He’d been there for me. I hadn’t been there for him. Now I had to live with that.
“Is that why you’re retiring?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Seemed like as good a time as any. Thirty-seven years on the force, man. Seemed like time to do something else.”
“Like drink Bud Light,” Terry said.
“You joke, pal, but your time will come soon enough, mark my words.”
“Nah,” Terry said. “I plan to just keel over right after I collar some escaped convict or something. Then I get to go out a hero. Think of the parade they’d throw in my honor!”
They both chuckled at this, but as Sam brought the beer up for another sip, almost as if he were shielding his face, I could see the sadness in his eyes. Being a cop, and especially a detective, had meant everything to him. He’d lived and breathed it. I doubted he ever would have retired unless his health forced him. If his knees had given out on him, he might have become a desk jockey, but I never saw him retiring altogether. He’d gotten a bit spooked by the stabbing, for good reason, but I hadn’t thought of his transfer to Tigard as a cowardly move. It had more been an acknowledgment that his old body just couldn’t keep up with the rigors of Portland’s more hectic pace.
Thinking all this, I felt profoundly sad. Death took everything that mattered to us eventually, sometimes all at once, sometimes a little at a time. All that was left afterward were lots of ghosts, not just the human kind, but faint echoes of our former lives, reminding us of all that we had lost.
“Whoa,” Sam said, “don’t look so down there, Myron boy. I’m not in the ground yet.”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed he’d read me so well, “I wasn’t—”
“Just live it up, man. That’s all. Live it up while you can. If you got something you’re good at, do it as long as life will let you. You might think I got a bunch of regrets, but I don’t. I knew what I loved and I kept doing it until Father Time told me it was time to take a break. I can live with cancer, but regret? Shit, no.”
He looked at me knowingly, wiping the beer off his mustache. I knew what he was getting at, I knew he was talking about me holed up like a hermit rather than getting back to work, and I found myself irritated at him for meddling. He didn’t know about my situation. He didn’t have to live with a world full of billions of ghosts and not be able to tell them apart from the living. But this was followed immediately by a wave of remorse and shame.
This was Sam, dying of cancer, giving me some advice. This was my old partner, just trying to show me the way one more time.
I was trying to think of something to say when Sam’s son joined us, a broad-shouldered young man in a nicely pressed Army uniform, his cap cupped under his arm. I hadn’t seen him in years, but his face was so similar to his father’s, except for the lack of mustache, that I probably would have guessed he was Sam’s kid even if I’d never met him. He was tan and fit and smiling broadly. His buzz of blond hair had been cut so close that I saw the gleam of his scalp.
“Hey, good to see you, Kort!” I exclaimed, both genuinely glad to see him and relieved that I didn’t have to continue the depressing turn the conversation had taken. “When did you get back from Afghanistan?”
Kort’s smiled even brighter, the gleam of his teeth almost as bright as the medals on his chest. “Last year,” he said. “I’m heading back out again tomorrow. Decided to re-up.”
“Wow,” I said, “your dad must be very proud.”
I turned and smiled at Sam, and that’s when I realized something was very wrong. Both Sam and Terry were staring at me with some mixture of horror and morbid fascination. None of them so much as glanced at Kort. Why would they? It was now apparent that I was the only one who was seeing him.
“What did you say?” Sam asked.
I tried to think of a way to explain my mistake, to pretend I was talking about something else, but I’d said too much. Kort seemed particularly oblivious to my plight, but then, he hadn’t always been the brightest of kids. I wondered if he even knew he was dead.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” Sam asked. In a flash, his face had gone from white to bright red.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“You know Kort died last November, right?”
“Um, well, I think I heard—”
“Shit-ass Taliban wearing a suicide vest. Fucking killed him in his sleep. My boy didn’t have a chance.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not some fucking joke.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I didn’t have an answer, at least not one he would believe, so I said nothing. The conversations in our vicinity had gone suddenly quiet, people turning in our direction, gawking. Kort, the smile gone, looked incredibly pained. Sam’s eyes turned watery.
“Hey, hey,” Terry said, patting Sam on the shoulder. “Myron didn’t mean nothing. You know he’s had a hard time, too.”
“Dad,” Kort pleaded, “I’m right here.”
“Not a joke,” Sam said, taking another swig of beer, not looking at me.
“Dad,” Kort said.
Now the kid was crying. This was even worse than being subjected to Sam’s anger. We stood there in awkward silence, but then a couple of burly guys I didn’t know who just came in joined us, oblivious to what had just transpired, starting right in on some inside joke about a blonde and a small-town sheriff at a gay bar. I took the opportunity to drift away, into the thick of the crowd, my gaze locking with Sam’s for just a second before he looked hurriedly away. It felt like being shot.
We must have hit the fashionably late arrival time, because hordes of people flooded into the little house. There were cops, and plenty of them, some I recognized and many I didn’t, but there were also just about every variety of man, woman, and child as well. I saw men in Navy uniforms that dated back to World War II, young women in bell-bottom jeans and perms that floated around their heads like halos, and a couple of barefoot children carrying bags of marbles and rolled-up Archie Bunker comics.
