I had parked my car in a garage nearby and was hurrying toward the Bread Factory. The Pussy Man spotted me as I approached the corner. His mouth widened in a predatory grin, showing his gray teeth.
“Steve!” he said. “Steve! Is that you, newspaper man? Is that the newspaper man? Now, I know you got my money, Steve. I know you got money on toast. Gimme some of that money.”
I came within range of his stench as he moved closer, his head bent down, his hand extended. My son’s miserable cries were still in my head, and an all-too-familiar sickness with myself swirled inside me like green gas. I was in no mood for the Pussy Man. For the smell of piss on him and the cloud of vomit and alcohol on his breath. For the looks on the women’s faces as they went by, not only the winces of disgust and anger, but the fear I saw as their footsteps quickened. I hated the bum. He made my gorge rise.
“Gimme some of that money, Ste …” he said, but then a working girl in a polka-dot dress tried to sneak past his blind side. She clutched her purse close, hewing to the restaurant window. But the Pussy Man spotted her. “Hey, sister,” he said-he called her sister because she was black too. “Hey, sister, I know you got some sweet pussy, you got some sweet pussy on toast, gimme some of that pussy.”
“Here,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”
He swiveled back to me and his sister angled by with her mouth puckered almost to nothing. I had my wallet out and was flicking through the bills. I always gave the bastard a five when I saw him. Because it got him off the street. The minute he had five he went for a bottle and was gone for hours, guzzling and puking behind some alley Dumpster somewhere.
“There’s that money,” he said, hanging over my wallet like a jumpy vulture. “Gimme five, gimme ten, gimme twenty, twenty dollars, Steve, twenty dollars on toast.”
I plucked out a fiver and stuck it out at him, turning my face to avoid his breath. “Don’t spend it on food, asshole,” I said.
His pocked hand made a fist, and the bill was gone. “Five dollars?” he said. “That’s all you gonna give me? Five lousy dollars? You could give me twenty. You could give me a hundred dollars you got so much money. You got money on toast, Steve.”
But he was already edging away, talking back at me over his shoulder. Folding the bill into halves and then quarters and slipping it into his overcoat pocket clutched in his fist. In another moment, he was walking down the sidewalk with his head hung down in silent concentration, ignoring the passersby, ignoring everything but the golden dream of the liquor store at journey’s end. I hoped he got drunk enough to stagger out in front of a truck.
Grimacing, I took the last few steps to the Bread Factory.
It was a colorful fast food spot on the corner, wrapped in glass. I shouldered the door in and the smell of sourdough came to me, washing away the reek of the Pussy Man. The lunch crowd had thinned, but the people behind the counter were still doling out round loaves of bread and broad plates of salad. Customers still sat munching here and there among the wood-rimmed linoleum tables. I scanned the room and spotted Porterhouse in a corner. Sitting alone at a table for two with an empty cup in front of him. He saw me and lifted a diffident salute.
He looked like his voice. A lot of people don’t-you learn that as a reporter, on the phone all the time. But he was a dead ringer for his own hesitant tremolo. In his early forties. Small and bald, with a head as round as a nickel, with a thin moustache hiding a weak, pale mouth and eyes like prey, flitting and frightened, behind the large square frames of his glasses. I didn’t like him on the spot. But at that moment, in that mood, I might not have liked anyone.
I raised a finger to him across the room, asking him to wait. I was hungry on top of everything else and, as the last customer carried his tray from the counter, I stepped up and ordered a loaf of sourdough and some coffee.
I brought them to the corner table. Set them down and offered the little man my hand. He shook it. His palm was clammy. I sat down across from him.
“Sorry to eat while we talk,” I said, waving vaguely at the bread loaf. “I missed lunch.”
It was a lie though. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t care. What was it to him if I ate while we talked? Little mousy dickhead dragging me away from my kid at the zoo. Sure, it was my fault, but blaming him made me feel better and he didn’t look big enough to stop me. I picked up the sourdough and ripped into it, chomping loudly, swigging some coffee to wash it down.
Porterhouse tried not to watch me. His fingers fidgeted round his cup. His glance went here and there.
“I guess being a reporter is a very busy life,” he said after a moment.
I swallowed hard. Gave him an accusing glare. “Yeah, and this is my day off,” I said.
He looked as if he might apologize. He licked his lips. The bottom rim of his paper cup rattled against the linoleum. Then maybe it occurred to him he ought to assert himself. He looked like the sort of fellow to whom that might occur from time to time.
“So I … I have a pretty busy schedule myself, Mr. Everett,” he said almost firmly. “How can I help you?”
I gave him another dark stare across my coffee. But I could hear my kid going on in my head again. We were going to the zoo! I could hear his mournful wail. Self-disgust wrestled with anger in my breast and it was self-disgust in three straight falls. I dropped back against the canework of my flimsy tube chair. I sighed. The poor bastard, I thought as I watched Porterhouse, as I watched his Adam’s apple working in his throat.
“Right,” I said finally, setting the paper cup down in front of me. I pushed my wire-rims back on my nose. Interlaced my fingers on the linoleum tabletop. I took a deep breath. “I appreciate your coming to talk to me. I guess I just wanted to get an idea of how you’re feeling today, you know. Now that Beachum’s going to be executed. With his conviction based on your testimony and all. Does it bother you?”
I suppose that was the sort of question he was expecting. He seemed ready for it anyway. He tilted his chin and looked thoughtful and sort of noble for a moment. Then he recited a speech he must’ve been composing in his head ever since he’d gotten my message. I took another bite of bread while he talked, another sip of coffee. I suppose I should have taken out my notebook or something, pretended to write some of it down. But it was pretty ridiculous stuff, and I figured I could always reconstruct it at the office if I had to.
“A man has a responsibility to his neighbors,” said Porterhouse. “You can’t just consider your own feelings. It’s very important that justice be done according to the laws of the land, you know …” And so on. The usual shit.
When he was done, he licked his lips again. Gestured nervously with one of his small pink hands. “Aren’t you going to take notes or record me or something?” he asked. “Usually when I’ve talked to reporters … I mean …”
“Oh … I … I have a photographic memory,” I said. It sounded stupid even to me, so I put the bread down and pulled a thin notebook out of my back pocket. I slapped it onto the table beside the loaf, opened it to an empty page. Pulled a Bic from my pocket and uncapped it. And I said: “So you never have any doubts? About your testimony? You ever think you might have made a mistake?”
Porterhouse swaggered-sitting there in his chair. He rolled his narrow shoulders around under his gray pinstripes and showed me a swaggering smile at one corner of his mouth. “I guess you might say I’m not the sort of person who gives way to doubts too easily,” he said. “ ‘Make sure you’re right, then go ahead,’ that’s my motto.”