Richard Price - The Whites

“What do you mean, not happening.”

“We’re undermanned as it is.”

Billy reached into the bag of clothes lying on an unoccupied desk, pulled out the pair of girls’ corduroy pants, and held it in his fist.

“Let me tell you what that guy did. He sat on his ass until he saw your doughnut eaters roll by, knew he had a good fifty-five minutes, ate a sandwich, did the crossword, bloodied up my porch, took a piss, washed his car, and went home. I want, I need, my family needs, a twenty-four-hour fixed post.”

“Doughnut eaters?”

Billy took a breath. “Look, I’m sorry about that, I swear to you I’m not one of those NYPD assholes who thinks every cop outside the five boroughs is some eeba-geeba related by blood to Barney Fife.”

Without excusing himself, Lefkowitz stepped off to talk to another detective about a different issue, Billy taking it to mean that maybe his Mayberry riff had been a little too lovingly delivered.

“Hey, this is my town too,” he said when Lefkowitz returned. “I’m living my life here, raising my kids here, paying my taxes, and all I’m asking you for is just a little bit more protection.”

“Like I said, we’re undermanned as it is.”

“All due respect, but could I speak to your boss?”

“She’ll just tell you the same.”

“Nonetheless…”

“Fine by me,” Lefkowitz said, walking away. “She’ll be in next week.”

As Billy came up on Brown’s Family Funeral Home that night, Redman, wearing a full-body apron and latex gloves, was standing in the narrow doorway swapping cash for Chinese takeout with a delivery boy.

“You mean to tell me you’re OK walking the streets like that?” Redman said without raising his eyes from the exchange.

“Like what?”

“Don’t you have a mirror at home?” Redman counted out his change. “Come in here.”

Once they were inside the chapel, Redman had Billy take off his shirt and lie down on a somewhat clean gurney. Then, reaching into his cluttered cosmetics cart, he found a jar of Standard Caucasian camouflage cream and went to work on the constellation of bruises that, between Pavlicek and Carmen, had erupted across Billy’s face since the morning.

“You ever notice how the storefronts line up in this neighborhood?” Redman said. “Dunkin’ Donuts, Popeyes, Roy Rogers, Ashley Stewart’s big women shop, then a funeral parlor, all cheek to cheek like a de-evolution cartoon.”

“They have fat people in Nebraska too, last I heard,” Billy said, wondering when they were going to get to Pavlicek.

“My point being,” Redman stepping back to assess his work, then peeling off his gloves, “I had two bodies coming in this week, a five-hundred-pounder and a four, but when I added the weight of the casket I realized that my front steps would collapse, so I had to farm them out to Carolina Home up the block because the director over there was smart enough to put in reinforced steel.”

Rafer came rolling into the room, made two quick circuits around his father, then charged at an old man sporting a Masonic fez and apron, who was lying in his casket parked by the piano.

“So.” Billy sat up and reached for his shirt. “Why am I here.”

Redman took a limping stroll around the chapel, straightened out a few folding chairs, then slowly came back.

“Look, I’m going to save you a lot of trouble.”

“How’s that,” Billy said, feeling the cadaver cream starting to grip.

“It’s done.”

“What is.”

“All what you’ve been looking into.”

Billy was quiet, waiting for more. Then: “How am I supposed to let him get away with this.”

“Who, the lone gunman?”

“What?”

“You think we all sent Pavlicek out there like that?”

“What then.”

“All of us.”

Billy swiped at his caked jaw with a shaking hand. “Who’s all of us.”

“Pavlicek didn’t do anything more than his part.”

“‘All of us.’ Including you?”

“Why not me?”

“Look at you,” Billy said cruelly.

And then he was aloft, Redman holding him two feet off the ground with those harpooner’s arms, the guy wheeling so fast on his cracked hips that Billy hadn’t even felt the long fingers slip under his arms.

“Why not me?” Redman holding him up in the air like a baby.

“Put me down, please?”

Redman deposited him in a folding chair, Rafer immediately raising his arms to his father: My turn.

“You did Sweetpea,” Billy said. “Bullshit. The wit said the doer had straight hair. Nothing about a fucking Afro.”

Redman picked up his son, held him in one arm. “That wit was six floors up and off-his-ass high. You said so yourself.”

Billy grabbed a rag and swiped at his face, but the makeup had turned to cement. “His girlfriend said she heard a white voice over the cell.”

“Do I sound, do I ever sound like some mush-mouth street nigger to you?”

“You kind of did, right there,” Billy said.

Rafer started to wail.

“What you cryin’ for, man?” Redman hitch-limped over to the Samsung and found something on the Cartoon Network.

Billy went momentarily south, checking his watch — ten p.m. — wondering if this kid even had a bedtime.

“Why,” he said.

“Because it felt right. It felt fair.”

“Why.”

“Pavlicek’s boy. We all known him since he was wearing a diaper. First of the kids born to us.”

“Redman…”

“It’s not like playing God, because me personally? To tell you the truth, the only time I believe in God is when something shitty happens, like Little Man here and his g-tube or John Junior catching leukemia. I’m in here sending people off three, four times a week to meet Jesus or whoever, but… You know what I believe in? Earth. Dirt. This right here. All the rest is a story. I guess I’m in the wrong business.”

“So everybody…”

“Was in on it.”

Billy went away again, telling himself that there had always been something off about Redman. Look how he chose to make a living, look how many wives he’d had, look how many kids…

“Billy, we all saved each other’s lives one time or another, including me yours.”

And to let the kid play around dead bodies all day… Redman and his wife — what was the child-rearing philosophy here?

“Billy,” Redman bringing him back, “I am telling you all this because it’s over.” He held his long basketball hands in front of his belt, gently tamping down the air like shushing a baby. “So let it be.”

Billy made it back home by midnight, but unwilling to go in and risk a conversation with Carmen tonight, he parked halfway down the street, intending to sit tight until the bedroom window went dark.

An hour into the wait, he reached for his notebook and made out the chart:

Redman — Sweetpea

Yasmeen — Cortez

Pavlicek — Bannion

Tomassi’s death by bus kept Whelan’s name off the chart, and Curtis Taft didn’t make it either, though Pavlicek had served him up to Billy hoping he would complete the sweep. But as he continued to sit there and study the neat matchups, he began to wonder if Redman, in order to protect Pavlicek, had been selling him a story back at the chapel, thinking that if Billy bought the conspiracy angle and thought he’d have to bring down three friends instead of just one, he might lose heart and walk away.

The 24/7 directed patrol unit cruised past his car without noticing him in the driver’s seat, slowed down in front of the house, but never came to a stop in order to allow the cops to get out and inspect the grounds. It was the third pass he had observed since parking here, each more lax than the one before.