They mingled together, the living and the dead, talking and laughing, slapping backs and shaking hands, the noise rising to a dull roar. Most of them were talking about Sam—men he’d served with, people he’d helped, neighbors, people from church, most alive, many dead. The air grew hot and thick, filled with the smell of beer and sweat and dozens of mingling perfumes. I bumbled and jostled my way to the far wall, sandwiched between a grandfather clock that was no longer working and a bookcase filled mostly with thick tomes on all the major wars of the world.
I looked for Alesha, but couldn’t find her. I thought I heard her laughter, but there were just too many people in the way. My collar was drenched with sweat. My tongue felt as dry as desert sand, and I thought about trying to navigate the sea of bodies to the kitchen, but I couldn’t get my legs to move. I was safe along the wall.
“You,” a gruff voice said.
I turned and there, leaning against the grandfather clock, was a black man in prison orange duds, lean as a pole, cornrows in his hair. He was thin and angular like a switchblade. When he sneered at me, I saw that several of his front teeth had been capped with gold. He looked familiar.
“You were with the asshole,” he said.
His breath reeked so badly of cigarettes that I had to turn my face away. I told myself that if I didn’t speak to him, he wasn’t there. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” he said. “I knows you can see me ’cause you was looking right at me.”
“Go away,” I mumbled.
“Nah,” he said. “Not until I figure out some way to get back at you and your fat-ass partner. Put me away for nothin’, man, for slapping around some bitch. Not my fault she fell off the balcony. And then what happens? Some white-trash cracker knifed me when I’m in the shower ’cause I wouldn’t be nobody’s bitch.”
I remembered him now—Jermaine somethin
g. I’d only been a detective for a couple of weeks, still afraid I was going to screw up so badly that everybody would know they’d made a mistake promoting me, when we were working Jermaine’s case. We found him hiding in Forest Park, after an estranged girlfriend of Jermaine’s told us that he would often hide in the park as a kid after shoplifting. Old habits died hard—or didn’t really die at all, in Jermaine’s case. It wasn’t like he’d become a different person as a ghost.
For the first time, I saw the blood staining his uniform on the left side, below the rib cage.
“Cat got your tongue, dickweed?” he said.
I looked away.
“You scared of me now, ain’t ya? What you gonna do, shoot me? Can’t do nothin’ to me now.”
I pushed off the wall and merged into the crowd of bodies. Jermaine, snickering, followed.
“Yeah, I think I’ll haunt your ass,” he said. “I’m going to stick with you forever, cocksucker. You can run, but you can’t hide. Get your skinny ass back here, boy.”
He laughed, a loud honking laugh that got heads to turn—ghosts, all of them, staring at me as if I was the freak and not Jermaine. I swerved around a few more people, picking up my pace and leaving Jermaine’s laughter behind, saw the narrow hall, and jetted down it. Pictures of Kort, from dimpled baby in diapers to proud young man in uniform, decked the walls.
The first door was the bathroom, but it was too obvious. The next bedroom was Kort’s, and there was no way I was going in there. The last door led to an office of sorts, though along with a Mac computer on an old metal desk, there was also a sewing machine, an ironing board, an exercise bike, and a freestanding rack filled with dresses just as obnoxiously colorful as the one Loraine was wearing. I ducked inside and closed the door.
The noise from the party was a low murmur. An air freshener plugged into the wall filled the room with a minty-fresh odor, though it wasn’t quite powerful enough to cover the overpowering stink of cat piss. I reached in my jacket for my Glock, but of course it wasn’t there. I hadn’t worn it since the accident, not because I couldn’t but because I didn’t trust myself with it. What good would it do against a ghost anyway?
I’d hoped he hadn’t seen me, but only a few seconds passed and there Jermaine was, loping right through the closed door. He flashed me his gold-capped smile.
“There you are, boy,” he said.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“Oh, is that any way to treat an old pal like me? We gonna be joined at the hip, brother, so you better get used to it. I’m gonna be there when you put your head down at night and when you take a piss and when you tryin’ to make sweet love to a lady friend. Jermaine will be right there the whole time, your special guardian angel.” He laughed and slapped his knee. “Look at me, I’m like Richard Pryor or something.”
“I know people,” I said.
“Oooooh. I know people, too.”
“I know powerful people. You know Frank Warren at the NAANCP?”
Jermaine blew air through his lips, producing a wet smacking sound. “Those people? They got nothing they can do to me. Face it, pretty boy, you stuck with me.”
He crossed his arms and smiled. I was in new terrain. I didn’t know how to get rid of him. The nightmare my life had become had seemed bad before, but now I saw how much worse it could be. If a ghost wanted to follow me around all the time, how was I going to stop him if I couldn’t even touch him? It wasn’t like mean words would make somebody like Jermaine leave me alone.
Or would they?
Words couldn’t affect Jermaine, but maybe it wasn’t Jermaine I needed to target.
“Your mama still like raspberry iced tea?” I asked.
“What?”
