True Crime (34 page)

To which Frank Beachum answered: “I don’t want to die, Harlan.” And he began to cry. He buried his face in his hands and shook. Tears dripped out between his fingers. “Don’t let em kill me, man. I didn’t
do
anything. I swear to God, I don’t want to die.”

The Reverend Flowers put his arm around the crying man. He rested his cheek against his damp hair. He closed his eyes and prayed to God to give Beachum strength and comfort and peace. He wished he were stronger himself, more able in himself to do the job he was supposed to do.

And he wished this night were over. He hated himself for it, but God knew the truth, and he wished this night were done.

A
s for me, I was getting drunk. Right about that time, right about ten-twenty. My butt was planted solid as a tree trunk on a barstool in Gordon’s and I was knocking those beauties down as if Prohibition were about to come back in style. It didn’t take much to start me floating. I’d hardly had anything to eat all day. Midway through my fourth double whisky, I was feeling the tavern swing to and fro under me like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Gordon’s was a restaurant-bar on a tree-shaded corner of Euclid Avenue. The faded brickface under the green awning outside, the warm wooden interior hung with lanterns and a large selection of fashionable beers had made the place a regular hangout with young city suits and the women they hoped to love. It was often crowded, and sometimes the dart and reek of the sexual hunt could get distracting to a man with his mind on liquor. But on a summer Monday, it was quiet enough, with a soft murmur of conversation drifting out of the dining room, and the bar empty except for me and a guy watching the Cardinals on the TV hung above the bar’s far end.

“Neil!” I called. I rapped the bottom of my glass against the oakwood. “Neil-o! Neil-o-rama!”

Neil was the owner but a bartender by nature, and he was tending bar tonight. A lean, pale man with a thin, aesthetic face behind round wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked
like Jean-Paul Sartre a little, only with a ponytail and a flowered shirt. He left his post under the TV and snagged a bottle of Johnnie Walker as he came toward me.

“You hear that ice clink, man, and you gotta come running. For mercy’s sake,” I said.

He tipped the bottle over my glass, poured out a generous helping. “You’re working at it tonight, Ev,” he said in his quiet, even voice. “I hope you left your car at home.”

“Hey,” I said. I lifted the glass, swirling it under my nose. “I am the greatest driver on the continent.”

“Uh-oh.”

“On any continent.”

“I’m talking to a dead guy,” said Neil. “Would you leave me your stamp collection?”

I drank and set the glass down. Laid a finger on the rim of the empty pretzel bowl. “Madder music and more munchies,” I said. And I drank again.

He swept the empty bowl away and replaced it with a full one. I grabbed a handful of pretzels.

“Haven’t eaten hardly all day,” I said.

Neil glanced longingly at the ballgame. Then, resigned, he leaned against the bar and did his best to concentrate on me.

“Too busy, that’s why,” I told him. “Too busy ruining my wife—my life, I mean. My wife
and
my life. And my job.”

“All in one day? You are a busy guy.”

“A tragedy should take place within the walls of a single city on a single day,” I told him. “Aristotle said that.”

“Yeah, he’s always in here saying that. Kooky old Aristotle, we call him. Crazy A.”

“Life imitates art.”

“Yeah. Does a pretty good Sophie Tucker too.”

“Right,” I said. I had no idea what either of us was
saying but I nodded profoundly. Then I lit a cigarette. Then I drank some more scotch. “Did you hear the ice clink?” “Nope.”

“I thought I heard a little tinkle, a little … Ah, maybe not. What was I about to say?”

“You were about to tell me that women were different from men.”

“Oh yeah. Women and men, man—completely different.”

“Really?” said Neil. “I’ve never heard that before.”

“True,” I said. “Completely.” And I waved my cigarette around vaguely to show how different they were. “A man, see, his dick stands up, his head buries itself in the ground. That’s all he cares about. In and out. Done. Finished. A woman, see, she thinks it’s all supposed to mean something.”

“Probably because they have children,” said Neil, stifling a yawn with his hand.

“It’s cause they have children,” I said, pointing the cigarette at him. “Makes em worry alla time. Makes em think everything’s gotta be a certain way. Right and wrong, good and bad. What difference it make? Does it make. We all die anyway. We should have fun. Tomorrow we may die.”

With a glance at the TV, Neil nodded. “You’re a profound guy, Ev. I’ve been tending bar most of my life and no one’s said that to me since nine-thirty.”

