Epitaph

NINE

Somehow William managed to make it back from the hooker's apartment in one piece.

Then he made the awful mistake of waking up.

First of all, there was the hangover: Someone had been using his head as a Chinese gong.

Second of all-there was the room: Someone had criminally assaulted someone else and not even bothered to cover up the evidence. Absolutely.

There was that overturned coffee table at the foot of the bed, and just look at his clothes-strewn all over the place as if they'd been ripped right off his body. Of course someone had assaulted someone else-only that someone was him-so was the someone he'd assaulted. He'd beaten himself up-with a little assistance from his good friend Jack. Take a bow please.

He surveyed the crime scene with sober dispassion- okay, almost sober, gazing at his twisted shirt stained with vomit, at his pants, each leg pointing in a different direction, at something caught just beneath the right leg, the tip of it barely peeking out. What's this?

He reached down and lifted it up.

The photograph. Santini, Jean, and himself. Three Eyes. It had fallen out of his pocket.

He stared at it through barely opened eyes. Still, this time he noticed things he hadn't seen before, little things: the very edge of a gun peeking out from the waistband of Santini's pants, a white streak on the toe of Jean's left shoe, and about himself-the way his jacket cuffs didn't match, one being clearly shorter than the other. He remembered now; Rachel was going to take it to the tailors, was just about to do that. But then Rachel had taken his heart to the cleaners instead, and so he'd continued to wear it that way until he'd worn it out.

Of the three of them, Santini looked every bit the detective. He was the only one who did. Jean, on the other hand, resembled a jailhouse snitch loaded with secrets, and he looked exactly like what he was. A fish out of water, someone who'd gone from investigating car accidents to investigating human ones with no particular talent for either.

William went into the shower and hung his head under a cold spray.

He felt like he'd been away-to a foreign country maybe, on some whirlwind tour like the kind Mr. Leonati went on-Mr. Leonati who lived across the hall and always left for these things looking calm and relaxed but always returned from them looking dazed and battered. The hotels had overbooked; the buses had broken down; someone had stolen his money. All those brochures filled cover to cover with pretty pictures of tranquil places had lied to him. It hadn't turned out the way they said it would. And now William, who'd never been on a whirlwind tour, or any tour for that matter, thought that this is what it must feel like.

He'd gone on a journey too-and with similarly false expectations. He'd gone to bury Jean; instead he'd dug him up.

And now he remembered other things-his trip home for instance; she showing him to the door through his stench of vomit, spending most of the nauseating subway ride home replaying what she'd told him, all the while consumed by something. What? Envy, fear, hilarity? Okay envy-from someone who'd been put out to pasture to someone who was maybe still in the race. And just a little fear too-that all the things he thought were far behind him weren't, that the compromises he'd made, that that tidy little armistice he'd signed-were about to be challenged. I know. Silly of him perhaps, but age does that to you. It's the biggest case of my life-that's what Jean said. Between pictures probably.

Poor Jean, he thought, as he trudged out of the shower and spent five minutes over the toilet-courtesy of his nagging prostate. Then back to the comfort of his chair where he downed three Bayer aspirin with a cup of stale orange juice.

Why had he said it? What did it matter? So Jean was down to chasing runaways. Have you seen this child? So Jean had maybe found a rich runaway, at least one with rich parents who'd been tremendously grateful when Jean collared them on the phone. So maybe he was going to get a big reward and retire to a big house where he could tell big stories to Miss Eat Your Heart Out-all about how he used to dig up big-time dirt on big-time people and dish it out to big-time lawyers, occasionally throwing the juicier tidbits to Confidential or certain columnists who'd print it blind. What Park Avenue shyster is tiptoeing through the tulips in very light loafers? What very hot chanteuse is doing the rhumba with what very hot politico? Remember? If not the biggest case of his life-maybe the biggest payoff, and these days maybe that made it the biggest case of his life.

He was an old man, she said. Sometimes that's what old men do. They lie-to themselves, to hookers with crimson tattoos on their thighs.

And even though, as he put forth this perfectly reasonable explanation, as he ridiculed the very notion of Jean back on a case-on any case-even as he knew that in large part it was a story created to appease the storyteller, knowing that didn't alter a thing. Not yet. After all, the storyteller was appeased. Just look at him.

Okay, almost appeased. Ninety-nine percent appeased- ready to stand up to anyone who'd dare suggest-what if what he said is true-and show them the door.

So now, his hangover dulled, it was his shoulder that began to act up. A sign, his shoulder was, a warning, a dear but annoying friend tap, tap, tapping him there to get him to look at himself and remember. Before he got too riled up and maybe started to believe things he shouldn't. And so he did remember. After all, he had the picture filed right under S for shooting, and right after R for Rachel. There.

There's William reading the Daily News. William sipping his coffee from Micky D's. William dozing off on his suddenly comfortable bridge chair like old guys are prone to do, guys who pull night shifts and dream about their wife doing their business partner every way to Sunday on a motel vibromatic off Utopia Parkway. Guys like that. Even as a Chevy Impala with one broken headlight circles Weissman's Auto Parts like someone lost; once, twice, three times around the block till it finally pulls over and lets two black men out onto the pavement. Three black men really-counting the one still sitting in the car-seven empty cans of Colt 45, a stolen sawed- off shotgun, and a spanking-new jigaboo special-.22 caliber to the uninitiated-check the police manifest for further corroboration.

