John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

It fit, sure. Corroboration, some would say. This was 1978, and the wives of sleazeball politicians could dump their husbands more freely than in the past.

It fit — but Kit wasn’t putting together that puzzle. He wasn’t working on the bad guy around the home, but on the public figure in high office. Wasn’t trying to hang out the dirty laundry, but to hammer out the whole truth.

Even now in his clean suit, with a long and thoughtful draft before him, with a half-decent breakfast in his belly and a plan for getting rid of the gun — even now, Kit could feel the worm on his back. The doubt. That too was part of the alacrity he’d woken up with, the energy that had rocked out of solving a small mystery or two. For starters, Kit fretted over explaining what he still had to do. It wasn’t going to be easy, once he got to the office. But worse than that, harder on him, were these ghostly vagues in his testimony. To him the work remained a mockup. Words words words. Popkin might accept it, maybe even the Grand Jury, but someone in his own line of work could put their finger on the weak spots in a minute.

MEMO

To: Kit the Employee

From: Kit the Editor

One, what’s this “no doubt” in your close? “No doubt” the Senator’s covering up some peccadillo from years ago? Original sin? So, you got a paper trail on that? You got the apple? Don’t you know, you’re not going to find a cancelled check? Haven’t you heard, paying off pols is strictly a cash business?

Get rid of it.

Two, what’s this “in the confusion” crap in the fourth graph? By then, wasn’t the con too weak to do any serious damage? Weren’t you safe against the wall? Hadn’t the guard come back into the area? So, what “confusion?” Why does that smell to me like hooey? Like more original sin?

Rewrite.

An actual paper, how about it. Kit had broken off reading when the apartment buzzer sounded and, back out on the freezing stoop, he found Charley Garrison.

*

“Ten minutes. I drop you off and goodbye.”

“Forget it. I’ll ride the T.”

“The T? Leo’s not at the office, I told you.”

“I can find him.”

“Leo, he’s at the new station, I told you. The new one the T’s putting in. Ain’t no stop anywhere near there.”

“I can walk.”

“Oh, whoa. Come on, I ride you, it’s warm. Ten minutes, and you won’t never have to see me again your whole life.”

“Goodbye, Garrison. I’m going back inside now.”

“Viddich. Leo, I told you — Leo’s got what you want. He’s got what you asked for.”

“I don’t want it any more.”

Garrison pouted, Irish, young. “Well, I don’t know anything about it. ‘Course. Don’t know anything about any business between you two. But you ask me, if you’re like changing the plan between you two? Changing the arrangement? Then you owe the guy. You got some explaining to do.”

Kit tried to relax, against his building’s closed front door. He’d been standing like a Cossack, chest up, arms crossed. He’d stiffened himself against the disappointment of rushing back downstairs only to discover this wasn’t Bette.

“Viddich. You know you got some explaining to do.”

The Monsod guard fit remarkably well into the rush-hour world. He wore college gear, a down parka, a flannel shirt.

“The guy just wants to help. Leo. He’s just thinking, where else you and me ever going to get to talk?”

Of course if Garrison was a college boy, he was on the varsity. His muscular butt bulged almost as wide as his parka. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t have looked out of place over on the steps of Widener Library. The only prop that didn’t belong was that bait-shop baseball cap. You wouldn’t find a college kid in a baseball cap, not unless they were totally unhip. Nonetheless the guard was showing Kit something, playing the diplomat. He’d kept his distance, backing down the stoop steps.

“But, ten minutes in the truck — Viddich, it’s not like we’re engaged or anything.”

Garrison kept his voice down, even when the busses roared by on Mass Ave, a block away.

“You ask me,” he said, “it might be the most important ten minutes of your life.”

“The most important ten minutes of my life? I think that was yesterday when I talked to my lawyer.”

“Whoa. Tough guy.”

In fact Kit’s role-playing felt stale. Out here, coatless and pumped up, with the soft spots in his testimony behind him — stale. And he was the one who’d left Leo the note, after all. Kit touched his neck.

“Garrison,” he tried, “think about it. You shouldn’t even be talking with me.”

The guard shrugged. Kit recalled what he’d seen in the paper: the Grand Jury had called prison security.

“Hoo boy,” he said. “Now who’s playing the tough guy?”

“Viddich, I mean, you’re not the only one’s got a lawyer.”

Got a lawyer, check. In spite of himself Kit began to think of the logistics: he looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. Leo was all the way down at the new waterfront station — the work site where they’d turned up the Colonial artifacts and the Shawmut pieces. Mirinex must have landed the contract. Only a cab could make Kit’s rounds, he figured, before the appointment with Popkin. A cab plus serious cash.

“Eight-thirty,” Garrison said, his own sleeve shoved back. “You know I been standing out here a half-hour?”

Kit remained head-down, over the big knob of his wrist. He found himself making a connection to something Uncle Pete had said last night, the man’s idea of evil: secrets in too small a place. Secrets ingrown and festering. If anything other than sheer astonishment had kept Kit out in the cold talking to this guy, perhaps it had been that, the need to break open his own small place. To talk, to tell. If anything would take him across town to confront Leo, perhaps it would be that.

Garrison stood so low, down off the stoop, that Kit hardly had to raise his eyes. “You realize that anything you tell me, it’s going to go straight to my lawyer?”

The guard grinned, catching on at once. “Lawyers, that’s their job. Got to hear what everybody’s telling everybody.”

An ambulance went shrieking by, the windchill made audible. Kit had a final consideration: “Garrison, listen. Last time I talked with Leo, he told me he wasn’t the Mafia.”

Again the Irish pout. “Come on. You asking what I think you’re asking?”

Kit, straightening, recrossed his arms.

“Viddich. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. You think I’d do anything to hurt you?”

Kit left him waiting. Left the big dogged errand boy down on the sidewalk wondering what Kit would do, while back in the warmth of his kitchen he pulled on his coat. The single noteworthy event of his few moments up there was the thump of the gun in his pocket. The whump of it swinging into place against his thigh. Kit would have to wait till lunch to stop at the police station. He couldn’t leave it here, not when there was a chance Bette might come back again. If he wanted her to find anything — if he had anything remotely resembling a strategy — it was his testimony. Kit tossed the Globe into the trash and squared the blue-specked legal paper in the center of the table. Ghosts and all, his draft went right where she’d left him the printout. Darling, here’s mine.

Still the gun nagged him, as Kit returned to Garrison and started towards his truck. The density got to him, the full pack jabbing and rejabbing his thigh. Out of nowhere, Kit recalled something from childhood, a square set of miniature books. Maurice Sendak: The Nutshell Library.

The Nutshell Library. When in fact this weight in his pocket was an unregistered weapon, and he was about to take a ride with a crooked cop. To meet a crooked money man. Kit never broke stride, there beside Garrison, but his face lengthened, sobered. He didn’t at first see the truck. He was eyeing the street. The walls of the Cambridgeport duplexes and triple-deckers were all straight lines, clapboard and shingle and aluminum siding, but at this time of year those lines were smudged with caked-on filth. A ruined geometry. And the brick sidewalks humped and wallowed, nowhere reliable.