Night Work Read online

  I did have to step on all the jewelry beads on the floor, though, nearly landing on my ass. When I had regained my balance, she gave me a quick kiss and opened the door for me.

  When I was safely out of the place, I squeezed my way down the spiral staircase, made it to the ground, and turned around to look back at her. She was leaning over the balcony.

  “Good night, Joe,” she whispered, just loud enough for me to hear her.

  “Good night,” I said. Then I left.

  I walked back down Wall Street. All the stores were closed now. I didn’t stop in at Artie’s or the Blue Jay Way. I got in my car and went straight home.

  “That was bad,” I said to nobody. “And yet not so bad.”

  I couldn’t wait to see her again. It was that simple. For the first time in years, I was genuinely looking forward to the next day.

  Then something came to me. One more small way I had proven myself to be beyond all hope. Jewelry design, she said. She designs jewelry for a living and I didn’t say one word about the jewelry she was wearing tonight.

  I could picture it in my mind now, the necklace with the blue stones. The earrings. The way they matched the color of her dress. The way the necklace followed her neckline. Even I could tell that it was perfect.

  I’ll tell her tomorrow, I thought. It’ll give me a good excuse. I’ll call her and I’ll tell her I should have noticed it and said something. Then I’ll ask her if she wants to go to Mariner’s Harbor, have dinner on the river.

  “That’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  I kept driving down Broadway. It was a hot, hot night in Kingston, and I was a happy man who didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that someone out there had other plans.

  For both of us.

  THREE

  Sundays are hard enough for me. But this one …

  I hadn’t slept much, that’s the first thing. How could I? I lay in the bed looking up at the dark ceiling, at the occasional sweep of headlights when a car would come up the street. Normally, I’d wonder who’d be out driving at three in the morning, on a night with a full moon yet, what kind of trouble they were getting into or had already been in. If they were clients of mine, or soon would be.

  I didn’t wonder about that on this night, though. I didn’t think about anything else but what had happened in Marlene’s apartment. In her bed, the way she had looked, the way she had felt. I hadn’t touched another human being that way in over two years.

  Laurel’s picture was on my old secondhand dresser. It was too dark to see her face, but I knew it was there.

  When the light finally came, I heard the few hardcore guys slipping into the place to start hitting the bag, or maybe to skip some rope. I knew nobody would be sparring yet, because you don’t set foot in the ring if Anderson isn’t there to supervise. Sunday mornings, he puts on a clean white shirt and a tie and walks down the hill to St. Mary’s for mass. I had once asked him if he ever thought about going to the late mass on Saturday night. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Trainers don’t go to mass on Saturday nights,” he said to me. “Saturday nights are for fighting.”

  Me, I don’t go to mass anymore, on Saturday or Sunday or anytime at all. I guess you could say I’m not on speaking terms with God these days. I hold him accountable for the sins he lets happen here on this earth, for being an accomplice before and after the fact. But there is one thing I still do on Sundays, a thing as close to going to church as anything I’ve done since I walked out of Laurel’s funeral service.

  This morning, especially, I needed it.

  I got out of bed, flipped on the stereo, and put on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Then I sat in the hard chair by the window, looking down at the street as the first notes were played. Elvin Jones hitting that gong, then Trane winding through the intro. Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm. Four parts, the last literally a prayer, Coltrane breathing the words right through his saxophone.

  It’s all there. Everything a man needs who has seen the worst that life has to offer and is trying to find his way back into the light.

  And damn, could the man play.

  Thirty-three minutes later, as the last note was fading away, I got up to find something else to play. I wasn’t ready for silence yet. Another thing about Sundays.

  I did a quick scan through my collection. By now it had taken over one complete wall and part of another. About twelve hundred CDs in all, plus a couple hundred LPs to play on my old turntable, everything from Jelly Roll Morton at the turn of the century through the glory days of the fifties and sixties, thinning out as it gets to whatever passes for jazz in the twenty-first century. The whole business taking up half my bedroom, making the place look like a fair-sized radio station. It was almost embarrassing, but hell … It was something to focus on. One more thing to get lost in.

  Eventually, I put on Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, really the only thing that can follow Coltrane on a Sunday morning. Both men dead too young, Coltrane in 1967, Ayler playing at his funeral, and then dead himself three years later, his body fished out of the East River, to this day nobody totally sure what happened to him. The stories becoming urban legends at this point—that he was gunned down by the authorities for being such a subversive influence, or even better, that they found him tied to a jukebox.

  Ayler only made a handful of recordings in his whole life, half of them recorded live with what sounded like five people clapping after each song, but damn, what it must have been like to be there in the flesh, to hear with your own ears what he could do with that saxophone. Coltrane once said that when he went to sleep at night and dreamed of himself playing, in the dream he would sound just like Ayler.

