Dave went home and watched baseball on TV, alone in his living room, while drinking a beer in Simon’s honor. He went to bed late; he was keyed up, but his mind was at rest.
At two in the morning, he awoke in a sweat. He’d had exactly the same dream as when he’d spoken to Derek in June — he was fighting the black bear with his naked hands. Dave didn’t like talking about his dreams much. They were very private for him. But he explained to me later that dreams don’t tell the future or the past. They tell you how to behave, and whether you’ve behaved the right way. For him, it was as clear as spring water: he’d acted in accordance with his second dream, so he shouldn’t have had to dream it all over again.
Unless the ancestors were trying to tell him that he’d made a mistake.
Something about Simon’s story didn’t hold water.
Dave got up and went to eat two eggs with bacon at Bercy’s. He gave Kim a call to ask her if there was anything new. She’d heard nothing, but earlier in the week she’d talked to another social worker at Stella. This friend had an escort client who did heroin on and off. She was a girl from the neighborhood who put out for tourists in the Old Montreal hotels during the Grand Prix. Her pimp had slapped her around because she’d started shooting up between her fingers. She couldn’t work anymore and was shit-scared of getting another beating, because she owed money to the guy who sold her the heroin. Dave asked Kim if she’d been able to get the name of the pusher.
“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but it’s Big Derek,” she told him.
Dave put the story together piece by piece: a hundred times over, he saw the expression on Teddy Bear’s face when he’d ask about Simon. Teddy Bear hadn’t hesitated because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to come clean, he hesitated because he had no idea what Dave was talking about. Teddy Bear didn’t have Simon killed. The asshole was just showing off.
Big Derek had a source for smack, one of the independents. Who knew which one? The Chinese or the Arabs. He’d tried to bring Simon on board, but Simon had done himself in while testing the product. Instead of telling Dave the truth, Derek had sent him chasing after Teddy Bear. Derek had always hated Teddy Bear. It was dicey, but Derek was a gambler. He’d waited for the war to end before making his bundle, and he didn’t want a new boss standing in his way.
It all made sense, but only if Derek knew Dave was with the police. But he was smart enough to have figured that out on his own. The only thing you couldn’t know for sure was whether Derek had killed Simon by accident, passing him stuff that was too strong, or on purpose, to stop him from bringing Dave in on their plan to peddle the heroin.
The Indian was furious.
He spent the whole day brooding in his apartment, drinking O’Keefe’s. Around four o’clock, he called me so I’d go buy some more at the corner store and come drink with him. It must have been a hundred degrees in that apartment. The Indian was downing the beer in his living room and sweating like a pig. When he wasn’t talking to me, he kept repeating the same thing over and over, real low, between his teeth: “That fuck, that fat fuck, that fat fucking fuck.”
I drank a couple with him. He ended up telling me the whole story and admitting, straight out, that he was a cop. He was drunk, so I asked him, “Are you sure it’s a good idea, telling me that?”
He said his time around here was coming to an end anyway. He apologized in advance for the shit I’d be in, and I said: “Don’t worry. I’ve known worse.”
Around seven o’clock he told me: “I don’t see any other solution. I’m gonna have to beat the shit out of Derek.”
I asked him if he did judo or tae kwon do or something. He said no. He said it wasn’t so hard to fight a guy bigger than you. You can’t be intimidated; you have to wait for him to make a mistake. Tall guys and fat guys tend to put too much trust in their strength. Also, try not to hit them in the balls. The tall guys and the fat guys are used to people pulling that on them.
“So your plan is: don’t be intimidated and don’t kick him in the balls?” I asked.
I was skeptical. Derek was all fat and muscle, with skin as thick as walrus hide. I wasn’t even sure he’d fall on his ass if you fired a twelve-gauge into his chest. I told myself that I’d spend the next few days getting all that stuff out of Dave’s head, but when I asked when he intended to go and fight Derek, he eyed how much beer he had left in his bottle and said: “I’ll finish this, and we’ll go.”
You would have thought it was a big neighborhood fair.
The Indian told whomever he met along the way that he was going to fight Big Derek. And they went to tell others, until almost a hundred people were gathered at dusk behind Sex Mania to watch the battle in the tobacco factory parking lot. It was up to me to go in and find Derek. I just told him, “Dave wants to talk to you outside.”
When Derek came out, he saw the crowd and Dave in the middle of the circle, making his neck pop like Bruce Lee. “You kidding me, Dave? Go sober up at home, fucking Indian.”
But Dave said he wouldn’t budge without a fight. Derek laughed and moved into the circle. Things looked really bad. Face to face, Dave and Derek didn’t seem to even belong to the same species. That must have struck Dave too, because the first thing he did was serve up a kick to Derek’s balls. Derek dodged it, fast for a guy his size, then he delivered a right hook with all his strength to the side of Dave’s head. Dave blinked and fell to the ground. I was sure he wouldn’t get up.
“Had enough?” Derek taunted.
“Not enough, no, you piece of shit.”
Dave got up and charged Derek again. He did that about ten times, fighting like crazy. Derek always ended up grabbing him and throwing him to the ground with a punch or a kick. The tenth time, he socked the Indian in the stomach, picked him up in his arms, and heaved him into the Polish butcher’s dumpster. There was a long silence, and then we heard Dave scrambling around and cursing. Derek started back toward the door to the club, saying, “Everybody go home. The fight’s over.”
“No, it’s not over,” Dave declared, climbing out of the dumpster.
Derek didn’t react and kept on walking. Dave took his key ring out of his pocket and threw a fastball to the back of his head. That put a big cut in Derek’s hairy hide. When he turned around, you could see that the Indian had really managed to make him mad. I wasn’t the only one who began to wonder how we could stop the fight or whether Dave was going to be killed.
Derek clobbered him one. Dave’s cheek was swollen, and he was bleeding from his right ear. I was worried about internal bleeding too, because Derek kept on punching him in the gut and the ribs. Dave’s skin had gone white, almost green.
Finally, Derek lifted him up and squeezed. A bear hug, like in wrestling. The Indian bellowed.
“Tell them what you are, Dave. Or I’ll crush you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Derek squeezed some more. We heard Dave’s spine crack.
“Tell them you’re a cop.”
Derek kept on squeezing. We thought he was going to break the Indian in two, but with all the blood and sweat, they were as greasy as a banana peel; Dave managed to slide his right arm out of the vise, and then raised his fist high in the air and slammed his elbow like a tomahawk into Derek’s eye. We learned afterward that some bone fragments had gone right into his cornea. Derek let Dave go and fell to his knees, his hand on his eye. He was squealing like a pig. Dave went up to him, pushed Derek’s hand out of the way, and threw a punch to his cheekbone as hard as he could. He said later it was like hitting cement, except the cement was hurting too. Dave struck three more blows and felt his joints give way, one after the other. He gave the fifth punch everything he had left in his fist and felt an electric jolt running up past his elbow to his shoulder. His hand was broken. Derek was swaying on his knees. The Indian stepped back five or six paces, then said in front of everybody: “Yeah, I’m a cop. And that makes him a fucking snitch.”