Clockers (16 page)

Touhey didn’t hear Mazilli, just narrowed his eyes at Rocco, nodding to himself, tapping his lips with a thumbnail. After a long moment, he rose from the table. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

Rocco watched him go, then smiled down at his fork, slightly embarrassed. Mazilli sat sideways, hunched over, elbows propped on the chair arms, fingers laced over his lap. He nodded to a white Dempsy councilman at another table who was dining with a black fire chief who had run for mayor a few years back and lost a close one. The councilman was a known coke addict and the fire chief was weathering an investigation by the IRS.

Gazing around the room, Mazilli suddenly imitated Rocco doing Frog Phelan. “‘Rocco? It’s the cycle of shit and you can’t do nothing about it.’”

Rocco smiled and began beating his fists rhythmically on the table, distant jungle drums. “‘I believe in fear. I believe in punishment. I believe in revenge.’”

Mazilli said, “Fuck you, it’s true.”

“I believe that each man,” Rocco said, raising his voice, “whether black, white, yellow or brown, is entitled to have his ass kicked free of charge, regardless of race, creed or color.”

“Cycle of shit,” Mazilli shot back.

Rocco stopped the drums, not wanting to push it too far. But Mazilli was steaming, and for a minute or two he looked around the room, avoiding Rocco’s eyes. When he had calmed down, Mazilli nodded in the direction that Touhey had gone. “Fuckin’ jamoke,” he said.

Rocco snorted in agreement. The tension between them evaporated.

The waitress came back with the salads and another vodka cranberry juice. As soon as she put the food down Rocco’s beeper went off.

Mazilli was stone-still, staring heavy-lidded at the pager as Rocco reared back to catch the number coming in on his hip.

Rocco couldn’t read in the glare, pulled the pager off his belt for a closer look.

“It’s your wife, right?” Mazilli’s voice was dull and low.

“It’s the office.”

“Don’t fucking tell me.” Mazilli dropped his fork in disgust.

Rocco tried to sound casual, but he prayed it was a job. “It’s probably bullshit,” he said, sucking down half his Cape Codder through the straw and rising from the table.

“It’s probably a fuckin’ tripleheader.” Mazilli signaled the waitress, raising his glass, pinging it with a flick of his fingernail. “Outdoors, in the rain, in a fucking mud puddle,
sixty
fucking shells laying around and a big herd of niggers stepping all over everything. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Rocco headed across the room to the pay phone. Ten feet from the phone alcove, he stopped in his tracks as he heard his own voice coming at him loud and clear from around the corner.

“‘The father was a real piece of shit. Now that she’s all grown up?
She’s
a real piece of shit. That kid you saved tonight…’”

Touhey was impersonating him on the phone to someone. The performance was pitch-perfect: the Dempsy accent, the tongue clicks and pauses, all his verbal fingerprints. Both thrilled and disoriented, Rocco debated hanging back, just out of sight, then decided he couldn’t listen and he couldn’t walk away. He turned the corner so that Touhey would see him and change the subject.

But Touhey’s back was to Rocco and he continued, leaning into the glass partition, hunched over the mouthpiece, his fat calfskin date book open on the steel shelf below the phone.

“‘Rocco, it’s the cycle of shit, so just sit back and do your job.’ The cycle of shit—is that perfect or what? I was thinking the other guy, but he’s too one way, too hard, too … I dunno. But ‘cycle of shit,’ it’s like, you take innocence and cynicism, put them in a blender for twenty years and that’s what comes out, you know what I mean? This guy’s the key on a silver platter. I want to
kiss
this poor fucking guy.”

Rocco cleared his throat so loud it actually sounded like “Ah-hem.”

Touhey didn’t straighten his posture, didn’t stiffen, just hung up the phone in midsentence and turned around.

“How you doing?” he said, as if they hadn’t seen each other in days. There wasn’t the slightest bit of embarrassment in his face. He was playing it straight and innocent; Rocco had to marvel at how good he was.

Rocco held up his beeper and smiled. “Might have a job coming in.”

Touhey almost clapped his hands. “Yeah? Great. I mean, you know, finally.” He turned for the tables, his date book under his arm.

Rocco dug for a quarter. “The key on a silver platter.” He liked that. But why “poor fucking guy”?

On his way back to the table, Rocco saw Touhey and Mazilli staring at him like Comedy and Tragedy, each rooting for separate verdicts.

“Don’t tell me,” said Mazilli. “Dempsy burnin’, right?”

“Nah, it’s bullshit. Patty just left some message for me.”

