On its cover, an alien with a triangular head gazed at me with almond-shaped eyes.
I smiled ferociously at her. 'It's nothing to worry about,' I told her.
'That's the way we handle things on Mars.'
Jesus, it felt great. I got all the way to Columbus Circle, carried along on adrenaline, riding the wave with my blood singing in my veins.
Then the rush wore off and I felt like an asshole.
And a lucky one at that. Fate had smiled at me, handing me the perfect adversary, someone bigger and younger and even more of a lout than I. It had filled me with righteous anger, always the best kind, and it had even furnished a maiden whose honor I could defend.
Wonderful. I'd almost killed the kid. I'd beaten him up good, launching what the courts would have rightly called an unprovoked assault. I might very well have done some real damage to him, and I'd run the risk of killing him. I could have crushed his windpipe, or ruptured internal organs when I kicked him.
If a cop had witnessed the incident I'd be on my way downtown now. I'd wind up in jail, and I'd deserve to be there.
I still couldn't work up much sympathy for the kid with the flattop.
He was by all objective standards a first-rate son of a bitch, and if he came out of this with a sore throat and a bruised liver he wasn't getting a whole lot more than he had coming. But who appointed me the avenging angel? His behavior was none of my business, and neither was his punishment.
Our Lady of the Swollen Ankles hadn't needed me to defend her. If she'd had enough of an aversion to heavy metal she could have bestirred herself and waddled away. And so could I.
Face it— I'd done a number on him because I couldn't get anyplace with Motley. I couldn't stop his taunting, so I silenced the kid's radio instead. I couldn't win when I was face-to-face with him on Attorney Street, so I evened things up by putting the boot to the kid. I was powerless over what mattered, so I made up for it by demonstrating power over what didn't matter.
Worst of all, I'd known better. The rage that had empowered me had not been quite strong enough to shut out the little voice in my head that told me to cut the shit and act like a grown-up. I'd heard the voice, just as I'd heard it before when it counseled against buying the booze.
There are people who never hear their own inner voices, and maybe they can't honestly help the things they do in life, but I'd heard it loud and clear and told it to shut the fuck up.
I'd caught myself just in time. I hadn't taken the drink, and I hadn't kicked the kid's head in, but if those were victories they struck me as small ones.
I didn't feel very proud of myself.
* * *
I called Elaine from the hotel. She had nothing to report and neither did I, and we didn't stay on the phone long. I went into the bathroom to shave. My face had recovered enough so that I felt I could use a disposable razor instead of the electric thing. I shaved carefully and didn't nick myself.
Throughout it I was aware of the smell of alcohol wafting up from the drain. I don't think it was real, I don't see how it could have been, but I smelled it all the same.
I was patting my face dry when the phone rang. It was Danny Boy Bell.
'There's somebody you ought to talk to,' he said. 'You free around twelve, one o'clock?'
'I can be.'
'Come up to Mother Goose, Matthew. You know where that is?'
'Amsterdam, I think you said.'
'Amsterdam Avenue and Eighty-first Street. Three doors up from the corner, east side of the avenue.
Some nice soft music, do you good to listen to it.'
'No heavy metal?'
'What a nasty thought. Shall we say twelve-thirty? Ask for my table.'
'All right.'
'And Matthew? You'll want to bring money.'
I stayed in my room and watched the news, then went out for dinner. I had the urge for hot food, and it was the first real appetite I'd felt since the ambush on Attorney Street, so I wanted to indulge it. I was halfway to the Thai place when I changed my mind and walked over to Armstrong's. I had a big plate of their black-bean chili, adding a lot of crushed red pepper to the already potent mixture the waitress brought me. It left me feeling almost as good as smashing that radio in the park, and I was considerably less likely to regret it afterward.
I used the john while I was there, and there was blood in my urine again but it wasn't as bad as it had been, and my kidney hadn't been bothering me lately. I went back to my table and drank some more coffee. I had Marcus Aurelius along for company but I didn't make much headway. Here's the passage I read:
Never surpass the sense of your original impressions. Perhaps they tell you that a certain person speaks ill of you. That was their sole message; they did not go on to say you have been harmed by him.
Perhaps I see my child suffers illness; my eyes tell me so but do not tell me his life is in danger. Always keep to your original impressions; add no interpretation of your own and you remain safe. Or at the most add a recognition of the great world order by means of which all things come to pass.
That seemed to hold some advice for a detective, but I wasn't sure if I agreed with it. Keep your eyes and ears open, I thought, but don't try to make any sense out of what you see and hear. Or was that what he was saying? I played with the idea for a while, then gave up and put the book away and enjoyed the coffee and the music. I don't
