Night Work Page 6

  She promised me she’d give him the message. Then she closed her door, too. I stood there a moment looking at both sides of the place, wondering if I could do any good for anybody in this building. Or if they were all beyond me.

  FOUR

  As the sun went down, I was paying my Sunday evening visit to the Shamrock, down the street from the gym. It was always quiet then, and the man would pour a lonely shot or two for me without saying more than a few words. I’d resist the urge to have him line them up for me so I could punish myself for being the one who was still alive.

  Punish the living. Forgive the dead. Words I had heard somewhere. They made me think about Albert Ayler again, his dead body floating in the East River. He died the same year I was born, this man I had almost nothing in common with, and yet it still bothered the hell out of me. I wasn’t even sure why, beyond the simple fact that he should have lived another forty or fifty years to make music.

  My cell phone rang. I took it out of my pocket and saw the number for the Kingston police station again.

  “Howie,” I said as I answered it. “You stopping by tonight, or what?”

  “I’m trying. Something came up. I gotta go check it out.”

  “Something serious?”

  “Dunno yet. I’ll let you know. How long you gonna be there?”

  “Little while. I can stick around if you want.” I looked out at the streetlamp, at the faint glow as it came to life. Sunday nights, man. Why are they so tough?

  “Don’t wait for me,” he said. “If I get a chance I’ll come over. If you’re not at the Shamrock, you’ll be at your place, right?”

  “I think you’ll have a good chance of finding me at one of those two locations, yes.”

  “Are you okay, JT?”

  “Yeah, I’m cool. Go do your thing. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I want the full scoop on your date, remember? You’re not getting out of it.”

  “Good-bye, Howie.”

  I turned off my cell phone and put it on the bar, next to the shot glass. The last thing I needed was one too many, but something told me I’d be having it anyway. And then maybe one more.

  Outside, the streetlamp was glowing a brighter shade of yellow. It was another exciting Sunday night in Kingston, New York.

  I left the Shamrock about an hour later and jaywalked across Broadway. As soon as I got to the gym, I saw the front doors wide open. That wouldn’t have been unusual during the day—Anderson didn’t insist on keeping the place a blast furnace like some trainers did—but after hours, the doors still open to the street … It didn’t make sense. I went inside and looked around in the dark, finally seeing a faint cone of light on the far side of the ring. As I got closer, I saw three men sitting around a table. Anderson, Maurice, and Rolando.

  “Joe!” Anderson said. “Come and sit down!”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “We’re celebrating,” Maurice said, raising his glass. That’s when I saw the bottle of Wild Turkey sitting on the table. With Anderson and his top two boxers sitting here in the dark, and now actual liquor inside the gym … It was officially more than my brain could handle. The only thing missing was a giant pink ostrich dancing on the table.

  “Rolando is gonna have a baby,” Anderson said. “Come on, sit down and drink with us.”

  “Actually, his wife is,” Maurice said. “Let’s be clear.”

  “That’s fantastic.” I shook Rolando’s hand. He smiled but didn’t say anything. The tattoos on his arms looked blue in the dim light.

  “She’s due in March,” Anderson said. “Just a few more months before his whole life changes.”

  “Yeah, what’s that going to do to your training?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He spoke slowly, like maybe he’d already emptied a little too much of his glass.

  “We’ll figure that out,” Anderson said. “Tonight we’re just celebrating, right?”

  I sat down and let him pour me one, knowing it would be a mistake to drink it. But what the hell. This was certainly a side of Anderson I’d never seen before. His hands were a little unsteady as he handed me the glass.

  “Wild Turkey,” I said. “How old is that bottle?”

  “I’ve had it in my desk for ten years,” Anderson said. “In case I ever got the chance to celebrate something.”

  “To your wife,” I said to Rolando. “To your first child.”

  We all drank to that. Then we drank to Anderson and Maurice and myself and everything else we could think of.

  “Your old man,” Anderson said to Rolando. “He’s going to be a grandfather, eh? What’s the Spanish word for grandfather?”

  “Abuelo.”

  “He’s going to be an abuelo. Good for him. You should have brought him along tonight. Give me someone my own age to talk to.”

  “He’s working.” Rolando wasn’t looking me in the eye, but I couldn’t help wondering if I was one big reason the old man never came to the gym. I’d had a few of the local Mexican kids as clients, so I knew the general story. If the parents are illegal, they don’t want to have anything to do with me. It doesn’t matter how much I tell them that I’ve got nothing to do with the INS, that I couldn’t care less what their status is as long as they want to help get their kids straight. I’m still a man with a badge, and that’s all they see.

  Before I could say anything about it, Anderson moved on to the next toast. “To the Rock,” he said, lifting his glass to the tattoo on Maurice’s left arm. “Rocky Marciano. That was the real Rocky right there. Never mind that movie.”

  “To the Rock,” Maurice said, lifting his glass.

  “To your other hero,” Anderson said, putting his hand on Maurice’s right arm. He touched the woman’s face as gently as he would the real thing. She looked ageless with her long blond hair falling over her shoulders. “This lovely woman who means so much to you. What’s her name?”

  “I just call her Angel.”

