The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  “Uh-huh.” My other hand searched beneath the couch until shaky fingers found the remote. I shut down the fucking guitar but its twang kept plucking. I was frantic with thirst, my tongue plastered to the roof of my mouth. Thankfully, there was a glass of day-old agua on the far end of the coffee table. When I looked at the Turkey bottle my stomach screamed.

  “I’m waking you up?”

  “Uh-huh.” I stared at my fingers but they were wrapped so tightly around the glass I couldn’t tell if they were still shaking.

  “It’s not that early,” Simon said, his voice both defensive and accusatory.

  “What time is it?” On my best days I had trouble reading the VCR’s little clock numbers.

  “Eight-thirty. What’s the matter with you? You sound strange.” All his defensiveness was gone.

  “Nothing’s the matter. I’m sluggish when I’m sleep deprived.” Sluggish and stiff. I tried to stretch my back, lost the will, and sank back onto the couch.

  “Or when you’re fucked up.”

  “I’m not fucked up. Fucked up is fun and I’m not having any. What’s with you? Are you trying to torture me with wake-up calls? I want sleep.” I reached back over to the table and grabbed a cigarette.

  “You’re not going back to sleep. I hear your hacking. You ought to stop with the cigarettes. The rest of it just makes you sick or stupid but the smokes are going to kill you.”

  I looked at the burning stick in my hand, took another drag, and stubbed it out. “You are trying to torture me,” I complained.

  “If you think concern is torture,” Simon buttoned down. “Look, I didn’t call to crap around. I got an early morning complaint. About you.”

  “From who? I drank alone last night.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said sarcastically. “But before your private party you apparently broke into Reb Yonah’s house. Reb Yonah called Rabbi Sheinfeld; Rabbi Sheinfeld called me. Reb Yonah also accused you of barging into the Yeshiva during prayers, despite his request that you visit some other time. Do you remember any of this, Matt-man?”

  “Yeah, Simon, I remember. Clearer than the Rabbi. When I knocked on Saperstein’s door he responded in Yiddish. I thought he’d invited me inside.”

  “Reb Yonah, not Saperstein, okay?”

  I held my temper. “What can I tell you, I thought the Reb invited me in.”

  “And the prayers,” Simon grilled.

  “I didn’t disrupt anything. I didn’t even look into the prayer room.”

  “Then how did he know you were there?”

  I found myself reluctant to mention Yakov. “How the fuck do I know? Maybe he followed me.”

  My anger shut him up but his heavy breathing continued. “You’re really feeling the heat, aren’t you?” I asked with false sympathy. My body was pounding at me to get off the telephone.

  “Yeah,” he muttered grudgingly, his annoyance slowly fading.

  “You get the work-ups from Downtown?”

  “Don’t ask. It’ll just set me off again.”

  So I didn’t. Just sat there smoking until he finished settling down.

  “Look,” Simon finally said. “I’m sorry I jumped on you, okay?”

  “Sure. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? Just don’t go believing everything a Rabbi tells you.”

  He tried to chuckle. “I’ll try to remember. In the meantime, why don’t you stay away from the Hasidim?”

  I remembered Yakov’s shiva period. “I won’t go back for a while, Simon, but I’ll have to return sometime. Most of the people there were at the shootings.”

  He couldn’t argue and he knew it. “Well, wait until Reb Yonah cools down, will you?”

  “I’d like to get it done before I start using senior citizen discounts.”

  This time the chuckle was real. “You won’t have to wait that long. Why don’t you lay off the Yeshiva and start nailing Kelly and the Avengers?”

  “Sounds like a rock group.”

  “This group doesn’t bite heads off rubber rats. They murder Rabbis.”

  “I won’t forget, I promise.”

  “Good.”

  Good for him, maybe, but our conversation just added to my four-star headache. I believed Simon’s anxiety related more to his emerging Jewish identity than any actual risk to his client. No matter, his misguided intensity was hard to handle.

