by Norman Green
“Well, if this guy Prior has already killed one person to protect his privacy, I don’t want anything else to go wrong.”
“That’s so nice, you worrying about me. Why don’t you tell me about this Prior individual.”
He shook his head. “I really think—”
“Honey,” she said, interrupting him. “Look, the best place to hide is always in plain sight. You wanna look into someone else’s dirty laundry on a computer, you go to the library and use a public machine. Even if somebody should come looking, what are they gonna do, sit there all day long to see if you come back? You want my help or not?”
He looked at her, thought it over for a minute. “All right,” he said finally. “As long as you’re sure he can’t get back to you. The guy lives up on the hill in Alpine, rides a bike, a real beauty…” She pulled a pad out of her bag and started taking notes.
She looked up when he was done. “That it?”
“No,” he said. “First, I want to be absolutely sure you can do this without endangering yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t stay alive this long by being stupid.”
“Fine. But if you mess up, if you feel uncomfortable, you even see the wrong guy in the rearview mirror, you call me.”
“Done.”
“Okay. Second, forget about where he lives, where he goes, and all that. Here’s what I really want you to find out….”
Stoney sat in his car in the parking lot behind the diner, watching the cars next door lining up for the car wash. It took a while, but when he felt ready, he called Donna on her cell phone.
“I got a favor to ask,” he said when she came on the line.
“Yes? What would that be?” She sounded strangely detached.
“A couple of favors, actually.”
“Why not?” she said calmly. “I’ve got no life anyway, I was just sitting here waiting for someone to call me and give me something to do.”
He ignored that. “First,” he said, “stay home tonight. And second, keep Marisa home with you.”
“She’ll be so thrilled,” Donna said. “After the fight the two of us had this morning, she gets a chance to spend another evening at home with Mom. What could be more exciting?” Donna exhaled fatigue into the phone. “Your friend from Brooklyn brought her home early this morning,” she said. “We had it out. She and I. She told me everything.”
“Everything? What everything?”
“I don’t want to do this on the telephone.”
“Man, you really know how to torture me, you know that?”
“You’re a big boy. You can take it.”
“God.”
“This hasn’t been easy for me, either, you know.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. Doing this on the phone is a bad idea. How about we meet tomorrow morning, before you go to work.”
“All right,” she said. “Seven o’clock. Where?”
“Westwood Pancake House,” he said. “That’s the diner across the street from the hospital.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, and she hung up. Stoney looked at his phone for a minute, then dialed Tuco’s cell number.
“Yeah.” Tuco sounded groggy.
“What’s up?” Stoney asked him.
“Nothing. Your daughter’s at home.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Why are you holding out on me, you little fuck? He wanted to ask, but he held it in. He could feel the fury building up inside, it had started when he first looked at the pictures Tina had given him. “Anything else I should know about?”
“The world is fulla shit you should probably know about.”
“Tuco, what the fuck happened last night?”
“Look, Stoney, you trust me? You trust me or what?”
“Fuck that,” Stoney said. “I wanna know what the fuck is going on.”
“Stoney, you want me to keep her safe, am I right? I did that. Right now she is safe at home, probably up in her bed. I did what you axed me to do.”
Stoney swallowed his anger. The kid actually did more than I asked him to, he thought. And ratting somebody out, even to me, goes against everything he grew up believing. Still…“All right,” Stoney said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
TWELVE
Five o’clock in the fucking morning, and after a sleepless night. You gotta be kidding me…. Stoney parked on a quiet street in Englewood, New Jersey, and walked back to the arena. It was a small block building just inside the edge of the park. The water tower that cooled the refrigeration system sat on the corner of the roof, blowing water vapor into the predawn sky. He heard the referee’s whistle just as he went through the side door. He found a spot by the rail just in time to see a guy in a striped shirt escort some kid off the ice. It was obvious the kid was angry, he slammed his stick to the ground and threw himself into the plastic chair that served as the penalty box. The ref stood by the rail and talked to the kid for a few seconds. Calming him down, Stoney thought. Telling him what he did wrong. He did it quietly, too, without yelling at the kid. Stoney watched the guy. Tall, a little paunchy, thinning hair, late thirties. Jesus, Stoney thought. I get up early one time to come down here and I’m all pissed off. Wonder how many times this guy’s done it? And for what? So that a bunch of thirteen-year-old carpet rats can have a hockey league. Yeah, sure, one of them is probably his, but still.
The penalty made the team from Closter shorthanded. The father who was coaching them sent four fresh bodies onto the ice. One of them was a little shorter than the other kids, and he skated around in a couple of quick circles to warm up. Even with the helmet, the pads, the gloves, and all the rest of it, Stoney knew the kid was his son, Dennis.
