Chance

A shitty business

Walking from the bathroom, he found her seated on the bed. Their clothes were strewn about the room, as were any number of hotel towels he could not now account for. The room’s single chair had been overturned. She had opened the drapes to the balcony and the shabby world beyond it and was sitting there naked, braced upon a pillow. The morning light now filling the room was white and harsh and not doing her any favors, nor really was the dye job that had turned her hair to a spiky blue black so that her face seemed pale and drained by contrast and from which her darkened eyes were holding him with a look beyond despair. He was also naked and they were a moment in taking one another in, pilgrims along the road to perdition.

He needed of course to tell her the news. Now, however, that he was faced with actually saying it aloud, he found that he was not quite up to it. He tried once or twice but his throat seemed to knot up and the words wouldn’t come. In their absence he remained in that no-man’s-land between the bathroom door and the king-sized bed, naked in the unflattering light while a jet plane thundered and the poor, bare maroon carpeting vibrated beneath his feet.

She looked at him a good long while, and then finally, “She’s not coming back, buddy. What can I say?”

“It’s my daughter,” he said and began to cry. Later he would wonder if it had been that way for his father too.

He finally got through to Carla on the room’s phone, the battery having run down in his own. It was the dyslexic personal trainer that had found her, on the floor of her room, saliva running from one side of her mouth. Paramedics had been unable to revive her and she had been taken to the emergency room at UCSF, the same in which he had so recently gone in search of Big D. As she had not yet regained consciousness it was impossible to say on which of the several drugs found among her personal possessions she had actually overdosed. The prognosis was as yet uncertain. Her vital signs were within normal ranges. The lead doctor, a pulmonary specialist Chance had never heard of, had placed her on a tube to ensure her breathing, telling Carla that she would be kept sedated for the next several hours to prevent her fighting the tube then brought round when her stability was ensured. Till then she was being listed as “stable but critical” and kept in the intensive care unit. Until she was able to regain consciousness, the whys and wherefores of it all would remain a mystery. Chance told Carla that he would be there as soon as he was able and hung up. He repeated it all to Jaclyn in fits and starts, working to master his voice.

“Oh my God…” she said. She was still in the bed, having drawn the sheet around her breasts and tucked it beneath her arms as one might a towel in a steam room, a stricken expression upon her face.

Chance sat beside her. He was still only half dressed, in T-shirt and boxers, one sock on, one as yet unaccounted for. She put a hand on his leg. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Which one of you?” he asked.

“Don’t be mean,” she said. The light had come back into her eyes and she pressed her head into his chest. “I am so sorry…” she began, but her voice gave way and he was reminded of that first time she had crossed the bay to find him, of their talk in the little café near his office, the late light through low windows, the play of emotion across her face as he talked about his patients. A gentle soul, he’d thought then, and imagined for an instant she’d come back to him after all, that the sudden revelation of impending tragedy had called her forth. A second look into her face was enough to dissuade him. In another age of the world they would have burnt her for a witch. In some future age perhaps they would locate the faulty wiring, the chemical imbalance, they would know what to do. In the here and now he supposed that she would simply have to do as the rest of them, cowboy up and soldier on, hunting her way in a world without light. His reckless invitation of only minutes before seemed a lifetime away. He was back on planet Earth.

“You know he threatened her once,” Chance said. “It was in the Thai joint that night in Berkeley.”

She nodded without meeting his eyes. “You need to go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll call a cab.”

“ ‘A predatory species,’ is what he said.”

“Yeah, well… he would know.”

“She has a boyfriend. I’ve never met him, just heard about him. He sounds like a bad one. It could be that.”

“If that’s what you think.”

“I don’t know,” Chance said. “I don’t know what I think. If you do, now would be the time.” He rose off her silence and started once more with his dressing then found he was having a hard time with the buttons of his shirt. He seemed to have developed a moderate tremor in his right hand.

She got out of bed to help, the sheet falling way. “Listen to me,” she said. “When you get to that hospital… you need to stay with her. Just be there. When she gets better, maybe you should just take her and go away someplace…”

He took her by the wrist and looked at her. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you need to be there.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “This can’t be happening.”

“I did tell you not to underestimate him.”

“You’re saying what, this is him, or the boyfriend is some guy he’s gotten to, someone on his payroll?”

“Let me tell you something about him,” she said. “That massage parlor? That’s his. He bought it with stolen drug money. He learned the racket from years of shutting them down when he was still in Vice. Now he uses his cop connections to keep out the competitors. He’s partnered up with some Romanian mafioso types. They bring in girls from Eastern Europe, hook them on drugs, force them into prostitution, and those are the lucky ones. They have guys, Romanians mostly but not always, young handsome guys, and that’s what they do, they troll for young girls and they’re good at it. Not around here so much, mainly in Europe but he knows these kinds of guys. It’s a shitty business. He’s a shitty guy with shitty friends is what I’m trying to tell you and there’s not much I wouldn’t put past him.”

“Is there any way you could find out?”

“You think I should ask?”

“Clearly you have some connection to this place.”

“I have no connection to anything, except you. You’d have to ask her about that.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “I really would.”

“And which her are we talking about, Jackie Black?”

