The November Criminals (17 page)

Then David reappeared. “Look, man. This sound weird, but I need your coat and bag. Pager, too. I need you to hand them to me. And then I need to frisk you.” I shouldered off my bag and the coat, which David set down with real care. He then frisked me. First time it had ever happened. Not even the cops had frisked me. I slumped there as he patted my back and chest. His behavior confirmed my guess about what was happening in Noel’s basement. You’d expect him to be cursory. Some skinny-ass motherfucker like me presents no threat, right? But David takes his work seriously, and he did a thorough, efficient job. He pocketed my pager. Turned it off, to my relief: I’d missed a few more, just standing there. I never even felt awkward when his hand approached my scrotum! A sign of skill. “A’ight, shit, man. I guess you good.” He hefted my coat and bag in one hand and beckoned me downstairs. The passage, narrow and alley-dark as ever, was made worse by the increasing noise.

He left me at the bottom, telling me once more to wait, and opened the door leading into Noel’s room. I saw a slice of dead-white fluorescent glare and one rumpled edge of a crowd. And I knew I’d been right. It was a fucking dogfight. The door was opened fully, and Noel was trotting across the room to shake my hand. “What up, my niggaaaaa,” he cawed, and we leaned into our usual handshake. He reeked of sweat. A happy sweat. The room was hot as fuck, anyway. There were about twenty guys there, ranging in age from mine to my father’s. All dressed the same, though the older guys were wearing more muted colors. Jeans, too-large T-shirts, ornately knitted sweaters. Enormous shoes. It’s weird to see a forty-five-year-old man in huge spaceman shoes. I didn’t stare too much. Or I tried not to. Other than Noel, who was doing his host act, and David, who looked worried and embarrassed on my behalf, no one was paying the slightest attention to me.

A long trestle table had been set up along one wall, on which lay a pile of coats, a heap of pagers and cell phones, and several handguns. At the end opposite from these piles, the battered old money counter. You know: it’s this thing that looks kind of like a scale, and you drop stacks of cash into it and it whickers through them and gives you a digital readout of the amount. Above it, at shoulder height, the small blackboard was covered—the first time I’d ever seen it used—in small, clipped, legible handwriting. Which I knew without having to ask belonged to David. Who was now placing my hole-elbowed gray coat with the others, adding my pager to the heap. David dangled my bag from his hand and stared at it, and then kicked it beneath the table.

I read the blackboard: just a bunch of initials and numbers, divided into two columns, one headed by the word
Shazam
and one headed by the word
Trojan
. “So what you want, nigga?” Noel asked. Through the human voices bouncing between the concrete floor and the baffling on the walls, I heard different, animal sounds, a growl and a whine.

“Man, am I like interrupting a bout, or something?” I asked. I was sure, now, that I was. I noticed the pen, made of scuff-clouded black plastic and hinged with oxidized metal, that had been set up in the room’s center. This was what everyone was crowding around. It rose to hip height. Noel’s bed was gone to make room for it, a fact I accepted with feverish equanimity.

“Shit, nigga,” Noel breathed out. “You too funny, man. You wanna like bet or suh’in?”

Noel would straighten everything out
. Not wholly wrong. I remembered my purpose in coming here. For literally two seconds. And then, louder than I’d meant, I yelped, “I have like twelve thousand dollars in my backpack.” This caused the other spectators gathered to pay attention. “Shit, Richie Rich!” one of the older guys said, in this gravelly voice. The guys standing with him cracked up and they all went back to ignoring me. Noel was restraining laughter, too. David still had that tight-lipped look of professional concern stretching his face. “I’d like
like
to bet man. I’d love to,” I gushed. David crossed back to us to interfere, but Noel was already asking me who I wanted to bet on. It took less than a second for me to reply, “Trojan.” Symbolic coherence, ladies and gentlemen! I was sure he would lose. Based on the name. That’s what Trojans do. They lose. Greeks win, Trojans lose. Kind of the story of everything, right?

