No Sleep till Wonderland (8 page)

I say, “One question: is Eddie your only suspect for the fire?”

“Goodnight, Mr. Genevich. Stay local.”

“I’ll cancel my trip to Lithuania.”

Detective Owolewa shakes his head and laughs. I’m not too stubborn or thick to realize that he’s giving me the benefit of the doubt, one that I haven’t earned. Where have I heard that before?

On the way out the door, he says, “Check that call you missed first.”

I almost forgot that Ellen called. It’s a good suggestion and it’s nice he’s thinking of me, but I’m calling Gus first. No answer. I check my messages next. Ellen left one, just checking in, wanting to see how everything is going. What she really wants to know are details about the therapy group but won’t come right out and say it.

Calling Ellen back is not on option as I need to focus on the swirling mess around me, a hurricane quickly gaining strength, and the goddamn hatches need some battening. I go outside, grab a coffee, extrablack, from the chain donut place three doors down. I burn my lips on the first sip, but it’s all right because I meant to do that. Next, I flag a cab from the stand across from my place. Gus’s apartment is only a handful of blocks away, but it’s too nice a night to waste on walking.

Parked cars choke both sides of West Second Street. There are too many of them, and even the newer ones have an abandoned look. All those darkened headlights and stilled engines are spooky. It’s a little after eight o’clock, and streetlights buzz and hum, the sorry-ass stand-ins for sunlight that they are.

My cigarette stub isn’t on Gus’s porch anymore. It made the great escape. So I light a new one in its honor. I hear the tenants on the second and third floors, residential sounds falling out of their windows. Someone’s stereo plays a seventies tune about a captain and his mystery ship. Gus’s apartment is dark; the only lights in the place are the digital clocks on various appliances, keeping time, green digits glowing their messages for no one.

I call Gus’s cell again. Nothing. I call the Abbey from the porch, even though I already called the bar an hour ago. Someone else answers, and she is just as helpful.

My meeting with Detective Owolewa has all my strings tangled. I planned to watch Gus’s place for a few hours if he wasn’t home because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Now waiting here seems like a colossal waste of time, like a dying man deciding to spend his final hours watching a movie he’d already seen before, one he didn’t like the first time around.

I ease down the porch stairs. The railing quivers under my weight like a fault line. There’s a rush of footsteps close by, but my hearing is too slow. The footsteps happen before I hear them, and I can’t react. A blur hits me hard in the stomach. Maybe it’s a sledgehammer. I go down, landing on my ass. The cowardly wind leaves when I need it the most. I suck in and can’t breathe, but my cigarette fills the vacuum of my mouth, rolls up against the back of my throat—look out teeth, look out gums—and I gag and swallow. The back of my throat hurts, scorched by the lit cigarette. Maybe the little firebug has introduced itself to my strip of group therapy snack paper. They probably won’t get along too well. It’s so hard to meet new people.

White stars and their long dead light fill the city sky, but I don’t think they’re real. Someone dressed in black, grunting and swearing, grabs my left arm, which has gone all lead on me. That someone yanks me up and leads me into a small alley between Gus’s apartment building and his neighbor’s.

“You talkin’ shit about me to the cops?” He spins me around, tries to punch me in the gut again. I drop my arms in front, and they absorb the blow. An unorthodox block, but effective.

My stomach hides somewhere in my chest, and I can’t stand up straight because of the spleen-splitting pain, but other than that I’m fine. The white stars have followed me into the alley. Need to be careful not to stare at them too long.

Through finely gritted teeth, I say, “Why would I do that, Eddie? I hold you in the highest regard.”

Eddie sways on his feet, like a boxer, a real one, someone who has taken his share of knockout punches but doesn’t care because nothing can hurt him more than he’s already been hurt. He wears a black hooded sweatshirt, black baggie jeans, and a high-brimmed baseball hat with script letters flowing into an abstract design. The hat rests carefully askew. My new short-term goal in life is to knock that thing off his head.

“You tellin’ the cops I sold you my bees? You’re a fuckin’ liar, pretend cop, just like the real ones.” His Boston accent is thick, honed by years of practice and indifference. Say
chowder
.

My white stars become swollen bees of light, fuzzy and buzzing. I have a rare moment of clarity where I think that I’m asleep, so I close my eyes and shake my head, try and take some breaths but only manage shallow, painful ones.

I say, “Didn’t know you were an apiarist.”

“What?”

“A beekeeper. Sorry, just trying to keep up with the lingo.”

