Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I said. “And I was thirsty. As you’ve noted, Detective, I’m frequently thirsty.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “About nine, I think. You can ask the bartender, she was serving me all night, before her husband came in and took over.”

  “How’d you know they were married?”

  “Because he came in a bit drunk and they fought,” I said. “Wives don’t like it when their husbands drink too much, or so I’ve heard. She was upset with him and she left, and then he went behind the bar.”

  “You guys talk much?”

  “A bit.”

  “Introduce yourselves?”

  “He said his name was Carl. We were both a little drunk, and the bar emptied out, so we chatted.”

  “About what?”

  “Lemmy,” I said. “He was a big Motörhead fan.”

  “Is that a band?”

  “Was. Lemmy’s dead.”

  Fitzpatrick nodded, uncrossed his legs, leaned forward again on the desk. His brow tightened, his eyes narrowed. “Now so is Carl Kruger,” he said. “And you were the last person—or perhaps the second-to-last person—to see him alive. Tell me what happened next.”

  “Next I got up to use the bathroom. When I opened the door and headed back to the bar, I was hit on the back of the head. Last thing I remember is hearing the weapon, a pipe or something, clang away. I heard it hit the ground, right before I did. Then I was slapped awake by your boys and dragged up and shown what happened to Carl behind the bar. And now here we are.”

  “Here we are,” agreed Fitzpatrick. He pushed himself up and turned his back to me and faced the mirror, shaking his head at whoever watched from the other side. He turned and said, “We believe you. We do. Despite our precautions due to your past, no one thinks you killed that guy. Turns out the back door to the bar was left open, where the killer or killers could have entered and escaped. Maybe they were waiting for the bar to empty and they got tired of waiting on your drunk ass to leave. Knocked you out, then held up Kruger. In any case the cash register was emptied. Also looks like they grabbed a few top-shelf bottles on the way out. Looks like your basic late-night bar robbery.”

  “Then why am I sitting here?” I asked, knowing full well. I pictured the javelin that had impaled Carl on his bar’s floor. So did Fitzpatrick.

  “Well, it’s about the murder itself,” he said. “Or the weapon involved, I should say.”

  He came and sat back down, crossed his legs with ease. He pursed his lips and gazed into his lap, like the final answer to the Sunday crossword was on the tip of his tongue. Without looking up, he said, “Someone hits you on the back of the head, knocks you out, and you hear the weapon hit the floor?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Then, he—or they—go to Kruger behind the bar. Maybe a gun is being pointed at him. They demand the money from the register, make big old Carl lie facedown while they take the cash.” Fitzpatrick peered up at me with a look of genuine fascination. “But the thing is, Carl had a gun too—a German Luger—that was right by his side. Maybe he reached for it when he saw them and they convinced him to set it down, promised he’d live if he didn’t resist.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Hard to figure a guy like that would stand down so easily,” said Fitzpatrick. “Big guy like that, drunk and cranking heavy metal?” He rubbed at his clean-shaven jowls, turned his head in profile. “Then there was all that broken glass on the floor, like someone had been throwing pints. Except it was in the opposite direction. It seems the intruders entered through the back, past the bathrooms. Hit you first and then approached Carl. But someone made quite a mess tossing glasses at the front door. Hell, I don’t know.” He sighed with bewilderment, forever perplexed by the reenactment of crimes. “Maybe it was a couple meth-heads. They charge in there, take you out, start trashing the place, and Carl resists and they decide to get creative. They see that long, sharp spear hanging above the bar. While they’ve got him on the ground, and one of them is emptying the register, the other one takes it down. Carl rolls over, tries to grab it, and, bam, too late, it’s driven into his throat. Game over. And off they go.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it figured,” I said.

  “We might, we might.” He offered that gentle smile again. “The simplest solutions are usually the correct ones, aren’t they?”

  We regarded each other across the desk. The black discs returned, another wave of stabbing pain through the backs of my eyes. He saw me wincing, said, “When you get out of here, you really ought to have that bump on your head checked out.”

