Flood

4

I PUT THE key into the door, turned it twice right and once left to deactivate the alarm, and climbed inside. I just sat there for a minute; sometimes I go down to the garage and just sit in it, too. The car is a 1970 Plymouth that cost forty thousand dollars. It was supposed to be the ultimate New York City taxicab. It has independent rear suspension so even the West Side Highway doesn’t shake it up; a forty-gallon gas tank, fuel injection so it doesn’t stumble in traffic, a monster radiator with connecting tubes to cool the oil and transmission fluid so it can’t overheat, never-fade disc brakes all around, bulletproof Lexan instead of glass in all the windows, and bumpers that would turn a charging rhino. It weighs about two and a half tons, so it doesn’t get real good mileage, but when it was built that wasn’t a consideration. The kid who put it together told me this was the seventh version-he just kept doing it until he got it right. The super-cab was going to make him rich-rich enough so that wife of his could have everything she ever wanted. In the meantime, they went without everything-the cab was hungrier than a dope addict. All the kid did was drive a fleet cab and work on his prototype.

I got into the car when the kid hired me to watch his wife. He had the idea she was seeing someone else, and he got my name from Mama Wong, where he used to eat during his late shift. He told me there probably wasn’t anything to it, but he just wanted to be sure, you know. It didn’t take me long to find out what his wife was doing. She had a girlfriend in the same apartment house. I watched and listened for a few days, but I didn’t want to just go back and tell the kid his wife was making it with a woman-I figured there was more to the story.

I approached the wife one night while the kid was at work. I knew she always waited a couple of hours before she went upstairs to her girlfriend, so I just knocked on the door.

“Yes, who is it?”

“My name is Burke, ma’am. I’m here about your husband.”

She flung open the door, quick as a shot. She was wearing an old bathrobe, but her face was all made up.

“What is it? What’s happened? Is he…?”

“Your husband’s okay, Mrs. Jefko. I’ve been doing some work for him and I have to talk to you about it.”

“Look, if it’s about that damn car, you’ll have to see him. I don’t-”

“It’s not actually about the car, ma’am. May I please come in for a minute?”

She looked me over carefully, shrugged, turned her back, and started walking toward the living room. I followed her but I walked past the entrance to the living room and sat down at the kitchen table. She fumbled for her cigarettes on top of the refrigerator and sat down facing me.

“Mrs. Jefko, I’m a private investigator. Your husband hired me to…”

“To fucking check on me, right? I knew he would. Marie said he would sooner or later.”

“Not to check on you, ma’am. He knew you were unhappy, and he thought that maybe something was wrong with you, something medical maybe, that you weren’t telling him about. He was concerned about you, that’s all.”

She started to laugh but she was out of practice. “Concerned about me. What a beautiful word-concerned. All he cares about is that fucking car and the millions and millions of dollars he’s going to make with it someday.”

“You know why he wants all that money, Mrs. Jefko?”

“No. I know why he says he wants the money. For me, right? What bullshit-he don’t care about me any more than I care about that car. He never talks to me, never looks at what I wear, doesn’t want to do nothing with me anymore. Marie says-”

“I know what Marie says.”

“How could you know? You got the phone tapped or something?”

“No, but I know what a recruiting pitch sounds like.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Marie understands you, right? Marie knows you’re really a very sensitive person, with lots of undeveloped talent, right? Marie knows that you were meant for better things than sitting around this miserable apartment waiting for some grease monkey to come home. Marie knows your husband has all the sensitivity of a pig, right? He doesn’t even know how to make love, right? Just fuck.”

She just sat and looked at me. “Maybe all those things are true.”

I looked back at her. “Maybe they are, I don’t know. But I know that your husband loves you, that’s for sure. I know he could be something, and that he wants you to be too. But he don’t have a fighting chance against Marie, does he? He has to work.”

“Marie works too.”

“You know what I mean, Mrs. Jefko. This has got to end.”