Rocco saw Touhey’s face collapse in petulant disappointment.

“Thank God.” Mazilli dug into his salad.

“It’s a funny job.” Rocco forced himself to sound hearty as he took his seat. “The pager goes off, it could be a double homicide or it could be your wife reminding you to bring home bananas.”

Touhey did not look amused, and Rocco felt queasy and a little desperate, as if he had just had his key-on-a-silver-platter status revoked.

“You know, Sean…” Rocco hesitated, sensing he was about to get himself in trouble, then forged ahead. “I actually met my wife off this thing here.” Rocco patted his pager as if he felt great affection for it.

Mazilli’s head rose from his plate. He fixed Rocco with a narrow-eyed gaze.

“Maz, did I ever tell you how I met Patty?” Rocco hated the false chirpiness in his own voice.

Mazilli continued to stare and Rocco looked away. Rocco had never told anyone, not even his partner, how he had met his wife, and the fact that he felt compelled to tell the tale now, in front of the actor, made him feel sick with shame, although he had no intention of shutting up: he was too hungry for Touhey’s attention.

“About three years ago? I’m in the office on a Sunday morning and I get this call. The radio station in town, ‘QRS, they have this phone-in show for mothers to talk to some pediatrician? Apparently this lady called in, asks him over the air, ‘Dr. Wiley, I have a nine-month-old son, but the problem is, I know he’s really Satan, and I was wondering, if I throw him out the window, will he just be reincarnated into another body? Or will I have truly done away with the lord of all evil in this world?’”

Rocco winked at Touhey, gauging his interest: he seemed absorbed now. “So they have this lady’s home number coming up on their board and they’re freaking out. The poor doctor’s talking to her on the air, trying to get her not to do anything. Meanwhile, the producer calls nine-one-one and for some reason they pass it on to Homicide. I take the number, get the phone company to get me the address, it’s in Guttenberg, which is Hudson County. But I’m bored, fuck it, I call the Guttenberg police, give them the address, I say, ‘Wait for me by the door.’ I go over, it’s a nice high rise, expensive, I’m up there with two uniforms, I bang on the door. I hear this lady inside: ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s Rocco.’ She opens the door—pretty, young—‘Rocco who?’ ‘Rocco
police.
‘ My foot’s wedged in now, and I can see it in her eyes, home run, she’s the one. She says, ‘What’s the problem?’—not ‘Can I help you?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, but we have to come in.’ She says, ‘What about my rights?’ and I start pushing a little on the door. I say ‘Call your lawyer but we have to come in.’ She’s looking from me to the Guttenberg cops, I’m ready to knock her down if I have to, but then she says, ‘Just you.’ And the way she said it? Well…” Rocco paused, weighed clown a little with emotional memory, suppressing the desire to get up from the table right then and go home to be with Patty. “I was hoping it would be a false alarm, everything would be OK So I say, ‘Fellas thanks resume patrol ‘ I walk in nice place plants Levolor blinds Turkish rug. I see she can’t be more than twenty-two, -three. I go in I look out the windows first nothing down there no bundles so I iust start opening closets the refrigerator toilet tanks anywhere you could hide a dead baby, taking out suitcases—and she’s not saying? anything just standing there twisting? her hands I can’t find nothing I say Why am I here?’ She says ‘Why ‘ but guilty, You know? I see she’s got a big stereo system set up next to the TV. I just go over and turn it
on,
don’t touch the dial and of course it’s set to the station and we hear the phone-in pediatrician on the speakers I just look at her She says ‘There’s no baby,’ and I believe her.

“I’m looking at her now, her hair’s a mess, her face is all puffy from crying. She says, ‘Am I under arrest?’ I say, ‘Why’d you do it?’ She says, ‘You ever
listen
to that creep? He’s so…“Well, Mother, first I’d like to thank you for having the courage to call in with a question like that. It’s a
hard
question but a
good
question.” He’s a phony.’ I’m just looking at her still, I ask again, ‘Why’d you do it? You look like a nice kid.’ And she bursts into tears, says, ‘I’m so lonely.’ After a minute she calms down, tells me that the day before? She had an abortion, and the guy who knocked her up? Didn’t show up at the clinic, didn’t call, just vanished. She went herself, paid for it herself, came back home to an empty apartment, she’s all cramped up, in pain, miserable, she wakes up Sunday morning
still
with the cramps, the guy
still
didn’t call. She turns on the radio, starts hearing all these mothers calling in with these problems about babies, like, ‘Is it OK if they sleep in bed with me? Is three too early to teach them the alphabet? When I take them to the netting zoo is there any animal they could catch something from?’ And she got a little wiggy thought she’d rattle the guy’s cage so I figure what the hell’ this poor kid so I go into her kitchen’ make us some tea. We talked for like four hours and because I was’ kind of in rocky shape myself at that time So, I don’t know, we found each other The funny thine is when she gets pregnant by
me?
I start freaking out, remembering the circumstances of how we met I’m thinking Holy Christ what if what if Anyhow it turns out she’s a fan
tas
tic mother, meanwhile
I’m
the one now who feels like ‘Dear Doctor Seuss my kid is driving me around the bend,’ you know’? But she’s a fan
tas
tic mother fan
tas
tic Just fan
tas
tic…”