  “Does that mean I can go?” I asked.

  “Soon enough,” he said. “It’s just . . . the thing that bothers me is that spear, that javelin or whatever. There was a picture above the register, of a woman throwing one at some kind of competition.”

  “He said it was another lifetime.”

  “Ah, so you two talked about more than just music, huh?”

  “I asked him about it,” I said. “I’m guessing many people do. It stands out in a place like that.”

  “And what did he mean by ‘another lifetime’? Was that his sister or something?”

  “Got me. It didn’t sound like he wanted to elaborate, so he changed the subject.”

  “To rock ’n’ roll.”

  “Yes.”

  A buzzer sounded in the room and Fitzpatrick frowned with irritation. “Hang on,” he said, and went to the door.

  I was left alone looking into the black mirror, too tired and pained to care about the details I was omitting. Fitzpatrick didn’t seem like a bad guy, as cops go, but I’d been hardwired for most of my life not to give them a bit more than necessary. All I wanted was a cool, dark room and a pillow and about fifteen hours of silence and sleep.

  A minute later the door opened again and Fitzpatrick reentered without his gentle smile. He was followed by a familiar figure.

  “Seems you’ve got a friend on the force,” he said. “Wouldn’t have guessed it.”

  He moved aside and Detective Lea Miller stepped forward.

  “Hello, Duck,” she said.

  Chapter 9

  It was late morning by the time I was released in her care. She agreed to give me a lift home in her unmarked Prius. The day was bright and blue, and there was a lightness to the city. Spring had settled in to stay. We didn’t speak as we inched through Chinatown and Little Italy, over on Grand, and up the Bowery. Despite the relentless development of the former flophouse stretch, the undercurrent of seediness remained. I hoped it always would.

  When I was a kid in the city, the Bowery was the land of bums and junkies and rock ’n’ roll. CBGB was long gone now; a John Varvatos boutique took its place, desecrating the holy spot with hipster threads that the Ramones would have spit on. Yet the homeless were still scattered in pockets along the sidewalk. They knew this land was theirs first. There were encampments flourishing along the east side of the avenue, never mind the outrageous rents behind the doors and up the elevators.

  I appreciated Lea’s quiet, her willingness to let a silence run its course. There had been a time, in the wake of my troubles with the McKay family, when she and I had something together. It was a matter of comfort. She had become immersed in the madness of that case too. Miller was the first cop to question me, after the first murder. She was a small, compact woman with a mousy beauty that she made little effort to enhance. Everything about her was sensible—from her shoes to her corduroys, to her diligence as a detective. A few months after the case I started to meet her at the Union Square dog run with Elvis and her mastiff, Freddy. Our pups would ignore each other and sniff around the perimeter of the pen as we sat together with few words exchanged. One afternoon I invited her back to my apartment, where she initiated the next step in our bleak, mute courtship. She was kind and warm-blooded in bed, with a hunger that surprised me. It might have led to something more if I had been less of a mess. As my drink
ing unraveled again, Lea stopped texting about doggie dates and I made no effort to follow up. Nothing felt worth it, least of all a relationship with a well-meaning cop.

  “How’s the hound?” she asked as we waited at a light.

  “Dead,” I said.

  “Oh, Duck.” She reached across and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry. When?”

  “Last fall.” I stared straight ahead. Watched a pack of giggling stoners stagger across the street to St. Marks. The world went right on, no matter the horrors. “How’s Freddy?” I asked.

  “He’s good. Getting up there, but still going strong.”

  We drifted the rest of the way up Third Avenue in silence. Elvis used to get jealous and howl anytime Freddy would jump up and collapse in my lap. I wondered when it would be time to go back to the shelter and rescue a new one. Not yet, maybe not ever. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to pass a shelter’s loose standards of adoption anymore.

  There was a hydrant in front of my building and Lea pulled in next to it and put an NYPD placard beneath the windshield. She looked at the cardboard taped over my front door.

  “What happened there?”

