Suicide Squeeze

13

Conner awoke, blinked, remembered he was unhappy and hungover and tried to go back to sleep. Sleep told him to fuck off. He rolled out of bed, groaned. His apartment smelled like throw up and cigars.

He shuffled into the bathroom, saw the puddle of vomit. He’d missed the toilet by a good foot. He’d clean it up later when his head stopped pounding. His toe nudged the empty vodka bottle. Memory crept back slowly. He’d been up all night trying to forget the two thousand dollars he owed Rocky Big.

With no money from the boat repo and rent looming, Conner had placed a thousand-dollar bet on the Red Sox, who blew a three-run lead in the ninth. He’d gone double or nothing on the Mets and lost that bet too. He was flat broke. The refrigerator was empty, and he was out of ideas. He went into the kitchen, looked in his cupboard for coffee.

He was out of coffee.

In the living room, he sank into the couch and pulled the phone into his lap, looked at it a long time.

Tyranny would lend him money. If he asked.

The thought of her made his sour stomach churn, and asking for money would only highlight his loserness.

He dialed the number.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Conner said.

“I tried to call you,” Tyranny said. “Yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Don’t you have an answering machine?”

Conner looked at the short table at his elbow. A perfect square in the dust marked the absent answering machine. “Sometimes I forget to turn it on.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“You tell me.”

She laughed, a tinkling sound like a wind chime. “Dan is throwing a reception for Jasper Dybek. You know who that is, don’t you?”

“Short stop for the Dodgers?”

She tsked. “He’s only the hottest new contemporary artist there is. He lives in SoHo, but he’s touring a few universities. He’s on his way to Tulane, but he’s stopping here because Dan knows him personally. We’re going to show some of his work here at the house. Dan’s even hired a caterer.”

“Old Professor Dan is one important dude.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. “This could be very important for me.”

“Is that why you married Professor Dan? Because he’s good for your career?” Conner grabbed for the words as they left his mouth, tried to reel them back in, but they’d already flown, sprinted the phone line into Tyranny’s ear. “Sorry.”

She was silent a second. “My marriage isn’t any of your business. It’s complicated.”

“Sure.”

“Look, I didn’t call to have a fight. I wanted to invite you to the reception. I wanted to see you.”

“Yeah, that sounds like big fun. Then all of your art friends can explain the pretty pictures to the dumb jock.” He couldn’t help himself. The conversation was a runaway train heading for a school bus parked on the tracks. He couldn’t make it stop, maybe didn’t want to. “A little too snobby for me.”

A longer silence this time. “It’s black tie, so you’ll need a tux. Show up or fuck off. It’s all the same to me.” She hung up.

Conner slammed the receiver down, jerked the cord out of the jack, and hurled the phone across the room. It slammed against the wall, shattered into five plastic pieces. He balled his fists into his eyes, fought down a wave of nausea. He curled into a ball on the couch, tried to hide from the sunlight and the sound of his heartbeat pounding between his temples.

And he still needed two thousand bucks.

Tyranny Jones looked at the phone, expecting Conner to ring back immediately. He didn’t.

Stubborn fucking asshole.

She felt the familiar rush in the blood, the roar in her ears surging. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Violence and sex and rage all boiled together inside her. She had a problem. She knew it. She wasn’t normal. Knowing it and making it stop were a million light-years apart.

“You okay?”

She started, looked up into Dan’s face suddenly in the doorway. Her husband. “What?”

He searched her face, eyes piercing and blue. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Nobody.” She unclenched her fists, realized how she must look, red-faced. Eyes wild. She pulled the plug on her rage, let it drain, offered Dan a weak smile. “It was nobody.”

He nodded. “Sure. Okay.” He returned the smile, a message: It’s okay if you don’t tell me. Dan’s teeth were white and straight. He was older, gray at the temples. Anchorman handsome.

Tyranny would never leave Dan. Couldn’t. Their agreement was too good, too necessary for her. He knew about her. Knew she didn’t always have control. Special needs. Dan only insisted he never hear about it and that she go to therapy. He wouldn’t pry, she wouldn’t tell, and they’d pretend to be a regular married couple. Once in a while there was a crack in the façade, a slip in the playacting. Dan wouldn’t push it, but Tyranny could tell he knew something, suspected. He’d asked about the phone call.

It was because Conner made her so crazy-no, not crazy. Dr. Goldblatt had warned her against words like that, even in jest. But it was so easy with the other men. She popped them like Valium, got what she needed, and forgot about them. She didn’t wear them on her face like she did with Conner, and Dan could see the difference.

Something would have to be done.

Conner showered. Hot water helped a little.

The couch cushions and the Plymouth’s glove compartment produced $1.43 in loose change. Conner walked the block to the convenience store and returned with a large coffee in a styrofoam cup. He used it to wash down four aspirin, then spent an hour putting his phone back together with a roll of masking tape.

He called Odeski, begged for work, said he would repossess anything from anybody. The gruff Slav said to quit bothering him.

He picked the phone up three times, intending to call Tyranny with gushing, eager apologies, but it seemed hopeless. Life seemed gray and useless and some kind of bad joke on him. All his second chances had been used up, and he didn’t deserve pity or charity or a break from anyone he knew. Rocky Big would send Fat Otis to ask just exactly when he would be getting his two thousand dollars, and that would be the final defeat. Even his friendship with Otis wouldn’t save him forever. This is it, God. If you have a trick up your sleeve, some kind of last-minute mercy. Anything at all. Now’s the time.

