Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series)
Read Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) Online
Authors: Elizabeth Zelvin
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Praise for DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER and the Bruce Kohler mystery series by Agatha and Derringer Award nominated author Elizabeth Zelvin:
“Smooth prose and outstanding storytelling ability … A remarkable and strongly recommended first novel.”
—
Library Journal
“A hell of a job … Great characters and a wonderful voice.”
—
Crimespree Magazine
“Zelvin has managed to capture the reality of alcoholism and detox, with its black humor and tragedy. Her pictures of AA meetings are very realistic.
Death Will Get You Sober
will strike home with anyone familiar with alcoholism or the addictions field.”
—
The AA Blog
“A well-plotted mystery filled with believable characters and realistic situations … Without being maudlin, cliched or clinical, Zelvin delivers a poignant story.”
—Oline H. Cogdill,
Sun-Sentinel
DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER
By
Elizabeth Zelvin
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
Death Will Get You Sober
Copyright © 2008 Elizabeth Zelvin
Cover by Andy Brown
ISBN: 9781625170842
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: March, 2013
eBook editions by eBooks by Barb for
booknook.biz
Chapter One
I woke up in detox with the taste of stale puke in my mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see twinkling lights. Either I was lost in space or coming out of a blackout. I rolled my heavy head sideways on the pillow. Now I saw a drooping strand of blinking bulbs flung over a dispirited artificial pine. A plastic Santa, looking as drunk as I remembered being when I went into the blackout, grinned at me from the treetop. I had an awful feeling it was Christmas Day.
The ward was quiet, but from my other side came the sound of coughing. I rolled my head the other way. That hurt. A skinny black guy lay huddled in the next bed, shaking the mattress with his convulsive coughs. I waited for him to get it down to a wheeze.
“Hey there.”
“Yo,” he said. “Know where you are?”
“Not a clue,” I admitted. “Detox for sure.”
“It ain’t Paree,” he agreed. His cackle shook the bed and started him wheezing again. Between gasps, he said, “You’re on the Bowery.”
“Great,” I said.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, and he laughed so hard he coughed up blood. I didn’t need a degree from Harvard Medical School to diagnose TB. I hoped he hadn’t been lying next to me long and that they’d move him out soon.
The next time I came to, an even skinnier guy lay in the next bed. The smell of his cigarette woke me. Long and white as a skeleton, with sunken cheeks and darkly shadowed eyes, he looked like someone the Headless Horseman might enjoy chasing. Ichabod lay there sucking up smoke. It sounded like he was working on a case of emphysema. So far, nobody in that detox was built like Santa Claus or breathed silently.
As I lay there, not doing much but breathing along, a small, pale female hand stuck a paper cup of juice under my nose. A sweet, cool voice commanded, “Drink!”
To my roommate, she said, “Put that out, sir! You know better. And offer one to the new man.”
Looming above us, she bored into him with a gimlet eye until he stubbed out his smoke on a plastic pill bottle and offered me the pack. She was dressed like a nun. Weird, unless maybe I was hallucinating. But I never said no to a cigarette.
“Thanks, bro,” I said, taking two. “And thank you, sister. You’re an angel.”
“It’s for later,” she snapped. “Smoking room only.”
Ichabod laughed until his dentures popped. When the nun trotted off to get him some water, he said, “Your first time here, huh? That’s Sister Angel.”
Sister Angel moved so quickly that she was back before he could tell me more. With her fresh pink skin and retro habit, she looked like the result of a penguin’s night on the tiles with a particularly clean pig. After handing Ichabod his water, she turned on me. Her round blue eyes bulged slightly.
“How are you feeling?” she demanded.
“Just fine and wonderful,” I said with weary irony. To tell the truth, I felt like hell. My mouth tasted like a garbage scow, my memory was on lockdown, and I bitterly regretted not being dead by thirty the way I’d always thought I’d be.
The next time I surfaced, Ichabod had vanished. The guy in the next bed now couldn’t have been more different. Well fed. Groomed, even. I decided that it would be a good idea to make friends. Not only did he look like a fellow who had at least one whole pack of cigarettes, but he probably smoked an expensive brand and might consider it
noblesse oblige
to give a few away. Except that at the moment, he was puking his guts out. Sister Angel held the basin.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Bruce, and I’m an alcoholic.” This is how people introduce themselves at AA meetings, of which I’ve been to a few in my time. He looked like a guy who might appreciate irony.
“Ggggggaaahhhh,” he said. “Jesus Christ. Oh, Christ, my head.”
I knew how he felt. There’s a kind of headache that you only get when you’re in withdrawal and puking at the same time. It feels as if somebody has inserted a crowbar in between two adjacent neurons in your brain and is using the lever principle to pry them apart.
Sister Angel held a damp cloth to his forehead. Now she straightened up and let go of the basin, which she had been steadying against his knees.
“Don’t drop it, now. I’ll go wet the cloth.”
Half falling out of bed as he sat up, he did almost drop the basin. I decided it was not the right moment to bum a cigarette. He retched, but nothing much was happening any more. He lifted his head very, very carefully and gave me a sickly half smile.
“Hi, I’m God,” he said. “Alcoholic.”
It wasn’t much of a resume, but it told me he wasn’t a virgin. He’d seen the inside of more than one AA meeting. Probably dozens, if not hundreds. You can’t mistake that perky introduction. It would make you feel like an asshole the first time you raise your hand and say it, except that the first time you’re usually shaking. Or crying.
