A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 3

AT HERTZ I GOT A BUICK SKYLARK WITH THE window crank handle missing on the driver’s side. Where was O.J. when you needed him. I went straight south on 101 along the west side of the bay and at a little after three I turned off south of San Jose and headed east, on Mill River Boulevard. A mile off the highway there was a big shopping center built around a modernistic Safeway supermarket made of poured concrete, with large round windows and a broad quarry-tile apron where groceries could be loaded. A big redwood sign at the entrance to the parking lot said COSTIGAN MALL 30 Stores for Your Shopping Pleasure. The lettering was carved in the wood and painted gold. I pulled in and parked near the Safeway and got my cast from the bag. When we’d made it, Henry had rubbed it with some dirt and ashes from one of the club sand buckets. It looked a month old. In the foot, indented, was a hollow space, and I put a .25-caliber automatic in there, flat on its side. Over it I put a sponge rubber innersole. Then I took off my left shoe and slipped the cast on. I shook my pants leg down over it and got out of the car. It worked fine. Comfort was not its strong suit, but it looked right. I walked on it a little and then went in the Safeway. I bought a pint of muscatel and got directions from a customer to the town hall. Then I went back to the Buick and got in. I stashed my wallet in the glove compartment. I took a Utica Blue Sox baseball cap from my bag, messed my hair, and jammed the cap on my head. I checked in the mirror. I hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning and it was beginning to show. Strands of hair stuck out nicely under the cap and through the small opening in the back where the plastic adjustable strap was. I was wearing a white shirt and jeans. I ripped the pocket on the shirt, rolled the sleeves up unevenly, and splashed some muscatel on it. I poured more of the muscatel onto my jeans. Then I put the bottle on the seat beside me and drove on into Mill River. The town hall was white stucco and red tile roof and green lawn with a sprinkler slowly revolving, trailing the water in a slightly laggard arc behind it. There was a fire station on the left side and then a kind of connecting wing, in front of the connecting wing was a pair of blue lights on either side of a sign just like the shopping center sign, except this one said MILL RIVER POLICE. There was a small lot in front of the police station and a bigger one beyond the town hall that looked like it went around back. I turned into the big lot and circled the building. A public works garage was out back. Not stucco, cinder block. Not tile, corrugated plastic. One for show, one for blow. I could see the jail windows in the back, covered with a thick wire mesh. Two police cars were back there beside a blank door with no outside handle. I went on around the building and out the driveway past the fire station and turned toward the center of town. Fifty yards down and across the street was the town library. A sign out front said J. T. COSTIGAN MEMORIAL LIBRARY. There was a parking lot in back. I pulled in, shut off the Buick, took my bottle of muscatel and rinsed my mouth out a couple of times. The wine tasted like tile cleaner. But it smelled bad. I took the half-empty bottle, put the car keys on a window ledge behind a shrub at the rear of the library, and strolled around front. As soon as I came into public view I began to weave, my head down, mumbling to myself. It is not easy to mumble to yourself if you don’t feel moved to mumble. I didn’t know what to mumble and finally began to mumble the starting lineup for the impossible-dream Red Sox team of ‘67. “Rico Petrocelli,” I mumbled, “Carl Yastrzemski… Jerry Adair.”

I sat on the front steps of the town library and took a swig from my bottle, blocking the bottle neck with my tongue so I didn’t have to swallow any. What I was going to do didn’t get easier if I did it drunk. A couple of high school girls in leg warmers and headbands skirted me widely and went into the library.

“Dalton Jones,” I mumbled. I took another make-pretend swig.

A good-looking middle-aged woman in a lavender sweat suit and white Nikes with a lavender swoosh parked a brown Mercedes sedan in front of the library and got out with five or six books in her arms. She looked forcefully in the other direction as she edged past me.

“George Scott,” I mumbled, and as she went by I reached up and pinched her on the backside. She twitched her backside away from me and went into the library. I sipped some more muscatel and let a little slide out and along the corner of my mouth and down my chin. I could hear a small commotion at the library door behind me.

“Mike Andrews… Reggie Smith…” I blew my nose with my naked hand and wiped it across my shirt. “Hawk Harrelson… Tony C.” I raised my voice. “Jose goddamned Tartabull,” I snarled. Up at the town hall a black and white Mill River Police car turned out of the parking lot in front and cruised slowly down toward the library.

I stood and smashed the muscatel bottle against the steps.

“Joe Foy,” I said with cold fury in my voice. Then I unzipped my fly and began to take a leak on the lawn. Provocative. The cruiser pulled in beside me before I had finished and a Mill River cop in a handsome tan uniform got out and walked toward me. He wore a campaign hat tilted forward over the bridge of his nose like a Marine DI. “Hold it right there, mister,” he said.

I giggled. “Am holding it right there, officer.” I lurched a little and smothered a belch.

The cop was in front of me now. “Zip it up,” he snapped. “There’s women and children here.”

I zipped my fly about halfway. “Women and children first,” I said.

“You got some ID on you?” the cop said.

I fumbled at my hip pocket and then at my other hip pocket and then at my side pockets. I looked at the cop, squinting to bring him in focus.

“I wish to report a stolen wallet,” I said, speaking the words carefully like a man trying not to be drunk.

“Okay,” the cop said, “walk over to the car.” He took my arm and I went with him.

“Hands on top,” he said. “Legs apart. You’ve probably done this before.” He tapped the inside of my good ankle with his foot to force my stance out a little wider. Then he gave me a fast shakedown.

“What’s your name,” he said when he was through.

“I stop standing like this?” I said. I was resting my forehead against the roof of his car.

“Yeah. You can straighten up.”

I stayed as I was and didn’t say anything. “I asked you your name,” the cop said.

“I want lawyer,” I said.

“Who’s your lawyer?”

I rolled along the car until I had turned and was facing the cop. He was about twenty-five, nice tan. Clear blue eyes. I frowned at him.

“Sleepy,” I said. And I began to slide down the side of the car toward the ground. The cop grabbed me under the arms.

“No,” he said. “Not here. Come on, you can spend the night with us, and we’ll see in the morning.”

I let him put me in the car and drive me to the station. At twenty-two minutes to five by the clock in the station house I was in front of a cell in the Mill River jail. Booked for public drunkenness and urinating in a public place. Listed for the moment as John Doe. There was a porcelain toilet in the corner with no seat, there was a sink, and there was a concrete shelf with a mattress on it, no pillow, and a brown military blanket folded at the foot. The arresting officer opened the door to the second cell. The first was empty. There were two more beyond.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I wanna see other guests.” I lurched past him and saw Hawk in the fourth cell, lying on his bed, his hands behind his head.

“Hey, Rastus,” I said. “You gonna play sad fucking harmonica when the warden comes?”

Hawk looked at me with no expression. “Maybe play a tune on your head, white belly,” he said.

“Come on, come on,” the young cop said. He took the back of my shirt in his hand and shoved me into my cell. “Sleep it off,” he said, “and don’t fuck around with the nigger.”

He went out and locked the cell and left me alone. Who said I couldn’t get arrested.