He spits on the ground, next to my feet. I need to be careful; he’s spitting mad, and his desperation is physical, emanating off him in waves strong enough to be picked up by a Geiger counter. He wears violence and ignorance like a badge, the only badge he’s ever been offered.

He says, “You ain’t funny, bitch. I didn’t sell you shit, and you know it.”

I’m getting used to the dark of the alley. Eddie isn’t looking too good. His thin mustache and Vandyke are unruly, the patches of stubble on his cheeks are more than a few hours past the shadow stage, and he has a fresh outbreak of whiteheads near his mouth and nose. He hasn’t showered for a couple days, maybe more. His eyes look drawn in, exaggerated. He’s probably been sampling his own bees. Whatever that means.

I say, “I didn’t tell the police anything.” Not exactly true. Another lie that won’t keep me up at night.

“Bullshit, you…”

“No bullshit.”

He says, “Aw, fuck. What, did fuckin’ Gus give you some of my bees? And then you point the finger at me?” His hands lash out, punching and slapping the air around me. I don’t flinch, not because I’m tough, but I’m too slow to keep up.

I say, “He didn’t give me any bees. I don’t like honey. And I didn’t tell the police anything. The cops probably were throwing shit against you to see if it would stick. You panicked, and the shit stuck, like it always does.”

“Fuck you.” Eddie wipes his face and whimpers. He’s not in pain, but it’s a the-tears-are-a-comin’ sound. It’s the scariest thing he’s done tonight. “You don’t understand, fuckin’ cops tryin’ to set me up. I didn’t burn Jody’s place up.” He pauses, sways hard to the left and then right, a bellows filling himself up with air. “That was my place too! I pay for half of it. Fuck. I wasn’t anywhere near the place. I wasn’t. I was…I was shootin’ pool at Murphy’s Law, didn’t leave until one. I was too far away to start the fire, man; it wasn’t me.”

Murphy’s Law is a bar just off L Street, heading toward Summer, more than a quick handful of blocks away from the fire. He sounds believable. He probably was at that bar. It’d be easy enough to verify. His being there doesn’t prove anything, but it might explain why he isn’t already under arrest. Can’t decide if he’s a little too eager in his own defense. I’m not his accuser.

He says, “Fuckin’ cops know it, too, but don’t care. They tell me it don’t matter none. They say they got shit on me but won’t tell me what. The only shit they tell me is lies. I didn’t sell you fuckin’ nothin’.” He swings at me for emphasis. It’s a wild, arcing swing, starting in his shoes. It’s only for show, and it misses. I sidestep it, but clumsily, and almost collapse to my knees. I’m London Bridge, always falling down.

Eddie laughs at me, and he sounds like the world. I somehow stay on my feet, but the referee should stop the fight. Eddie’s voice goes soft, like a rotten fruit. “Jody’s my girl, and JT, he’s my boy.” He taps his chest with his fist, a simple hand gesture usurped and corrupted by pop culture that I might believe is sincere if it wasn’t so pathetic, part of the act. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them, man.”

I say, “Where’s Gus, Eddie?”

Eddie jab-steps forward, and unlike the haymaker this move is focused, sharp enough to cut me in half. I stumble back into a racked set of garbage cans and fall down. A seven-ten split.

He kneels next to me, then grabs fistfuls of my jacket, holding me down. At least my hat didn’t fall off. He says, “What, you think I know? I came here lookin’ for that bitch. Don’t try and get me thinkin’ it all backward, asshole. You tell me. Where’s Gus? Where’s that little bitch? I wanna talk. He’s gonna wanna talk to me too.”

Lying on my back is my natural state, but it’s not the best of positions considering my current location and predicament. I’m about to make everything worse, too. I say, “I think you know where Gus is. I think you made him disappear.”

Eddie goes feral, lifting my torso off the cement, thrashing me around. “Fuck you!” His voice bounces off the alley walls, a ricocheting bullet. “You’re makin’ shit up. You liar. Fuckin’ liar. Maybe it was you. They told me you were at the fire, you know. I know that shit. What the fuck were you doin’ there?”

“I was trying to save your boy, JT. And I did save him, mostly.”

