Cutting Loose, page 10
“The Texas Ranger kind.”
“Are you shitting me?”
Mead smiled. “No.”
“Ranger? So why the hell was he at Sim’s office?”
Mead shrugged. “I don’t know. Nice guy. I said I’d leave a ticket out front.”
“He’s at Sim’s? What the hell gives?”
“It’ll be nothing. Sim is clean.”
“Nobody is clean. Nobody.”
Wetherspoon sipped his rum, watching Janis.
“Rangers got a remit. Where’s it cross a line with Sim?”
“You got me.”
“You ever heard of him before?”
“Yeah. I didn’t say nothing when I met him, but I knew a bunch about him. From TV, the last couple, three years. I knew him right off. What’s he’s done.”
“Like what?”
“Like he shot a cartel hit squad to rags. Like he shot Gus Bohlin, that serial murderer. Like he put some bullets in a chopper carrying Gila Estrada and it blew up. Yeah, Estrada―cartel boss. Like that.”
Wetherspoon nodded. “Him. Now I remember. Media gave him a hard time for being trigger-happy.”
“A shit-kicker you don’t fool with. Emmett Capps. He does it the old-fashioned way.”
“And he’s up at Sim’s.”
“Right.”
“Man alive. Now that’s interesting.”
“You got that look.”
“I’ve always got that look. Sim is dirty.”
“Forget it. I need Sim. He saved my ass.”
“You might want to make alternate arrangements. Just good business sense.”
“I owe him. And he’s straight-arrow. You may not believe it, Noah, but some people are.”
“I’ll do my own checking on Appelbaum. There may be an angle there for me.”
Mead sighed. “Don’t screw with my livelihood, Noah.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Relax. By the way, that two thousand. Are you good for it?”
“Not right now.”
“That’s fine. Jed. Next week?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a rough patch for you, Jed. Your investments have tanked, your shares are in the toilet.”
“Shares bounce back.”
“Right. Jed, we’ve known each other a long time. I can pass along some freebies. Relax.”
“Appreciate it.”
Their eyes met: Mead knew Wetherspoon was giving him a warning. In earlier days, Mead would have brushed him aside, but that choice was no longer available. His financial situation was worse than Wetherspoon knew; his habit was expensive, he was living on credit, and the gigs he was getting were not enough to keep him afloat.
Why, he wondered, was he such a total fuck-up? Was it a death-wish? He was rescued from a hole in the ground by Sim, but then that wasn’t good enough for him; he had to get a bad attitude about the top-liners, instead of thanking his lucky stars for what he’d clawed back. He had to let bitterness eat at him and start with the junk again. Was he the dumbest redneck in Tennessee? Now Wetherspoon was stuck to him like shit to a blanket, and it was his own damned fault.
If he had been alone he would have banged his head against a hard, gritty surface; he was not, so he sipped his rum Lewis.
They talked show-business later, lying on loungers with Janis, who had tied her hair back. Mead knew the look on her face as she talked with Wetherspoon; she was thinking the guy was a cockroach but intriguing―perhaps, even, colorful. Janis had received a fancy education but liked to hang around with a mixed crowd, and Mead knew that included him; he inhabited the gray area in which respect could be granted or withheld, no longer basking in the sunlight. Perhaps it made Janis feel better about herself, though she carried herself with an air of self-assurance.
When Mead and Wetherspoon walked down the drive to the Chevrolet, Touchette turned half-lidded eyes toward them and uncoiled himself. He opened a door for his boss and said, “Gonna head downtown, sir?”
“Sure.”
Mead had heard B. B. King on the car radio before Touchette turned it off.
“B. B., huh? I shared a bill with him one time.”
Touchette raised an eyebrow. “That right?”
He was lean and sinewy, dressed in a drape suit that almost avoided the suggestion that he was a chauffeur.
“Yessir, he can play.”
If he had never been in prison, he had beaten the odds, but he had clearly found his niche with Wetherspoon as driver and leg-breaker.
Wetherspoon lifted an index finger by way of farewell as the car slid away.
“No evidence? Yes, you’re right,” said Travis. “But no evidence is evidence.”