Rocco trailed off, furious at himself for telling the story that both he and Patty swore to keep to themselves, furious at himself for betraying Mazilli’s primacy as a confidant. It was just that the actor made him feel so off balance, so desperate to say, “This is me, this is what I know, this is who I am.” Maybe all movie stars had that power to effortlessly strip a person down, but Rocco was perfectly willing to serve up every shadow and angle of his heart if he could only get back a little of that recognition he had won earlier in the meal, re-experience the momentary sensation that his life was somehow of consequence.

“That’s wild.” Touhey was smiling, nodding, blatantly intrigued again. But Rocco couldn’t tell if it was the story or the desperation behind the telling of it that had captured the actor’s fancy.

Rocco briefly caught Mazilli’s eye and sensed that if they’d been alone now, Mazilli would have lunged over and punched him out. Rocco smiled sheepishly at his empty drink, thinking: Be my guest.

5

HOOD UP,
Strike entered Ahab’s, the air dense with a burnt closeness, as if a fire had been put out just hours before. It was seven-thirty on a Friday night but the restaurant was nearly empty, no one seated at the handful of littered tables, one raggedy man at the stand-up counter running along the window, the guy breaking up a fistful of begged change into pennies, nickels and dimes, lips moving as he tried to tally up some kind of meal. In the kitchen—a long glinting stainless steel confusion sealed off from the customers by streaked and dull glass—the food handlers appeared in silhouette, moving around the fryers and heat lamps like shifting shapes inside a steam room.

Three people stood on line along the kitchen glass, and Strike watched them shuffle restlessly from foot to foot. They were silently fuming at the languid counter girl, who was wearing a blue tricot service smock and chewing gum so open-mouthed that her tongue flapped out like a third lip.

Strike held the .25 in his pocket. But what was he supposed to do, get on line, ask for Darryl and then shoot him through the service window, hoping no one would give a shit? The insanity of the situation made him feel as if he was sleepwalking, inhabiting strange skin.

A fat, balding white guy with long sideburns and a Fu Manchu mustache came out of the bathroom and got on the food line. He was wearing a fatigue jacket and ripped-up tennis sneakers. The guy rapped on the kitchen glass with a key as if signaling someone inside, and a moment later the counter girl was replaced by a tall, rail-thin kid with a flat nose. He wore a red nylon running suit, and a Lion of Judah medallion hung from his neck.

Strike stepped back, sliding out of the kid’s line of vision. It was Darryl, and the sight of him, the
real
ness of him, made Strike want to fall down.

How to play this? What to do? Got to be got: maybe that meant something else, like a warning. Or a wounding.

The white guy asked for a Golden Mobie, a Coke, fries, and an eight-piece. Darryl served him up quicker than the girl would have, and the guy moved off to the stand-up counter with his grease platter, dropping a spray of loose change on the beggar’s army of coins and looking out into the parking lot as he tore into the glistening fish-burger.

The girl came back on counter duty right after the guy was served, and then Darryl emerged from the kitchen and quickly slipped into the bathroom. Strike saw the white guy furtively catch the reflection of Darryl’s movements in the window.

Eight-piece: there wasn’t any “eight-piece” on the menu. Eighth of a kilo was probably what he meant. Had to be, Strike reasoned, because an eight ball—just three and a half grams—wouldn’t be worth the risk of selling in such a public place. Strike also guessed they were using the bathroom for dope and money exchanges, given that Darryl was in and out in ten seconds, too fast to piss. Strike studied him, entranced with the vitality of his every gesture, the absoluteness of his existence. Tracking his silhouette behind the kitchen glass, Strike tried to believe that Darryl’s beating heart was a throw-down challenge to his own welfare and future and manhood. Strike tried to muster fury but only summoned a lightness in his guts: Darryl was so
real.