. I was enjoying being in limbo.
Jim was leaning on the refrigerator door, staring blankly at the empty shelves before him. I looked up, still not fully conscious, saw his face lit white by the glare spilling out of the refrigerator, and turned over the get some good sleep, real sleep. He was home.
I could hear him pacing, then the rattling started. I got up to see what was wrong. He was in the hallway, hunched over the bathroom doorknob, jiggling the lock with a screwdriver.
“I locked myself out I don’t know how,” he said, his voice oddly monotone.
I looked at his eyes. There was a virtual roadmap of swollen capillaries jagging out from the thin ring of blue surrounding his dime-size pupils. He had made a case. Or had at least been working on one. I took the screwdriver from him and popped the lock.
He looked at the tool in my hand and marched past me into the bathroom, closing the door between us. I went back to the couch and sat down, trying to rub my eyes awake. The heater kicked on with a muffled rattle and I felt a stirring above my head as warm air began flowing from the vent near the ceiling. It wasn’t cold outside; it was September. But Jim insisted the heat be left on.
From behind the bathroom door came the clatter of banging cabinets, then silence, and then the awful echo of Jim violently retching.
He hadn’t locked the door, and as I entered the bathroom he rolled away from the toilet, began crawling in circles, round and round, spinning and moaning. He grabbed my feet, clutched at my ankles, but when I bent toward him he jerked back and pulled his head sideways, as though ducking a punch. He darted a look at the wallpaper above the sink, a brilliant blue and green floral print, and shielded his face with his hands.
“Stop!” he yelled. “Make it fucking stop!”
“It’s okay,” I said, “it’s okay.” I reached toward him, moving slowly. “You’re fine. You’re safe.” He jumped around and grabbed the shower curtain, yanked it in front of him, and then fell to the floor, pulling the shower rod down with him. I threw the curtain into the tub and leaned over him. No breathing. I pounded his chest, hard, jerked a towel from above the toilet, swabbed out his mouth and started CPR. I pounded and blew and pounded and blew and thought, over and over, “Breathe.” I tried to will it to happen and tried not to remember all of Jim’s tales about how many times agents had O.D.’d and the panic you feel when you think you’re about to have a body on your hands and how to God are you going to explain why, or how, or anything. Right at that moment I hated loving him. But I did. I put my lips to his and forced my breath into his lungs. I think I prayed.
I was trying to figure a way to keep breathing into him and at the same time get to the phone for some kind of help when he choked and coughed and opened his eyes. He squinted, then opened his eyes wider, then squinted again. And then he moved and the back of my head smashed against tile and white light exploded in my brain. I felt my eyes bulge against the tops of their sockets and heard Jim’s rage everywhere, his screaming fear.
“I’M DEAD I KNOW IT ALREADY YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT MOTHERFUCKER I’M HERE TO DO THE DIRTY WORK! HIDE THOSE RIGS THEY’LL BE HERE ANY MINUTE! FUCKING FEDS DON’T KNOW THEIR ASS FROM A HOLE IN THE GROUND BUT THEY GOT THE STROKE, BROTHER, THEY GOT, THEY GOT…”
His voice slowed to a crawl and when I could see again he was on his knees in the bathtub, mumbling, bent over and holding the faucet with both hands, tears streaming down his face.
I pulled myself up and slipped my hands under his arms, moving slowly, talking gently while the pain built in my skull. I was dizzy, but got him out of the bathroom, draped his arm over my shoulder and lugged him to the couch. I could smell the chemical in his sweat, as though his body were tainted with battery acid and it was seeping out through his pores.
“I don’t know what you’re on,” I said, “but you got a dose and a half.” Talking to myself. Jim slumped onto the couch and I pulled a blanket over him, tucking it tightly under his shoulders.
I took his face in my hands, trying to force him to look at me. He jerked his eyes in every direction but mine, and then gave up and simply closed them.
“Jim,” I said.
“I don’t know I don’t know.” He sighed. I thought about an ambulance, and about the storm that would follow when the powers at the police department got the call. I should wait, as long as he remained conscious, I should wait.
He was suddenly calm, wide-eyed again and stretched out on the couch like a cadaver, staring through the ceiling. I sat rubbing the welt that was rising on the back of my head.
“Rob,” he finally said.
It was nearly two in the morning, but I dialed the number. His wife answered, sounding resigned when she heard a woman on the line, but she woke him.
“Sorry,” I said, “Jim’s been O.D.’d. I need a little help.”
“What’s he on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe acid or maybe dust. Whatever it is, it’s stout.”
“On my way.”
I turned to see Jim ripping his clothes off, scattering them across the living room floor as he headed for the front door. I caught him as he struggled with the chain lock and eased him back to the couch.
“Just lie here,” I said. “Rob’s on the way over.”
