Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (3 page)

“And I expect you to fucking be on time for your fucking appointment this afternoon.” Game, set, and match to God.

Unfortunately, Charmaine turned around and saw me hovering behind her. She marched me straight back to her office to finish our interview. So I didn’t get to hear God’s side of it till later.

“The man’s an asshole.”

“You mean you don’t like his sobriety,” I said. An AA way to register disapproval without actual name-calling. Step Four was taking your own inventory, not someone else’s.

“I mean the man’s a jumped up, undereducated heroin addict who wouldn’t be in a position of authority if it weren’t currently politically fashionable to kowtow to ethnic and racial minorities.” His voice dripped contempt. He didn’t give a damn about Step Four.

Whoa. Nasty streak. It made me uneasy.

“I don’t think you can say that.” In this detox, WASPs and even white working class boys like me formed a distinct minority. Politically incorrect could get you stomped.

“Watch me.” His tone was uncompromising.

“Don’t be a fool, man. You don’t want to antagonize the guy who gets to watch you pee in a cup, do you?” After we’d been good for a few days, they might let us out on pass. But they would breathalyze us and check our urine for drugs when we got back. No asking a buddy on the outside to lend you a little jar of clean piss, either. One of the counselors would watch you perform.

“Let him stay off my back, then. The loathsome little twerp.”

But Darryl wouldn’t leave God alone. His legitimate job was to needle, chivvy, manipulate, emotionally disarm, and forcibly educate us into staying clean and sober. On top of that, he was tough, mean, and just as arrogant as God. Godfrey the Third hadn’t exactly become the Dalai Lama in three days of sobriety either.

As luck would have it, Darryl led therapy group next day. Everybody hated group. Not only did we have to sit in a circle and share our feelings, but they expected us to interact. If we didn’t, Darryl would go after us personally or get the group to do it. It was risky to let yourself get vulnerable. God made the mistake of admitting he’d had some losses and disappointments so painful the bottle came as a relief. Even, he said, when the bottle was Thunderbird or Ripple. Darryl pounced on him.

“Ripple still not good enough for you? Maybe our friend from uptown here can share with us what it’s like to be down and out. Maybe some of the homies can identify with the terrible life he’s had.” He bared his teeth in a wolfish sneer. The diamond chip glinted in the light. “Nome sane?” (“Do you know what I’m saying?” boiled down to two syllables on the street. Darryl used it almost as frequently as the F word.)

God clenched his fists. He looked ready to start swinging, but he held onto the rags of his temper. If he got physical with Darryl, he’d get eighty-sixed in no time. And it was still midwinter out there.

“Whatsa matter, white boy? What you know about losing shit? You make me sick, rich boy, nome sane? You never gonna stay clean. Go back uptown and diddle your little friends. You know they say some people too fucking smart to recover? Well, Mister God-damn, you might be one of them.”

Next to me, I could feel God shaking with the effort not to react. Surprise kept the rest of us silent. Patients lost it all the time. But for a counselor, this attack was over the line. It was—I hate to sound like a counselor, but—inappropriate.

Darryl kept goading him. “Not such a smart mouth now, huh? Still as sick as your secrets?” The AA phrase was supposed to encourage honesty. From Darryl, it came out a taunt.

“You b-bastard,” God spat out. “Who are you to talk about down and out, you hypocritical pimp? Your losses, Mr. Candy Man? Don’t make me laugh! Why don’t you tell your brothers here about your bank accounts? The only way you’ll lose is if all your customers get clean. As long as some of us still need to score, you’re all right, Jack. Nice gig—counselor.” He got up so abruptly that his chair fell over and stalked out of the room.

After group, I looked for God. I asked a couple of the counselors if they had seen him. Bark was meditating on the racing page in what must have been an out-of-town paper, Florida or California, at this time of year. Boris was communing with a little red and gold painting or icon of some kind that looked too good for the Bowery. Both looked startled when I popped my head in. Neither had seen God. I finally found him in the cramped laundry room both staff and patients used. He sat on a mound of dirty sheets, sulking. I tried to snap him out of it.

“Don’t let him get to you, man. The guy’s an asshole.”

“If he gets in my face again, he’s pulp.”