“I hear you,” said Emmett. “Nothing, nothing at all on record more than nine years ago. And that makes no sense.”
“Right. I mean, there’s always something―for a regular person. Tax history, whatever, something . . . but Appelbaum? Nothing. It’s like he descended from another planet nine years ago.”
“So he’s got new papers, he’s reinvented himself, and his prints are on documents in that keg. If he isn’t the murderer, he’s dirty. He’s connected to it somehow.”
“Are we wrong about this?”
“We’re right. He’s running from something, but his face is ringing no bells. What does that mean? Maybe it’s not the law he’s running from. Could be it’s the other way, he’s running from someone who wants him dead.”
“Maybe,” said Travis, “it’s time to stop being nice. Grill his ass.”
“He’s too smart for that. He’d lawyer up. Let’s get clearance to follow all the paper: bank accounts, insurance, investments, the works. There’s got to be something we can pick at. Get a jimmy into.”
“I’ll talk to Legal, see what they can find.”
“Okay.”
“Damn light keeps jumping. Oh, I get it―that plug isn’t all the way in. Plus, the wiring here’s kind of shot. I’ve got to get it fixed. Yeah, I keep putting it off, the way you do. But electricians? Their prices? I mean, are they dentists or lawyers? The prices they ask? Though, look at it another way. An artisan who gets sky-high pay. Is that bad? Actually, it’s good. Things leveling out. Not just professional guys who get the crazy paychecks. Good, that is, until you’re the one with the shit wiring. Then, not so good. Then, you wish you had those skills yourself. Maybe I should go to night school. I mean, if I’m not an artisan, what the fuck am I? Hey―oven timer!”
“You’re gonna love this. Way back, if you ate lasagna, you wore a wife-beater at dinner. Now, it’s gourmet food. Except―when you can get it at the supermarket, it kind of loses its cachet. Know what I mean? Joe Shmo eats lasagna―suddenly it’s not cool. But what are you gonna do? I mean―possible you just like lasagna. Jesus, the shoals you have to navigate nowadays. Hey, you’re sweating there. I’m gonna wipe your brow. Gimme a moment―first I gotta put the dish on a plate. Okay, there we go. Listen, I’m gonna cool this cloth under the faucet. All right . . . Oh, yeah. That’s got to feel better. The fan’s working, but, okay, it’s still warmer than I’d like. The stuff you got to do nowadays just to live a basic, reasonable life. I wish they’d told me in school you’ve got to swim like a lunatic just to stay in the same place. The tide is always there, fighting you. You find that?
“I’m gonna lift your head. It’s easier that way. Okay, that’s it. Small spoonfuls. Hey, man overboard. Let me get that. Okay. Whoa, you’re gagging. Let me lift your head a little more. Listen, I’m gonna get some orange juice. A straw will help.
“Howzat? Better? Enough? Okay.
“I’ll tell you, last night was great. We got to know each other. I mean, there’s no deeper way to know another person. Am I right? Those intimate moments are what life is about. Everything is an exploration. Who am I? Who are you? At bottom? There are ways to probe all that. I won’t lie, I’ve spent years trying to know myself. Way back, the Romans and Greeks had got that message. Literature from way back can be a revelation. I had no kind of education. And I’m not envious of guys with college degrees. You get knowledge where you can. Don’t get it in college, you get it later. So, I read. Nosce te ipsum. Know thyself. Likely my pronunciation is for shit. That’s the inscription from the Oracle at Delphi. Like, centuries before Christ. The passage of time is spooky. Kids think twenty years is a long time ago. But, people four thousand years ago were just like us. Okay, they believed in shit like gods and goddesses, but, we’re full of shit too, nowadays. We never get totally free of it. Each generation has its own illusions. But some things rise above the BS. Some eternal truths.
“Listen, having said all that, guess what, I’m gonna go look at cartoons on the tube. So, chill, digest, study the ceiling. “
“Bugs Bunny, gotta laugh. That attitude he has is priceless.
