No Sleep till Wonderland (10 page)

It’s worse than I thought it would be out here. There’s no breeze even though I’m only a half mile from the water, and the sun glowers down at the city like it has a vendetta. It’s too goddamn hot for the old door-to-door, so I head directly to Rachel Stanton’s apartment. Her place is down the hill and about a block and a half away from the fire.

The two-story town house fits in with the other houses in her row like a Lego piece. Its exterior is light gray with white trim; both could use a fresh coat. A rusty, waist-high, chain-link fence carves out a small rectangular alley with its garbage cans and debris. Tufts of yellow and dead grass vainly poke through the cracked pavement and have nowhere to go.

I buzz the second-floor apartment, and a familiar woman opens the front door to the building. She’s the scarecrow I saw the night of the fire, the one who grabbed me and begged me to save the kid on the second floor. Maybe I should tell her that I did save him, and then she’d trust me. Or, like the cops who don’t believe me, she’d want nothing to do with me.

She says, “Hi,” and it’s clear she recognizes me too. I’m just so memorable.

I extend my hand and say, “Hi, I’m Mark Genevich, private investigator. Are you Rachel Stanton?”

Rachel has dyed black hair, chop-cut short to uneven length. Thick black mascara rims her paperweight eyes, which are sunk deep into her face. Her look comes from so far away, it might get lost. Dim lights in a cave. She’s wearing a tight black, logoless T-shirt, gray jeans, and large black plugs in her earlobes. She says, “What’s this about?” The black plugs stretching out her flesh are the monstrous periods of leviathan sentences.

“I’m working on my own search for the arsonist who set your friend Jody O’Malley’s building on fire. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Rachel is too skinny. She could use a sandwich. Instead she folds her pale arms over her thin chest and she chews on a fingernail. “Jody is here. Upstairs. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.” Rachel is a recording. No inflection, no life, all static. I wonder if she’s on something right now, or maybe she’s just sleepwalking through this.

I hoped and had a hunch that Jody would be here, but fear of success fills my gut with poisonous winged insects, too ugly to be butterflies. I say, “Can I come in? I think you and she and we know some of the same people. I want to make sure I have all the dancing partners straight.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. I’m greedy, and asking to see Jody is too much. She unfolds her pop-up-book arms and is going to shut the door on me. But she doesn’t. She hides her hands in her pockets, which is a neat trick, because I thought the jeans were too tight for empty pockets.

“I won’t say anything to upset Jody. I want to help.”

Rachel’s bony-shouldered shrug is an anatomy lesson. She turns and walks up the white stairs without me but doesn’t shut the front door. Follow the leader.

I need to acknowledge my entrance. I say to her back, “Are you doing okay?”

Rachel doesn’t turn around. The plugs shake her ears like little earthquakes. “I’ve been better.”

She waits for me on the second-floor landing, and her hands are rocks in those pockets, all inert. The walk up the stairs leaves me winded and tired, my legs heavy and outmoded machinery that I shouldn’t be operating.

I hear the TV through the closed apartment door. If it isn’t turned up as loud as it can go, it’s at least turned to eleven. People talk and yell, begging for attention and self-worth, in their tinny, one-speaker voices, and a crowd cheers and jeers, filling the background with American white noise.

Rachel says, “Don’t step on anything,” and opens the door, then slides inside and ahead of me, moving like a river. A blast of air-conditioning is a welcome temporary respite from the heat. The TV goes quiet, but I know the quiet won’t last. I’m right. Their quick and harsh whispers fill the void. I shut the door, its ability to mark boundaries suddenly very questionable.

The apartment is in a state of recent neglect. The hardwood floors and various pieces of furniture support only a few days’ worth of laundry, magazines, dirty dishes, take-out food bags and cardboard containers.

Jody and Rachel sit on a couch in the middle of the living room. The couch is askew. No one has cared enough to adjust it. A dingy white sheet covers the cushions; two pillows are smooshed into the armrest. The couch as a makeshift bed reminds me that I didn’t sleep at all last night. Not that I need any reminding.

Jody wears cutoff sweatpants and a white T-shirt. She rewraps herself in a blanket, cold when the outside world is cooking. There’s wisdom in there somewhere. Jody stares at the TV screen, at the muted daytime talk show. She stares at it like she’s looking at the future. Rachel stares at me like there is no future.