“Listen to me,” she said. “There’s ones could swallow her with a glass of water.”

“Christ I’m tired of this,” he said finally. “Aren’t you?”

“The beat goes on.”

“Why were you there, Jaclyn? Why were you with that guy?”

“I told you,” she said.

“Right. So why was she there?”

“Let’s just say we like to pilfer a john now and then.”

“Both of you?”

“She’s a bad influence. What can I tell you? Drives him fucking nuts.”

“And how about Jaclyn? Is she in on it too?”

“Aw… your special lady friend.”

Chance was inclined to slap her but stayed his hand. There had been enough of that.

“Jaclyn can do the numbers. She’s good at that.”

“And take a beating now and then.”

“Oh, we all take those.”

“And that guy we ran from?”

“One of the Romanians who brings in the girls. There used to be two of them but I’m guessing maybe you know some  thing about that. I mean, if not, why were you even there?”

He declined the gambit, putting forth his own instead—now that they were back in the world with all of its unpleasantries. “And how about Gayland Parks?” he asked, in what must have seemed to her as a bolt from the blue. “What was he, a mark, a client, someone you pilfered?”

She stepped away as from an electrical shock. “Whoa…” she said, “look at you! Tou-fucking-ché!” She retrieved the sheet that had fallen, retreating to the bed, where she drew up her legs and rested her forehead upon her knees, a bit of the dramatic posturing that she was so good at.

Chance stood watching.

“That’s what you meant… coming clean, doing time… and you at the place…”

Chance said nothing.

“The fuck, man?”

“I got to his computer. I saw some of his reports.”

She stared at him a good long while. “You know what?” she said. “You shouldn’t even tell me that. Does he know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know what he knows.”

“And you stand there asking if he’s behind this other… Really?” Her voice trailed away. Chance waited. “Well…” she said finally. “You’re fucked, is what I think.” She had begun to rock back and forth on the bed in the manner of a deranged street dweller. “We’re kind of both fucked,” she added, “but he at least likes me.”

“Did he like Jane too? Did he fall in love? Did he bring her home? Maybe he found out she could do the numbers, or knew the business… And how about Myra Cohen, while we’re on the subject?…”

“Stop it,” she said. She reached out suddenly to take him by the wrist, surprising him once more with her strength even after all they’d been through. “We’ve been made, buddy. Don’t ask me how.”

“How?”

“That’s rich. He’s got fucking eyes, is how. He’s hooked up. I’ve told you he can get things done. Now you’re seeing what he can do.”

“Is he still in the hospital?”

“He was there for two nights and they sent him home but I haven’t seen him. He’s called but I didn’t return.” Chance made to pull away but she held on tight. “You are a good person,” she said yet again. “I can’t imagine how you got to his computer or what if anything you had to do with that goat fuck in the alley…” She paused but kept hold of his arm and for a moment was something like amused. “I’m saying that ’cause if I didn’t you’d probably fucking tell me. Don’t. Never cop to anything and never talk to a cop. First rule, for Christ’s sake, and if you’ve got a magic rabbit someplace you better go find him and you better hope he’s still your pal. Is this making sense? Am I getting through?”

“Help me find my sock,” Chance said.

She was still on the bed when he’d finished dressing. She’d taken what he guessed to be the last of the beers from the hotel minibar and was sipping from the can, staring out into the unpleasant light, toward that place where the Oakland airport shimmered in the distance.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked.

“Would that be a joke?”

But he was still trying to process, to place everything she had given him into some kind of real-world perspective, given her state, given his, given every other fucking thing…

“Listen to me,” she said once more. “If I can find anything out I will and I will give you a call. But don’t call me.”

“Righto.”

“I would go with you if I could.”

“Probably not the best of ideas.”

“You know what I mean,” she told him and he guessed that he did.

“Thanks anyway,” he said, then thought of something that had not occurred to him till just now, though well it might. “I thought you had gone off to see your daughter,” he said. “I thought that’s where you were.”

“Really? And here I thought you were looking for me.”

“I was looking for cameras.”

“What did I just tell you?” she asked.

“And your daughter?”

“Let’s not.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Two farmers meet on a road.” He’d stopped in the doorway and was looking back at her in the bad light. “One farmer has a pig that he is holding up to eat the leaves of a tree. The second farmer takes this in, asks the first guy what he’s doing. The first farmer says, ‘I’m feeding my pig.’ The second farmer says that must take a lot of time. The first farmer says, ‘What’s time to a pig?’ ”

She gave him a long look. “Would this be the kind of thing you generally charge your patients for?”

“To tell you the truth… I don’t really see that many people, as patients.”

She gave it a beat. “Wow. Let me think…”

“Yes, they scare the shit out of me.”

She said nothing to that.

“Think about the story.”

“And that’s it?”

“It’s all I’ve got,” he told her. “The room is on my card. I’ll tell them you’re going to sign for it on your way out.”

“I really am sorry.”

“Me too.”

He closed the door behind him. Within minutes he had gained the freeway, heading north then west, the great span of the Bay Bridge groaning beneath the weight of midday traffic, cars stacked four abreast for as far as the eye could see, a harsh metallic rainbow run to the spires of the city it had so often pleased him to call his own.