Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

What about the big man and his lurching accusations? What had he said? Anything real? Maybe drawing attention to himself, maybe trying to get himself some help or just his way of saying, Stop me before I do something too uncontrolled? Sometimes the twisted ones accused everybody else of doing what they really, in their hearts, Already Dead / 105

wanted to do themselves. These berserkers were infants in big bodies, that’s what the condition chiefly consisted of. Imagine a six-month-old with manual dexterity and an arsenal. He’d get his bottle all right. Then the SWAT people, and everybody dead and nobody knows why.

“Mo—”

She brought over the coffeepot.

But he covered his cup with his hand and said, “Remember when we talked before?”

She didn’t answer. Because they were virtually alone she was, he could see it, reluctant to be flirtatious now.

“I’d still like to see you sometime. Tonight, even.” She wouldn’t quite look at him, not directly.

“What do you think about that?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said, and suddenly her loneliness stank all over the room.

He told himself: let’s get out of here.

“Save my seat,” he said to her. “I gotta move my clothes around across the street.”

He left a five by his plate. Because he wasn’t coming back.

“Wait a minute,” she said when he had his hand on the doorknob.

He could feel his shoulders hunching and knew she could see it — he’d be looking yanked back, stopped against his will. “You left too much,” she said.

“No — keep the change.”

“This is a five.”

“I’ll be back in a second.”

“It doesn’t seem like you will.”

He had to go back and break it.

“If you’d really like to get together sometime,” she said.

“Sure,” he agreed, revolted with himself.

“I get off at nine.”

“Okay. Yeah. Fine.”

The look in her eyes was friendly and not that stupid. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“You look like you’re under arrest.”

Navarro got back up the coast with his laundry before 5 P.M. to check in with Merton, nominally his boss but no one’s boss, 106 / Denis Johnson

really, before Merton headed home or wherever he headed each day at five. Navarro in truth didn’t mind the drive between Anchor Bay and Point Arena, a stretch of coast that opened into breezy emerald meadows where an occasional bunch of cows or horses just stood still, apparently thinking. Here the coast jutted westward, farther westward, he’d been told, than any other part of California, and well out into the clouds and fog of the ocean’s weather systems. Point Arena was generally sunless, damp, depressed, a scrawny community gathered around a fishing harbor whose pier had been wrecked by a great wave some years back and only very recently rebuilt. Now the revival was on, however: other renovations had started along the main street, and Navarro only hoped they crept up the hill a couple blocks to include his own territory. The police station didn’t quite rate the designation — it was a moveable structure meant for use as a temporary classroom in overburdened schools. Certainly it was big enough for the two-man department, but it felt wrong. In a workspace this size they needed di-viders, which they’d had briefly but which had been command-eered — by the school, as a matter of fact — and which would have given it less this air of a hovel crouched in a universe of chaos. Everything was everywhere, and the three desks, his, Merton’s, and the part-time clerk’s, seemed to be rising on a tide of stuff, mostly paper: fliers, notices, findings of the county and state attorneys, things that should have been taken out and burned.

Merton greeted him only by raising his eyes while lowering his head to drip Skoal snuff out of his mouth into a Styrofoam cup.

Judging by Merton’s silence, nothing was happening today. The office closed at five, and after that the two men could be summoned by beepers — Navarro would take the calls tonight.

In fact he’d had it in mind to ask Merton to switch with him because he felt he might get lucky with Mo, the tall waitress, but now he decided against it because, in the event he was wrong about his luck, he didn’t want to be loitering around and lamenting the fact.

He paused at the file cabinet to check the mail, which had obviously lain all day in its wire basket undisturbed. Jenny, the part-time clerk, did not actually open mail for fear of creating confusion. Merton didn’t open mail either, but as today’s included a stack of half a dozen brown envelopes bearing a familiar, earnest scrawl, he might have been expected to. Merton enjoyed these little communications — the first one Navarro opened started right out PS: Now I am Already Dead / 107

mad as shit kicking in Hell… Their correspondent wrote and sealed and stamped them on different days, but dropped them in the box all at once like this, in a batch. Two or three times before they’d come, and Merton always got a kick out of reading them out loud. Today’s sampling looked basically illegible.

“Anything up?”

“Nah,” said Officer Merton. “Another perfect day.” Merton was a large battered handsome man on whom a police uniform looked like something he’d wear doing yard work. He kept his boots next to his desk and worked in his stocking feet. Good clean white socks. Nothing untoward there. In fact to a degree they offset the effect of the snuff, and the spitting. He’d been employed by the Sheriff’s Department in Ukiah for one year, in the county jail; then he’d been out of work for quite a long time before moving over here for this job. In Navarro’s opinion his colleague showed a flair for law enforcement though he lacked experience in basic police procedure. The truth was he navigated the local waters more skillfully than Navarro could ever hope to. Merton had found great success in viewing Point Arena as a large jail — there were good and bad prisoners, some serving sentences and some not yet proven guilty, and he anticipated nothing much to do unless called upon to crush a mass disturbance. “What?” he often said into the phone, “I’m not going out for that. I just had my feet up and was reading the newspaper. Dogs are supposed to bark. And if your neighbor calls me tomorrow and says his dog’s been poisoned,” he might add, “I won’t go out for that either.” Without a word right now, though, Merton pulled on his boots, stood slowly, winked, touched a few things on his desk in a secret, supersti-tious way, hefted his Styrofoam spittoon and then pitched it into the wastebasket, gathering himself to leave the building as usual with great informality, even haste. Navarro suspected him of some arcane habit or vice. He pictured Merton in a smoky den gambling with Chinese guys.

Opening another of the day’s brown envelopes, Navarro noticed that it was addressed to him by name. He discovered they all were.

Last May, the second of his three ex-wives had written to him, sounding strange and sentimental — he’d wondered if she’d lost her looks or fallen prey to booze. Otherwise, these collected lunatic ravings were the closest he’d come to receiving any personal mail. He 108 / Denis Johnson

got lots of ads, that was about it, and he wished he could take a cut on the money people made selling him off to mailing lists, mostly for companies offering high-tech law-enforcement gadgets. All the cops were buying plastic Clock automatics now. He wouldn’t have minded owning a ten-millimeter himself, 649 foot-pounds of knockdown power in every one of fifteen shots, and all that. To what purpose? Well, for the hell of it. I have activated brain power , the second letter began without salutation or heading—