“So. People who do this stuff, I mean, people like me, generally they’re dumb as a bag of hammers. I’ve read a lot about them. There’s literature available. So, when they’re caught, the cops say, why do you do this shit? And you get some dumbass reply. I don’t know. Everything went black. This one guy, evening before his execution, he gives an interview. Reporter says, so why do you, like, kill people? And the guy says, it was the influence of pornography. I mean, how lame is that? On the eve of getting the Jesus juice? That’s the best you can do? Sad. If he’d said, I get a buzz out of smashing their fucking brains in, well, that’s an answer I could respect.
“Or else―this theory I have―there’s a secret room in our heads. There is in mine, for sure. I’m guessing it’s the same for the others, Speck, Berkowitz, Bundy, whoever. . . . It’s a room we let no one into. Ever. It’s the place where we live. Those thoughts and feelings that can never be expressed. Yes, we can talk about that stuff with our peers on the rare occasion that we meet. That’s happened to me, once. Met a guy who did this shit. But Joe Public? The cops? No way. Not a chance. They never see into it.
“This is different, this situation. And the reason is, you’re in that room. That secret room. You’re in the center of it and you know my mind as well as I do. You ought to.
“Maybe everything is banal when we fully understand it. Like, the concept of power. To have complete control over someone. Like, you’re an ashtray. I can stub out cigarettes on you. Do anything at all. Cut you with a razor. You belong to me like produce from the supermarket. Maybe it’s not deep, this concept. But if it presses your buttons, it’s the ultimate trip, and there’s no way back. Listen, we’ll talk later.”
“It’s okay to scream. Okay to cry. There’s nothing up there but the horizon. I’m gonna use some antiseptic on those cuts. Jesus! I nearly spilled the bottle. End it? You want that? Not just yet. Got to squeeze the lemon. But don’t fret. Your grave is dug. One thing, you won’t be lonely. Bunch of other graves out there. There’s whispering of a night, I hear it―the dead talking to the dead. Comparing notes. Did he do that to you, too? The thing with the eyes? The exsanguination? Hey, wish I could turn the fan up for you but it’s shit from Walmart. Look, what I need right now is a shower. Later, I’ll get you on the other gurney.”
“Beautiful evening up there. Sometimes that happens. Bakes all day, then the evening is cool as you like. I remember that from a year I spent in Virginia, up in the hills. . . . People out there who lived like a hundred years ago. That’s all gone now, I guess, or going fast, though it’s only, what, twenty years since. Molasses, moonshine, kerosene lamps, the whole thing. Stayed on a farm near Hayter’s Gap, sat on the porch of an evening. Violet in the sky over the cornfields. . . .”
“Ratcliffe,” said Touchette.
“Huh?”
“It’s Ratcliffe, where Appelbaum lives.”
“Oh, right,” said Wetherspoon.
“Got the top floor in a condo. Nice area. White folks with an education. Kids cycling around like they think the world is a beautiful place.”
“Good work, Touchette. So.”
“Yeah. Not easy. What can I say?”
“How not easy?”
“Like, top floor? The whole floor?
“Are there single occupiers on each floor?”
“No. Two on each floor, but he bought both. I talked with this old guy who, I can see, likes to shoot the breeze, tells me his wife is dead, folks look through him like he’s not there. I say, yeah, what you gonna do? So, we sit, he tells me whatever I wanna know. Like I say, just glad to talk.”
“Bought both? Knocked a door through?”
“Prolly.”
“Okay. This is good.”
“I aks him, you see this guy around much? He say, sure, nice guy, easy to talk to, nice as pie, drive a spensive car, gray sedan. Ever’thing with Appelbaum good taste, know what I’m saying? Nothing like I would get. All, like, cool and low key. Me, I’d have leopard-skin pattern on the seats. Just kidding, sir.”
“Right.”
“Any girl friends up there? He say, no. What Appelbaum do, beat his meat? Life is a mystery. White folks, even more. If Jews are white.”
“Uh huh.”
“So. Make a move? Not easy.”
“I hear you.”
“The whole top floor tells you he’s thinking smart. No reason to be up there ’less you fucking with him.”
“Right. But there’s always a way.”
“They surely is.”
“Security?”
“Nothing I could see. There’s stairs. There’s a elevator. Something tells me he’s got whatever he needs to cover his ass. No way you can walk up there, say, hi, Appelbaum, is your shit cool?”
“You stayed back?”
