Richard Price - The Whites

“You know, Victor, your sister, she’s a real high-wire act but she’s got heart by the mile.”

“I know.”

Billy lit a cigarette, inhaled, then twisted his mouth to divert the smoke.

“So why is she always so tough on you?”

“She’s ashamed.”

“Of you?”

“Of herself, don’t ask me why. Because she left me to take care of our so-called father down south? I was thirteen. And now I’m thirty-six, you know?” Shrugging the whole thing off. “But I do know this. Whenever she acts like she’s trying to push me away? She’s in a lot more pain than I am.”

Billy felt like crying.

“I don’t know,” Victor said, taking his car keys out of his jacket, “with the twins on the way? I find myself thinking about family all the time, and I just want her to feel good about being my big sister. Even for a minute.”

Billy nodded, then leaned in close as if Carmen could hear him through the living room glass. “Can I ask you something? How freaked are you really about these new kids of yours?”

“Not too,” Victor said, waving goodbye to his sister in the window.

Tomika Washington, a tall, slender, light-skinned woman looking to be in her fifties, was stretched out in her bathrobe on the carpetless floor of her railroad-flat living room, the rawhide bootlace that had done the deed still around her neck. A rolled towel was propped under her head, as if to make her comfortable, and a washcloth was carefully draped like a veil over her face, as if to prevent her from staring at her killer — both gestures, Billy knew, textbook signatures of remorse.

With Butter and Mayo canvassing the neighbors and the Crime Scene Unit stuck in traffic, Billy was alone with the body when he heard a knock at the door. On the off chance that the actor had slipped the barricade in order to come back and apologize to his victim, Billy drew his gun before opening up and was surprised to see Gene Feeley, his elusive butterfly of love, standing there in what had to be the last Botany 500 three-piece suit in existence.

“You have Tomika Washington in there?” Feeley asked. Then, sliding past Billy: “I just want to see her.”

“You know her?”

Ignoring the question, Feeley stood motionless over the body for a moment as if paying his respects, then dropped into a squat and delicately parted the lower half of her bathrobe.

“You looking for something, Gene?”

“That right there,” pointing to a fading tattoo of a bird high up on her thigh. “You see that? That was his brand.”

“Whose brand?”

“Frank Baltimore,” he said, closing her robe as carefully as he had opened it. “He was kind of a player around here for a few years in the eighties, used to stamp his bags with a blackbird, same for a girl or two like Tomika here.”

“She was hooking for him?”

“Never. Well, not for him — I mean, yeah, on her own, later, but she was strictly his girl before that. He found her down in Newport News on one of his dope runs when she was seventeen, beautiful kid, brought her back up and threw her a crib in Lenox Terrace. She told me she thought she was living in a fairy tale.”

“She told you.”

“Before I was transferred to the Queens Task Force after Eddie Byrnes got shot, I was in Narcotics up here and I had occasion to bring her in a couple of times, see if there was any kind of conversation we could have about Frank. She didn’t know shit, but she never gave me grief about getting picked up, had these country manners, didn’t know how not to be friendly, just never really got the hang of this place, you know? And when Frank finally went upstate she got tossed out on her ass, a down-home kid ashamed to go home. Oh, it was a bad time for her, first she got dope sick, which is when she started turning tricks, and then when rock came on the scene? I would see her on the street, down to about ninety pounds… But even then she always had that smile for me, always that well-brought-up-southern-girl thing going on, and when she’d get picked up by the cops she had my number and I’d try to get her out of whatever jam she was in, but it was hopeless. Anyways,” kneecaps popping, Feeley rose to his feet, his eyes still saying goodbye, “I heard she finally got herself clean a few years ago through some church program, so good for her.”

“That blackbird tat?” Billy just had to say it. “It’s kind of in a hard-to-know-about place, Gene.”

At first Feeley threw him a hard look, then shrugged. “If I wasn’t so afraid of catching the Package in those days? Me and her, we could of had a little something. We came pretty close once or twice, but… you know, what can I tell you, it wasn’t to be.”

“Any ideas about the actor?”

“With the towel, the washcloth, I’m thinking it’s someone close, a relative maybe. She has a nephew in the halfway house on a Hundred and Tenth and Lenox, Doobie Carver, a real nutcase. If you’ll allow me, I can take it from here.”

“All yours,” Billy said, happy to see him seize the initiative on any run, for any reason.

Feeley stepped to the door, hesitated for a beat, then turned back to the room.

“I have to tell you,” gazing down at Tomika Washington so intently that Billy wasn’t quite sure who he was addressing, “I know I can be a real hard-on, and you don’t have the juice to tell me to do shit, but you’re a good boss, you respect your people, you don’t have a political bone in your body, and you don’t ever pass the buck. So,” finally meeting Billy’s eye, “after tonight? If you want me gone, I’ll put in the call myself.”

“How about you stay,” Billy heard himself say.

“I would appreciate that,” Feeley said solemnly, offering his hand.

“Does this mean you’re going to start showing up when you’re supposed to?”

Feeley threw him another look— Don’t press your luck —then bent down one last time to Tomika Washington. “Take care, honey,” he said.

She was supposed to come over at nine the next morning for the money to cover her airfare, but instead Marilys showed up at seven-thirty, Milton opening his eyes to see her standing red-faced and trembling at the side of his bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m so stupid,” she whispered, her voice clotted with tears. “She doesn’t have a passport. She doesn’t have anything.”

“Who’s she.”

More drunk than hungover, Milton sat up, stood up, and then had to sit back down as the Chartreuse rebooted.

“My mother, why am I so stupid.”

“OK, all right,” grinding the heels of his palms into eyes. “What time is it?”

Marilys dropped down alongside him, her shoulders as slumped as his own. “This was a bad idea.”

“OK, so you’ll go get her when she gets one.”

“No. I mean getting married.”

“Getting married is a bad idea? Since when?”

“Last night I dreamed the priest was blessing us and my mother just crushed.”

“Crushed?”

“Like a flower, when they speed up the movie and you see it bloom then dry up then crush down to nothing. To dust, because she wasn’t there.”

“Wasn’t where,” his skull like a soft-boiled egg.

“There when we got married. She died in her house because she wasn’t with us.”

He took a deep breath, and his back teeth tasted bile. “Listen to me”—taking her hand—“you had a dream. It’s a dream.”

“No.”

“Everybody has bad dreams. You should see some of mine.”

“Mine always come true. Always. When I was a girl, I dreamed one of my brothers was in the hospital, and the next day he broke his back. When I was married the first time, I dreamed my husband got cancer, and I buried him in a year.”