Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

He still didn’t want anyone else in the club to know we were having a border dispute over here; he had something to lose if they figured out I wasn’t as deep in his pocket as he had maybe been implying I was.

I kept anything even resembling a smile off my face, not wanting to push him any further than I already was – I wasn’t stupid enough to think I knew his limits. “Like I said, a little birdie. Tweety tweet, Mr. Tubbs.”

I turned on my heel and strolled down the hall, out the door, and across the street toward Sam’s Lincoln, my back crawling the whole way. I had no real faith that having all his business buddies around as eye witnesses would slow Tubbs down.

Sam had started the Continental, but the passenger door was locked and the window was up. I rapped on the closed glass with my knuckle but he just gave me the stink eye.

“What?” he mouthed.

“Open sesame, kid,” I said. Sam unlocked my door and I climbed in. Across the street Tubbs’ Bronco roared out the Club parking lot like it was in a hurry.

Sam wiped his face with the back of his hand. “You know we got nothing to offer to match what they’re putting on the table, and I know you’re looking out for number one like always. So what’s changed? How is now any different from an hour ago?”

I grinned at him. “Quit fishing. All you need to know is I want to go back to the Gardens.”

Sam started to pull away from the curb.

“Wait,” I said, looking over at the library, where Chief Jansen had busted the under-age hooker a few minutes before. “Let’s go to the library really quick, I need to check on something.”

Sam drove over there, managing to take up two spaces when he parked at an uncaring angle.

“Wanna come in with me?” I asked, but he only laughed.

I left him and entered the cool quiet hush of my church. When I’d been inhaling the prison library whole I’d just about memorized the Dewey Decimal System. Now I wended my way through the rows and shelves, running my fingertips along the exposed book spines as I searched for those familiar catalog numbers.

Here was 818.3, and I nodded patriotic respect to the Transcendentalists as I passed: Thoreau with his bleak ironies – his attack disguised so well by the beauty of his words that his victim was unaware of the damage before it was too late. And Emerson, the King – his unapologetic world view was such a lonely one, I was surprised more of Ralph’s readers didn’t try to hack their wrists up with a dull butter knife. A little ways down at 811.3 Whitman held court, aloof as always: Walt, with his suicidal compassion dripping crimson from his poems like a squeezed triage room sponge.

From there a straight leap back to the ancients and my buddies the Stoics: 187 and Lucretius, with his flat gaze and incisive mind, attacking the world as if it were an enemy deliberately trying to pull the wool over his eyes. 188, and my almost-namesake, Marcus Aurelius – reading his Meditations was like chewing on tin foil sometimes; but Marcus freely gave all the tools necessary for courage and honor in a universe so obviously not constructed with our benefit in mind.

What should I do now, Lucretius? I asked silently. How would you go about things here, Marcus? But of course all I got from my boys was static.

Which of my mentors did I want to hold in my hand? What book would be worth the effort of carting it away from here?

I smiled as I realized who it had to be. I walked to 844, grabbed a copy of Montaigne’s Essays and headed to the checkout counter. “I don’t have a card,” I admitted to the librarian, a pretty young brunette.

“Do you have proof of residency?” she asked.

“Sara,” an older librarian called from behind her.

“Excuse me,” Sara said, going back to join her coworker. The two huddled together whispering, both of them turning to look at me occasionally. I was getting ready to leave when they both marched up to me and Sara took her seat again.

“We know who you are, Markus,” the older librarian told me, while Sara pressed all the necessary keys on her computer. I nodded, blinking a little.

I was happy as a kid at Christmas when I left the library with Montaigne, no longer fully alone. Sam just smirked when he saw the book in my hands, and we commenced to driving.

“Just so you know,” Sam said, “the family’s name is the Vangs; the girl’s name was Mai. The mom you saw crying? She told me once she had seven other children back in Laos that didn’t even make it here to the Land of the Big PX – she still has two left, even with Mai gone. Maybe the Vangs ain’t gonna make you guest of honor at their next Moon Festival, but they know who killed Mai. And they know damn well it wasn’t you.”

“Thanks Sam,” I said.

“For what?”

“Just ‘thanks,’ and let’s leave it at that.” I glanced at the floor but our Kodachrome was gone. I looked around at Sam’s belongings scattered around the car and almost asked him why he didn’t stop pretending he wasn’t with Elaine; why he didn’t just move in with her.

No, I thought, studying his stony profile as he chauffeured me home to the Gardens. Sam’s love life was none of my affair.

That afternoon Big Moe drove me to Mai’s funeral in a Ford Taurus that had seen better days, but was clean and looked well maintained. The Taurus had an infant’s car seat in the back but Moe apparently decided to leave his baby at home.

It was quite the juxtaposition, this young slanger driving such a conservative, respectable family car. My confusion must have shown; Moe said, in an almost apologetic tone, “It has a very good safety rating.”

The funeral was a dismal affair, as such rituals always are. Her family stood around that cold, cold hole while some kind of priest dressed in colorful robes mouthed words in a language I couldn’t understand. Mai’s tiny casket was lowered into the ground and that was that.

One of the male Vangs looked my way; I was standing with Moe several graves over, as distant as I could manage and still pay my respects by attending. This Hmong guy just stared at me; I couldn’t interpret the expression on his face but I didn’t take it for friendliness.

“I was out of line, what I said before,” Moe said, both of us watching the funeral instead of looking at each other. “You’re still needed – can’t let you get away that easy. It was like an act of God, not your fault.”

He spat on the ground. “Just like an act of God,” he said again.

I turned to see Officer Reese standing by his car a ways behind us with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a soda can in the other. His black-and-white was a brand new Crown Victoria. Given Stagger Bay’s money problems, it had to have been bought with drug seizure money.

Big Moe was right by my side as I walked toward Reese, but I shook my head at him. “Go wait in the car.”

Moe didn’t like it, but he peeled off.

“Tell me Kendra didn’t know about any of this, Reese,” I said by way of greeting, lobbing the name right up in his face to get it over with. “Tell me she had no part in it.”

But Reese was already intent as a targeting attack dog: “What you was saying to Mr. Tubbs before, about those douche bags that killed Kendra? Where’d you get that? Who told you?”

“That’s between me, Mr. Tubbs, and my source.”

“Source,” he snarled. “You’re full of it, just trying to stir things up.”

“You may be right. You’d be the one to know whether you and Kendra got your shifts switched. You’d even know who was the one made it happen.”

Reese shuddered but it was no more than a momentary spasm, nothing to hang my hat on. He hadn’t shaved since the last time I’d seen him. His uniform was wrinkled and soiled like he’d worn it overnight on a stakeout.