“You fuckin’ liar. Freddie saved him. Everyone knows that. Maybe you burned up my girlfriend’s place, my place, and tryin’ to set me up? I’m gonna fuckin’ burn you up if I find out you did this to me, you and Gus, you and Gus settin’ me up…”

Nice. Seems everyone wants to burn me up like I’m a fossil fuel. I’m not a renewable resource. I’ve about had enough. While he’s still in raving-lunatic mode, I prop myself up and land a punch, pushing the reset button of his nose. There’s not a lot behind it as I don’t have any leverage, and I don’t think I actually hurt him, but he’s surprised enough that he lets go of my jacket and wipes his nose. More surprising, I have enough time to sit up and throw a kitchen-sink punch landing below his equator. Down goes Frazier. I stand up, fulfill a dream by knocking off his baseball hat, and kick him in the groin again, injury added to injury.

I leave Eddie facedown in the alley, inhaling concrete and spitting broken glass. I limp-jog out onto East Second, cell phone in hand and ready to call a cab. I know better than to stand there and spin some clever closing argument line. I’m not that clever, and I need the head start. One has to know one’s limitations.

I ignore Satchel Paige’s advice and look back whenever I can. Eddie isn’t gaining on me. No sign that he’s even emerged from the alley, which in the immediate present is a very good thing. Even better, I get a cab only a block away from Gus’s apartment.

I give the cabby Ekat’s I Street address instead of my own, then sink into the seat. I need to talk to her, face-to-broken-face, and find out what she knows about the new men in my life.

The cabbie taps my shoulder, being gentle with me, and says, “Wake up, please. Please, wake up.” He must want a big tip. I open my eyes and can’t lift my head. I’ll need to carry it in a wheelbarrow. I rumble and groan myself back into animation, back to a semblance of life.

I open the door, and my cab is in front of Ekat’s apartment, double-parked next to a blue Crown Vic, the one that belongs to Detective Owolewa. He gets around. My cab idles a bit too long and loudly, announcing to the neighborhood that it’s dropping someone off. I hope the detective isn’t standing near Ekat’s front bay window and seeing me, the lumpy man with a fedora and a trench coat but without that head-toting wheelbarrow he needs.

I leak out of the cab, backpedal across the street, and duck down behind a parked car. I’ve always been subtle. Not the best hiding spot, so I find a better one.

A few doors down, there’s a brick building full of overpriced condos that aren’t selling. The building used to be a parochial elementary school. I duck inside another alley, one without Eddie. Not an alley really, but a small pedestrian walkway between a three-family and the condo lot, its perimeter ringed by wrought-iron fence and trees. Good sight lines for me, bad for the detective. Even though my throat still burns and my stomach isn’t right, I light up a cigarette to commemorate the occasion.

I wait and attempt to focus solely on eyeballing Ekat’s front door. Hard to do when thoughts of Gus and Eddie and all the possibilities are poltergeists in my head, moving stuff around, toppling the furniture and making a mess. Me and the ghosts, we have so much in common.

Couples with hands in each other’s ass pockets and small groups of annoying people pleased with the other’s company walk past my hiding spot and give me, the man in the shadows, a nervous glance. I flick ash at them. My first cigarette is still dutifully chugging along when Detective Owolewa opens the front door, disappears into his Crown Vic, then plows through the Fifth Street intersection toward Broadway. I like a short wait.

I walk back up the street and put finger to the apartment buzzer. Ekat is quick to answer the call, wearing a white T-shirt and red nylon shorts.

She says, “Mark?” I’m a question, one without an answer.

“Good guess. I only have a thousand and one questions for you. Mind inviting me in?”

“Yeah, okay. Please ignore the mess.” She’s sheepish and quiet about the decision. Her front door opens into her bedroom. Sparsely decorated, the bed unmade, the blanket and sheets twisted and piled and spilling onto the floor. The linen disaster partially obscures a blue suitcase leaning against the bed; its corner and a black wheel stick out from beneath the pile.

We pass through the bedroom and into a small living room with white stucco walls and a high ceiling. The fan above rotates its blades but doesn’t have its heart in the job.

“I hate to impose, but could I have a drink? My throat’s burning like I swallowed a cigarette.”

Ekat says, “Okay,” with a long
o
, then goes into the kitchen and grabs two beer bottles. She passes one to me, then sits on a futon couch and kicks off her sneakers. I’m left with few sitting options, relegated to a papasan chair, which is like sitting in a creaky cereal bowl.

I say, “Thanks.” The first sip cools my throat, but the pain echoes back. “How’d it go with Detective Owolewa?”

“You saw him? Are you still watching me?” She unties and then reties her hair up, pulling her sweaty bangs off her forehead.

“No. I was watching the detective. Aren’t we a little self-centered this fine evening?”

She says, “He was out front waiting for me when I got back from my jog. I probably came off sounding like an idiot, I was so nervous. Being interviewed by a police detective is not something that happens to me every day, you know.”