  “That’s nice,” Anderson said. “That’s beautiful. She must have really helped you out.”

  “I’d be dead by now. Or in jail. She was the one who saved me.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  “Sure, I try to do stuff for her whenever I can,” Maurice said. “She doesn’t get out much anymore.”

  “That’s good,” Anderson said. “You’re giving back to her now that she needs you.”

  “I try.”

  “It’s always one person, eh?” Anderson turned to me and grabbed me by the shirt. “Rolando’s old man. Maurice’s angel. One person who makes the difference. Am I right, Joe?”

  “Sometimes it is, yes.”

  “That’s what you try to do. Every day, huh? That’s your job, being that one person who makes the difference. Even now, after what happened to you. Maybe even more now …”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I had never heard him talk this way. Then again, I’d never seen him sitting around drinking Wild Turkey.

  “To Joe,” he said. “And to his sweet Laurel. May she rest in peace.” They all raised their glasses to me. I had one swallow left in mine, so I sent it down.

  As everything started to get soft around the edges, I looked at Anderson and I said to myself, okay, maybe this isn’t so surprising after all. This is the man who gave me a place to stay, gave me something to occupy my body while my mind healed. No matter how tough his exterior might be, he obviously has a heart as big as this gym. I was about to refill my glass and propose my own toast to exactly that sentiment when I noticed somebody walk in through the front doors, at first just a dark form against the light from outside. Then, as the form stepped closer to us, I could see it was a woman.

  Marlene? Coming to see me in person, instead of returning my call?

  No. It wasn’t Marlene. It took me a moment to place her. It was someone I’d just seen recently.

  It was the woman who lived next door to the Schulers, down by the creek, the woman with the husband who’d been y
elling at her. I knew I’d given her my card and asked her to come see me if she ever needed help. I just wasn’t expecting to see her again the very same day.

  “Hello again,” I said to her. She stood at the edge of the light, not moving. I tried hard to remember her name.

  She didn’t say anything. I went to her, and as she held out my card I took it from her. Up close I could see the swelling around her left eye. I knew she’d be wearing several shades of black, blue, green, and purple by tomorrow morning. I’d been there myself, under different circumstances. I didn’t imagine this woman’s husband had been wearing boxing gloves.

  “Did he do this to you?”

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “You can have him arrested,” I said. “I have a friend on the police force. I can call him right now.”

  “Do you know why he did this?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  “He did this because you gave me your card.”

  I stood there. I didn’t have a word to say to her.

  “You had to come over and act like a hero,” she said.

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “Yeah, that worked out great. Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to … I mean, this isn’t the first time, is it?”

  “You don’t know anything about me. You had no right.”

  She turned away from me. I stopped myself before I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Let me call my friend,” I said.

  “Do not call anyone.”

  “I have to.”

  “I said, do not call anyone.”

  “You told me your name this morning.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s Sandra.” Thank God it came to me. “I remember now. So tell me, Sandra … Why did you come here? It wasn’t just to be mad at me, was it?”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t turn around to face me.

  “Will you talk to me, please?”

  I touched her once, lightly, on the arm. She flinched like I was electrified and started walking out the door.

  “If he kills me tonight,” she said, without looking back, “it’ll be your fault.”

  “Sandra! Don’t leave!”

  She opened the door and went out into the night. I chased after her, followed her down the sidewalk.

  “Get away from me!” she said when she saw me.

  “Stop.”

  “Get away!”

  She tried to step around me. I wouldn’t let her. She finally started hitting me with her fists. I was ducking and trying to block her punches without hurting her, right there on the sidewalk while the cars went by. Some of the cars started honking.

  “Let me go!” she said. I wrapped her up and held her. If I had stopped to think for one second, I might have realized how many laws I was breaking. I was holding a woman against her will, with a dozen witnesses slowing down to get a good look. It was all gut instinct at that point, on a day that had already slipped away from me.

  I wasn’t going to let anything else happen to her. That was the only thing in my head. On this day of all days, I would not let her go back to that house.

  “He’ll kill me,” she said in a low voice. She stopped struggling. “He’ll kill me.”

  “No, he won’t.” I let go of her. She didn’t move.

  “Yes, he will.”

  “Do you have any kids, Sandra? Anybody else back at the house we should be thinking about?”

  “If I did, you think I’d leave them with him?”

  “Okay, then. That makes it easier. We’re going to call Protective Services right now.”

  “No. No, we’re not.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We are. Come on.”

  I led her back inside the gym. Anderson, Maurice, and Rolando were all standing now. Over five hundred combined pounds of manhood, enough muscle and experience to take on a small street gang, but they obviously had no idea what to do here.

  “We’re gonna use your office,” I said.

  A minute later she was sitting in the office while Anderson kept bringing her tissues and cups filled with ice water. I was on the phone with Protective Services, arranging the emergency pickup. Something they’ll do at any hour, any day of the week. Sandra didn’t say anything. She stared off at nothing. While we were waiting, Anderson pulled me out of the office.

  “What do we do, Joe?”

  “They’re on their way over,” I said. “They’ll take her to the shelter.”