William still dozing, somewhere between Brooklyn and Pimlico by now, although what's this? Clank, bink, boom. Someone being rude enough to ruin his beauty sleep- that's what it is. William opening his eyes and actually hearing someone trying to jimmy open the front door. Imagine that. They hired you as a security guard, didn't they, and suddenly that's what you're being asked to do. Guard. Not sleep, not sample the coffee and donuts from every diner on Utica Avenue, not analyze the box scores and handicap the ponies and do two words of the crossword puzzle. Guard. Used fan belts, four-horsepower transmissions, and radiators of dubious lineage, but they're all yours.

There's William with his hand already sneaking down to his.45, trying to remember if he's ever really shot it, even once, ever even taken it out and sighted it and pretended to shoot it, and knowing that the answer is no- not on your life, but taking it out anyway. Sidling up to the door in a kind of bent three-quarter shuffle, then stopping just in front of it-the door starting to quiver from the pressure of whatever they're using to jimmy it open or maybe just from the knocking of his knees.

I have a gun. That's what he says. Because it's true- he does, and who knows-maybe they don't, and the simple fact of him having one might make them reconsider their options here.

I have a gun he says again.

But they do too. They have a gun-or actually guns. A sawed-off shotgun, a spanking-new.22-check the manifest for corroboration.

Suddenly the door splinters open and there they are- the three of them, caught in an awkward moment Emily Post just can't help you with. William with his gun out, pointed in the general direction of black groin-though he can swear the safety's still on-and the two of them, one with the shotgun raised past William's shoulder.

No one says boo.

So the gun speaks for them. William's gun actually- the safety wasn't on after all-deciding to fire a shot into the black man's kneecap, the kick of the gun tending to lower aim by as much as a foot. The gun just deciding to do it-what William told the police later on his way into the ambulance. Because William has no recollection of pulling the trigger, none. There they were staring at each other and the gun didn't like what it saw. Bang.

There's one black man going down-Vernon M. Maxwell, by the way, five foot eight, one hundred eighty pounds, BedStuy by way of Rahway-two stints for breaking and entering and a dismissal on rape. And there's the other black man running back across the street and starting to fire as he goes.

William? He's wondering why his gun went off like that and considering if he should bring it up on charges. He's staring at Vernon M. Maxwell's right kneecap, which doesn't resemble a kneecap now as much as the ground beef in Pirelli's Italian Deli. He's ducking too-because the other man is firing at him and William can hear the bullets ricocheting off the tin walls of the warehouse.

Now the other man is back at the Impala where he's multiplying before William's shocked eyes. That is, he's becoming two men again-the driver has joined him of course, which means William is again outnumbered and possibly outgunned.

Now turn your attention to the left, ladies and gentlemen. It is a Sunday morning in spring. The kind of morning that makes Sunday mornings in winter bearable. The kind of morning that makes you think of possibilities instead of realities. The kind of morning a five-year-old girl puts on her Sunday best and decides to skip rope before church.

And there she is. Mom still in the apartment somewhere, but Deidre-yes, he knows her name-out there on the pavement with a jump rope. A my name is Alice… B my name is Barbara… C my name is Carol… D my name is dead.

Not yet though.

William crouching down behind an old fender just outside the door, with Vernon cradling his shattered kneecap and calling him every name in the book to his left. And now his two bros coming to get him. Both of them advancing across the street like gunfighters do-like Wyatt and Doc at the O.K. Corral maybe, only they were the good guys and these guys here are the desperadoes.

This is what William can see: A Chevy Impala still idling across the street. Two black men bearing guns- one of them for sure. The five-year-old girl skipping rope-yes, he's seen her by now. And one thing else.

He's seen this guy, William. You know him, don't you? This guy crying into his blanket, cowering behind an auto part, blubbering into the air. This pathetic security guard positively pleading with the deities not to take him yet. Can you believe this guy-I mean can you?

The two black men halfway across the street now, one of them with a small pistol aimed at the chicken's head.

So William raises his.45-the one with its own mind, only this time William taking charge. Even as he sees Deidre putting the rope down and walking curiously out into the street. Even as he sees-yes he does-a police cruiser rounding Utica Avenue just out of the corner of his eye. Still he raises the gun, still he pulls the trigger. Still he closes his eyes-that's right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you saw it right-he closes his eyes. Why? You'll have to ask him-maybe because he didn't wish to see. And bang. Bang, bang, bang. One of those bangs a bullet he takes in his left shoulder courtesy of one of the black men still walking. One of those bangs a bullet taking out the left front tire of the Chevy Im- pala. One of those bangs a bullet slamming into the front cranial cavity of a five-year-old jump-roper dreaming of summer.

Last snapshot.

There they are, strewn before the Brooklyn warehouse like the various pieces of a wreck, blood seeping like oil onto the cracked pavement, onto the willow leaves carried by the spring wind all the way from Van Cortlandt Park, onto the white petticoat of the little girl right next to him, because once he's opened his eyes and the sheer awfulness of what's transpired here has begun to make itself known, he's staggered, crawled, stumbled in her general direction. The little girl in mid-moan, in terrible gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling pain. He tries to tell her to lie still, to keep quiet, that the doctor will be there any minute, tries to tell that to her and her wailing mother too, her mother and the police and the man in the moon, all looking at him as if he's crazy, mad as a hatter, which, of course, he is. For when he tells the little girl to lie still, to be quiet, shh… shh please… please… the whimpering does stop, but not because she's listened to him. She can't listen to him-its technically and medically impossible. Why? Because she has no head. One of his bullets took it right off. The crying, of course, had been his; he'd been comforting a corpse.

Old men, the warehouse owner said, you send me old men and this is what happens…