I fell to the carpet, holding my shin, and listened to Al chew his new electronic toy. I repeated the word “fuck” over and over.
I spent the day in bed, hovering over sleep-the kind of state that actually makes you feel less rested than if you had just gone on with your day and forgot about getting rested. I began to think that getting punched in the head, followed by greater than moderate consumption of Schlitz may not be the way to a holistic lifestyle. Whether that axiom was true or not, this was a lifestyle I took years to hone, and I didn’t really see the utility in trying to move away from it.
I did feel like moving toward AJ’s before my rendezvous with my new best friend, the alleged serial killer, Howard. A few Schlitzes and the intellectual stimulation of the Fearsome Foursome was just what the doctor ordered.
“It was in some medical journal,” Jerry Number One said.
“Bullshit,” Rocco said.
“Let me get this straight.” TC tried to add some sanity to the discussion. “If you light up a cigarette from the wrong end it stops the flow of blood to your wiener?”
“Exactly, and if you do that once a month, in about two years you won’t be able to get it up at all,” Jerry Number One said.
“I wonder if this qualifies for the seven-second rule,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I swear, if you start counting I’m going to whack you with this glass,” Rocco said.
“There’s some sort of chemical in the cigarette that has an anti-Viagra effect,” Jerry Number One said.
“You mean you see a color other than blue?” Jerry Number Two asked.
“I’m still thinking of tits-that’s all I can come up with,” TC said.
“What’s the name of the chemical in the cigarette, Jer?” Rocco asked.
“Let me think… it’s something like limpfadoraphyl… no that’s not it. It was woodrowdeflatus, I think… hold it, it was micoxaphlopin,” Jerry Number One said.
“My-cock’s-a-floppin’? That can’t be right,” Rocco said.
“Nothin’ right about that at all,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Tits-it’s all I get ever since Jerry Number Two put this seven-second thing in my head,” TC said.
I didn’t interrupt the brain trust and instead took my seat next to Kelley who was staring at a retrospective featuring a replay of the time Havlicek stole the ball. The Johnny Most call was probably great the first thousand times I heard it, but now it was getting on my nerves.
“I’m hoping there’s no micoxaphlopin in Coors Light,” I said.
“Hey, Duff,” Kelley said.
“I talked to Howard this morning and promised to meet him tonight. You wanna come?” I somehow thought if I just blurted it out, Kelley would take it easier. I was mistaken.
“You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that? Do you realize the kind of trouble you’re putting yourself in? I thought you said you were going to call Morris.”
“The guy’s scared to death and I promised him. I told him you’re cool and that I’d bring you.”
Kelley didn’t say anything. He just stared at me. His eyes almost bore laser holes through my skin. I took a pull off the Schlitz longneck.
“I’m meeting him at sundown at the bridge in the park-you in?”
“Uh geez,” was all Kelley said. He turned away and watched Havlicek sink the runner against Phoenix in ’77.
12
Jefferson Park is across town from AJ’s, and with the lights it’s a ten- or fifteen-minute drive. I threw in Elvis’s Promised Land eight-track and clicked through to the fourth program to listen to “If You Talk In Your Sleep.” It’s a haunting song about a couple slinking away to have an affair. It was dark and a little sleazy, which was how I felt going to see a man who had murdered four people and whom most folks believed was responsible for murdering four more.
I parked by the tennis courts and walked through the rolling knolls of the park, past the statue of Moses, the modern-art sculptures, and the empty tulip beds. I had hit the cobblestone walkway that led toward the bridge when I heard a voice call me from behind.
“Wait up, nutcase.” It was Kelley.
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” I said.
“The Foursome started talking about John Wayne’s colon again, and I figured meeting Howard had to be more pleasant than that.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
We walked the final fifty yards to the bridge and the twilight had given way to the night. The corner of the bridge was dimly lit with one of those retro streetlamps that throw a soft amber hue to everything, which gave the bridge area an even creepier feel. There was no one there yet.
“I hope we didn’t miss him,” I said.
“Yeah, that would be a shame,” Kelley said.
We walked the fifty-foot span of the bridge to check the other side, and there was no sign of Howard or anyone else. The silence Kelley and I stood in made me a tad more nervous, though with Kelley, silence didn’t necessarily mean anything. Still, the nervousness gave me a knot in the left side of my chest and my breathing wasn’t as smooth as I liked.
After a moment passed, Kelley started to walk around the entrance to the bridge in a way that most people would consider mindless strolling. I knew better. He stopped and suddenly squatted.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Blood,” he said.
Kelley was squatting over a pool of blood the size of a Frisbee.
“I should call and get a crime-scene team out here, Duff. You okay with that?”
“Of course.”
We hung around and waited for the circus to begin. Morris and his gang came along with the special crime-scene guys who looked remarkably less glamorous and, for that matter, less intelligent, than the people on those CSI shows. There were three of them and they scooped up the blood, set up crime-scene tape, and poked around the bushes and the grass. I sort of expected them to wear asbestos suits and have electron microscopes fixed to their heads, but they did most of their work with tweezers and Ziploc bags you could get at CVS. Morris and his guys had their badges clipped to their jackets just like the cops on Law amp; Order do, though it looked more natural and less forced on Jerry Orbach. My best friend Mullings walked by me and shook his head like he disapproved of my existence, which probably wasn’t going to keep me from sleeping. I had plenty of things running around my head that kept me from sleeping, but whether or not detective Mullings approved of me wasn’t one of them.
Morris, who so far had seemed like a decent guy, was markedly less polite when he finally got around to talking to me this time. He had his hands inside his trench coat when he walked up the bridge to talk to me. He had a look on his face like he just ate something that had spoiled.
“We could arrest you for about eleven different things, you know, Dombrowski,” Morris said.
“Look, I was going to call you, I swear. I was here to meet Howard to bring him to you. I knew it was the only way he’d go,” I said.
Morris turned toward Kelley.
“Can you vouch for this nutcase?”
“Yeah, Detective Morris, what he said is the truth. He’s all right. A little misguided in his energy sometimes, but he’s all right,” Kelley said.
Morris turned back to me. I took note that both Kelley and Morris had referred to me as a “nutcase.”
“This time, out of respect for Kelley, I’m not going to make a deal out of you not notifying us before this little rendezvous of yours, but from here on out-no more bullshit, you understand?”
“Gotcha,” I said.
There was another twenty minutes or so of more putzing around by the lab guys and intense posturing by the other cops who had honed their whole intense furrowed-brow, tormented-by-the-criminal-world look. There was just something about people who tried so hard to create an image that I found so contrived-like they didn’t have enough inside them to just be who they are. Instead of being themselves, they take on roles and personas to do the work of developing a personality for them.