Richard Price - The Whites

Another incoming call flashed Pavlicek’s name across his screen, Billy ignoring it. “Everything else all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Talking to you.”

“All right, I’ll be home for dinner, OK?”

“OK.”

“And everything’s OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Your brother’s OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Grandpa?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, buddy,” he said, as Pavlicek attempted to ring through again. “I’ll see you at home, OK?”

“You didn’t ask about Mom.”

“I’ll see her back home too.”

“Do you want to talk to her?”

“I’ll talk to her at home,” Billy said, knowing all too well that when things were tense between them the phone was not their friend.

He started to call Pavlicek back, hesitated, and instead called Elvis Perez at Midtown South to see if there was any kind of progress on the Bannion homicide. Perez was out, so Billy settled for leaving a message.

He sat there for a moment, thinking about Pavlicek’s afternoon flip-out over the Sweetpea poster, then looked over his interview notes, which yielded only two pieces of hard information: 502 Concord, three-fifteen a.m.

If he were so inclined he could do a canvass for possible witnesses. But it probably wouldn’t be too smart: a detective from outside the local precinct, on his own, knocking on doors in the middle of the night to ask about Sweetpea Harris, especially if Sweetpea turned out to be dead, Billy imagining the barrage of questions that would then come his way, none of which, at this point, he would be prepared to answer, especially after having come so close to stepping in it simply by entering Eric Cortez’s name into the system.

So, it had to be someone else, and not a cop. For a hot second he thought about hiring Sousa Security but then bagged the idea; there was something about his brother-in-law he didn’t quite trust. It wasn’t that he was a liar exactly — more like an omitter, as if the answers he gave you had to hold up in court.

So.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hey,” Stacey’s voice high and on the shaky side.

“I have some work for you this week if you’re up for it.”

“Yeah, sure, absolutely,” once again sounding sunny but strained, as if someone was standing behind her with a knife.

“Are you OK?”

“Sure.”

Billy hesitated, then: “Where do you want to meet?”

“Can you come to my place?”

In all the years they had known each other, she had never invited him to her home.

“Yeah, no problem, what’s a good time?”

“Now.”

He began to smell the stale waft of old cigarette smoke coming from Stacey’s apartment midway in his wheezing climb to her floor. When he finally reached her landing, Billy took a moment to catch his breath, then followed his nose down the long hallway to 6B, where she greeted him in the open doorway with a smile so tense he thought her face would crack.

With its dim corridors, greasy slit of a kitchen, and small living room filled with indifferent furniture and overflowing ashtrays, the apartment reeked of resignation, and it made Billy ache to think what life could have been like for her right now if she had only looked elsewhere to make her journalistic bones.

Her boyfriend’s plaid bathrobe matched the fabric of the couch so well that Billy didn’t even realize the guy was in the room until he reached for his beer.

“Hey, how are you.” Billy couldn’t remember his name.

Lying flat on his back, the boyfriend made no effort to sit up or even turn to face him. “Superb.”

Stacey stood mutely between them, looking first at Billy, then her boyfriend, then back to Billy, her face still tense and expectant.

It was the collection of amber prescription bottles on the coffee table that first caught his eye. Then the edge of the butterfly bandage on the ridge above the boyfriend’s averted brow. Then the face full-on, as lumpy as a thumbed hunk of clay, his skin the color of overripe bananas, the sclera of one eye hemorrhaged to a neon red.

“Did you call the cops?” he asked Stacey.

“Of course.”

“And?”

“They came.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“What happened,” he asked the boyfriend.

“Some gentleman must have come into the vestibule right behind me last night and…” He shrugged.

“What did he look like, this gentleman.”

“He was behind me.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Race, hair, clothes…”

“Nothing.” Then: “It’s my own fault.”

“Why do you say that?”

The boyfriend turned his face away again.

“Why do you say that?” Billy’s voice sharper now.

Stacey touched Billy’s arm.

“What time was this,” asking both of them.

“About one in the morning,” the boyfriend answered.

“And where were you coming from.”

“The Jaunting Car.”

“What’s that.”

“The bar where he first met you,” she said.

“Were you there too?”

“I left about an hour and a half before he did,” sounding embarrassed about it. No, not embarrassed, he thought, more like defeated.

“Did anybody in there talk to you? Either of you?”

“People in there tend to talk to themselves,” the boyfriend said.

“Anybody giving you a hard time?”

“Not really.”

“What’s ‘not really’ mean?” Billy getting hot again.

“A seventy-five-year-old cirrhotic called me an asshole.”

“Anybody else?”

“Call me an asshole?”

“I’m trying to help you here.”

“I appreciate it,” the boyfriend said carefully.

“All right, let me make a call,” Billy said, this time by way of an apology. Gesturing to the opened beer, he said, “You have an extra one of those?”

As Stacey headed to the kitchen, Billy retreated to a corridor off the living room and worked to get a handle on his rage.

He tried to picture it: this guy stays to drink after Stacey — and not for the first time — is unable to coax him out of the bar and so just gives up and leaves. He continues to drink alone for another ninety minutes, waiting for happy, or bright, or successful to kick in, before finally giving up and herky-jerking his way home. And at one in the morning, he couldn’t have been more of a staked lamb out there, a street-dumb, self-hating smart-ass reeking of death wish, probably not even caring, once he got his load on, whether he was heading home or straight off a cliff.

Fuck the mugger: what detective worth his salt wouldn’t want to strangle a guy like that himself? Victims like Stacey’s boyfriend made you feel like a nameless bit player in some narcissistic melodrama performed before an audience of one.

Made you feel demeaned.

Billy paced the short corridor, hating on the victim while trying not to give a thought to the person who had battered his face into a bloody stew.

It couldn’t be him.

Coming back into the living room, he ignored Stacey’s offered beer and went right at the boyfriend.

“The guy who beat you, what did he take?”

“My dignity.”

Billy threw him a look.

“And my wallet,” he quickly added.

Then not him — unless he took the wallet to throw Billy off. But that would defeat the purpose, would obscure the message, and the message was the point, unless, unless…

“All right, let me make a call,” he repeated.

Before leaving, Billy looked around the apartment one last time; then, thinking once again how Stacey’s life might have turned out if she’d been a little less reckless with him, he added, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked brightly, but she knew.