David rifled the money from my bag, at a two-finger gesture from Noel. “You all
organized
and shit, Addison,” David gritted out, when he noticed my über-anal bundling system. Pissed, yes. His voice well under control, despite that. As always. He fed the bundles through the money counter. The whiffing of the machine, which took its time eating through all the bills, made everyone go sort of quiet. The group gave me another stare, and the older guy piped up again: “He really
be
Richie Rich.” He got just as big a laugh as before. Why mess with success?

“It’s like twelve,” David called to Noel, as the machine finished up. “Like twelve four.” He was crouching under the table, twirling the dial of Noel’s fire safe, which had been dragged from beneath his mattress for the occasion and sat beneath the table in stolid shadow. I heard the door chunk open and closed, a heavy chord.

“Man, he a’ight,” Noel said, as David noted me on the board with the rest of the players, in the TROJAN column: A.S., 12,447. “You bettin against the favorite, though.” Noel chuckled. This reassured me that everything was going to be fine. “Like three-to-two, son,” he continued.

After some more communal mumblings, things quieted down. Noel had gone back among his crowd of bettors. And two guys came out of the subrooms at the back, each with his dog on a leash. The dogs were a lot calmer than I expected. They didn’t go for each other at all. They didn’t strain at their leashes. One was cotton colored, and one was brick red. They both had this squat, foursquare build. Pit bulls or half-breed mastiffs or something. The owners approached the pen. I can’t tell you what the owner of the white dog wore. But the red dog’s owner had on this mango-colored tracksuit, with a blue racing stripe from heel to shoulder. “Which one is Trojan?” I whispered to David. He pointed at the red dog, and then walked over to stand guard by the entrance, resolutely not looking at me. The owners both lifted up their dogs, with visible tenderness. Noel raised his open palms. The crowd took a breath. You know how crowds, even small ones, can sync up at moments of tension.

What happened next I did not participate in. I didn’t even
watch
, really. I stood in the corner of Noel’s basement, flexing and unflexing my fingers in my pocket and quivering like a fool with my chills. The crowd had heated the air. There were enough people gathered to generate heat, a low earthbound heat, even at the ragged edge of the crowd. I’m not the kind of person who hates crowds. You feel more solitary in a crowd than anywhere else, because it deemphasizes the physical side of your solitude. You know? Leaves you with the intangible and more important side of it. And there was this air of businessmen’s camaraderie emanating from the group, though there were clearly two opposing sides. As Noel lowered his hands, the owners placed their dogs in the pen and clicked off their leashes.
That
I saw.

Then the crowd obscured the action. Everyone was yelling, pumping their fists. David grew more and more still. Noel’s face glowed with social happiness. I kept having to shut my eyes and swallow, from the dizziness and growing dryness in my throat. A window in the crowd opened for a moment. I saw that the dogs did not seem to be fighting so much as struggling. The crowd wove together again, and I contented myself just listening to the sounds of the fight, grunts and outright barks. The animals were speaking to each other. You could pick up the rhythm underneath the hum of human voices, which had blurred into static-like noise.

“Dogfighting,” Noel told me when I’d asked him what the soundproofing in his room was for. I laughed. Big fucking joke, right? But it makes sense if you think about it. Another of his
gestures
. Constructive of the illusion that he’s friends with his business peers. I had no idea who these guys were, but in my memory their clothes were clean, expensive-looking. Their faces well fed. They looked prosperous, if not
100
percent legitimate. The crowd was leaning left and right, arms around one another, faces hectic with hope or worry. I counted up the numbers on the blackboard, or tried to. They didn’t make any sense. I got different totals each time. One of the dogs howled. The white one, Shazam, I was sure. A howl of victory. I expected everything to stop. Probably I
wanted
it to stop, the crowd buzz and the smoky, used-feeling air, rich with human exhalation. The fight continued, though. The howl wound down, and the back-and-forth of brief cries rose again. One of the crowd members leaped, off the balls of his feet, and muffed his landing so that he fell on his ass. His gap let me see the action again. My lips were numb.