  “Just some kids,” I said. “Tagged it with graffiti. I haven’t bothered to fix it.”

  Lea nodded, didn’t push it. “How have you been, Duck? I mean, since we last saw each other? I worried about you.”

  “All’s well,” I said. “Or it was until last night. I was actually doing better. Even cut back on the drinking.”

  “I can tell. You look healthier.”

  I gave her a side-eye, put my hand on the door.

  “So, are you going to tell me what happened last night?” she asked.

  “I already told your colleague down there.”

  “Yeah, you were always so forthcoming with law enforcement.”

  “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

  “I want to know why you were there, and how you knew that guy?” She placed both hands on the steering wheel at ten and two. Gripped it until her knuckles whitened. “When I get back to my desk,” she said without turning. “And I start digging into this Carl Kruger’s life, I’m not going to find any connection to you? You’re telling me I won’t find any weirdness to this guy’s life, anything that might have interested you?”

  I pulled the handle and stepped out into the street. “It was good to see you, Lea,” I said. “Give Freddy a rub for me.” I closed the door. Heard the electric Prius click into gear. She pulled out and was already at the light by the time my key reached the lock.

  Inside, I tapped out two Xanax, four Advil. Tossed all six pills into my mouth at once, leaned under the faucet, and gulped them down. Wished I had something stronger. My painkiller connection had OD’d. He lived, but was scared straight and got out of the life. A fistful of fat white Vicodin would put me right in no time, or even better, some of those power-packed Oxies that he started getting toward the end. I knew I could have found that stuff elsewhere with minimal effort, but it had been a part of my chez Cohen rehabilitation. Now it would take a number of calls and conversations with past associates I didn’t care to contact. Lea said I looked healthier. It gave an odd dose of pride, before I remembered how I’d been with her: a bloated, catatonic corpse lucky to get it up.

  I needed to see Juliette Cohen and Stevie again. Those two were responsible for whatever health I could muster. I needed that stability. There’s only so much you can unravel in the presence of a kid in grade school. I knew another bender was inevitable living alone, with not even an animal to keep me accountable. If I had any sense, I’d go over there and grovel for forgiveness, beg to be permitted back into their gilded fold. I’d been so quick to flee the moment I was summoned by Cass. I didn’t hesitate. Hell, Juliette caught me smiling when I read Cass’s text. Good little bird dog, run back to your master, or mistress, as the case may be. I resolved to get some sleep after the Xanies kicked in. Then I’d reach out to Juliette. Convince her to take me back. I’d promise to cut Cass out of my life. Her lover’s fall over that waterfall was not my problem. Forget I ever spoke to Carl Kruger, banish the image of that javelin impaled through his throat.

  I felt the pills making me woozy with little else in my belly. I staggered to my bedroom with a book, some devilish Nick Tosches, and tried to read a page. I made it through a paragraph where the narrator bit through the femoral artery of a gorgeous young coed. He sucked the blood from her thigh, and then rushed her to the hospital. It was the last image I had before the black discs returned and the book fell from my hands and I was out.

  * * *

  It was dead of night when I woke. I reached for my phone by the bed. A few past three a.m. The soul’s midnight, I’d read, the hour of darkest depths. My headache was gone. I felt the egg on the back of my head and found it shrunken. My body felt rested and strangely right. I considered my options. There would be no more sleep tonight; my eyes had opened without the urge to snooze. If I hustled, there was time for a few rounds at a nearby pub before the four a.m. call. I resisted that option. See, Lea, I wasn’t lying, I’m improving.... Instead, the prosperous path: a morning swim with my old Masters group. It had been too long. The swim lessons with Stevie provided the chlorine fix, but it wasn’t the same as those sensory-deprived laps, slogging up and back under fluorescent light, vision a dreamscape of moving water and body parts. Finding the breath again, feeling the body stretch and ache and pull over the black line on the bottom, flipping at the cross, pushing off in a streamline. A few languid dolphin kicks. I knew it was what I needed. Knew it would always be my tether to sanity.

