"Ok. But let me
clear up a few things for you. The cops weren't crazy about my talking to you at all. As far as they're concerned, with your record, you're probably guilty as h**l. Now if you've got anything to say about the other night you'd better tell it fast and come with me. Otherwise they're gonna march in here and scoop you in their own special way. And we all know what that can be like."
Wayne stood like he was made of cement. Dirty cement. his face could have soured milk. He stepped back slowly, the coffee cup still in his hand.
"So lead me out of here. If we're goin'"
A pause. Then Wayne picked up his coat from the back of his chair and thrashed about in a pantomime of putting it on without letting down the coffee cup. By the time he threw it Barry was already moving, dodging easily as the chipped mug sailed past and hit the wall behind him. It didn't break, but chipped a little more and bounced downward.
Wayne bolted, heading for the stairway to the street. The captain, speaking in low tones to his group, looked up. He glanced to Barry, eyes querying: Should we chase?
"Naw, f**k..." Barry said, immediately regretting it. He mumbled, sorry before it fled his lips, for having used bad language to a man of faith. "He's had it anyway..."
Wayne knocked over a row of folding chairs a pleasant-looking old rummie had been setting out for the afternoon card game. Two men coming into the room parted quickly, with beautiful choreographic instinct, to let him by. Then he skidded into a hallway and out of sight. Barry was about to tell the captain he was sorry for the fuss when a crash of glass filled the place. The captain and Barry went together into the hallway where about a half-dozen street people had been trying to climb the stairs. They stood still, crowded on the stairway, bracing themselves for a fall.
Barry could see what had happened.
"Oh my, said the captain.
"Yeah."
They saw that Wayne had blazed by the first two derelicts but calculated that he wouldn't have time to get past the six more who were blocking the stairs. Thinking he was being pursued, Wayne dodged into a small office at the top of the landing and dived stuntman-like over a desk and out the second storey window. They could see the ragged glass hole and hear a comotion from the street below.
Wavering, the man
put down the bottle and swayed to the rear of the towtruck. He looked comically at the driver still working in the Honda, behind the driver's seat digging at something on the floor, then pushed a lever. With a whine of hydraulics the car lurched upwards and kept going until it was ready to unhook and fall backward.
"Hey!" The driver clambered out and fell to the pavement. "What the h**l?"
"Heh. Lady here wants the full treatment."
"Yeah well, be careful with that stuff, it's not a toy." The driver strode toward the cab.
"Yeah yeah," said the man, searching in the toolbox. He grabbed a large screwdriver and went to the exposed underside of the Honda. "Where'd you say it is?"
"I didn't. I don't exactly know." She yelled the words into relative silence as the driver cut the motor.
"Well, I've hid stuff in cars." The man spoke while tinkering and wrangling among the rusted metal under the front end. "Usually if its something valuable you weld a chunk into the quarter panel..."
"I'm sure as h**l it's not a sophisticated as that. He said it was well up under a seat."
"C'mon lady," he emerged from under the car. "Nobody just sticks a bag full of money under the seat of a car and expects to just come back and pick it up later. He's got to've figured something better."
"You don't know Wayne."
"No I don't." He went to the bottle and picked it up. "Should I?"
From behind Barry
placed his arms across Jane's midrif, clutching her back to his chest in complete contact, sharing warmth and almost their heartbeats, heads together so his words needed only to be whispers, thoughts breathed into her hair.
"Jane, as far as your past and your present is concerned, your fragility of body right now and your aproaching journey that makes me afraid, and with respect to your person and your feelings and acknowledging the violation of boundaries that my words are making, have you any idea of how much I love you? Any idea the total protective heat I can get going in me when I think of you? When I see you and speak to you and even on the phone feel your sense and touch and the way your words on your voice enter my ears and trickle down my mind and settle in all the places in my body I take comfort.