  I needed java, nicotine, and out of the house. I pushed myself off the couch, looked for some clean clothes, but settled after pulling on a fresh pair of socks. For penance, I decided to walk, not drive, to Charley’s for coffee.

  I had her made by the time I eased down the front steps. I liked to think my neighborhood was mixed, but young Black women invariably came coupled with the area’s music or art students. They didn’t sit alone reading paperbacks in dirty green Fords. In my town, once a neighborhood was defined it stayed that way. It took a moment of painful stretching at the bottom of the stairs to make certain I was her mark. Despite an effort to cover, she almost licked her lips.

  I crossed the street, strolled part way up the block, and walked to the front door of an apartment building. I blocked her view with my body while I jimmied my way inside. When I peeked out the hall window she was staring toward the door I’d entered but didn’t move her Taurus. The young lady had a clear view, and what goes in also comes out.

  I found the door to the basement, hurried downstairs, and climbed out a rear window looking onto the apartment building’s back alley. I walked down the alley until I was behind her car, cut through a side yard, then trotted up the street and yanked the passenger door open.

  “What the hell…” Her head snapped around, her expression flashing fear and surprise.

  “Hello,” I said easily. “I thought we might formally introduce ourselves, but first let me catch my breath.”

  “Catch it somewhere else! This here car is mine.” Once she saw who was next to her, the fear ebbed from her face. “Now get the hell out,” she demanded.

  “Soon.” Up close I realized she was not only young, she was beautiful. High cheekbones, Asian eyes, firm lips, and a head full of shiny ringlets. The lady belonged on a stage, not on a stake-out. “I’ll leave as soon as you tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “What’s it look like?” she said, her large slanted eyes glittering.

  “Well, it looked like you were watching me.”

  “Then it looked wrong. I’m just killing time.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m surprised. I didn’t know carjacks think at all.”

  “Carjack?”

  “What would you call what you’re doing? Unless you’re after something different from money.”

  I resisted imagining the different, then realized I didn’t care what she was doing. I even regretted frightening her. Maybe my warmth toward Yakov was spreading to include youth in general. I hoped not.

  Since I wasn’t going to beat any information out of her, I settled for delivering some. “You’re bullshitting, but I’ll let it go—this time. I don’t like looking over my shoulder so stay away from me. I’m betting you’re some kind of reporter, but I’m not news. You want information you find someone else to follow. Anyone else.”

  I climbed out of the car then stuck my head back inside. “And the next time you work a stake keep your doors locked.” I stood and slammed the metal hard enough to add to my headache.

  I didn’t care whether she followed me or not. My spontaneous exercise in futility had upset my stomach. If I didn’t get to Charley’s soon, I’d die on the damn street.

  During my walk I thought about the first time my father-in-law, Lou, tried Phil’s cooking. He’d parked his bulk behind one of the signed enamel-top tables and grunted, “I should have figured. An extension of your apartment. What’s with you, Boychik? The thirties and forties do not represent all that was pure about America. I can tell you stories of the war years that would make the government’s chazarai during Vietnam look like pab
ulum.”

  And he could. A longtime wheel in Chicago’s Daley machine, Lou once had access to more garbage than Fresh Kills landfill. Still, with all his grumbling about Charley’s deco/depression decor, he never left without muttering “good traif.” No surprise, Phil cooked a mean morning meal.

  Which didn’t help explain why the place was usually empty. It wasn’t as if Phil had no friends. Sometime before the Mayan civilization he’d been a cop, and Charley had been his partner. Phil didn’t talk about why they had quit the force and opened the restaurant. I never asked. Charley was still alive when I ate there during my former life as a social worker. In those days it was a joint where off-duty police and off-duty social workers mingled without sneers. When I finally crawled out of hibernation after Chana and Becky’s deaths, Charley was also dead and Phil was doing the cooking. Despite vast improvement in the food and the city’s gentrification of the area, business trickled away. Maybe the place was too funky for the new neighborhood residents or the block too fancy for the old regulars.

