Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

“You’re sure?” I was skeptical. “I don’t want any more innocent people hurt.”

“No one will be hurt. But what is-”

“It’s better not to ask what you were gonna ask. If it works, maybe I can make it work for Valencia Jones, too.”

His face brightened beneath the low light of the bare bulbs. His desperation to get out of the hole he and Zak had dug for everyone was beginning to wear on him as well. The late-season blizzard had kept him out of work for an extra day, but he had called in sick the last two days. Someone needed to stir the pot and I meant for that someone to be me.

“When would you like to make these calls?” Guppy was eager to know. “I will need several minutes of preparation.”

“Tonight, preferably when Zak and Johnny are asleep.”

There was a yawn, a pause, then: “Hello.”

“Tess.”

“Dylan!”

“Shhhhh, keep it down.”

“Are you all right? There are cops-”

“I know, Tess. I’m fine. And no, I didn’t do it.”

“You couldn’t, Dylan, not what they say you did.”

“I loved her.” That was met with reverent silence. Tess was great like that. “Listen-”

“I’ll go get Jeffrey.”

“Don’t! I called for you. Zak is alive. He’s with-”

Her voice cracked. “Can I speak to him?”

She began crying. I heard her put her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, but joy was a difficult thing to cover up.

“Tess. .Tess, you okay?”

“Never better,” she sniffled.

“He can’t talk to you now, but he’ll be home soon.”

“What about you?”

“Forget about me. Just tell everyone Zak’s okay. And tell my brother I know about Hernandez.”

“But-”

I hung up before she could put Jeff on the line or talk me into or out of anything. I waited for Guppy to give me the go ahead for the second call.

He tapped on the radiator and I picked up. The phone number I had given him was already ringing.

“You have reached. .” the message began.

“Larry!” I screamed as loudly as I dared, “Larry Feld, pick up! Pick up the goddamned phone. It’s me! Larry!”

“If you leave your name, number, time you called and a brief message, I. .”

“Larry, pick up! It’s me, Dylan!”

“. .If this is a business matter, you may reach me after 10:00 A.M. at my office. The number is. .”

“Lar-”

“Dylan, for chrissakes! I’m here. I’m here. Wait for the message to finish.”

As I waited, listening to the recorded Larry, I found myself feeling sorry that I had found him at home.

“Larry?” I screamed from nerves when the message was ended. “Are you there?”

“No, schmuck, I ran down to the deli for a cup of coffee while the message was running.”

“I need help, Larry.”

“Help!” He was incredulous. “You were never much for understatement, Dylan. From what my sources tell me, you need a miracle, not help.”

“I need you,” I said.

“For what?”

“To defend me, genius.”

“I don’t do miracles, Dylan.”

“You gonna make me beg, Larry?”

“Maybe.”

“Consider yourself begged.”

“Not good enough.”

“What is it, Larry? You want me to swear I’m on my knees or something?”

He giggled. “I wouldn’t care if you were standing on your head.”

“Then what is it?” I was really starting to regret finding him at home.

“Did you like me?” he asked.

“Did I what?”

He repeated: “Did you like me?”

“Christ, Larry, I feel like I’m in Fiddler on the Roof. What does it matter?”

“Maybe your future depends on it or maybe you would like your brother to defend you?”

“I didn’t ask my brother. I’m asking you.”

“Answer my question,” he persisted.

“Yes, Larry, I liked you. What, do you think I was always sticking my neck out for you because I was Abraham Lincoln? I’m no hero. I did that shit when we were kids because you were different, driven, but not like Jeffrey. With him it was like success was preordained, like he had it coming. If I had what you had, Larry, I’d be the most famous fucking writer in the world, not some putz peddling his screenplay ideas like a Fuller Brush man. And you could make me laugh. That’s it, you could make me laugh.”

“You’re not a putz , Dylan, but I’m real tired of owing you.”

“That’s the joke,” I told him, “you never owed me anything.”

“I’ll take the case,” he said almost before I finished my sentence.

“Don’t you wanna know if I-”

“You didn’t do it, so shut up and stop wasting my time.”

“Okay.”

“Dylan, just one thing. Why do you need a lawyer?”

“I want to turn myself in.” The words came out, but I couldn’t believe I’d said them. “There’s some people I need to protect.”

“This have anything to do with your nephew? Don’t tell me he whacked the girl.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Larry.”

“I have to meet you and talk,” he explained, “then we can arrange terms with the cops to turn yourself in. Where are you?”

“I’m in-”

MacClough stepped out of the shadows and depressed the phone button before I could finish. I could barely make his face out in the dark, but I knew it was him. I continued to hold the mute phone to my ear like a stage prop.

“No one,” MacClough whispered, taking the phone from my hand, “is turning himself in. No one.”

I thought about arguing with him, but his face told me not to bother. That face of his made me think twice. MacClough wasn’t an unreasonable guy. You could sway him sometimes. Then there were times, times like this, that you just knew he wasn’t moving. You would have better luck lifting the Statue of Liberty on your back and walking it to Prospect Park. I was just as glad to go to bed right then. I wasn’t so eager to surrender that I needed to throw myself at the cops in the middle of the night.

For the first time since I’d gotten to Guppy’s underground palace of Red paranoia, we ate breakfast together. I whipped up some omelets and bacon and toast, keeping Guppy as far away from the kitchen as possible. We dined in the bunker. The fact was, we had spent little if any time as a group. We all seemed far too preoccupied with our own guilts and ghosts to bother with socializing. And when we did attempt to make small talk, the small talk tended to degenerate into anger, the anger into silence, the silence into separation.

The only noise at breakfast was the scraping of silverware on cheap china. No one mentioned my phone calls or my plans of surrender, though I felt sure that Zak and Guppy had some sense of what was going on. The weather had broken finally and Guppy could no longer avoid work. With the better weather came the paper. As we ate, it sat folded and untouched like a boobytrapped centerpiece at your cousin Mary’s wedding. Everybody wanted to take it home, but were afraid of what might happen if they made the first grab. I thought I caught Zak’s arm twitch as if he had decided to go for it only to change his mind at the last moment.

“For chrissakes!” MacClough growled, unfolding the paper to show us the front page. “Take a gander.”

I looked like hell in black and white. Sometimes I think newspapers purposefully hunt down your ugliest photo before going to press. The Riversborough Gazette had nearly succeeded. It wasn’t my investigator’s license photo-Sorry, MacClough. It wasn’t my bar mitzvah portrait-I’d burned all the copies. What it was was a head shot of me at Sissy Randazzo’s prom. I sported an afro the size of a small asteroid, no beard, and a mustache that could have been a caterpillar, but never a moth. The grainy reproduction made it impossible to differentiate between my acne and freckles. The lapels on my polyester tux were piped in dark felt and wider than the thirteenth and fourteenth fairways at Augusta. The ruffles on my shirt added three inches to my chest and my bow tie looked like two yield signs welded together. The fact that one of my eyes was half closed when the picture was taken did nothing to enhance my already splendid visage and attire. It did, however, make me look like an escapee from an Ed Wood movie.