I took his gun from the coffee table, and my own from under the couch cushion, and moved them and the screwdriver to the far end of the L-shaped sectional, stuffing everything back under the end cushion. I gathered his jeans and shoes and shirt and underwear from the floor and tossed them in a pile next to the couch. They were objects he might start seeing as alive, lurking on the floor, waiting to hurt him.
I sat down to watch him, hoping he would stay calm until Rob could make the thirty-five mile drive from Saratoga.
It was almost an hour later when at last Rob walked in the door. He’d stopped to pick up his ex-partner, Denny Dennison, before driving in. Jim was hunkered on the floor in the corner of the living room, staring at the ceramic greyhound next to the stereo.
“I know, I know,” he was saying, “she told me that the day I left. But she’s dead now.” He paused, tilting his head, chewing on his tongue while he waited for a reply. He sweated before the dog, leaning forward on his hands, the curve of his back dotted white where the knobs of his spine pushed against his skin. “Mother is dead,” he said.
Denny looked at me and then at Rob and shook his head, chuckling softly.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, “I’m sorry. We all been there, but sometimes it’s just goddamn funny. What’s he on? Did he come home naked?”
“No,” I said. “Disrobed after
arrival. My guess is PCP or acid.”
“Well this is one hell of a way to get together,” Denny said, “but I’m pleased to finally meet you.” We shook hands. His left eye seemed to be in a permanent squint.
“What do you think?” I asked Rob.
“I think he’s a fucked up motherfucker. I told the dude to be careful around here.”
Denny got Jim back onto the long part of the sectional and sat down on the shorter end. Jim was blathering on about rigs and dope and heat and handling it, but he was talking calmly, almost to himself. We watched him without speaking.
“How about some java,” Denny finally said.
We moved across the room to the tiny dining table next to the kitchen bar. Denny dumped four big spoons of sugar into his cup and almost filled it with milk, adding coffee last, until the liquid hung at the rim of the cup. He leaned down and sipped loudly. Rob, as always, took his black, and held his little finger extended straight out when he drank, as though it were at attention.
“So,” Rob said, “you think old Jim done himself?”
Denny kicked one black-booted foot up on the empty wooden chair next to him and shrugged.
“It’s happened,” he said.
“No way,” I said. “There is no way. Somebody slipped him something.”
“Hey man, I’m not accusing the dude,” Rob said. “Just asking a question.”
“And there’s no way he’d do it accidentally,” I added. “He knows from just a taste how much to take. He knows.” I didn’t want to admit to them that the possibility had simply not occurred to me.
We sat there, sipping coffee and staring at Jim. His eyes were closed, but I could see the blanket moving in time to his breathing.
“You gonna call his sergeant, what’s his name, that Dodd feller?” Denny asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even know the man. I met him once, for about ten minutes, when I went with Jim to drop off some evidence.”
“He’s not the sharpest dude I’ve ever run into,” Rob said. “Maybe you should go straight to the chief.”
I walked over and checked Jim’s pulse. It was steady, though fast.
“He’ll be okay,” Denny said. “Let him sleep it off.”
“He stopped breathing on me once already.” I rubbed a hand over the back of my head. There was a silver-dollar size bump there, tingling, like somebody was using it for a pin cushion.
“Look,” Denny said, “long as he ain’t foaming at the mouth he’ll be all right. Relax, girl. If he was gonna die he’d already’ve done it.”
“Anyway,” Rob said, “You can’t take him to the hospital. He’s buying morphine off two nurses, at least, that he’s told me about. Maybe more. Blow his cover in a minute.”
When 5 a.m. finally rolled around, Denny flipped on the “Farm and Ranch Report.”
“Got to see what’s doing,” he said. “I’m a farmer now, you know.”
“Some farmer,” Rob said.
“Hell with you too, boy.” Denny pushed a wad of blond hair off his forehead. Most of his left eyebrow was missing. Instead there was thick white scar tissue.
“How about I go after some breakfast,” Rob said.
“Do that,” said Denny. “I’m just about hungry.”
“Got some cash?” Rob asked. “I ran out without my wallet.”
Denny handed Rob a twenty and he stuffed it in his jeans pocket.
“In a few,” he said, and slipped out the door.
“So what do you think,” I said. “You don’t think he did it.”
“Darlin’,” Denny said, “I don’t think shit. The man’s still breathing, right? I’ll tell you right now I think the whole damn deal is about as screwed up as a thing can get.”
“Him working here?”
“Not just that. I damn near got killed by a dope dealer. I have no use for any of it. No use at all.”
“Jim said you were ambushed.”
“Been half blind ever since. But I can still see a heifer good enough to get a rope around her neck and I can find a barn door. I can even get my truck down the highway if it’s not cloudy outside.”
“I never heard exactly what came down.”
“It was a rip-off, a smooth out-and-out burn. Me and Rob was working down around San Angelo, supposed to buy two keys of brown off some Mexican out of Coahuila.” He took a sip of coffee and held the cup as he talked. “We were down there sweating our asses off in a hole-in-the-wall roadside motel on the edge of Ozona, down Crockett County, figuring they’re bringing it in somewhere between Del Rio and Langtry, or maybe, hell, who knows, we didn’t know. It’s about a hundred and four that afternoon, and this motel hadn’t even got a name. Even three hours after sunset you could feel the heat coming up out of the ground. One thing it did have, though, that room had a fucking back door. And Johnson damn sure found it.