Stoney felt the weight of an elephant sitting on his chest, wondered briefly if he might not be having a heart attack, but it was just the kid, just his fear that he’d lost him, or worse, messed him up somehow. He had always operated under the conceit that his behavior hadn’t hurt anyone but himself, that he paid his own way, that he’d never walked away owing anybody, but it came to him right there, leaning on the rail watching his kid skate, that he’d been hiding from the truth, believing his own bullshit so that he could do what he needed to do. He wondered, then, what kind of price this kid was going to have to pay for his father’s misdeeds. Dennis went at things with a single-minded focus and drive that was very reminiscent of the monomania which Stoney had noticed was very common among addicts.
He couldn’t think of anything to do about it.
The father in the striped shirt blew his whistle, and they got the game started again. Stoney had bought Dennis a pair of street skates and some lessons, back before he and Donna had split. The kid had practiced in the driveway with feverish determination, starting as soon as the two of them had gotten home from the store. Now he was a much better skater than he’d been the last time Stoney had seen him. The Closter team’s penalty-killing strategy consisted of the five kids from the other team chasing Dennis around. The kid was quick, it was hard to get a clean hit on him, and he handled the puck well. After a little better than a minute, they boxed him in down in one corner of his own end, and he passed the puck out to one of his teammates. They gave it back to him soon enough, though, and as the penalty ended, he charged through center ice and rushed the opposing goalie. He didn’t get a shot off, one of their defensemen knocked him off the puck, but by then, Closter was back at full strength.
Yeah, sure, Stoney thought. These other guys come out here every week for the little bastards, and you think you did something good because you bought the kid a pair of skates. They had “No Smoking” signs up all over the place, so Stoney went over by the door and lit up. It’s no good telling yourself that you’re doing the best you can, he thought. You’ve done more harm than good.
He’d opened Tina Finbury’s white envelope the day before, looked at the pictures before reading the report. New Jersey was one of those states that had a lot of regulations about what can and cannot take place ins
ide a strip joint. As a result of that, a girl in a bikini was basically all you got to look at. The bar was called the Jupiter Club, it was in South Hackensack, down by the Teterboro Airport. There was one shot of the exterior. The inside of the place looked like they all did: he could practically smell it. There were two dancers in most of the rest of the pictures. One of them was Marisa. She wore a tiny metallic-silver thong bikini, and she had the usual garter strap around one upper thigh, a bunch of paper money stuck underneath it. Her skin was ghostly white in the spotlights, and the angle of the shots made her look taller, and older, than she was in real life. There were enough pictures to give Stoney more information than he really needed. She was squatting down in one, legs apart, holding the garter strap open so that one of the patrons could show his appreciation while she watched disdainfully. The guy might have been Charles David Prior, but he had his back to the camera, and Stoney couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was adding two and two and coming up with five, but he figured he didn’t need Einstein’s brain to figure out why she’d told him that Donna was seeing Prior. So assume the guy in the strip club with his back to the camera really is Prior, Marisa tells me that Donna is seeing the guy, probably thought I’d kill him, Stoney thought. I’m her trump card, and she’s betting I can end the game. Why would she want Prior dead? What had he done?
In another shot, she had her back to the edge of the stage, and she was bent over, stiff-legged, her palms flat on the floor. There were others, too, as well as the written report that went with them. Jesus, why couldn’t she have taken after her mother? He asked himself that for the umpteenth time. He glanced through the rest of the pictures quickly, just to make sure they held no more surprises, skimmed through the report. There had been some ugly stuff there, the part about the escort service had been worse than the pictures, really, almost more than he could handle.
The other team scored a goal. The players on that team cheered, along with some of the fathers. The kids skated around high-fiving one another. Two of them fell down, occasioning some laughter and name-calling. Stoney had not been following the game, he didn’t know if Dennis had been on the ice for the goal or not. Pay more attention, he told himself. Isn’t that what this is supposed to be about? It was hard, though. Even without everything else he had on his mind, the fact was, he’d never played hockey, never watched any of the games, and he couldn’t get into it. Bunch of kids with sticks skating around in circles, knocking one another down…
Marisa wore the same expression in all of the shots where you could see her face. It was a lot like the one favored by the broad across the hall from Mrs. Cho’s place; a little bit of euphoria, a little bit more of contempt, and some bemused indulgence. The woman knows what she’s got, and she knows what we’ll do to get it. Now it appeared that Marisa had discovered that, as well. Having the power was one thing, though. Knowing how to use it without getting yourself jammed up was something else.
He’d been sick, at first, he remembered feeling the same way, years ago, when they told him his mother was dying of cancer. Sick, helpless, disbelieving. The rage passed over him in recurring waves, for five or ten seconds at a time he was capable of any destructive act his mind could conjure up, but the waves seemed to recede as quickly as they came. So far. After some of the shock had worn off, mostly what he felt was sorrow. Kids, even smart ones, can be so stupid….
He wondered how Donna was going to take it. He had talked it over with Benny, at Fat Tommy’s insistence, the previous afternoon.
“Who took the pictures?” Benny wanted to know. It was hard to tell Benny the parts you wanted and leave the rest out. Evasive action was no good with him, he was worse than a fucking lawyer.
Stoney sighed. “This investigator I hired.”
“You hired a detective? Why?”
God, dealing with this guy was like having another wife. “I thought Donna was stepping out on me.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I got the impression, talking to Marisa.”
