Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

“Your brother?”

“Yeah, Kent opens his eyes up real wide and looks horrified, and says he saw it crawl into my bathing suit.”

“Fuck.”

“Exactly. So I just about lose it, scramble out of the pool on the verge of tears and find my dad sitting there reading, and I’m all blubbery and basically freaking out, and I begin to pull down my bathing suit to find the thing, and he asks what’s going on and then sort of grabs me by the shoulders and says, ‘Blake, did you physically see it go in?’ And I have to admit that, well, no, I didn’t. And so he says, ‘Then don’t take off your suit.’ And this has stuck with me I think because it was this moment where I basically submerged myself in his authority, let it douse my own doubt and fear and assumptions, which were of course in retrospect stupid but at the time seemed very real.”

“He woke you up.”

“Exactly. It wasn’t so much what was the truth, but that I could accept this version of it.”

Mitch let that sit for a while and so did I. After a couple minutes I changed the subject.

“So who’s the guy we’re staking out?”

“An interesting case, actually.” Mitch immediately grew more animated. “He’s a gambler, but he’s a successful gambler, or was. He made a lot of money, made a lot of investments. And now he’s filing for bankruptcy.”

We passed a sign for West Milford. We were getting close.

“So what’s the angle?” I glanced over at him, wondering if he’d acknowledge the term I’d used.

“The angle is that someone he owes money to thinks he’s actually still cash rich. Their lawyers have hired us to gather evidence of unusual or excessive expenditure.”

“Huh,” I said.

Mitch seemed to sense my disappointment. “But the guy has some colorful hobbies,” he said. “For one, he’s a peeping Tom. We’ve actually followed him around his own neighborhood, where he’s got a little route he takes once or twice a week, half a dozen houses he hits just as people are headed to bed.”

“No shit. So you’re watching someone watch people,” I said.

“Another peccadillo is his habit of impersonating a federal officer. He’s been picked up for that a couple times over the last decade or so.”

“He dresses up like a cop?”

“Federal. FBI.”

“Oh, right, of course. So…”

“He wears a black suit and flashes around a badge, which is really just a piece of paper for the Bureau. He’s talked his way onto crime scenes, into people’s houses. He’s even testified in court as an expert witness.”

“That’s wild. So what does he do? I mean, what’s he after?”

“Honestly, he doesn’t seem to take advantage of it. Or, you know, no more than what it is.”

“Amazing,” I said. “What’d you say this guy’s name is?”

“I didn’t. It would be unethical for me to give you the guy’s name. Now, if you happen to pick it up while we’re at the Elk’s Club, that’s not my business.”

This seemed overly formal, given the fact that Mitch was taking me along and telling me all about the case, but I understood the need to control information. He was an expert, and sometimes expertise is an act of withholding. We passed another sign for West Milford, and up ahead I began to see the soft glow of artificial light against the dark summer sky. A small plane flew overhead, seeming to descend.

“So what are we looking for, exactly?”

“Well, we have our case more or less buttoned up — that’s why my father chose to sit this one out — but what we’re missing is that last really definitive…I don’t know. The court is a drama, and it’s always nice to have something truly memorable for the jury. Something that defines the whole case. Let’s just say it would be great if he drove up in a Ferrari.”

“How long have you been watching him?”

“Nineteen days.”

There was no fancy car in front of the West Milford Elk’s Club. There was a gravel lot, mostly empty, with weeds tufting around a pole doing double duty for power lines and a dull yellow light. The building itself was almost unmarked, its single story depressed below a flat roof, and a small window beside the door held a collection of trophies. It was a place children would avoid, teenagers would ignore, and adults would “find themselves in.” Mitch brought me around to the trunk, where he pulled out two trucker hats and a bright orange hunting vest.

“Believe me,” he said. “You’ll want to fit in. Oh, and one more thing. Turn off your cell phone. They know me in here, but we’re trying to keep a low profile, and regardless of who calls you, you’ll talk like an out-of-towner.”

I did as he asked, and in we went.

The room was sparsely furnished, somewhere between a bar and a basement rec room. Most of the twenty-odd people inside sat around a square bar in the center of the room, and most of them were smoking. I followed Mitch to the bar. The bartender was the only woman present, and she was at least ten years younger than the people on the other side of the counter. She smiled at Mitch and began drawing a pint of Yuengling.

“Two?”

“Please,” Mitch said. “How’s tricks, Shelley?”

Shelley wore a pink T-shirt with the words “You Got Served” across the chest. She was girlish, with loose, wavy blond hair and an expressive face that scrunched up as her eyes rolled. “How do you think, Mitch? Who’s your friend?”

“This is Blake, a buddy of mine from way back.”

Shelley reached across the counter to shake my hand. “Welcome to the Club.”

We took our beers to a small table some feet from the bar. Mitch scanned the room. He nodded to a couple of men, smiled, then held up his glass.

“Here’s to old friends,” he said.

“Which one is he?”

“Not here yet.”

An hour and a half and three pints later, I was having a good time. The jukebox was playing songs everyone knew, and I’d struck up a game of pool with a man named Harry who’d been a figure skater before becoming an arc welder. I’d told him about the book I was writing — or failing to write — and he’d eagerly launched into story after story about his days on ice. His big belly belied his athletic past, but his tales of competitive skating were lively enough to keep me from focusing on the table, and I was getting creamed.

“But I knew in my gut,” Harry was saying, “that the attitude of my free leg wasn’t going to cut it for the flying layback I was trying to land.”

I was trying to picture this man in a glittering, skin-tight leotard.

I nodded, shot, missed.

I was littles.

“Did you land it?” I asked.

“Oh, I landed it all right. But I was so busy thinking about my attitude that I forgot about my spine.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Harry sunk his final stripe and left himself a nice angle on the eight ball, but just as Harry was lining up his final shot Mitch came and whispered in my ear, “He’s here.”

The bar was directly between where we were standing and the door, so I could see only some bright red and orange plaid moving between tables, the man’s head hidden behind the raised liquor shelf. There was a jovial murmur audible even above the jukebox, which was now playing “Baker Street.” The song’s saxophone soared and, combined with the smoky, lowlit room, lent an almost mystical quality to the man’s entrance. Half drunk, I was pleasantly pulled from the scene, gently coaxed into a state of bemusement as though hypnotized just enough to appreciate my own lack of willpower. It was, after all, not really my life I was living here. It wasn’t even the life of the person who’d brought me here. I was a parasite twice removed, a ghost haunting a ghost, and the buzz I felt was not just from the booze but from my near-total absence of connection. Freedom without the existentially attendant responsibility. I’d never be back here. I’d never see any of these people again, and they’d forget me the minute I left.