“So I fucked the boss’s daughter—no, his wife this time. No, wait, his daugh—yeah, his wife, yeah. So what does that mean? That mean I gotta lose my job? That mean my wife gotta throw me out?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Naaaaaah,” I said. “S’judgmental … ness.” I drained my glass and set it down hard to make the ice shake. “That time.”

“Yeah, I heard it.” He brought up a scoopful of ice from the bin beneath the bar. Dumped it in the glass as he upturned the scotch bottle. I held the cigarette to my lips and watched the operation through curling smoke.

“Judgmental,” I said again. “Everybody saying this one’s right, this one’s wrong. You killed somebody, you gotta get the needle. You fucked somebody, you gotta get the shaft. All bullshit. All bullshit, Neil-o. Makes everybody unhappy. Nothing’s good or bad but
thinking
makes it so. William Shakespeare. Billy Big-Boy said that himself.”

“He knew a thing or two, all right.”

“Judge not lest you be judged. That was Jesus Christ, for Christ’s sake, wasn’t it?”

“Old Mr. J. Haven’t seen him around here much lately.”

“See, that was the problem with my parents. My dopted parents,” I said. “Big lawyers. Big liberal muck-a-muck-a-mucks. A-mucks. Always knew the right thing, always knew who was the bad guy, who was the good guy. Always on the side of the angels. And how do they know? See what I’m saying? Wha’s right, wha’s wrong? How do they know? Who told them?”

“Uh, Plato?”

I whiffled like a horse.

“Just a guess,” said Neil. “We hadn’t done Plato.”

I took another toke of nicotine, but it had lost its talent to amuse. It seared my throat and I crushed the cigarette weakly in the glass ashtray, left it there bent and fuming. I bowed my head over my glass and studied the ice floating in the amber. I nodded at it somberly. I had reached that stage of inebriation when you start to have Ideas about Life; Life with a capital L, Ideas with a capital I. I had reached that stage when these Ideas seem to link together in a chain of perfect sense or, that is, when the links forged in the smithy of creation become clear to you through the veil of mortality
and time. Or something. Anyway, as I sat there, with my neck limp and my chin bouncing lightly above the hollow of my throat, the Idea came to me clearly that Life is a pretty bum affair in which a guy hardly gets a break at all. Happen-stances that, through generations out of living memory, have combined themselves into a history all but unknown, coalesce at the moment of your conception into a clockwork of inevitability. What seem to you like decisions, opinions, revelations, growth are really only the ticking of the mechanism, relieved by the occasional accident or two—if they
are
accidents—and made sonorous and mournful by the ever-present suspicion that there is no breaking the machinery of fate. Well, it seemed to make sense at the moment anyway. It seemed mournful and profound. And when I imposed this Idea over the events of my existence—as one generally does impose one’s ideas—those events—as they generally do—were forced to fall into line with the Idea which, therefore, seemed to explain everything to perfection.

So I belched miserably. I raised the scotch glass to my hanging head and sucked in the liquor with a slurping noise. “Aaaaaah,” I said, as I let the glass drop back to the bar. “Wha they have ta dopt me for anyway? Who ast em? Where they get me, fer Crissake?” My eyes filled with tears and I asked myself—I asked the whole arena packed with the audience of my imagination—who there could be, anywhere, more pitiful than I? “Always try’n push their things—their notions on me. Tellin me wha was right, wha was wrong. Li’l, gentle instrushins.” I held up thumb and index finger to show how teensy-weensy my parents’ moral instructions were. “Li’l, li’l lectures bout every fucking little thing. Be nice, be fair, be good. Ah Christ it was unbearable shit. Practically see in their eyes which stupid book they’d been reading, which stupid article in which stupid magazine. Who asked them to dopt me in the first place anyway? Where was my real father? Hanh? Thas wha I wanna know.
What am I doing here? Where’s my fucking father? Somebody tell me that, why don’t they.”

“Jesus Christ, Everett.” Neil Gordon sighed. “Go the fuck home, will you.”

I laughed oh so bitterly, lifting my heavy head. “Got no home, Neil-o,” I said. “Neil-o-rama. Got no fucking home.” With some difficulty, I reached into my shirt pocket and removed Barbara’s wedding ring. I rolled it between my fingers, holding it up in the dim barlight. “See? An now my son too. Got no father. My boy, my poor boy, my poor little baby, baby boy … What the hell’s he gonna do? Ruin his life. His fate, see, that’s what I’m talking. No fault o his jus …”

I sniffed pitiably. Neil’s mouth puckered as if he smelled something awful. I held the ring out to him.