“Hey, one day at a time.” I kept my tone light. “If you’ve got to kill him, wait till next year.” In fact, I doubt they would have thrown him out on New Year’s Eve. Turning us loose on Amateur Night would be like handing us the bottle themselves. “At least wait till Check Day.” What everybody here called Check Day passed for a holiday among the guys who got welfare, Social Security, or a VA pension. “You do have a check coming in, don’t you?”

God said nothing. I took it for a yes. Some of the family money obviously still clung to him.

“Don’t let him screw up your three hots and a cot.” The amenities provided motivation to come to detox even if you didn’t really want sobriety. “Say the short Serenity Prayer.” This was an in-joke. The short Serenity Prayer goes: “Fuck it.”

God sat there pouring a cupful of laundry soap from one plastic container to another and back again.

“And he’d better stop needling me about my name.”

In AA they talk about the unreconstructed alcoholic as “His Majesty the Baby.” That’s just what he sounded like. I guessed petulant was better than ready to kill.

“He says I have more grandiosity than any client he’s ever met. Ha! That’s a good one, coming from him.”

I hated to agree with Darryl about anything.

“Maybe you just have more class than any client he’s ever met,” I said.

“I’d rather be me than the fucking Jack o’ Diamonds of the Bowery,” he grumbled.

He had simmered down some more by the time Sister Angel marched in with a fresh load of laundry. She opened up the washer as it ground to a halt, releasing a cloud of steam. It was like being in a Turkish bath. With a nun.

“Come on, God—Godfrey,” I said. “Just forget it. Come have a cigarette.” Sister Angel cast a keen glance at his thunderous face and whipped out her pack. “Thanks, Sister.” I took two. I stuck one in my breast pocket and the other behind my ear. God took one. I told you he didn’t belong on the Bowery.

At three in the morning, wide awake and restless, I decided to wash the street clothes I’d come in wearing. If I was a good boy, I’d be going out on pass on Check Day. I bundled up my things, which still smelled of my lost Christmas Eve, and made my way to the laundry room. Clutching the big mound to my chest with my chin and nose holding it in place, I tripped over what I thought was a heap of sheets and towels until my shins made contact with something solid. I stumbled and came down hard. What I’d taken for a pile of laundry was a human being. It startled me, but I didn’t freak out until I saw his face. His glazed eyes stared and his mouth hung open. He looked astonished and very dead.

I saw Barbara before she saw me. She bounced out of the elevator talking a mile a minute. I might have known she’d show up. I hung back behind a pillar, watching her.

She had hit rush hour. The elevator was packed with guys coming back from pass. She stood out among them. The older white guys had bulbous red noses, broken-veined cheeks, and the filmy eyes that said cataracts. The black guys were mostly very street, with hairdos ranging from shiny bald to massive mats of dreads. Many of them carried the scars of knife wounds. The younger ones were pierced in a variety of interesting places. Not one man in the elevator had all his teeth. Barbara came from the kind of home Jimmy and I had seen only on TV, where all the kids had orthodontia. But she looked surprisingly comfortable. I suddenly remembered she’d done an internship here. Oh, I was in for it now.

I had almost worked up to revealing myself when little Hieronimo appeared at her elbow.

“Mees Barbara, Mees Barbara!” He jumped up and down trying to get her attention, his quiff of oily black hair bobbing.

“Hello, Hieronimo. How are you doing?”

She’d probably been his counselor at least once. She ran into former clients in alcohol and drug programs all over town. Hieronimo had been in detox sixty times. He helped keep the revolving door oiled and spinning. I’d heard him swear this was the last time. But we all said that. In the meantime, he lived on Social Security and some relatively harmless little hustles.

“I am good, I am doing very fine.”

Barbara sniffed the air like a bloodhound. Counselors never took your word for it. If anyone on that elevator had smelled of alcohol, she’d have known.

“Mees Barbara, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Hieronimo, how can I help you?”

Hieronimo launched into a long story about his benefits. The bureaucracy had streamlined some procedure. As always, it improved nothing and confused the people it was supposed to help.

“They give me the paper for the new program,” he told her in bewildered tones, “they say not to worry, they grandfather me in. Can you explain me thees, Mees Barbara? My understanding ees not good. I don’t even got a grandfather.”