A loud knock at the door.

That was fast. Praise Jesus.

Conner opened the door, looked into the face of a stern, handsome woman wearing a beige pantsuit. Her eyes were hidden by dark, sleek sunglasses. She had an air of authority that kept Conner from acting on his gut instinct, which was to slam the door in her face.

“Conner Samson?” She pushed the sunglasses to the end of her nose, regarded him over the lenses. The action made her look predatory, dangerous.

“Who’s asking?”

Her mouth twitched, almost smiling. “Joellen Becker. I have some questions about Derrick James and Teddy Folger.”

The cop at the crime scene had said somebody might be around to ask more questions. A detective. Great. You’re a funny guy, Jesus. Conner formed and rejected several replies: Never heard of those people. I’m sorry, but I don’t answer questions without my lawyer. I don’t speak English. Finally, he said, “Okay. Come on in.”

She entered the apartment, closed the door behind her, slipped her sunglasses into a shirt pocket. She scanned the room, eyes darting into every corner. She sniffed, wrinkled her nose. “Christ. Open a window, will you?”

She spoke to Conner, but her eyes finished scanning the room in the way cops look at everything. Conner told himself to stay cool. Rule number one: Keep your mouth shut until you know the score.

“I understand you were repossessing a sailboat for James,” she said. “Folger’s boat.”

“Yeah.”

“You repossess a lot of boats.”

“Just this morning I hot-wired the QE2,” Conner said.

The corners of Becker’s mouth twitched again. Her mouth might have been trying to smile or grimace. “I can’t decide if you’re funny or tiresome, Samson.” She produced a folded piece of paper with a photo paper-clipped to it. She handed them to Samson. “The Electric Jenny, right?”

Conner took the picture, looked at it apparently without interest. “Right.”

“I need some information, okay?”

“Am I under arrest? Last time I checked, repossessing boats wasn’t a crime.”

“I’m not the police, Samson.”

Conner’s brow furrowed. He reappraised the woman. She sure as hell acted like a cop. And the slight bulge under her jacket was probably a pistol. “Let’s start over. Who are you, and what’s this about?”

“I’m an insurance investigator,” she said. “I talked to Derrick James, and he said he’d put you on to the boat repo.”

“I couldn’t find her,” Conner said too quickly. “Sorry. Wish I could help.”

“I’m looking for Folger, not necessarily the boat.”

“Haven’t seen him.” Conner had seen him. Tied to a chair, eyes swollen, lips bleeding, a couple of Asian guys working him over. The memory made him wince. He couldn’t look Becker in the eye, so he pretended to look harder at the picture of the boat. “I checked all the marinas. No sign of her or Teddy Folger.” Conner looked at the paper to which the photograph of the boat was clipped. It was the insurance information from Allied Nautical, a fuzzy photocopy, the same exact page Samson had looked at, the same scribbling in Derrick James’s handwriting up in the corner.

James was dead, the file missing from his office. And here was a woman who said she’d talked to James. Conner’s stomach flip-flopped. He glanced again at the bulge under her jacket, licked his lips nervously. Maybe Joellen Becker had been the last person to see James alive.

“You okay?” she asked. “You look pale.”

Conner cleared his throat. “Hungover.”

She offered Conner a business card. “I can make it worth your while if you happen to remember something.”

Conner stared at the card, didn’t take it. “Uh-huh.”

She said, “Best to try my cell phone. I always have it with me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any time, day or night.” She wiggled the business card like it was a crust of bread she was offering to a petting-zoo goat.

“Sure.”

“Are you going to take this fucking card or not?”

“Excuse me just a moment, will you?” Conner said.

He left her standing there, went back to his bedroom, and slid open his closet door. He rummaged past old baseball cleats and his winter coat, found the Webley, the old British service revolver Fat Otis referred to as the antique. He held it tightly, his heart thumping madly. Easy does it, Samson. If she killed James, then she won’t hesitate to kill again. Don’t get cute. He didn’t like guns, but he wanted to do this quickly and decisively. He took one more deep breath. Now go citizen’s arrest her sorry ass.

Conner walked into the living room, the Webley leading the way. Becker saw him, raised an eyebrow.

She said, “Does Indiana Jones know you have his gun?”

“Don’t move,” Conner said.

“Or what?”

“What do you mean, or what? Or the usual. I’m pointing a big fucking gun at you.”

“What’s this about, Samson? We were getting along so well.”

“You killed James,” Conner said. “I saw his body. And the Folger file was missing, and now here you are with a page from that file.”

“You’re adding two plus two and getting five. Put the gun down.”

“Lie on the floor and… uh… put your hands behind your head.”

Becker laughed. “You watch too much NYPD Blue.”

“You’re not supposed to laugh at me. I’m holding a gun.”

“What reaction did you want?”

“Fear and compliance,” Conner said.

“Fat chance. Your revolver’s not even loaded.”

“What?” He brought the gun up to his face, looked down into the empty chambers. When was the last time he’d cleaned this thing?

When he was no longer pointing the gun at her, Becker spun, her leg flying out and knocking the gun from his hand. No time for him to react. She kicked again, clocked him on the jaw. His last thought before everything went black was Does everyone fucking know karate but me?