I nod but am too busy losing to the papasan chair. The bamboo frame digs into my ass and back. I scoot backward, lifting myself up and dropping like a bomb. I land too heavy, tilt the chair frame to the left, and spill a little beer on my pants. I squirm some more, grinding bamboo against the wall, and pull my legs under me so I can sit up taller. I’m a kindergartner who can’t sit still for duck-duck-goose.

“You all right over there? Want to switch seats?”

“No. I worked too hard to get here.” I drink half my beer in one gulp. She hasn’t touched hers. “So what did the detective have to say?”

“Why would I tell you, Mark?” She peels the label from her beer but still doesn’t take a drink. Fingers tap on the bottle, and eyes crawl around the room. She’s frazzled or spooked. Less confident and confrontational than she was last night, even if her words aren’t.

“Because, I’m assuming, you have nothing to hide.”

“Are you here to make sure our ‘stories’ match up?” She uses quote fingers for the word
stories
. I hate that.

“I didn’t know we had any stories.”

Ekat tilts her head and narrows her eyes as if it just got brighter in here. “He made some connections between you and Eddie that I’m not wild about.”

“Why’d you let me in your apartment, then?”

“I didn’t say I believed they were true.”

“All right. How was I connected to Eddie?”

“The detective said that you or a friend bought drugs from Eddie.”

“Might be true. Might not. I don’t know.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know where Gus got or bought the amphetamines he gave me.”

“He’s such an idiot. Why would he buy you that shit?” She stands up and paces. I’d join her, but my legs have gone numb.

“He thought the amphetamines would improve my narcolepsy. He was trying to help. Not so famous last words.”

“Did they help?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know if they would’ve. I didn’t take any.”

“Right.” She gives me a half sneer, half smile. It’s a look that doesn’t have a very high opinion of me. “So you told the police that Gus was buying drugs even though he was just trying to help you? Some friend you are.”

J’accuse! “Slow down. I didn’t ask Gus to buy me anything.” I’ll never know if that’s true, not that it matters. “And, I only told the detective that I didn’t buy the amphetamines from anyone, that some nameless client of mine did. I never told him Gus’s name. I keep all my clients confidential.”

“How did the police find out about the amphetamines, then?”

I sigh. That never works. “It’s complicated, unflattering, and not all that important.” Having had the weight of my dignity removed, I feel lighter in the papasan chair.

Ekat returns the sigh, pumps it up with some extra juice, throws her hands up, and sits back down on the futon couch. She finds her beer and attends to it, finally.

I say, “How well does Gus know Eddie?”

“You know Gus. He’s friends with everyone. Never says no to a favor or an odd job. He’s been working with Eddie at the Abbey for about a year now. I guess he knows Eddie as well as he needs to.”

I yawn but cover it up with another sip of beer. Falling asleep, in this position, has great appeal, more appeal than continuing this interview. I guess the papasan chair is comfortable despite its thoroughly designed attempts to be otherwise.

I say, “How about you? Did you give Detective Owolewa Gus’s name?”

“What? No. Why would I?”

“Detective Owolewa didn’t ask you who hired me to watch you last night?”

She looks away, down into her bottle. “He did. And I told him I hired you.”

Interesting lie, one that’ll impact my relationship with Detective Owolewa seeing as I told him my friend hired me, not Ekat. We were only in the get-to-know-me phase, too. I say, “What exactly did you tell the good detective?”

“I talked about the Eddie story…”

“You and your stories. What’s the Eddie story?”

“You already know it. I went to the Abbey with friends for a few drinks. Eddie was the bouncer and wouldn’t leave me alone until I poured a beer on his head. Then Eddie left me threatening phone messages at work. I told the detective that I hired you to watch me at the Pour House last night and then follow me home.” Ekat talks with a calm and even rhythm. It’s natural or practiced to the point of being rote.

“You’re protecting Gus or trying to. Why?”

“I could ask you the same question, Mark.”

“You’re right, but I asked first.”

“Obviously I’d heard about the fire and that Eddie was a suspect. The detective told me about you and a so-called friend and Eddie and drugs. I didn’t know what to think, and I just panicked, and decided not to tell him about Gus. I didn’t want Gus to be in any trouble or get him into trouble.” She pauses. Silence always has meaning. “He’s not exactly new to drugs. He’s been selling joints to friends, same shit he did in high school, but that’s just a stupid, little, juvenile thing, you know. Something to brag about, make him look cool. But he’d never do anything big stupid.”