“You can’t make me do anything-I have my own life-”

“I’m not telling you what to do-I’m saying this has to end. And you know it does too. Sooner or later your husband will find out-or you’ll move out to be with Marie, or something. I just mean it won’t go on like it has been.”

I looked at her face and I saw that she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, although the odds were that Marie had. Then she asked me what she should do, and I said I didn’t know. I told her the only reason I was there was that I didn’t want to be the one to tell her husband, that I thought she could try again with him, maybe move to a different place. “Talk to someone, the two of you together. I don’t know. But something.”

“You don’t look like Dear Abby.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look like a nasty, cold man. And I think you should get out of my house.”

I thought so too. There wasn’t anything else I could say. I didn’t have the right words, and she understood that. I went back downstairs and back to my office. When I saw the kid a few hours later, I told him that his wife wasn’t involved with any other man as far as I could tell.

A couple of days later, he grabbed me outside of Mama Wong’s. He told me his wife had told him the whole story, even about me being there. His eyes looked bad, and he wanted to go in two different directions. “Mr. Burke, I know why you went to see her. You should have told me yourself. You ain’t no fucking marriage counselor. It’s my problem, and I can handle it.”

“All right, kid. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’re sorry. You did it all wrong. You should have just told me.”

“Look, kid-”

“Hey, fuck you, okay? How much I owe you for the last work?”

“Two hundred.”

The kid looked at me, trying to make up his mind. He finally did. “Well, you can go scratch for that money, Burke. I ain’t paying you. You didn’t do your fucking job. How’s that?”

“Okay, kid,” I said, and just walked away. I knew he was staring after me but, like he said, I hadn’t earned the money.

Mama Wong got a letter for me from the kid a few weeks later. As soon as I saw the return address, I knew what had happened. I went to see the kid in the Tombs, wearing my nice pinstripe with an attache case full of file folders and business cards in case the guards wanted proof I was a lawyer. But they didn’t give a damn. They were holding the kid for homicide-his wife. He looked all right when they brought him down to the interview room, calm and relaxed, his hands full of documents. “Mr. Burke, my lawyer says I’m going to trial on this in a few weeks. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“What can I do now?”

“Nobody can do nothing now. I did what I had to do, what I thought was right. Just like you did-just like she did. I just got to clear something up first. About my car.”

“What about the car, kid?”

“I don’t want the lawyer to have it, okay? He already got paid too much by my father. My father don’t know any better-he wants me to cop to manslaughter or something, says I’ll only get a few years. I don’t want a few years.”

“You want me to investigate…?”

“I don’t want you to do nothing, Mr. Burke. I understand a few things now. Not everything, but a few things-enough. I just want to get everything in order, make things right.”

“What things?”

“Those things that are left. Nothing ever would have worked out with Nancy anyway-I knew that, I guess. But if that scumbag lawyer gets my car…”

“What do you want, kid? I can’t just-”

“Here’s the title. I had my father send it over. I’m gonna sign it over to you. I owe you money anyway. Besides, you’ll use the car, won’t you? I mean, you’ll have it on the street, in your work, right? I don’t want them to sell my car at some lousy auction to pay that motherfucker.”

“Look, you don’t have to do this. You’re a young guy still. You can do the time. I know-I’ve been inside. It’s bad but it’s not impossible. There’s ways, things you can do. And then you can come out and finish the car.”

“The car is finished, Mr. Burke. It’s really been finished a long time, I guess. It never was the money, you understand?”

I do now, but I didn’t then. So the kid signed the car over to me, and I went and got it registered. I even found a guy who would insure me-no problem, just minimum coverage. That car doesn’t need collision insurance.

It wasn’t hard to figure what the kid was going to do. I didn’t say anything to anyone-he was a man and he was entitled to that much respect. Even the guards knew what was coming so they put him in a special cell, suicide-proof. It didn’t stop the kid. After all, he was a mechanical genius, they said. He hung up a couple of days later. I heard his lawyer was asking questions about the car, but they only found another 1970 Plymouth that the kid was cannibalizing for parts. That was a few years ago. I used to think about the kid every time I drove the car. Then no more until tonight, for some reason.