Anyhow, this yoyo made quite a first impression. Hi, I’m God. Maybe this wasn’t detox after all, but the loony bin—okay, inpatient psych unit—a place I had so far managed to avoid.
“Are you delusional, or should I be genuflecting?” I guess my skepticism showed.
“Godfrey Brandon Kettleworth the Third,” he amplified. He rolled his bleary eyeballs up past exhausted lids and threw his hands in the air in an I-surrender gesture. “Blame my parents.”
“What are you in for?” Joke.
“Ninety days with time off for good behavior?” A wit. Maybe I would have to forgive the guy his Harvard education. Contrary to legend, not too many déclassé rocket scientists end up on the Bowery. It was Princeton, he told me later. Whispered. Little boys grow up, but we never get over wanting to be cool. Ivy League was not cool on the Bowery.
By evening, God’s guts were behaving better. After lights out—did I mention being in detox is humiliating?—we exchanged some basic information. Preferred brand of gin—Tanqueray. Favorite Scotch—Chivas Regal, both of us, though he had probably been able to afford a lot more of it than I had. What bars we drank in. He had started out on the Upper East Side at the Bemelmans Bar in the Hotel Carlyle and worked his way down to some dive on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. All right, fashionable Clinton. New York, always reinventing itself. Hi, I’m Clinton, I’m a grateful recovering neighborhood. What the hell we were doing in a place like this. He couldn’t remember either. Kindred spirits.
“You’ll never guess who called me today,” Jimmy said. A big, blocky Irish American with a square, cheerful pink face, ice-blue eyes surrounded by laugh wrinkles that almost hid their glint of intelligence, and a small rosebud mouth like Henry VIII’s, he clung to the rail that surrounded the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. He wore a puffy red down L.L. Bean parka and a bright fuchsia woolen watch cap and mittens, painstakingly hand knitted. Behind him soared the RCA Building, with the towering Christmas tree, studded with multi-colored lights, standing sentry before it. “Hey, if you’re going down, you don’t have to take me with you.”
He teetered on rented skates, the back edges of his blades banging against the low wall, as his girlfriend Barbara clutched at the front of his jacket. Her thick brown hair, dancing with static, frizzed up around her head. She wore a teal and violet parka and turquoise accessories knitted by the same inexpert hand. Small and olive skinned, she had the long slim nose and rounded cheeks of a Barbra Streisand who ate too many bagels. Even when not on skates, she appeared to be in perpetual motion.
“I’m stable, I’m stable!” she said, letting go her grip on his jacket and windmilling frantically. “Guess who, huh? Bill Gates? Bill W.? No, he’s dead. The Pope?”
“Are you break dancing or what? Nope. You’re out of guesses. Bruce.”
“Talk about a voice from the past,” she said. Her voice trembled between wistful and excited. “Was he drinking?”
“Nope again. Are you ready for this? He’s in detox. Aw, pumpkin, I know it’s shocking, but you didn’t have to sit down.”
Barbara tried to glare up at him from her seat on the ice, but instead began to laugh.
“Ow, my butt hurts. Good thing I’m well padded. Here, doofus, give me a hand.” She extended a woolly turquoise paw. “How did you feel—hearing from him, I mean? What did he say? Where was he—what detox, I mean? Do you think this time he might finally have hit bottom? Are we talking to him? Can we go and see him? Did he say when he’s getting out?”
Jimmy pulled her upright and stabilized her balance by putting his arms around her in a bear hug, his back braced against the rail so they wouldn’t skid and go down again. Barbara nestled happily against his chest.
“Whoa, there, peanut,” Jimmy said. “One question at a time.”
Barbara shook her head, her curls brushing his chin.
“One day at a time I can do when I work my program really hard. One question at a time? I don’t know, honey, that’s a tough one. Don’t torture me, just tell me everything.”
“He’s down on the Bowery—woke up there Christmas Day.” His arms tightened as she began to shake with laughter. “Stop that, it isn’t funny.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” She caught a teardrop on her mitten as it rolled down her flushed cheek. “I’m sure he appreciates the irony—and maybe it’ll even motivate him to stay sober. It could hardly get any worse, could it. So where is he? My old place on the Bowery or the other place?”
“Your place. And don’t squeal like that. I know you’re still in touch with the staff down there, but do you really think it’s a good idea to get involved? No, don’t answer that, I can see that you do. Will you think twice before you go barreling down there? You don’t want to embarrass him, do you?”
“Nice try, sweetie, but forget it. You alcoholics don’t embarrass worth a damn compared to us codependents. And I have so much recovery I won’t even blush when I call up Charmaine—you remember her, the head nurse—and invite her out to lunch. Actually, I haven’t been down to the Bowery since I worked there. I hear it’s gentrifying fast, and I’ve been wanting to go see for myself. From flophouses to fern bars, can you believe it?”
Jimmy sighed deeply, sending a puff of frozen breath out into the air above her head.
She flung an arm around his neck, pulled his head down, and rubbed her cold cheek against his.
“Seriously, baby,” she said, “I know it’s hurt you to see him go on drinking all these years. You’ve done everything you could. You haven’t gotten caught up in his bullshit, and you’ve been there the few times he’s reached out. If there’s a chance that this time he means it, we’ve got to help. Come on, skate with me. I promise I’ll stay on my feet.”