  Phil didn’t seem to care. He still had his police friends, they just didn’t eat in his place. WhenI needed information he was one of two. The other was Julius. Between them I had legs on both sides of the law.

  I opened the door to the storefront diner and walked in to empty quiet. My belly was queasy enough to make the black and white tile dance underfoot. When I got to the counter I sat on a tall round backless and grasped the heavy sugar bottle with the silvery top. The weight of the glass was reassuring.

  “Look at you.” A broad grin slashed through Phil’s weather-beaten, craggy face. “Hard to say whether you’re starting the binge or just finishing?”

  I looked at him balefully, “What will you think after I ask you for six aspirin and a pot of black.” My earlier four had been neutralized by my skirmish with the lady. “Oh, and maybe turn off the lights and pull the shades.”

  “‘Cept for the aspirin and coffee it sounds pretty sexy.”

  Startled, I slowly spun the stool toward the corner booth and Red’s throaty purr. There were traces of lipstick on the off-white coffee mug in front of her. It didn’t matter; she always wore enough to share. If Charley’s was the forties, Red was fifties’ costume jewelry. Serious paint, Susan Hayward red, and flattering foundation garments added up to ageless B-girl beauty. From a distance she might have been fifteen or fifty.

  “Hard to be sexy when the fireworks are bursting inside your head, sweetie.”

  “At least somebody has fun in the dark,” she pouted.

  “Maybe somebody, Red. Not me.”

  “I didn’t hear you complaining last night,” Phil grunted to his ladyfriend. “You tie this on during work?” he asked me with amused curiosity.

  I spun back around to face him. “Nah, after. At home. Alone.” I glanced over my shoulder but Red had gone back to painting her nails over the newspaper.

  “Are you working on something that’s depressing you?”

  The promise I’d made to think about what bothered me flickered, but the anvil in my head interfered. “No,” I said with a tight throat. “An error of judgment. Valium and alcohol make for a delicate juggle.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk to me about drugs.”

  “Why not? You haven’t been a cop for twenty-five years and you wouldn’t bust me if you were. When did you start walking the twelve steps?” I heard the hangover nasties in my voice.

  So did Phil. He took a long look at my face then sliced a thick slab off the fresh ham he always kept skewered and slapped it on the grill.

  The smell instantly aroused my already upset stomach. “I didn’t order that,” I protested.

  “I know.”

  “You already had your breakfast,” I accused.

  “I know that too.” He cut another piece then threw it on the grill.

  “Maybe you are still on the force, you fucking sadist.”

  “You put that on for no reason?” Red’s voice, no longer a purr, rammed the back of my head.

  Phil rubbed his hands on his full length apron and looked over my shoulder. “I got a reason.” He turned his eyes back to me. “Damn right I don’t do no twelve step. I don’t have to. I like a drink. A lot of drinks. But I know the line. You don’t. There’s never been the morning I couldn’t come down here and inhale the smell of burning flesh. You oughta see your face.”

  My gut rocked and I tried to eliminate the need to breathe.

  “Hell,” Phil said.

  His face blurred and beads of sweat popped onto my forehead.

  “Hell,” he repeated. “I just threw on ham. If the she-devil hadn’t been here I’da throwed on roast beef and let you watch the fat sizzle, the blood drip…”

  I couldn’t listen. I jumped off the stool and raced to the bathroom hoping I’d make it on time.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said when I finally returned. The meat was off the stove and the two of them were in the booth showing off their dental work. I walked over to my seat, lit a cigarette, and poured a cup from the pot of coffee he’d left on the counter.

  “The aspirin are on the saucer,” Red said.

  I nodded but kept my eyes averted. “I don’t think I need them,” I said sheepishly.

  They both burst out laughing and after a moment’s embarrassed hesitation, so did I.

  Once the laughter died I sat quietly drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes until the rest of my headache shuddered into the background. When my residual embarrassment disappeared I took my cup and joined the merry pranksters in their booth.

  “You ready to eat?” Phil asked.