The dogs were just going
at
it. The white one scrabbled its forelegs up on the red one’s shoulders and gnawed at the back of his neck. But the red one bucked him off and lunged, opening a gash in the white dog’s flank. They circled and snapped, without getting real purchase, as the fallen guy moaned and everyone ignored him. The reddish one, broader built, lower to the earth, dove at and gripped the white one’s throat and drove his enemy with a writhing twist to the floor of the pen, jerking his head and grunting through the mouthful of flesh. The white dog waved its legs, a recognizable gesture of dismissal. This was greeted with a huge unitary roar, cheers of approval by some and cries of defeat from others. We’d entered the final stage. Everyone was delighted or devastated. As the red dog crushed his opponent’s throat, the shouts and catcalls dwindled into an abashed, almost awed quiet. Then the fallen man was back on his feet, obstructing my view of the slow death. It distressed me, though. Not out of empathy. I hate dogs. It was
not
out of empathy.

“Shit,” someone said during the hush, his voice hollow. Then everyone backed away from the pen. Not a crowd anymore, just a bunch of guys. That likable cohesion gone. The losing owner, the forgettably dressed one, scooped up the white dog in two arms, staring down into his burden. A forking blaze of red and pink at the throat. Eyes rolled back. My stomach heaved.
Not
out of empathy, again. The winning owner, the man in the mango tracksuit, was surrounded by the people he had made money for. Patting his back and congratulating him. He’d releashed the red dog. Trojan. The white one was called Shazam. Trojan, who was still alive. Which meant that I had just won … I couldn’t do the math then. I was too out of my head. Noel was slapping me on my back, asking me jovially if I wanted to bankrupt him. (“Or suh’in,” he appended.) To show me, I guess, that he could handle basically any action. He does usually have a huge amount of cash on hand. I mean, was he going to put his profits in the bank? Buy fucking bonds, or whatever? A short line had formed by David. He’d opened the safe and was counting out money for the winners. After he paid them, they’d get their coat and pager or phone back. The guns stayed on the table. There were only three.

When David had stowed my money, the last of whatever weight was connecting me to real existence vanished. This
certitude
overcame me, about Kevin, about the killer … everything. All I had to do was
to not do anything
, to cede the control I’d been trying to exert, and I’d be set free. Have you ever joyridden? Just cruised down a steep hill, letting gravity and the other natural forces do their work? A sense of soaring liberation. Lasting less than five minutes, it must have been. Holy fuck! All that money, which I’d been sure was gone, had now come back and
fructified
. What the fuck was I going to do with
more
money? This is why I waited until everyone had gone before I approached David. I didn’t even go to him. He called me over, with soft contempt in his voice. Noel had followed his guests upstairs. “Look, man,” I said. But he held out my original stacks of cash, bound again in their ratty rubber bands stained with my father’s sketching ink. And six more. One was a centimeter thicker than the others. I figured it held the odd bills. “Look, man,” I repeated. “I want to like
donate
it. Like donate it to you and Noel. For like your home improvements. Is that okay?” I was cradling my money, half shoving it at him. The soundproofing had killed my voice, damming it within the confines of my skull. “Like, David,
please
. Please, man.”

He didn’t hit me. He didn’t have to, though his jaw was set like he might. He just
looked
at me. His eyes half-lidded. That hard-to-decipher expression, or lack of expression, calming his features. Then he gave me my bag and coat, my pager, and thumped up the staircase. The throb of gathered voices leaked into the basement. I was alone. So I put the money back in my bag, shouldered on my coat, and activated my pager: I’d missed five pages since David had shut it off. No one looked at me as I stumbled into Noel’s living room. No one looked at me as I flat-footed it back onto the street. The forgettably dressed man was just closing the rear doors of a white van parked in front of Noel’s house. He sat on the bumper, which made the van bob tinily, and massaged his chin and cheeks, staring at the concrete. This is the point in the story where, if I were a professional writer, I’d insert a meaningful, beautiful scene. A disgusting showpiece of talent. I’m
supposed
to be trying to impress you. Pulling out the old
look at how gifted yet modest I am
routine might help my cause. But I don’t have anything like that to offer you, only a fragment of ordinary memory. The loser bobbing on his chrome bumper, his breath streaming up in a vanishing ribbon. My stupid car, the same orange as the inflamed autumn sun. And, stretching in all four directions, the trackless kingdom of nothing at all.

XV
.