  Which brought me right back to Marlene, because out of everything else that happened last night I promised her I’d burn her a sampler CD. That would give me something to do later today, in those lost Sunday evening hours after dinner, the hardest time of all for me. I’d burn a CD for her and maybe even offer to deliver it personally. On the other hand … I hope she’s ready for this stuff. Ayler can be pretty intense the first time you hear him. Or hell, the first few hundred times.

  I cranked up the music and let it wash right over me. It was like something beyond music, the way he blew that sax like it was his last statement to the world, going from whisper to freight train and back again, using such simple melodies as starting points— folk songs, spirituals, marching band themes—making music that sounded new and original, and at the same time as old as something you’d find on a dusty 78 from somebody’s New Orleans basement.

  He makes it sound so easy, I thought. He makes it sound like the saxophone was a part of him. All raw energy, like he could just close his eyes and let it come out. I shut down the stereo, picked up my own sax, and started blowing.

  This old man … He played one … He played knick-knack on my thumb. Skronk, scrank, screech.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. I put the sax down on the bed. “That’s just criminal. Somebody should come and confiscate this thing.”

  Laughing at myself. Which made me look at her. Finally. Laurel’s picture in the full light of day, a cold day, Laurel in the sweater I had given her. That face, which I would have happily spent eighty years waking up next to every single morning.

  “How much trouble am I in, anyway?” I said to her.

  I picked up the picture and looked at her.

  “You’re not saying.”

  I put the picture back on the dresser and looked at the clock. Almost eleven. Time to do something. A faint echo of guilt in my head, from someplace faraway, accusing me of wasting half the day already.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked up the phone. Another echo, from way the hell back in high school, that nervous feeling you get when you dial a girl’s number.

  It rang four times. The machine picked up. I heard Marlene’s voice, a quick message letting the world know she was out at the moment, would call back as soon as she could. Then the
beep.

  “Hi, Marlene,” I said. “It’s about eleven on Sunday morning, just wanted to say, uh …”

  Say what, exactly? Maybe next time you’ll think about what you want to say before you call somebody.

  “I just wanted to say that I really had a good time last night.”

  Especially the part where you made me feel like a man again, for the first time in ages. Go ahead and say that, Mr. Smooth.

  “And I, uh, I’m looking forward to seeing you again. That’s all. Oh, I didn’t forget about burning you a CD. I’ll do that today. I hope you like it. And I guess that’s it! I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

  I put the phone down, took a breath. I looked at Laurel’s picture one more time.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. I left the apartment and went down the stairs to the gym. Anderson, having just walked back into the place, was still wearing his best shirt and his tie. Two men were in the ring, sparring.

  “Trumbull,” he said as soon as he saw me, “did you run?”

  This was how Anderson treated me, always, like I was a real boxer two months away from a title fight. It was yet another thing he had done for me, after agreeing to train some of my knuckleheads a few years back, and even a couple of the girls. Then when I needed a place to live, he had offered me one of the two apartments over the gym. Then when Laurel was killed … The training was his way to save me. It was pure genius, because it was probably the only way to keep me focused on a constructive way to punish myself for being alive. Boxing can be all-consuming— the roadwork, the drills in the gym, the sparring. I had never been in better shape, at any time in my life. And hell, maybe someday it would come in handy.

  “I got in a little late last night,” I said.

  “I take it it went well?”

  “Fine. It was good.”

  “Did you call her yet?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Did you call her? Don’t be dense, Trumbull. You should call her the very next day.”

  The two men had stopped sparring. They stood with their arms hooked over the ropes, peering down at us. I wondered if there was one person in all of Ulster County who hadn’t heard about my blind date.

  “He’s right,” Rolando said with his thick accent. “You should call her today.” Rolando was one of the two top fighters in the gym, the son of Mexican immigrants, his mother dead a long time ago. I knew his father had almost worked himself into the adjoining grave, trying to keep things together and to raise his son.

  Rolando had thick black hair like most of the other Hispanics in town, but he was a few inches taller and a hell of a lot stronger. He also had more tattoos on his body than I could count. He had all the right moves, but from what I gathered he hadn’t yet shown the commitment to work himself into serious shape. That and a suspect chin were the two things that kept Anderson awake at night.

  “You should send her some flowers,” Maurice said. Maurice was the other top fighter, the only other man with a realistic shot at a career. He had a lot less hair than Rolando—it was shaved all the way down to stubble and barely hid a few scars on his head that suggested he’d seen some trouble already in his young life. He only had two tattoos, because, as he put it, he only had two heroes in his life. High on his left arm was a portrait of Rocky Marciano, the only boxer who ever retired as an undefeated champion. On his right was a portrait of a woman, “the woman who saved me,” as he called her. Whatever her relationship to him was, I never got the whole story, but the general idea was something I knew well. Sometimes it takes one adult at the right time to turn somebody around.

  In the ring, you apparently had to hit Maurice with a house to knock him down, and best of all, as Anderson himself put it, he could move around the ring better than any white boy should be allowed. Anderson was always telling him he needed to find a way to get meaner, and that he needed to find his one big punch.