  “I think I’ll pass,” I replied with a weak grin. “I could keep it down but…”

  They smiled at my false bravado before Red stared at the back of her hands. Phil eyed me carefully. “So what’s got you messed up? You were going to lay off working the personals.”

  He was talking about a couple of cases that had been loaded with relationship entanglements. Both had left me battered and bruised. One also left a bullet in my thigh, an automatic airport alarm trigger.

  “This one isn’t personal,” I said.

  “So what gives?” he demanded. “What’s the case?”

  I’d always felt uncomfortable asking Phil for information, guilty I had nothing to trade but my appetite. Now, for an isolated moment, I had a reassuring glimpse into his side of our equation. “Jeez, Phil, a little eager, aren’t you? Your fuzz-buddies stopped talking?”

  Something was bothering him but before he spoke Red jumped in. “Believe me shamus, no one stopped talking. They need my Phil’s thinking on things. You should of seen this place yesterday.”

  I turned my head too quickly for Phil to hide his displeasure. “The Rabbi thing,” I guessed.

  On the button. “Why do you say that?” he asked, as surprise rearranged his face.

  “The police don’t consult anybody if the stiff ain’t white, rich, or a headline.”

  Phil rubbed his hands across his aproned chest. “I never could understand why you became a cop. Even private. You’re almost pinko, you don’t like the criminal justice system, and you’re more scared of Big Brother than a thief hiding under a parked car.”

  I lifted my hands. “Communism is dead, cook. Don’t you read the papers? And look who’s talking paranoid. You’re as uneasy about institutions as I am.”

  “For different reasons,” he grumbled.

  “For different reasons,” I agreed.

  After a moment’s hesitation I volunteered, “I’m working on the same thing.”

  “What same thing?” Phil asked.

  “The Rabbi case.”

  He tipped an imaginary cap, but didn’t seem overwhelmed. Red glanced up from the newspaper.

  “How did you get involved?” he asked.

  “Simon Roth is the Rambo Rabbi’s lawyer.”

  Phil looked at Red. “I don’t know why anyone comes to see me,” he said. “My mind is shot. You can’t do no one no good if you can�
��t fucking string two and two.” He turned back to me. “They told me about Roth. I should have known that meant you.”

  I shrugged. He should have known. “Who told you about Simon?” I asked.

  Phil ignored the question, reached into my cigarettes and helped himself.

  Red stiffened. “Goddamnit, you old asshole, maybe your mind is shot! Just ‘cause you didn’t guess Dagwood the Gumshoe was working this Jew thing you gotta be double dumb and light up?” She pushed at his arm. “Let me out of here, will you?”

  Phil slid off the booth and pushed at his few remaining white hairs as Red brushed past. He sat back down with a sigh but kept the cigarette. “No one preaches as good as the converted,” he said, inhaling as she went through the door leading to their second-floor apartment.

  “Why were the Blues here to see you?” I was still stuck on my case. Besides, I didn’t like to discuss other people’s drug habits.

  “A big case makes them want to shoot the shit,” he said, slipping around my question. “What’s your angle?”

  I saw no reason to return the slide. “Dirt digging on Kelly and the White Avengers.”

  Phil grinned. “Always get the good stuff, don’t you? Roth likes to make you look up life’s heinie.”

  “It’s what I do best,” I replied, worried it might be true.

  The fucker nodded his agreement. “At least you won’t have much to do,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’ll get your information from the newspapers. Nobody from that neighborhood is going to talk to you. Maybe the beards, but I don’t know anyone else who will.”

  I didn’t know whether to be insulted by his term for the Hasids or surprised that I noticed. “Why won’t people talk?” I asked, avoiding the dilemma. “I’ve lived in some pretty tight Irish neighborhoods. Hell, I even married green.”

  “You also divorced her. Nobody’s gonna talk for three reasons. One, you’re an outsider. Two, you’re an outsider. You guess the third.”

  I tried to shake him off. “Megan divorced me. Look, it might be hard to get to the gang, but decent people everywhere are disgusted by those kinds of hatemongers.”