  “No, I mean what do we do? To the guy who did this?”

  “Anderson…”

  “We’ll go find him,” he said. “You and me, and we’ll bring Maurice and Rolando, let them do something useful for once.”

  I was tempted by the idea. I admit it. The four of us could have driven down there and knocked on the door. I could picture the look on the man’s face when he opened it, when he recognized me and saw who I’d brought with me. The old guy wouldn’t worry him much, but the two men behind me, all tattoos and arms busting right out of their shirts … He’d try to close the door on us, but we’d already be on top of him.

  “I made a promise to Laurel,” I said. “All those women who came to her shelter … She made me promise to never go after any of the men. No matter what.”

  “You saw her face, Joe. You know what she’s gonna look like tomorrow morning?”

  “I know, believe me. I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  “It’s not right, Joe. I can’t stand the thought of that son of a bitch walking around with all his teeth still in his mouth.”

  “If we went down there, it would be assault and battery,” I said. “A felony if it’s bad enough. And it might get that woman killed. If we beat that man half to death, he’d never come back at us. You know that, right? Never. He’d go after her instead.”

  “Your Laurel, she told you all that, huh?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “This is what she dealt with. Every day.”

  “This was her job, yes.”

  He shook his head. “What a world we live in, Joe. What a world.”

  That’s exactly what I kept thinking for the rest of the night. When the woman from Protective Services came to pick up Sandra, when she got in that car and drove away … I said good night to everybody, went upstairs, and took a shower while Anderson locked up the gym. I put a frozen dinner in the microwave and ate it standing at the window overlooking Broadway. I didn’t play any music.

  God, Sunday nights.

  When I was done eating I sat on the bed and looked at my picture of Laurel. I traced the outline of her face with my finger.

  “I played that wrong from the beginning,” I said to her. She would have known what to do. She would have told me not to go over to that house, not to make a big scene unless I was ready to go all the way with it. Never show up the man when the woman is still in jeopardy. Never force her hand unless you absolutely have to. Unless her life depends on it.

  Thinking back now to the very first time I ever saw Laurel, in the Social Services building over on Ulster Avenue. I was dropping off the Christmas presents from my department, lugging those two big bags into her office and dropping them on the floor. The way she looked up at me, like she very much wanted to kill me for walking through that door without knocking. This was no man’s land, after all. The place where women came to escape the opposite sex.

  Me apologizing for not knowing the rules. Laurel apologizing for having a bad day and getting mad at the man delivering the Christmas presents. Me offering to buy her dinner so we could both apologize some more.

  “Sorry, I’m engaged,” she said to me. Usually words that would stop a man dead in his tracks. Not just engaged, either, but engaged to some hotshot investment bamboozler down in Westchester County. China pattern all picked out and everything.

  My whole life up to that point, spent knocking my head against one wall after another, never learning when to quit, my total lack of an
ything resembling common sense, it would finally pay off. And how.

  God, I missed her so much. What was I thinking with the blind date already? That two years was enough time to get over what happened to her? That I could move on with my life like a normal human being?

  Without looking at the clock, without thinking about it, I picked up the phone and dialed Marlene’s number again. I wanted to talk to someone, to hear a live voice. That’s all I needed. The phone rang four times, then the machine picked up.

  “It’s Joe again,” I said. “Sorry if it’s late. I was just worried about you, I guess. I wanted to make sure you’re all right. And, um …”

  And what?

  “And I just wanted to say good night before I went to bed. That’s all. Give me a call if you get in. If you feel like it. Take care. Good night.”

  I hung up the phone. Another dazzling display of human smoothness, I thought. She’ll be so impressed with you.

  “Leave yourself alone,” I said out loud. “For one night, leave yourself the hell alone.”

  I cracked the window open, felt the hot night air come in. As I looked out at the lights on the street I imagined Sandra sitting in a strange room somewhere, in the women’s shelter, the secret safe house where the Protective Services people hide the women from their men. What a foreign new world they find themselves in, this underground railroad, staying inside all day so nobody sees them, waiting for the slow wheels of justice to turn so they can start to have a normal life again. The man arrested, put through the wringer, restraining orders issued and read out loud to him. Or if he’s bad enough, if he’s unforgivable and unredeemable and for some technical reason they still can’t put him in jail … Then they send the woman as far away as possible, steal her away under cover of night and hope the man never, ever finds her.

  Laurel did this. It was her calling in life, and how many times did she bring the stress of the job home with her? Enough to make me realize that being a probation officer wasn’t nearly as tough. For every woman she saved, there was a man who felt wronged by it. Until one day, she took the wrong woman from the wrong man …

  He’s still walking around out there, whoever it was who killed her. Some ex-husband or ex-boyfriend or ex-whatever the hell else, driven mad by rage and humiliation, to the point that he’d actually track down my Laurel, the woman who ruined his life, and kill her in cold blood. That’s the angle the Westchester PD has been following for the past two years, anyway. They’ve been going over every case, every single man who had ever laid a finger on a woman who ended up turning to Laurel for help. Where else could they look? If it was just some random homicidal lunatic, somebody who happened to see her on the street one day … How do you find someone like that?