  Rolando drove one of the few cabs in town, and Maurice apparently took care of some rich family’s house and garden to pay the bills. It was hard to match up their training schedules, but they needed each other, because nobody else was good enough for serious sparring.

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said. “Yes, I did call her. I’ll think about the flowers.”

  “No, you can’t think,” Maurice said. “You think, you lose.”

  “I got it.”

  “I’m just looking out for you, Joe.”

  Truth was, I thought he still probably felt guilty about what he did to my eyebrow. Not that it was his fault. I was the one who convinced Anderson to let me try sparring with him, when Rolando wasn’t around one day. “Come on,” I said. “I’m getting good enough now. Just let me go a couple rounds with him. I’ll be careful.”

  Careful, my ass. Two minutes into it, I surprised him with a quick double jab, snapping them just like Anderson had been trying to teach me. He came right back at me, probably without even thinking about it. For a man who supposedly hadn’t found his big punch yet, I sure as hell took one from him. Funny how you can be standing up one second, then flat on your back the next, looking up at the ceiling and wondering why there’s blood running into your left eye, thinking, oh yeah, this must be what it feels like when an outclassed fighter gets laid out on the canvas like a Christmas turkey. Ever since then, he’d been going out of his way to do things for me. He’d probably serve as my chauffeur if I let him.

  “Seriously,” Anderson said. “We need a few more details. You went out to dinner. Then what?”

  “Then we had a nice time.”

  “I said details, Trumbull. Paint us a picture with words.”

  “We had a very nice time. Now if you’ll excuse me …”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to work.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Yeah? You’re working. Why can’t I?”

  Before he could think of an answer to that one, I got the hell out of there. I heard him yelling at Rolando and Maurice to get back to their sparring as I closed the door behind me.

  The office is about half a mile up Broadway. Most nice days I’ll walk it, and this day certainly qualified. Not too hot for an August day in the Hudson Valley, not too humid. But with all the good reasons to walk—the chance to clear my head, to loosen up my body, to smell the Dunkin’ Donuts shop on the way—somehow it didn’t add up today. Suddenly, I wanted to be in the office. I wanted to be sitting at my desk, the one place where everything made sense. I didn’t want to wait another minute.

  I got in my black Volkswagen. I turned on some more Ayler while I drove up Broadway. It was an Ayler kind of day all around, that mixture of joy and sadness in everything he played. That’s how I felt today. But I only had a minute or two to enjoy it before I turned into the parking lot.

  I got out and went into the Ulster County Probation building. Five years ago, we were working in a converted funeral home up on Pearl Street. Then we moved down here on Broadway, to this new building where everything about the place told you there would be no nonsense allowed. On weekdays, there’d be two county deputies stationed by the front door. You’d have to sign in and then walk through a metal detector. In the old building, you just walked right in and sat in the common waiting room. You might have had a sixty-year-old sex offender in the same room with a fifteen-year-old girl. But no longer. Now you enter one of two completely separate worlds, the left side of the building for adults, the right for juveniles, with no chance of contact.

  We don’t do appointments on Sundays, so there were no deputies waiting in the lobby. I opened the front door with my key and locked it behind me, walking through the dead metal detector into the juvenile section.

  We have enclosed offices on this side, unlike the adult side, where everything’s wide-open cubicles. There’s a high priority for privacy here, and a greater need for space when you have a parent or two joining in on the visit. I went to my office and unlocked the door, sat down at my desk, and dove right into
a folder full of PSIs. “PSI” stands for presentence investigation—it’s a thorough report we do when the court finds a defendant guilty. Before sentencing, the judge will want to know about any mitigating factors surrounding the crime, the impact on the victim or victims, the defendant’s family and personal background, mental and physical health, history of drug or alcohol use. Then finally there’s a recommended sentence of either prison time or probation, which the judge is free to agree with or completely ignore. The state requires the report for any felony, or for any crime committed by a juvenile. Which means I end up doing a hell of a lot of them.

  Already I could feel myself relaxing for the first time that day. It felt good to be here. Or if not exactly good, then comfortable. Some days it felt like everything else I did was just pretend. The training, the music. All by myself, just pretending to have a life. Until I get back here in this office, at this desk … This was where I belonged, no doubt about it, reading over somebody’s PSI instead of being outside enjoying a perfect August day.

  The building had felt empty when I came in, but now I could hear a chair rolling around in Larry’s office upstairs. He had probably heard me opening the front door, which meant he was probably on his way down the stairs. About thirty seconds later, he poked his head around my door.

  “Joe,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Catching up.” I didn’t look up at him.

  “Everything okay? You know I’ve got coverage today.” Meaning he was the lucky guy on call in case of an emergency, in case any of our clients did something truly monumental.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I’m just going over some stuff.”

  He hung there in the doorway. I could tell he wasn’t sure what to say to me. In the three months he’d been there, I’m not sure he’d ever spoken a totally confident word to me.

  “How’s it going with that Schuler kid?”

  “Wayne? He wasn’t home on Friday.”