Rachel says, “Jody, this is Mark. He’s the first guy who ran into the building.”

Jody looks up and says, “What happened in there?” Her voice is ragged, broken, a scratchy record continuously ignored in a world of digital recordings.

I tell her what happened in there. I tell her I did what I could, which was helping her son down the stairs before stumbling out of the building empty-handed and passing out. At least, that’s how I remember it.

Jody says, “Is this true? No one told me that.”

Rachel says, “No one told me that either.”

I adjust my hat. “Yeah, it’s true.” I try to adjust my beard by rubbing my face. “Sorry I wasn’t able get him all the way out of the house.”

Jody pulls the blanket tighter around her and says, “Thanks for doing that, then. Thanks for trying.”

Her uncertain, pseudo-acknowledgment will have to do for now. I say, “Is it all right if I ask you a few questions?”

“Don’t think I can help you any.”

That’s not a no, so I start off slow by asking each woman what she does. Jody works at the chain supermarket on Broadway, in the deli. The managers give her only thirty-two hours per week, and she’s currently on unpaid leave. Rachel washes hair at a salon and takes classes at Bunker Hill Community College. Not quite sure how either supplements her income for the luxuries of food and rent, and I don’t ask.

Instead it’s time to get more personal. I ask, “How’s your son doing, Jody?”

“Aw, fuck, I don’t know. They tell me how he’s doing, but I can’t go see him, won’t even let me talk to him until after the hearing, maybe, so I don’t really know.”

“Has he said anything to the cops? Did he see anything?”

“No, they told me he won’t talk about the fire.”

I say, “I’m sorry that this all happened, Jody.” And I am. Despite spending the better part of two afternoons reading about her and the DSS, about her utter and spectacular failings as a mother, I am sorry. No one deserves this.

“Yeah.” Jody’s in her midtwenties, but her extra weight makes her look older, carrying the pounds like outed secrets or sadness. Maybe there’s no difference. She has a small silver ball stud that pokes out just below her bottom lip, not centered, but on the left side. A robo-dimple. The stud is too small and is being swallowed by her skin. Her face is red and puffy and breaking out. She’s been crying, and I’m guessing she’s on Valium or using antidepressants, prescribed or not. Her hair is dark brown, almost black, and greasy. Like the apartment, she’s in a similar state of fresh neglect. Her nose is short and squat, pushed in, a button that doesn’t work. Her eyes are a bright, severe blue. Her stare is a challenge, one that I can’t meet.

I’m too nervous for my own good, and I’m getting a bad feeling. The kind of feeling that might grow into a sweep-the-leg moment. Eventually always becoming inevitably.

I have so many questions to ask. I’m just going to let them loose and hope order sorts itself out, my personal chaos theory. I say, “The night of the fire, what time did you leave your apartment to come here?”

Jody tilts her head to her left, half a shrug. “Ten. Ish. It doesn’t matter. It was way past JT’s bedtime. He’s a heavy sleeper, never wakes up for nothing once he’s out. Doesn’t matter if someone’s yelling or poking him. I left him like that all the time, and he was fine; nothing ever happened. It wasn’t a big deal. Nothing should’ve happened to him. It wasn’t my fault. Me being in the apartment wouldn’t have changed anything…”

Jody trails off, talking into her blanket, smothering her quiet words of regret. Rachel grabs the faltering baton and says, “It wasn’t a big deal. JT would’ve been fine.”

I can’t tell if she believes that or if she’s acting as Jody’s chorus. I’m not here to contradict her. I’m not here to tell her the truth, only to find it. There’s a difference.

“How come Rachel was at the fire before you were?”

Jody covers her head and growls. Rachel clucks her tongue. Then the women speak at the same time, voices and words overlapping.

Jody says, “I’ve already answered these fucking questions a million times.”

Rachel says, “I was just running to Jody’s apartment to get my iPod that she forgot, left on the kitchen table. The building was burning when I got there. I panicked and just started screaming for help.”

I remember her screaming and grabbing me. Her emotions from that night are so alien to her flatline response to my question. Sounds like she’s giving me an excuse. I don’t trust the scarecrow anymore.

I say, “And you didn’t see anyone coming out of the building? Anyone there?”

“Just you. Then Fred, the neighbor who saved JT.”

