Sixkill

12

I stopped on my way back to the office to get a sub sandwich. When I got back to my office, it was nearly two in the afternoon. I found Zebulon Sixkill, fragrant with booze, asleep on the floor in front of my office. I stepped over him, unlocked my door, and opened it. I put my sandwich on my desk and went back and got hold of Zebulon Sixkill by the collar and dragged him into the office and laid him out on my office rug. I stepped back over him again and shut my office door, then made some coffee, poured myself a cup, and sat at my desk with my feet up, eating my sandwich and drinking my coffee. When I got through, I wrote some bills and put them in envelopes and stamped them.

At about three-thirty the sun had moved out over the Charles River, five blocks away. It slanted in through my office window, making a long parallelogram on the floor where Zebulon Sixkill was lying on his back. It woke him up.

“Where the fuck am I,” he said.

His voice was very hoarse.

“My office,” I said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Spenser,” I said. “We met, couple days ago.”

He raised his head and looked at me. I smiled in a friendly way.

“Yeah,” he said. “You got a bathroom?”

I pointed. He got painfully up and went into the bathroom. He was in there a long time. When he came out he looked as if he might have washed his face.

I pointed to a chair.

“You got a drink?” Zebulon Sixkill said.

I took the bottle of Dewar’s out of my desk drawer and put it on the desk along with a lowball glass. He took a couple of deep breaths as if to steady himself and carefully poured some. He looked at the glass for a moment, then picked it up with both hands and drank some whiskey. He showed no sign of pleasure. He drank it the way you take aspirin for a headache.

“You’re lucky,” I said. “Lila across the hall had seen you, she’d have called the cops and you’d be waking up in the drunk tank.”

“That’s me,” Zebulon Sixkill said. “Lucky.”

“You functional?” I said.

“I will be in a minute,” he said. “You got any ice?”

“Wow,” I said. “A picky drunk.”

I got him some ice in a second lowball glass. He poured the remains of his drink over it and drank some. I waited. He sat.

After a while he said, “I’m in trouble.”

I nodded.

“I can see that,” I said.

He shook his head and poured a little scotch over the ice in his glass.

“All my life I been a tough guy. You know?”

“Till now,” I said.

Z looked at me. I looked back.

“Whaddya want?” I said finally.

He shook his head again. We sat. He drank a little of his drink.

“I never lost a fight before,” he said.

“Have many?”

“People always careful around me.”

“Ever fight somebody knew what they were doing?” I said.

He held his glass of whiskey and looked at it some more.

“Guess not,” he said.

We were quiet again. He drank a little. I was watching something happening. I wasn’t sure what. But I kept watching.

“You know what you’re doing,” he said.

“Yep.”

“I want you to show me how,” he said.

“If you don’t get the booze under control, it’s a waste of time,” I said.

“I can not drink,” he said.

“You just got no reason not to,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“You been juicing?”

“Like HGH?” he said. “That kind of thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Little,” he said.

“Rock bottom,” I said.

“Yeah.”

We sat for a time, contemplating how rock-bottom he was.

Finally I said, “Good place to start.”

“Good as any,” he said.