“For sure. Limit to what I can do without folks saying, check out the nigger―what his sorry ass doing in this part of town?”
“Sure.”
“You going somewhere with this?”
“Maybe.”
“Like, this Capps guy?”
“Emmett Capps, yeah. Sharp as a tack. He’s got this down-home routine, but don’t let it fool you.”
“Maybe not smart to poke a stick through the bars, rile the guy. Some kinda old west throwback, draw down on your ass soon as blink.”
“I’ll keep space between us.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m thinking Appelbaum has a safe . . .”
“Be at his office.”
“For sure at his office, but something tells me he’ll keep everything there squeaky clean, case authorities come ’round, say let’s see what’s in there. My guess, he’s got something in the condo.”
“Uh huh. You find it, you got an edge.”
“Right.”
“High-stakes business, putting yourself between Appelbaum and Capps. Ice there pretty thin.”
“Won’t hurt to look. This stage―hat’s all.”
“Uh huh. Sir, you me both, cain’t take a fall one more time, or it deep doodoo.”
“Touchette, we’re cool. Everyone is on the payroll.”
“And that thought helps, sir.”
“We need a black-bag guy.”
“A white black-bag guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me think on it. Already, I’m getting ideas.”
Appelbaum paused at the entrance to the clinic and saw the reflection in the glass door of the man who had been behind him earlier at the cabstand. Was their presence supposed to be obvious? Were they trying to unsettle him? There was little chance of that happening: nothing they could do would upstage his diagnosis, and it must be clear to them from his appearance and visits to this clinic that he had medical problems. He knew it was none of that: years of living on the edge had sharpened his instincts and kept them sharp. He was simply as canny as they, and those sharp instincts told him that imagined shadows were finally becoming reality. He was not just a name on that Ranger’s list: he was the list.
Nurse Cloris Bergdahl smiled, and Appelbaum relaxed.
“Sir, this won’t hurt at all,” she said, as she slid the needle into his arm. She was a likable girl, with blonde hair turned in Swedish plaits. There was something about her that made Appelbaum feel the world was not a complete cesspit; perhaps it was no more than her wholesome manner.
His affairs were in order; his arrangements were made. There was nothing anymore but the dripping of the blood in the IV equipment and the ticking of the clock. His life was measured by the intervals between his visits to the clinic, and the time it took to empty the bags. So be it. There was even a certain ease provided by the clarity of his situation. There was no more striving and no more fretting over matters that had lost their significance. He was in the anteroom that precedes death.
“Do you have family, sir?” said Nurse Cloris.
“No. Not that I know of. There may be a cousin or two somewhere.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir.”
“That’s all right, really.”
“My brother tells me I don’t have the sense to say nothing.”
“Nurse, say anything you want.”
“If I didn’t make dumb remarks, I’d never have met my boyfriend. There was this real overweight woman buying ice cream. I said to a nice-looking guy, why do people get that fat? That’s so gross. Who is that? And the guy said, that’s my mother. Actually, it broke the ice.”
“Sure.”
He had not seen Ranger Capps since that initial visit. Something about Capps intrigued him, and he searched files and newspapers at the City Library until he found a reference to his involvement in the death of Gila Estrada, and then a piece about Capps’ suspension from duty and later reinstatement. That story led to another, the shooting of Gus Bohlin, who was one of the new breed christened ‘serial killers.’ Bohlin was clearly from another dimension, a person who lived for death. The account of his exploits was the stuff of nightmares―eviscerated bodies, heads in cabinets, and the like. One thing was clear―Capps’ résumé belied his easy manner.
Later, wheeling the IV pole to a window, he looked down at the street, three stories down but he could see no one he recognized.
“I’m off duty now, sir. Annie right here is taking over. So I’ll see you Thursday.”
“Sure. And thanks.”
That evening, in his apartment, listening to Claudio Abbado’s recording of Mahler’s 1st symphony, he opened a bottle of Macallan double malt and poured himself a generous snoot. The apartment was immaculate and his records were alphabetized on several shelves; Mahler, Gustav, was next to Monroe, Bill. Was he, perhaps, content? That would be an exaggeration. His present situation, though, was not the toughest one he had ever faced.
