Jeff Rovin - Vespers

A companion?

Joyce opened her eyes wide to snap away the reverie and get off that track. She had known Gentry half a day. And it hadn’t been love at first or second sight. But she couldn’t shake the surprising awareness she felt of the man next to her. If there wasn’t exactly a magnetic pull, there wasn’t a desire to go anywhere either. And for her, Ms. Camp Alone, Stay at Home, that was something truly different and a little unsettling.

“You can go ahead and shut your eyes if you want,” Gentry said.

“Pardon?”

“I saw you start to doze a little.”

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

He nodded. “If you want music there are a bunch of tapes in the glove compartment. I don’t know if it’s your taste, but you can look.”

Joyce popped open the door and looked in at the tossed-in collection. “This reminds me of the way I used to store tapes of Professor Lowery’s lectures. You have any preferences?”

“Anything’s fine. It’s all fifties and sixties rock.”

“No seventies and eighties, huh?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“That was my era,” Joyce said. “Queen. Prince. Michael Jackson.”

“The King of Pop. All the royalty.”

“You got it.” Joyce began looking through the only occasionally labeled tapes.

“I used to like them too,” Gentry said. “But when I was undercover, this guy we were trying to bring down always listened to contemporary rock in the car. His favorite was the Police, which I guess was kind of ironic. Now it’s one of those association things. I can’t listen to any of that music without thinking of the son of a bitch.”

“Why did you give up undercover work?” Joyce asked.

“Because I was burned out. I was pretty close to quitting anyway.”

“Anyway?”

“Yeah. Even if it weren’t for what happened to Bernie Michaelson. My junior partner.”

“What did he do to drive you out?”

“Exactly what I told him,” Gentry said.

Joyce frowned. “You lost me.”

“Never mind. It’s a long story.”

“That’s what you said when you called before,” she replied. “It’s a long drive. I’m interested in hearing about it if you feel like talking.”

Gentry looked at her. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Mine?”

“Whatever it was you said I had no idea about back at the hospital.”

“I’m still not following-”

“What you said I didn’t know the half of. When you told me about SDS.”

“Sorry. No deal,” she said emphatically. Then she added, slightly softer, “I can’t, Robert. I’m not sure I could even articulate it all. I’m not sure Iunderstand it.”

Gentry turned his eyes back to the road. Joyce resumed going through the tapes, but her mind wasn’t on them. She understood this much: men alwayspushed. Why? Because they wanted to help or because knowledge gave them some kind of control-

“Bernie Michaelson was my partner for seven years,” Gentry said suddenly.

Joyce stopped shuffling the cassettes. She looked over. His hands were squirming slowly around the wheel.

“All he ever wanted to be was a cop. Son of cop, grandson of cop, that kind of thing. He started out as my ghost-someone who covers an undercover cop when he’s making buys in the street. See, when you’re undercover you can’t wear a bulletproof vest. It’s bulky, and if you get patted down you’re screwed. The ghost stays until you’re clear of the scene or makes the buy if you don’t show. Mizuno, this guy we’d been after for years, spent the summers in Colombia and the winters in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He stayed at home every night during basketball season and watched the game. Every night, no exceptions. We finally had the goods on him-audiotapes, fingerprints, bank account numbers, paper trail-and arranged with the cops up there to pick a night for the pinch. On the night we picked, the Knicks were getting creamed so Mizuno decided to go out and see his girl in Fairfield. His two bodyguards got up to start the car and make sure the coast was clear. This is two minutes before the Bridgeport narc squad is due to move in. If the guys had left then, they would have seen the strike team taking up positions on the lawn and outside the doors. We have to keep everyone where they were, in front of the TV, for two more minutes.

“This Mizuno happened to like my sense of humor. So I told him he had to wait and listen to this joke I’d heard. I told the bodyguards I needed their help, it was a visual. I was going to make something up, some story. But Mizuno wasn’t in the mood. He told the guys to go ahead, and then he started to get out of his chair. I was standing between him and the TV. The front door was a few steps to my left. Bernie was sitting in the chair next to Mizuno. We looked at each other. There was nothing to do but try to take the three of them down ourselves and have the narc guys back us up.

“I nodded toward Bernie and then toward Mizuno. I was going to go after the other two. Bernie nodded back. The problem was, we weren’t allowed to wear guns around the boss. So I had to get one from the bodyguard who was coming toward me, and Bernie had to get Mizuno’s. Bernie moved when I did. I succeeded. Bernie didn’t. Mizuno shot him in the chest and leg. I nailed the bastard in the shoulder before I turned back to deal with the bodyguards. The narcs came in then and cleaned up. Bernie died en route to the hospital. I got out of the narc business a couple of weeks later. Commissioner Veltre shifted me over to Accident Investigations. Important, but a little less stressful.”

Joyce had been sitting still. The glove compartment was still open. “Robert, I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

“I can’t even imagine what that was like.”

“It was pretty bad for a while,” he admitted. “Now it comes and goes, though I go through the drill almost every day-the should’ves and could’ves and why did I do this instead of that. I can’t shake the idea that the narc squad might’ve been able to handle it without us. That maybe the best thing would have been for Bernie and me to do nothing.”

“Maybe then it would have gone worse than it did.”

“It’s possible,” Gentry admitted. “At least, that’s what my new best friend Father Adams in the Chaplain Unit’s been trying to tell me for six months now. He and I get together every other week for a spirited spiritual exchange. But this is pretty thick,” he tapped his skull, “and what’s inside is still telling me that I blew it. That’s the reason you and I had out little to-do back in the tunnel. I love working with people. Always have. With my sources in the street way back when, with other detectives, with my forensics guys, even with our sorry goddamn softball team. I like working with you. But if something happens to anyone else I’m with, it’s going to be an accident or an act of God. It’s not going to be because I didn’t look out for the people who were with me.”

The car continued along the Hudson River. Sunlight and pleasure boats skipped across the waters. Joyce closed the glove compartment without selecting a tape. Her eyes drifted ahead to the George Washington Bridge.

“Everybody screws up,” she said. “Sometimes it happens when you think you’re doing the right thing. When you’d absolutely swear it. When you’ve thought about it, and gone back and forth about it, and hadweeks to decide, not seconds. This field-the curatorships, the associate curatorships, the directorships, the assistant directorships-is every bit as competitive as you said it is. There are about fifty Ph.D.’s for every available position. If you manage to get one of those you can really vindicate yourself. Say ‘fuck you’ to all the people who thought you were crazy as a kid for liking what you did. For dreaming of being a circus aerialist or running cruises along the Amazon.”