I
MIGHT NEVER HAVE FOUND OUT
who was paging me all that day if I had not, as soon as I’d gotten back into my car, vomited all over my lap. Yellowish bile. It burned, coming up. I’d eaten nothing, which made it worse. I gacked and harrumphed, and pounded the horn, and started—though I knew I didn’t have any—to rifle my glove box for napkins. Which is how I found out. I mean because Kevin’s folder was what I dug up. I took the contents out, the sheaf of documents, and tore a corner from the etiolated cardboard of the front flap, and scraped the strings of stomach acid and mucus from my lips and chin, and tried to get some of the shit off my thighs. Having done this, I lit a cigarette. Having done
this
, I’d exhausted my options of in-car behavior. So I sat there, sucking down the smoke, which hurt my astringed throat. I picked up the pages. Not against my will, but without will. Some dinosaur-brain tic, moving my twentieth-century hands and arms. Almost the twenty-first. Can you believe that? In like less than three months we’ll see if all the prophets had it right, if they outguessed us, or if our long-lasting whatever-it-is will last a bit longer. I, for one, am excited. Either way.

Another gout of bile surged in my throat. I gripped the wheel. Even when you don’t puke, the odor of it still permeates your pharynx. Hydrochloric acid, with large quantities of potassium chloride and sodium chloride. What metallic-sounding shit! Numerous secretions get human-specific names—adrenaline, dopamine.
This
was just raw chemicals, salts, and acid. I defeated it, though. When it had stopped fountaining up to my uvula, I picked up the pages from Kevin’s now-ripped file. Nothing else to do, other than sit in the private stench of my vomit. The top half of the sheaf dimpled and percussed as I locked my thumbs. KEVIN BROADUS. 3549 MCKINLEY STREET NW 20015. 202-364-1889. I read the top line five or six times. KEVIN BROADUS took on a random look, like the street signs you see in dreams. My pager went off and I slid it from my pocket. Another spurt of bile tickled the inner cavities of my nose. And there on the display was the number listed for Kevin in his school records: 202-364-1889. I dropped pages and pager and shouted in fear. Struggling to get away from them, belted in though I was. My cigarette tumbled into my lap and I punched myself in the nuts trying to swat it out. Chills were rocking me now, much worse than before, and I had to sleeve the sweat from my wet neck. I checked the numbers again. They matched. And I knew where I had to go, no matter who or what was paging me. I had the address, after all. I’d
been
there before. I’d even seen the porcelain parrots. The losing owner had not moved from his bumper when I drove off. He was talking to someone now, on a cell phone. Or listening.

Busy! That’s what the drive over was. No other word for it. I had a long and energetic talk with myself. About ghosts! I’d come to that. I’m not saying I was
absolutely
positive that Kevin’s ghost was somehow paging me. I did think about it, though, every time a red light came up, as I wiped the sheets of sweat from my face and neck, and hunched closer to the steering wheel for imaginary warmth. Noel’s house is due southeast of McKinley Street, and it’s basically a straight shot once you get past the old soldiers’ home. I’d missed the first gout of morning traffic during the dogfight. So it didn’t take long to arrive. I covered a lot of paranormal ground, all the same. I
may
even have wagged a finger at myself in reproof, between dabs at my perspiration and muscle clenching to suppress my shivers.

It didn’t take long to arrive. There was even a parking space, right across from the Broadus house. It took me
forever
to actually go and ring the doorbell, though. The morning light was gray, literally gray. It made everything look carved and weighty, the kicking branches, the bricks of the walk, the helpless screwed-back shutters. All of it. I knew that if I got out the cold would assault me again. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to smoke cigarettes. I wanted to smoke weed. I wanted to do anything other than what circumstances required of me. So I hunched there and hunched there, until I looked up and saw, through the open green curtain of a first-floor window, Mr. Broadus shuffling back and forth, and before I could stop myself I charged up the walk to the door, jabbing my thumb into the fingernail-colored doorbell. It released a silvery chime. I heard some more shuffling. The instant stretched and stretched. I remembered I’d forgotten to lock my car, and muttered, “This is the second doorbell I’ve rung just
today,”
as I patted my cheeks with my sleeve.