There is not a thing in this world I am thinking about right now except you. I brought you to this place because I was here once when I was happy and I'm happy again right now even though everything is bad. Everything is disaster except the exact coordinates of the exact space our bodies inhabit at this second. My love for you is exactly right here. You feel it in my chest and the way I want it to radiate to your back and where I want it to go, into your pores, your skin and hair, your eyes, into your mouth and down into you. Through the palms of your hands and the bottoms of your feet and through the backs of your knees. I am so in love I am inside your heart and the air in your lungs. I am the air on your face and the quiet in your stomach.
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Wayne Stickner's wife
lived in the east end of town, not far from the docks and only a couple of blocks from the fragrant menagerie of Chinatown. It was an area of low-cost housing projects, un-quaint older houses and welfare offices. There were a lot of stray dogs. The schools were the first in town to lose teachers by way of physical assault. The house was up a dead-end street, a newish but badly kept cinderblock fouplex with plywood windows at street level. There were tire marks on the lawn. The door Barry Delta knocked at rattled on its hinges and from behind it came shuffling sounds. The door opened. A kid about ten stood holding the knob. The resemblance, including the rats-nest hair was unmistakeable.
Wayne Strickner, a family man! Barry never would have believed it had not the evidence been standing before him.
"Is your mother home?"
"Who are you?"
"Barry Delta."
The boy fled, leaving the door open. Then he returned. "Come in." He backed away from the door, keeping Barry in sight. They walked down a hallway into a gloom-hung room fouled with cigarette smoke and dark behind musty drapes. Cooking smells lingered. A heavy woman sat on a tortured love seat against one wall. Cartoons wailed from the screen in a far corner.
"Rose Strickner?"
Barry had to yell, fighting the TV.
"Go to school now, Wayne," she called. "Don't be late."
"You going to be okay, Mom?" The boy's voice quavered perceptibly. The sound of it jolted Barry.
"I said get to school. I can handle this."
The boy stood uncertain, looking with hostility toward Barry and a frightened reverence toward his mother.
"I'm sure your Mom and I will get along. We're going to talk about your Dad."
What about Dad?" The heat in his eyes, Wayne Junior's whole fight-worn attitude, erased any pretense of childhood. He seemed ready to do some kind of fighting. Barry fought to get up to speed with the situation. He reached into a pocket and whipped out his badge, proffering it to the lad with respectful efficiency.
In his office
Barry sat the lawyer down and went to get her a cup of tea. When he got back he handed her the steamy cup over and saw that her hands were shaking.
"Are you sure we're even safe in here?" She said. "He could be dangerous."
"He's dangerous all right, but not to anyone who stands up to him."
"That shouldn't be. There are labour codes. There are harassment laws."
"And you're just the one to go for it. It won't cost you comfort at your job like it would me and my friends."
"Forget it. I have plenty of trouble to think about already."
"You'd be doing us a biggie."
"There's so much trouble in the world."
"Isn't that what a lawyer is for?" Barry finessed as best he could. "Trouble?"
"...The car, it's yours.
The guy, he's your boss. What's it look like to you?"
"Mighty funny, I have to admit."
"Then we got your background. Been in the business what...? 'Leven years?"
"Right."
"Been good at it, we have to give you that. Did a good if kinky job on old Ellen-the-drinker-mob-woman. Work reports are all okay except for this year."
"They're not done yet, are they?"
"Old man Belsen had some notes."
To this Barry shrugged and tried to look right into the dark dots in the wall tiles. He squinted.
"So, Barry. Wanna tell us about this?"
Barry unsquinted and stretched back in his chair.
"Sure."
"Okay. So what was with the car?" Alan asked.
"Why'd he have it?" Dave asked.
The cops leaned close.
Barry told.
Next they asked: "What was the girl's story?"
Barry told.
"How do you figure they got together?"
Barry theorized and told.
"Where were you when all this came down?"
Barry told. His blood pressure remained constant, his scalp did not prickle, he did not move in his chair. He spoke, teling the truth, and told. When all the talking was finished Barry got up to leave, pausing at the door.
"You guys gonna tell me not to leave town?"
Allan and Dave looked at each other.
"Barry..." Dave began.
"...You can go any d**n place you please," finished Alan.
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