I say, “Of course. Fred.” I have a bad feeling that is getting worse, bullying me around, kicking Mr. Sandman sand in my face. I push a small stack of magazines off a wooden chair that doesn’t seem to be part of a set, and say, “Tell me about Aleksandar Antonov.”

Jody says, “Nothing to tell. He’d only been living there for a few months. Kept to himself. Quiet guy. I hardly saw him. Sorry he died. Sorry he died like that.”

Jody sinks deeper into her blanket. Her body language isn’t good. But neither is mine. I slouch and slide into the chair, my skin and bones wanting to weave into the fiber of the wood. I sit up too quickly and almost topple over.

I ask Jody if she ever saw or heard any of Aleksandar’s friends or anyone who might’ve visited his apartment, and Jody shakes her head no and stares at the muted TV. I turn and watch the pointing fingers and wide silent mouths and clapping hands and know that everyone is only pretending to be angry or righteous, or pretending to be laughing. They’re all just scared because no one knows what the hell is going on.

I ask Rachel the same questions about Aleksandar. She gives me the same
no
answers, then gets up, leaves the couch, and disappears into a bedroom. I’m losing both of them. I’m losing myself too.

It’s too cold in here. My damp shirt is a clammy fish on my skin. Wish I had my jacket, should’ve been prepared for anything. I say, “How long have you known Eddie Ryan?”

“Just about all my life. Unfortunately. We’re both from here. Grew up together. Same project.” She’s giving me the typical Southie story, although I’ve never understood it: proximity and place as a badge, as an identity that determines loyalties, relationships, and destinies. So kiss me; I’m from Southie, where friends protect friends and sometimes fuck them over too. Yeah, everyone’s friends here, friends of convenience, as if there were any other kind.

Time to shake things up. I twist and lean back in my chair and paw at the TV’s power button. I hit it, but there’s also a loud crack coming from behind me. Nothing falls off the chair, but I think I’m dealing with a stool now.

I know the answer to my next question, and I know the question will be as comfortable as this broken chair. “Is Eddie the father of your son?”

Jody looks at me like I tried to throw a punch at her but missed and now she’s going to hit me back. One for flinching. She says, “No! Is that what he’s saying? Is he telling people that so they’ll think he didn’t do it?”

I shrug, and it’s a lie, but I don’t care. It’s clear she needs and wants to hate Eddie.

“That motherfucking son of…” Jody growls out obscenities, squeezes out some tears, and it’s all too much of a reaction. I wanted to push her but not get an eruption.

I say, “Slow down. He didn’t exactly tell me he was the father, but that he was like a father to your son.”

Rachel comes running out the bedroom. She’s a wisp and might be incinerated by Jody’s volcano. “Just tell him to leave, Jody. You don’t have to talk to him.”

I shoot Rachel my that’s-bad-advice look. A look that is often confused with I’m-goddamned-tired look.

Jody says, “What, are you and Eddie friends? You can go fuck yourself.”

“Would that I could, but I’m not Eddie’s friend. I asked him some questions last night, that’s all. Like we’re doing now. He wasn’t exactly cooperative. For what it’s worth, I kicked him in the balls at the end of the interview. He wasn’t singing ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ when I left him.”

The women look at each other, look at me, and I look at them. We don’t want to believe in our own eyes.

Jody smiles, but it goes away, like hope. She says, “Good. Even if you’re lying to me.”

“When was the last time you saw Eddie?”

“The goddamn night before the fire. I went down to the Abbey. We got into a big fight. Didn’t like the way he was talking and looking at some little red-headed bitch. And I told him all about it.”

“You guys are always fighting,” Rachel says. She adjusts her earplugs. They’re big enough to be plates for Mrs. Tittlemouse. I can’t help but stare and wonder what it feels like to actively change your skin like that. If only…

Jody says, “It’s his fault. He treats me like shit, like I’m nothing. Worse than nothing, like I’m a pet, need to be kept and told what to do all the time. You should hear how he talks to me in front of JT, like I’m dumber than a plant. JT has started mouthing off to me just like Eddie does. Eddie’s teaching him to do that shit. I fucking hate it.” She pauses, then adds, “Should’ve burned down Eddie’s place a long time ago.”

Her last sentence is a direct challenge to me, to see what I’ll say. I’m not going to say anything. It’s an easy answer for me, but I don’t know if it’s the right one.