The door creaked. And he was there. Just as tall as I’d remembered him being on TV, his stoop just as slight. In a knit Christmas sweater—gray, showing three rearing maroon reindeers with white tufts for eyes.

“If you’re selling firewood, I already informed your friend: no good.” He ticked his glasses back up onto his nose, and a fragment of torn dry leaf snecked into his line-free forehead.

“No, I’m like not here for firewood.” Eloquent, no? He wasn’t convinced.

“So what
are
you selling?”

“Am I
selling,”
I echoed.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

“No, man, it’s like, I mean sir, I just wanted to
see
you about something.” He held up a
wait
finger, and leaned back into his house from the threshold. Returning with a piece of cornflower blue folded paper. Which he unfolded. “Is this you? Have you been putting these up?” he asked. Kevin’s Xerox-fuzzed face stared into the world of objects, looking somewhere over my left shoulder. “Sir, it’s like you paged me all this morning.”

“And you couldn’t
call
back? Why did you
come?
Why are you here
physically?
That’s
one
thing I don’t understand.”

“I was a friend,” I told him. This time, it did not leave my mouth with the smooth hurry of a lie. Mr. Broadus wet his lips.

“He did not have a lot of friends. Who are you?” I said nothing. Standing with my arms tight-crossed against the cold. How did he not feel it? He paused there straight and still, in his sacklike sweater. “My wife’s out. I wanted to talk to you before she got back. I guess now I’m getting what I want.” He moved aside in the doorway, with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. And displayed a stiff, stiff grin that should have warned me away. A car alarm began shrieking just as I crossed his sill.

This physical sense of
tactical superiority
poured into me at the sight of the living room. Through the growing incoherence of my bodily sensations. Nothing had changed since my visit; all the doilies and porcelain parrots had kept their sad order. And this made me feel like an equal to Mr. Broadus. You know? My violation of his home entitled me to equal rights within that home. Or superior rights, even. That’s how the human mind works, I think. Virtue is its own punishment, if you see what I mean. He was a large man, slack-gutted, yes, but large-built. Competent-looking. The shapeless and juvenile sweater could not conceal this. He did not resemble his son, whose face had still carried indecisive fat. Mr. Broadus was staring at me as we stood near his threshold, a trickle of cold air singing in under the door. He was barefoot. That much I remember. Going around barefoot in front of strangers takes a lot of spine, in my opinion. I can’t do it.

“Sit down, please.” He pointed at a rocking chair. “And your name would be … ?” I made for the couch, assuming his point was a general gesture. It was not. “No, there,” he instructed, giving the chair a shake by its shoulder, as though he were trying to rouse it from the trustful slumber of objects. “And what’s your name? You’re slow with questions, huh? Is that vomit? Did you vomit on yourself? Have you been drinking?”

Do you know how humiliating it is to be interrogated while sitting in a rocking chair? It’s worse when you’re embracing yourself to fight chills.

“It’s like Addison, man. I mean sir. I mean my name. It’s Addison Schacht.”

“Addison Schacht.” You probably assume he said it “venomously” or something. Like how novelists write:
He looked at me as though I were an insect. He said my name as though it were the name of a disease
. Nobody does that, you know. Such ideas of human nature come from TV, where people
do
use that hilarious sneering emphasis. But Mr. Broadus was just trying to get it clear. Or maybe he thought he remembered it.

“You have an unusual name, Addison. I like names like yours. Always have, although I could not tell you why. It may be due to my own name, for which I was mocked a lot as a child. On the other hand, it’s easy to look at other people’s affairs through the lens of your own. It’s dangerous to do that. I apologize for rambling. Though I was complaining before, I’m
grateful
that you decided to come by, Addison. For a number of reasons.” Here he lowered himself onto the brown couch across the room, without averting his sharpened gaze. “I think it’s important that you have your say,” Mr. Broadus continued, “because all angles must be considered, correct? In any important issue, all angles must be considered.” The chalk-stiff smile stretched his face. Before I could speak he held up a massive hand—bigger than my father’s, and free of the pointless art-caused scars and discolorations that mar his. A prick of fear, here. But he went on. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I’ve been
rude
to you, Addison. I was just about to go make some tea. Would you like some tea? Young people like yourself often don’t enjoy it. But I find it relaxing. Will you have some? I insist that you do.” And he got up, still speaking, and wandered off to the fruit-walled kitchen.
He has no idea that I know how his kitchen looks!
Again, that pompous little thrill of superiority.