“The beaners showed up without the dope, sad it would be along in a few minutes. I go in to take a leak and the next thing happens is a fucking gun comes through the bathroom door and there I am holding my dick, no heater, not even a fucking nail clipper to defend myself, I am on the floor and scrambling. I didn’t hear a damn thing when they popped the first cap. Not a goddam sound. Silence. And then I couldn’t see. I was fucking blind. I heard footsteps going out that back door and all I could think about was my kids. Just my kids.
“I’d been shot in the face, right here.” Pointing to his eyebrow. “Johnson, I don’t know how he did it, he hooked ‘em out that fucking back door and ran off into the desert. Ran smooth out of his shoes. The sheriff’s office found the fucker’s shoes forty yards from the back door. The Mexicans caught him, and they started beating the shit out of him when they did. Hell, one of them had a blade and was three-quarters of the way across his face when he badged them, and they stopped with the beating and ran off their own selves.”
There was a tap on the door, Rob’s special three-two-three knock. I got up to let him in.
“Chocolate, sugar, or blueberry,” he said, tossing a dozen-box of donuts on the coffee table. Denny waved him off.
“Rangers tracked them,” he continued. “Found them in Pandale, three days later. They’re still in Huntsville, picking cotton and getting butt-fucked, God bless the Texas Department of Corrections, and they’d best hope they never get out of there.”
“You talking about those Mexicans again?” Rob asked. “They won’t. Back-to-back life. Forget about it.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Denny looked at him and started to say something else, but reached for a doughnut and pushed the box toward me.
Rob had run. I couldn’t understand why he and Denny were still so tight, but I knew that they were. It was Denny who had talked Rob into moving from Houston. He wanted his partner around, he said, even though he’d been retired for nearly five years.
“I moved out near Saratoga right after I got out of the hospital,” Denny said. “Heard there was medicinal springs there. Hell, they ain’t been used since Spindletop blew, but the fishing’s good. I take my boy fishing every Saturday, up at Livingston or Toledo Bend. Got forty acres and some heifers, a barbecue pit in the back yard. A few laying hens and a rooster that thinks he’s the best-looking thing this side of Memphis. It’s cool in the shade.”
“Yeah,” Rob said, “bragged about clean air and pine trees until he talked me out into the countryside. It’s dull as dishwater and now I got a seventy-mile commute to the office. Is there any more coffee?”
Denny moved to the couch and squinted at the television, trying to get some kind of image through his damaged ocular nerve, but mostly just listening to the newscaster squawk about the price of pork bellies. Jim slept, tossing every so often on the couch.
Rob began pacing the living room, scattering blueberry donut crumbs until Denny told him to sit his white-boy ass down and be still. He tossed a half-eaten donut at Denny, poured himself another cup of coffee, and joined me at the dining table.
“Been working a cok
e case on some dudes in Houston,” he said. “Jam-up stuff.”
“And?”
“Just thought you might be tired. Offering a little help.”
“I could use a little help,” I said.
He pulled a baggie out of his shirt pocket and began cutting rails on the table top.
“Did you ever think things would go this direction?” he asked. “When you first signed on?”
“I had no idea.”
“Yeah. Well sometimes you just got to go with your instincts.” He snorted a couple of rails and handed me the tooter. “You know,” he said, “I watch the weather on TV and I hear that joker talking about barometric pressure and think fine, that’s fine, but what effect does it have on me? Is there anything out there controlling this scene, or what?”
I snuffed up the lines and passed the tooter back to him.
“Thanks for the bump.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Anytime at all. From me, you just say the word.”
I looked over at Jim. He was still asleep, one foot twitching slowly beneath the blanket.
Just say the word. The night before the bust-out in Pasadena, I’d been in my apartment, staring out the back window at a large field in the June glory of weeds, trying to gather myself for the return to real life, for the arrests, wondering what Hayden Smith would think when he discovered I was a cop, what all of them would think. Wondering if what I had done was right, and what it would feel like to be marked, to wear a uniform, or if it would make any kind of difference at all, and attempting not to think too hard about any of it. And Rob, his body taut, lean like an athlete, blowing into my living room at two in the morning with roses in one hand and champagne in the other. Not saying a word, laying out lines, opening champagne, moving quietly and efficiently, no time to waste, this was it, our final night as partners. All those weeks we’d been playing the role of lovers, and there was a hint of desperation in the way he slid his hands under my blouse. No wasted motion, lifting me to him, carrying me, and then the cool of white plaster against my back and the heat of him inside me, and the sweat-slick warmth of his skin, his breaths coming faster, and mine, and the scent of him, the overwhelming strength of him.
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