Morgan approached. Yellowing pages had been taped to the door: news articles, poems,
Morgan lifted his fist to knock, stopped, tried the knob. It turned. He very slowly pushed open the door and went in.
The office was long and dark, the music loud. The room was thick with smoke. Bookshelves lined with assorted tomes from floor to ceiling. Near the window sat a large brown globe of the world like it had fallen there from orbit, more books stacked around it like the edges of an impact crater.
A black-and-white poster of Freud on the wall. Some wag had drawn a penis head at the tip of his cigar with a red Magic Marker.
Morgan waved at the smoke, coughed. This smoke seemed familiar. He inhaled deeply, tried to remember.
Ganja.
The music stopped abruptly, and a voice from the dark recesses of the office said, “Close the damn door.”
Morgan jumped. “What?”
“You’re letting the smoke out.”
Morgan shut the door behind him, peered into the haze. “Who is that?”
Slowly, as if from a long way off, from the other side of a Scottish moor, a reedy, bearded man, round spectacles, pointed frame draped in threadbare tweed, emerged from the smoke like he was walking out of an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery.
In his gnarled hands he held a bong the size of a clarinet.
The old man exhaled as he spoke, eyes narrowed to dreamy slits. “I’m Professor Valentine.”
Morgan’s jaw dropped. “Valentine?
“The same.”
“I thought you’d gone on sabbatical.” Valentine was the professor Morgan had been hired to replace for a year, but it was Morgan’s understanding the old Pulitzer Prize-winning poet had rented a studio in Prague. It seemed unlikely to find the man smoking weed from a giant bong in a remote office on an abandoned floor of Albatross Hall.
Perhaps this wasn’t Valentine. Maybe it was an old derelict junkie who’d wandered in from the cold. Morgan could think of no tactful way to ask.
“Please, please. Have a seat,” Valentine said. “Make yourself at home. I haven’t had visitors since… well, I don’t suppose I’ve ever had any. Not since moving up here.”
Morgan cast about the room. No chairs. He remained standing, hands folded demurely in front of him. “Uh…”
“Want a hit?” Valentine offered him the bong.
“Oh… uh…”
“You’re not a cop, are you?” Valentine pinned Morgan with wild eyes.
“No, no, I… Um…”
Valentine frowned. “Is there something wrong with you?”
“I’m Jay Morgan.”
“Well, that’s hardly your fault, is it?” Valentine mouthed the bong like he was in love.
“No,” Morgan said. “I mean, I’m the one-year-contract professor teaching your classes. Why aren’t you in Prague?”
“Ah, Prague.” Hazy nostalgia washed over Valentine. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he looked off into the dreamy distance. “Yes, I had a glorious few months there, and this wonderful studio apartment overlooking the Charles Bridge.” He shrugged. “I got kicked out.”
“Out of the apartment?”
“Out of the Czech Republic,” Valentine said. “Some leftover Iron Curtain nonsense. All ancient history really, but these chaps evidently have a long memory.”
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Morgan asked. “Whittaker never mentioned you’d returned.” Morgan worried he was out of a job. Would the old poet want his graduate workshop back?
Valentine lunged forward, took Morgan’s elbow into his bony fist, maneuvered Morgan into the smoke. The spindly professor’s grip was iron.
“Now listen, old sport,” Valentine said. “I’d really appreciate it if you could keep my presence here on the hush-hush side. Understand?”
“No.”
They arrived at a low leather couch, and Valentine dropped Morgan at one end. Valentine perched down at the other. “It’s just that I am still officially on sabbatical.” He sucked long on the bong. “I need rest. I couldn’t stomach a mob of ghastly students and their dreadful writing.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” Valentine leaned forward, squeaking the sofa leather. Shaggy brows knotted with stress. “I can’t write anymore, Bill. My head is cluttered with student writing. Insipid, cliché, rhyming excrement.”
“My name’s not Bill.”
Valentine didn’t hear. “I sit down at my desk and nothing comes out. My pen is an impotent noodle.”
Morgan nodded, sunk into the vast, deep swallowing womb of the leather sofa. He’d just been making the same complaints. His mind drifted. If he’d had a chance to take a year off and write in Prague, he damn well would have made good use of it. He daydreamed himself to cobblestone streets. Perhaps the ganja smoke had gotten the better of him.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he told Valentine.
Valentine grinned, eyes brightening. He patted Morgan on the knee. “That’s a good fellow, Bill. I appreciate it. I really do. Let’s smoke on it, eh? Seal the deal.”
“I’d prefer a beer,” Morgan said, more a wish than an actual request.
“Certainly.” Valentine waved his hand like he was casting a spell. “In the refrigerator behind the desk.”
four
Harold Jenks crouched on the fifth-floor fire escape of the abandoned building and smoked a Philly Blunt with one hand, the other hand in the warm front pocket of his Cardinals sweatshirt. He scanned the alley below. He puffed quick and nervous, watched the smoke spiral away on the cold wind.
He was always nervous picking up a delivery from Red Zach. Anything could happen. Only two years ago, the cops had shot Jenks’s cousin in a drop just like this. Those undercover fuckers could be anywhere-on the roof, in the old buildings, disguised as homeless drunks sleeping in a Dumpster. Anywhere.
Sherman Ellis’s wallet still hung heavy in Jenks’s back pocket. Jenks sighed out a long, gray stream of smoke. He hadn’t wanted Spoon to kill that boy. His heart hadn’t been in it. Hadn’t been in a lot of things for a while now. If Spoon hadn’t been there…
Jenks had told Spoon his wild idea, but in a flash of sanity, Jenks figured it just wouldn’t work. Spoon told him he was crazy and should throw the wallet out. If he did this thing-if he was crazy enough-he’d keep it under wraps. He would tell no one. Jenks would simply slip off quiet into the night. He made Spoon swear to keep it secret.
A flutter of noise off to his right. Jenks jerked, his free hand going to the Glock at the small of his back. But it was only pigeons. Damn sky rats sawing on Jenks’s nerves.
He smoked the Blunt down to the end, flicked the glowing butt into the alley.
Then he saw Red Zach’s white limousine enter the alley. It approached slowly, parked under Jenks’s fire escape. Five men got out. Four big motherfuckers, hands deep in the pockets of expensive overcoats, stone faces, sunglasses. They spread out and kept watch.
Red Zach craned his neck, looked up at Jenks. Jenks waved. Red Zach climbed the fire escape. Jenks