“See dat?” I said. “Inside there? Thas her name. Our name. Barbara Everett. Sposed ta be … a fambly! Sposed to be … together. That’s the thing, that’s the heart of … everything. One name. Change yer name ta one. Together, A fambly.” The ring seemed to become too heavy for me to hold up like that and my hand dropped to the bar. As it did, as if I were some sort of mechanical toy with all the parts connected, my other hand rose, bringing the glass to my lips again. I gasped out of the sting of the whisky. I peered into the wavering depths of Neil’s flowered shirt. I did not think I could keep the tears from falling anymore. “I had that name carve into the gold …” I said in a strangled voice. “To be there for … to be there …”

And so I sat, my mouth twisted, gaping, my eyes, full of tears, blinking stupidly into the nauseating whirl of printed flowers. And once again, as I sat, there seemed to be a lifting of the mortal veil, or a drunken skewing of it anyway, to reveal—blurred, unstable, moving toward and away from me at once—the hidden chain of sense behind events. I opened
my mouth even wider. My tongue wagged and bulged as I tried to form words to express my revelation.

“Duuuuuuh …” I said.

Neil shook his head, casting a wistful look at the TV again.

“Locket,” I finally managed to say.

“Hm?” said Neil, interested just barely if at all.

“Duuuuuuuh,” I said. “The locket. That locket.”

With which remark, I slid off my stool, catching myself by my elbows on the edge of the bar and hanging there a moment, my chin floating just above the wood, before I clawed and climbed my way back to an upright position. The fall jogged my mind, cleared it somewhat for some few seconds. I cast my gaze over the shelves of shiny bottles, over the red uniforms moving on the televised ballfield, back again to the cool brown eyes behind Neil’s spectacles, trying desperately to focus through the lenses of my own.

“Doncha see?” I asked him. “She’s still wearing the fuckin locket.”

“Who, man? Who are we talking about now?”

“Miz Russel. Warren’s granmother. Can that be? Is that right?” I ran my hand down over my face, rubbing my eyes hard. But the idea would not go away. I stared at Neil. I reached a hand out and clasped his shoulder. “The locket, Neil-o! Jesus. Jesus.”

“Take it easy, Ev.”

“I gotta go. I gotta go. Where am I?”

“Hold on, hold on, you’re drunk.”

“Christ, I know I’m drunk. What’m I, stupid? I’m smashed outta my fucking head. But thas why he shot her, see?”

“Warren’s grandmother?”

“Amy Wilson!”

“What?”

“Doncha see? I
saw
him. Her father. He was on TV. I
saw him. He said—he said the killer tore the locket off her. The one he gave her when she was sixteen. He said that.” Thunderstruck, my grip on the bartender’s shoulder went weak. I let him go, sliding back down onto my stool. “That’s what happened,” I said. “She’d already given Russel the money, but he wanted the locket and that’s why he shot her in the throat. It all makes sense. They gotta see it. What time is it? Where the fuck am I going here?”

“Wait a minute, let me get you some coffee.”

“No, no, no!” I cried, waving my hand at him wildly. “Neil. Jesus. Listen. Listen!
It’s all true.”

“Sure it is, buddy. Everything is true. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.”

“Yeah, but this is, like,
true
true.” I shook my head, wondering. Even I couldn’t believe what I was saying. I tried to think it out, to make sure it wasn’t just the fantasy life of despair. But it was hard to think straight now. The bar heaved and hoed and my stomach heavehoed with it. “He was holding up the store, right? And she gave him the money,” I said to no one in particular. “But then he saw her locket, he wanted her heart locket with the initials on it. For his grandmother, see. Because they were her initials, the same initials. Angela Russel. And Amy said, ‘Please, not that!’ Not the locket. Porterhouse heard her. And Russel shot her—in the throat because he was pointing at the locket with the gun.” I hauled myself to my feet again. “And she’s still wearing the fucking locket. The grandmother. For him, Warren, to remember him. Jesus Christ. What time is it?”

“Five of eleven.”

“Jesus Christ!
Put me in my car!”

I took a step—and I tripped on something—a thick piece of air, I think—and the next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees, my glasses hanging sideways across my face, my stomach bubbling thick as lava. Neil was next to me, kneeling next to me. The other guy was there too—the
guy who’d been watching TV. The two of them had me by the shoulders. They were helping me to my feet.