“Oh. Was she?”
“No.”
“So how come the investigator was following Marisa?”
“I guess she smelled a rat.”
“All right, fine. So your seventeen-year-old daughter is dancing in a club.” Benny stared at him. “Now you wanna go kill someone. Safe assumption?”
Stoney looked at Benny for a long count. “Is this conversation privileged?”
“You oughta know by now if you can trust me or not.”
“All right, yeah, I’m thinking I should torch the place,” Stoney said. “Or the guy who owns it. Or both.”
Benny looked at him, unblinking. “You know, I believe you could do it.”
“Fucking right I could do it.”
“So say you burn the place down, and a fireman gets killed fighting the fire. How you gonna feel, then?”
Stoney shook his head, then shrugged. “He’s supposed to know better.”
“C’mon, man, some putz is trying to do his job and he gets roasted alive because you want to inconvenience some asshole who’s had the temerity to pay your daughter for doing something she apparently wants to do, of her own volition. I didn’t see anybody holding a gun to her head.”
Stoney kept his voice calm. “She’s underage, Benny.”
“Fine, she’s underage. You could go to the cops, rat the guy out, you could probably get him shut down. So what?”
“What do you mean, ‘So what?’”
“So fucking what? You think this place is the only strip joint around? You told me Marisa’s seventeen, that means she’s gonna be eighteen in a matter of months. What’s to stop her from going right back out to this place the day after her birthday? Or another one just like it? Or worse?”
“Me, that’s what. I’ll kill her.”
“Sure you will. Look, you asked my opinion, here it is. You and your wife been doing the addict-codependant mambo ever since you got married. Who do you think has been raising these two kids of yours? The other kids they hang with, the shit they watch on television, and maybe a teacher or two, if you’re lucky. Is it any wonder they’re a little bit fucked up?” He waited for his words to sink in a little, then continued. “There’s only one person involved in this mess whose behavior you have any control over.” He stopped then, and waited.
“Yeah, all right,” Stoney said, gritting his teeth. “Me.”
“Yeah, you. Maybe. You go off on this kid, okay, you start yelling and making all kinda threats, you go whack the guy owns the strip club, and I promise you, a year from now, she’ll be taking it off in some other joint.” He waited, again, let the weight of that settle on Stoney’s shoulders. “I promise you. And you know where it goes from there.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to even think it, let alone say it out loud.
Benny was not one to pull his punches. “Yeah. She’ll be doing the horizontal boogaloo with whoever has the price of the dance. Let me ask you one thing. What’s your objective in this? What do you really want?”
It took him a few seconds. “I want to get her out of it.”
“Are you sure? Because if you just want to get back at somebody, okay, if you just want to hit somebody so you can feel better about yourself, I can’t help you. I’m guessing you already know how to do that.”
“Look, I’m not gonna lie to you, Benny, I want the guy’s dick in my pocket. But not as bad as I want to get Marisa out.”
“All right. Start by admitting that you can’t control what she does. Not for long, anyhow. Try to look at it this way: your daughter’s in trouble, and she needs your help. Maybe you can show her how to make smarter decisions, but you’ve got to start by making smarter ones yourself. You know what they say, Stoney.”
“What’s that?”
“Do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.”
“I understand that. But I gotta tell her something, Benny.”
“Yeah, you do. Just remember, you’ll be walking a fine line. Lose you
r balance, you might lose your daughter, too.”
The kids were cheering again, the Closter team had scored a goal, but they were still behind, and they were running out of time. There was another group of kids, even younger, down at the end of the building, waiting their turn. Stoney didn’t know if Dennis had noticed him or not, the kid had given no sign, but when the game ended, he skated over.
“Hi, Dad.” The kid kept his voice low, and he avoided eye contact.
“Hey. Good game, kid.”
“We lost, Dad.”
“Yeah, I saw that. But I saw how you killed that penalty, too. You played a good game.”
Dennis looked down at the ice. “Thanks,” he said, after a few seconds. “You coming home soon?”
So easy to tell some reassuring lie. “I don’t know,” he said. “I will if I can.”
The kid looked up at him, then back down at his skates. “I can ask Mom, I can tell her—”
“Don’t do it.”
Dennis made a face, but did not look up. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t need to be worrying about that. You need to worry about school, and about working on your slap shot. Your mom and I need to take care of our own shit.”
“All right. Thanks for coming to see the game.”
“When do you play again?”
“Friday. Four-thirty.”
“In the morning?” Jesus. “Why so early?”
“On Fridays, the old guys have the ice at five.” The makings of a grin danced at the corners of his face. “Guys your age.”
“Oh yeah?”
The dad who coached the Closter team was calling Dennis. Dennis looked over his shoulder. “I gotta go, Dad.”
“All right. I’ll see you.”
“Okay.” Dennis nodded, pushed off, raced across the ice in a flurry of quick, short strides. You don’t even know where the kid is going from here, Stoney thought, you don’t know if he’s going home or to school or what. That’s how much involvement you got.