“Hey, lady.” I pushed myself off the side of the pillar. “My understanding is not good either, but don’t I know you?”

“Bruce!” Barbara squeaked. She threw herself on me and gave me a rib-crushing hug. I was glad I had on my freshly laundered sweatshirt, though I wore the bottoms of the undignified detox pajamas.

Barbara sniffed a couple of times. Checking for scent, damn her. She looked first at the pajamas, then down at my feet. I’d forgotten about the paper slippers.

“Well, well. Happy New Year!” She grinned widely.

I did my best not to look flustered. Keeping Barbara off balance is both an art and a necessity.

“Happy New Year to you too.” I sounded more sardonic than I felt. Okay, so I was glad to see her. “I know you knew I was here, because Jimmy tells you everything.”

“Only what he knows will interest me.” She hugged me again.

I squeezed back. Every time Barbara and I got within hugging distance, I could see her wondering if I remembered the one time we ended up in bed together. I think she just wanted all of us to love each other. Knowing Jimmy, she should have known better. My excuse was the usual. Barbara probably hoped I was in a blackout at the time. And Jimmy didn’t know. Best for all concerned. Her feelings for me were about ninety percent sisterly these days. Mine for her were purely brotherly. I think.

Hieronimo still stood there looking bewildered.

“Go see Bark, son,” I advised him over Barbara’s shoulder. “He’ll straighten you out.”

“How are you doing, baby?” Barbara asked when Hieronimo had strutted off like a bantam cock. “In detox on the Bowery over Christmas, that’s got to be some kind of record.”

“Not my best Christmas,” I admitted. “How’s the big guy?”

“He’s good. Santa brought him some new toys for his time machine and he’s hardly been up for air since.” Jimmy’s passions were history and computers. “Have you gone out on pass?”

“Not yet. I’ll call Jimmy. Or I might go see Laura.” Laura was my ex-wife, of whom Barbara was not very fond. It had gotten worse since she learned how to diagnose bipolar disorder, borderline personality, and anorexia.

“Decisions, decisions. Go to a meeting or get laid for New Year’s. Hmm, which one will you choose?”

“Sometimes I think Jimmy is right when he says you’ll say anything. Sometimes it’s not as endearing as you think it is.”

Barbara clapped a hand over her mouth.

“I’m sorry! There I go again. Jimmy thinks mentioning anything personal is like going out without your underwear. You know how Irish Catholic he can get. And sometimes I go all Jewish and overcompensate.”

Now I felt guilty.

“I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to zing you. I’m glad you came to see me.”

“I’m really here because I have a lunch date with Charmaine.” Yeah, right. “But can we go into a corner and talk for a few minutes?”

“I bow to the inevitable.”

“Anywhere but the smoking room.”

We ducked into the laundry room. The load jouncing around in the washer made it a little noisy, but nobody would bother us for seventeen minutes.

“So tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. I was in a blackout. I woke up here.”

“And how are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Come on, Bruce, this is me. Cut the crap. This has got to be a new low for you. Is there any chance at all you’ve finally hit bottom?”

“If scolding ever got an alcoholic sober, you’d be out of a career.”

“I know, I know. It just exasperates me to see you throwing your life away.”

I decided to change the subject.

“Hey, guess what. I found a body.”

“What?”

“Fact. An old guy dropped dead right here in this laundry room the other night. I found him.”

“What on earth were you doing in here in the middle of the night?”

I looked at her reproachfully. “My laundry. Have a little faith.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“Oh, Barbara, Barbara. You know me too well.” That wasn’t too manipulative, since she knew I knew she was a sucker for flattery. Besides, it was true.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Go on. Were you upset?”

“More taken aback, I guess. I just came in to do my wash and stumbled over a corpse.”

“Oh, poor Bruce!”

“I’d say poor Elwood.”

“Elwood? I think I knew him. Elderly gent from Alabama, they called him Mudbone?”

“That’s right.”

“I did his psychosocial once. It took three hours because he’d lost his dentures and I couldn’t understand a word he said.” Homeless chronic alcoholics tend to mislay their teeth. In Elwood’s case, the condition had exacerbated an already impenetrable rural drawl. “Sweet old man, though. What happened? Did somebody kill him?”