“Yes, it’s quite relaxing,” he yelled, over the sound of the water and the minor clanks, “and being relaxed, you’ll find, is usually the most necessary thing in any situation. Don’t you agree?” He’d returned, by this last question. “Don’t you agree, Addison, that being relaxed is the
important
thing?”

“Sir, like I just wanted to talk about Kevin. I see you found the posters. I think the posters are like a good thing. I’ve like been doing them like after and before school. I think they can help bring out uninvestigated aspects of the case.” I was panting by the time I finished. I knew it sounded mechanical. I couldn’t think of anything else, between the cold, which had somehow gotten indoors, my worry about ghosts, and that tickle of superiority. He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked me, low and calm, “Well, do you or don’t you, Addison?” I noticed that he had a pen clipped to the neck of his sweater, which went with the meticulous gait of his speech.

“No, I’m
very
relaxed, thank you.”

He unclipped his pen and sighted me down it.

“No. No, Addison, that is
not
what I asked. I asked a general question of principle. Not specifically related to you.” His grin only got stiffer and wider.

“I agree,” I said, with high and vacuous sympathy.

“You agree what?”

Another tide of sweat burst out of my pores. “I agree that like what you said about relaxation? Is important?” This elicited a nod.

“Well, I suppose I have to accept that, Addison. Although you might be just telling me what you think I want to hear. You have to admit, there’s a good chance that you’re telling me what I want to hear.” As I listened to the easy, full drone of his voice, this weird
seizure
of sleepiness gripped me. Fucked-up, right? “Addison? Hello? Hello in there?” He was snapping his fingers. “Your attention wandered, Addison. That’s sort of rude, wouldn’t you say?” Before I could agree, the kettle gave a high harmonic moan.
“There
goes the water,” Mr. Broadus chimed. “Please keep talking.” And so I did. After agreeing—“Yes, I would say it
is
like sort of rude, Mr. Broadus”—I explained everything. Explained it to that chocolate-colored couch. Above it hung a lithograph, an old map of the city, still a whole rhombus then, before the government had given the ragged quarter west of the Potomac back to Virginia.

I offered all the pathetic fragments I had. The assembly. My idiot teachers. Mr. Vanderleun. My theft of the file. Noel’s statement about Short Mike. The lax behavior of the police. Lorriner’s assault on my house. My trip to Brander’s Hollow. Murphy, Murphy, Murphy. The postering. The dogfight. My money. And this newest moment. Oh, ladies and gentlemen,
you
know how empty and sad it sounded. You’ve heard it already. The way you lie to your teachers. Or the way you lie to whichever parent you love and trust more. I didn’t care. I thought I sounded
amazing
. The rocking chair plunged back and forth beneath me. I did not mention weed. I did not mention the
Aeneid
. I did not mention Digger. I did not mention Holocaust jokes. So Mr. Broadus—or rather the air where he had been sitting—got the whole story. Minus the useless personal information. My voice had come apart. Luminous haze had started seeping from every object I could see, through the fishbowling of my vision, through the bone-cold of the outdoors that had gotten into his house.

“Is your like heat working?” I shouted at the end of my précis.

“Our heat works fine, Addison,” he called from the kitchen. “It’s a new renovation. I can send firewood sellers away because of it.” I shivered. In agreement, I guess. The trails of glowing vapor followed my glance, whenever I moved my eyes. And I just forged ahead.

“And I’ve like lost a loved one
too
, Mr. Broadus,” I gasped. A loved one! The big finish! Kevin’s father was still clattering away with the teacups and kettle. He wasn’t much longer about it, though. “Sorry about the delay,” he sang through his rigor-mortis smile as he sailed in. He’d brought only one cup of tea. I didn’t object.

Water chunked through the second-floor pipes. Mr. Broadus blew on the limpid surface of his tea.