Sounds fishy. Or maybe it doesn’t. My sincerity radar is off tonight as both Eddie and Ekat seem to be telling me the truth when both can’t be. I know which person I want to believe, though.

Ekat piles onto my hesitation with “I mean, come on. Gus has been my best friend since middle school. I’m not going to do or say anything that gets him in trouble. You’d have said the same thing for a friend if you were in my shoes.”

I did do the same thing for the same person, but I can’t explain why. I say, “Style’s okay, but my feet are too small for your shoes.”

She ignores my attempt at the funny. “Gus does well enough finding trouble on his own, anyway.”

“Have you talked to Gus since last night?”

“No. Have you?”

I shake my head, and there isn’t anything in it. “Eddie says he’s looking for Gus too.”

“You talked to Eddie?”

“Not voluntarily.” I give her a brief account of slamming into Eddie outside of Gus’s empty apartment, his denials and alibi and threats to me and Gus.

Ekat holds her head in her hands. She doesn’t want it to fall off. “Wow. I called Gus three times today, and nothing. I’m really getting worried now. I never realized how dangerous Eddie was. What do you think, Mark?”

I don’t say anything and just stare. My stare turns into another yawn. The yawn could continue down the darkening path if I’m not careful.

She says, “Maybe Gus and Eddie had a falling-out because of the whole stalking-me thing. Gus said he was going to talk to Eddie last night, tell him to leave me alone.” Ekat chews her nails. “You said Eddie threatened Gus too, right? Maybe Gus somehow found out or knew Eddie was going to set that fire, and now he’s laying low, hiding out.”

I say, “Gus never struck me as the type who sleeps with his head under the covers.”

“You might be right. I don’t know. There’re a thousand places he could stay in Boston, and he’s pulled disappearing acts before with angry girlfriends.” Ekat’s legs bounce up and down.

There’s no air-conditioning in the apartment; the ceiling fan is threatening to go on strike. She says, “Something must’ve happened to him. Maybe Eddie or one of Eddie’s lowlife friends did something to him.”

I’m getting the sense that Gus was closer to Eddie than he’d let on. I have an idea, and it’s a pretty good one if I don’t say so myself. “Mind if I call Gus?”

“Please do. Call him.”

“How about with your phone?”

“What?” Ekat’s brow knots up and mutates into a question mark, then she says, “Oh, sure.”

Ekat returns to the kitchen, comes back with her phone, and hands it to me. It’s sleek and black, a piece of the future. I find Gus’s name in her contacts list and dial him up. Four rings and straight to voice mail. I’m a little surprised and disappointed. My considerable gut was telling me that he’s ignoring my calls, but hers he’d answer.

“No go, but let’s try again.” Not ready to give up on her phone. Maybe she and Gus have a pick-up-on-the-second-call system. There’s no answer to call number two. “Mind if I have a peek at your incoming and outgoing calls list?”

“You think I’m lying to you about Gus?”

“I think everyone lies to me.”

“Go ahead.”

I check. In the last twenty-four hours the only incoming calls were from Mom and her bar. There were three outgoing calls to Gus’s number, but she’d told me that. There’s no way to tell how long she was on the phone with Gus as it’s just a list of numbers and times, a call log. I fold the glowing flower of her phone back up and toss it to her.

She says, “Am I all clean?”

“For the moment.”

“Wonderful. What do we do now, Mr. PI? Are we worried that something happened to him? Should we call the police and tell them Gus is missing?”

I can’t tell if she’s serious about involving the police, or if it’s some kind of call to my bluff. I say, “We’re going to have another beer and see if Gus calls you back. I have a feeling he might.” The waiting game isn’t a real strength of mine, but I don’t have a whole lot of other options. That, and I can’t get out of the papasan chair.

“Fine by me.” She goes to the kitchen and comes back with two more bottles.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“It’s a nonsmoking apartment, stipulated in the lease.”

“Don’t you just hate overbearing, manipulative, I’m-gonna-rule-your-life landlords? Maybe it’s just me.”

“Maybe you need a new landlord.” Ekat opens the beers and spreads the wealth. “How’d you meet Gus? Wait, let me guess: a bar.”

I’m too tired to put up a front. I can only muster the ability to answer her with ugly, unprotected truth. Hope no one gets hurt. I say, “Our first date was at a bar, and he even bought me breakfast the next morning. But we met at group therapy down on D Street.”

“That’s right. I almost forgot he’d joined another group. Which one of you is getting the lobotomy?”