“When we went to talk to her, she offered us raspberry iced tea. She said it was her favorite drink.”
Confusion clouded his face. This obviously wasn’t the way the game was supposed to be played. It may have just been my imagination, but Jermaine’s bloodstain seemed to grow larger.
“What you talking about?” he said.
“I’m talking about your mama.”
“Well, you better quit.”
“Or what? You know, she lives on those disability checks, doesn’t she? Kind of struggles month to month. Might be tough for her if she lost those checks. Be tough to see her on the streets.”
I could almost see the icicles in the air between us, his gaze was so cold.
“You can’t do nothin’ to her,” he said.
“Oh, you might be surprised. Cops have friends all over the place. I even got friends at the Social Security office.”
“Like hell,” Jermaine said, but I saw the doubt in his eyes.
“Want to find out?”
He said nothing.
“Figure I’ll pay her a visit first,” I said, “make sure she really knows all the awful stuff you’ve done, Jermaine. That will take a while, I’m sure. Hope she has some of that raspberry iced tea.”
I could see him dismembering me with his eyes, the fires of his rage burning fiercely hot, but he didn’t do anything. He didn’t say anything, either—just went on looking at me for a long time until, with an aggressive snort, he turned and walked right back through the door. I watched and waited, and when I was sure he wasn’t coming back, slumped into the wooden swivel chair by the desk.
The party was a steady hum beyond the door, all those people living and dead mere feet away, but it could have been on the other side of the world for all I cared. It was all too much. I’d had enough. Every time I thought maybe I could pick myself up, find a way to deal with my issues, something happened to set me back. I felt like a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces matched. Or maybe I was like the room where I found myself—filled with junk placed together because none of it belonged anywhere else, and yet without the junk, there was nothing but an empty room. I was an empty room. Take away all the junk, all my problems and troubles, and I was a hollow man. There was nothing left of me worth saving anymore.
I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard the door creak open. I looked up and saw Alesha peering into the room.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, smiling coyly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She laughed. “You really shouldn’t be in here, you know.”
I nodded. She must have seen the anguish on my face, because she swallowed and closed the door behind her.
There must have been something about the way she was standing, but I was struck by her vitality, by how vibrant and alive she was, this sinewy, beautiful young woman with the breathtaking eyes and the polished black skin. She may have only been seven or eight years younger than me, but the distance between us seemed much more vast now, ages come and gone, civilizations risen and fallen, eons of struggle and suffering. I’d always felt older than Alesha, but not like this.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing.”
I shrugged.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked.
I shrugged again.
“You’re not giving me much to work with here,” she said.
“Maybe there isn’t much to worth with,” I said.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Yeah, well.”
She looked at me as if waiting for me to say more, but I didn’t have anything more. It took all the energy I had to engage in even this much conversation. I gazed at the carpet, focused on a piece of dryer lint. With a sigh, she came over to me and leaned against the desk, hands gripping the edge. Her legs, in those taut designer jeans, were inches from my own. She was so close I could smell her lilac perfume. When we spoke, something about the proximity required us to speak in a whisper, and it felt so much more intimate than before.
“Is it a panic attack or something?” she said.
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you mean, sure? You mean that’s it?
”
“I mean I don’t know.”
“Come on, Myron. I’m here. I’m listening.”
“I just didn’t think it would be this hard.”
“What would be this hard?”
“Living.”
When she didn’t answer, I looked at her. Because I’d been slumped over, elbows on my knees, the act of straightening and turning slightly in her direction brought our faces remarkably close together. I saw the tiny imperfections in her skin, a divot here, a mole there, every mark and scar a placeholder on the aged map that made her face her own. These imperfections did not mar her beauty; they made her beauty more unique. This was Alesha. This was my partner, my friend, my confidant. My silhouette loomed large in her wide black pupils. Her lips, full and bountiful, parted slightly.
“Maybe you’re just lonely,” she said.
She reached out and ruffled my hair, then caressed her thumb across the scar on my forehead from the shooting. It was probably an impulsive act, done without thinking, but this simple gesture unlocked some deep, buried frustration. Until she touched me, I didn’t realize how much I’d been craving that kind of intimate human contact. I was a thirsty man who’d forgotten the taste of water. I started to speak, but the words collapsed under the weight of all my frustrations and never made it out of my mouth.
“Myron,” she said, “I know it’s been hard … I know, losing Billie. We’ve never talked about it …”
I kissed her.
It wasn’t her. It was me. After all the years of furtive glances, inadvertent touches, and offhand comments filled with double meanings and sexual innuendo, I kissed her first. Her lips were just as soft and pliant as I’d imagined them to be. She reacted with surprise for only a second, jerking back, her eyes wide, but then she kissed me even more hungrily than I’d kissed her. She cupped her hands behind my head and leaned into the kiss. I tasted red wine and salty wheat crackers. Her nose, pressed against my cheek, was surprisingly cold, but her fingers in my hair and her lips pressed against my own burned hot. One kiss turned into many, a series of desperate little kisses, our breath warm on each other’s faces.
Ghost Detective Page 17