  But first there were two hours to kill. The Masters group did not meet until five thirty a.m. The darkest hours still needed to be filled. A few episodes on Netflix perhaps, some porn on the laptop, or back to the Tosches novel and more of his bloodsucking, all options that held a certain appeal, but not as much as my curiosity about Carl Kruger. I would return to Juliette and Stevie soon, but first a bit more research was required. Victor Wingate was a best-selling author, albeit years ago. He must have an agent, an editor. Would he have told them about his new book? Cass said he was thrilled, filled with inspiration, and immersed in the tale of Carl Kruger, investigating the villainy that consumed his childhood. The villains were still out there, infecting the highest levels of sport. Mad scientists with potions of performance enhancement, it was the dark art of athletes, whose multimillion-dollar contracts depended on it, whose multibillion-dollar teams and federations looked the other way.

  It wasn’t difficult to find Victor’s past representation. Walk Through Fire had been a hit, earning enough for all parties involved to ensure the author a follow-up whenever he was ready. I found Wingate attached to an agent named Alex at Writers Room, and an editor named Colin at Anchor Press. Both were thanked prominently in the Acknowledgments. But there was nothing recent in the search results, nothing within the last six years. No indication that his comeback book on Kruger had been sold, or was even making the rounds. Maybe Wingate was still in the early stages and was keeping a wrap on his research. Or maybe agent and editor had given up on the one-hit chump, left him to his has-been career in the country. I emailed both from an incognito AOL account. It was easily tracked, but who cared? A short note with the subject heading Inquiry About Victor Wingate. I introduced myself as a source for his most recent project, and asked if they knew what would come of it now, after his untimely demise. I didn’t elaborate, hoped it was enough to elicit a reply. Hit SEND.

  Besides Cass, and the Krugers, who else would have known he was writing this story? If he was immersed in it, that meant he must have been speaking to plenty of folks. Word would spread, perhaps among those with a vested interest in silencing it. Where was his computer? Was there a working manuscript, transcripts of interviews, research compiled?

  I considered Victor’s loony sister, Susie, intent on ejecting Cass from her brother’s home, now hers. I remembered Cass mentioning Victor’s paranoia in the days before his d
eath. Locking doors, rushing off in the mornings to write elsewhere. Someone had been circling. They were taking measures to shut things down, until the most extreme measure was taken.

  I felt myself caught in the rip current of curiosity, felt the pull of the tide sucking me out to sea. What was it that lifeguards said about riptides? Don’t fight it. If you try to swim against it, you’ll lose. All you can do is let it take you, and when the current is through with you, swim around it and back to shore.

  * * *

  My phone buzzed. A 518 number, upstate, it must be her.

  “That you?” I asked by way of greeting.

  “It’s me,” said Cass. “I’m sorry we didn’t connect earlier.” No explanation offered.

  “Carl Kruger is dead,” I said.

  “I know.” Her voice was clear and hard, with midday clarity.

  “How? Did Uli call you? You didn’t tell me you knew them.”

  “Duck, it’s in the news,” she said. “You’re in the news. I just saw it. Where are you?”

  “Home, it’s the middle of the night, Cass. I was in custody for most of yesterday. I think I have another concussion. Somebody hit me, before killing Carl.”

  “I know,” she said again. “It’s online, in the Post. Your old buddy Roy Perry wrote the story.”

  “Lovely.” I hoped to make it to the pool before the paper made it to the newsstands. At least give me that final underwater respite before the insanity began.

  I was surprised I hadn’t heard from Roy. We’d been close once, or as close as a friendship can be that revolves around drugs and heavy boozing. Last I saw him, it looked like the blow had taken over his face. He was unimpressed by my houseboy cleanup, courtesy of Juliette Cohen. I told him I wasn’t using anymore, which meant there was little reason for us to hang out.

  “You sound wide-awake,” I said.

  “I’ve barely slept since Victor. I’m sorry to call at this hour, I didn’t even realize it was so late.”