Not that I care about either Romania or the girls. I have no enthusiasm for any part of Eastern Europe, and prostitution has always been with us. Although I know the man I tied to the fence also runs Brazilian girls, and I care for them to some slight extent. Sweet, dark, shy creatures. I partake regularly, in fact, in that arena, which is what led me to the man himself. A girl I rented, less than half my age, recited on request the menu of services she offered, some of which were truly exotic, and I asked her if she really liked doing those things. Like all good whores she faked great enthusiasm at first, but I was relentlessly skeptical: You
But mostly I care about the equilibrium, and the partnership, and keeping Mr. Rafferty in work. He is a veteran homicide cop, my age exactly, and I like to think we understand each other, and that he needs me.
It is time to sit up. And because written narrative has its conventions, let me again be clear: A long time has passed. My thoughts, however presented on the page, have been halting and disconnected and have taken a long time to form. We are not talking about a burst of decisive energy here. This process is slow. I walk my hands back above my waist, I raise my head, I twist and lever, I sit up.
Then I rest.
And I confess: It is about more than just equilibrium and partnership. It is about the contest. Me and Mr. Rafferty. Him against me. Who will win? Perhaps neither of us, ever. We seem to be perfectly matched. Perhaps equilibrium is a result, not a goal. Perhaps we both enjoy the journey, and perhaps we both fear the destination.
Perhaps we can make this last forever.
I scan ahead through my morning tasks. The ultimate objective, as for so many, is to get to work on time. My day job, I suppose I should call it. Punctuality is expected. So less than an hour after sitting up I gather my feet under me and rise, hands out to steady myself against the walls, two staggering steps to establish balance, a lurch in the general direction of the living room, and the prize is mine: my morning smoke. I pull a second cigarette from the pack and close the lid so as not to see two busted teeth; I gaze around, trusting in the eternal truth that wherever cigarettes may be, there will be a lighter close by. I find a yellow Bic a yard away and thumb its tiny wheel; I light the smoke and inhale deeply, gratefully, and then I cough and blink, and the day finally accelerates.
The shower is soothing: I use disinfectant soap, a carbolic product similar to medical issue. Not that I carry trace evidence; I am not new to this game. But I like cleanliness. I check myself in the mirror very carefully. The carpet burn on my cheek is noticeable, but generalized, like a normal Irish flush; it is entirely appropriate. I part my hair and comb it flat. I unwrap a shirt and put it on. I select a suit: It is not new and not clean, made from a heavy gabardine that smells faintly of sweat and smoke and the thousand other odors a city dweller absorbs. I tie my tie, I slip on my shoes, I collect the items a man in my position carries.
I head outside. My employer provides a car; I start it up and drive. It is still early. Traffic is light. There is nothing untoward on the radio. The abandoned construction zone is as yet unvisited by dog walkers.
I arrive. I park. I head inside. Like everywhere, my place of employment has a receptionist. Not a model- pretty young woman like some places I have seen; instead, a burly man in a sergeant’s uniform.
He says, “Good morning, Mr. Rafferty.”
I return his greeting and head onward, to the squad room.
Ten Keys
Mostly shit happens, but sometimes things fall in your lap, not often, but enough times to drop a rock on despair. But you can’t start in with thoughts of redemption. That would be inappropriate. Such events are not about you. Things fall in your lap not because you’re good, but because other people are bad. And stupid.
This guy walked into a bar—which sounds like the start of a joke, which was what it was, really, in every way. The bar was a no-name dive with a peeled-paint door and no sign outside. As such, it was familiar to me and the guy and people like us. I was already inside, at a table I had used before. I saw the guy come in. I knew him in the sense that I had seen him around a few times and therefore he knew me, too, because as long as we assume a certain amount of reciprocity in the universe, he had seen me around the exact same number of times. I see him, he sees me. We weren’t friends. I didn’t know his name. Which I wouldn’t expect to. A guy like that, any name he gives you is sure to be bullshit. And certainly any name I would have given him would have been bullshit. So what were we to each other? Vague acquaintances, I guess. Both close enough and distant enough that given the trouble he was in, I was the sort of guy he was ready to talk to. Like two Americans trapped in a foreign airport. You assume an intimacy that isn’t really there, and it makes it easier to spill your guts. You say things you wouldn’t say in normal circumstances. This guy certainly did. He sat down at my table and started in on a whole long story. Not immediately, of course. I had to prompt him.
I asked, “You okay?”
He didn’t reply. I didn’t press. It was like starting a car that had been parked for a month. You don’t just hammer the key. You give it time to settle, so you don’t flood the carburetor or whatever cars have now. You’re patient. In my line of work, patience is a big virtue.
I asked, “You want a drink?”
“Heineken,” the guy said.
Right away I knew he was distracted. A guy like that, you offer him a drink, he should ask for something expensive and amber in a squat glass. Not a beer. He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t calculating.But I was.
An old girl in a short skirt brought two bottles of beer, one for him and one for me. He picked his up and took a long pull and set it back down, and I saw him feel the first complex shift of our new social dynamic. I had bought him a drink, so he owed me conversation. He had accepted charity, so he owed himself a chance to re-up his status. I saw him rehearse his opening statement, which was going to tell me what a hell of a big player he was.
“It never gets any easier,” he said.
He was a white guy, thin, maybe thirty-five years old, a little squinty, the product of too many generations of inbred hardscrabble hill people, his DNA baked down to nothing more than the essential components, arms, legs, eyes, mouth. He was an atom, adequate, but entirely interchangeable with ten thousand just like him.
“Tell me about it,” I said, ruefully, like I understood his struggle.
“A man takes a chance,” he said. “Tries to get ahead. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t.”
I said nothing.
“I started out muling,” he said. “Way back. You know that?”
I nodded. No surprise. We were four miles from I-95, and everyone started out muling, hauling keys of coke up from Miami or Jax, all the way north to New York and Boston. Anyone with a plausible face and an inconspicuous automobile started out mul-ing, a single key in the trunk the first time, then two, then five, then ten. Trust was earned and success was rewarded, especially if you could make the length of the New Jersey Turnpike unmolested. The Jersey State Troopers were the big bottleneck back then.
“Clean and clear every time,” the guy said. “No trouble, ever.”
“So you moved up,” I said.
“Selling,” he said.
I nodded again. It was the logical next step. He would have been told to take his plausible face and his inconspicuous automobile deep into certain destination neighborhoods and meet with certain local distributors directly. The chain would have become one link shorter. Fewer hands on the product, fewer hands on the cash, more speed, more velocity, a better vector, less uncertainty.
“Who for?” I asked.
“The Martinez brothers.”
“I’m impressed,” I said, and he brightened a little.
“I got to where I was dealing ten keys pure at a time,” he said.
My beer was getting warm, but I drank a little anyway. I knew what was coming next.
