I was about to twist off the cap of my fourth beer when I caught the last message on the disc. Once again the screen was blank, but the woman’s voice on the other end of the line was all too familiar.
“Gerry, this is Mari. Are you there …?” A short pause. “Okay, you aren’t, or you’re not picking up. Okay …”
Great. My wife-or rather, my ex-wife, once we finally got around to formalizing our separation. She didn’t even want to put her still-pic on the screen.
“Listen, your Uncle Arnie called a while ago, and … um, he’s mad at you because you didn’t get to the seder last Friday night …”
I winced and shook my head. I had forgotten all about it. Uncle Arnie was my late father’s older brother and the Rosen family patriarch. A lovable old fart who persisted in trying to get me to attend observances even though he knew damned well I wasn’t quite the nice Jewish nephew he wanted me to be.
“Look, I know this is the usual family stuff, but, y’know I wish you’d tell him not to call here …”
Of course she didn’t want him to call. Marianne wasn’t Jewish, and although she had put up with her share of Rosen seders and bar mitzvahs and Hanukkahs, there was no reason why she should be bugged by my relatives. She didn’t understand that Uncle Arnie was just trying once more to get us back together again. Fat chance, Arnie …
“Okay. That’s it. Take care of yourself. ’Bye.”
A call from Marianne. The first time I had heard from her in almost a month, and it was because I had missed last week’s Passover seder.
For some reason, this made me more depressed than before. It took me the rest of the six-pack to get over the message. By the time I had finished the last bottle, I couldn’t remember why she had called in the first place, and even if I had, I could have cared less.
All I could think about was Jamie.
PART TWO
5
(Thursday, 9:35 A.M.)
I didn’t remember falling asleep: that’s how drunk I got.
Sometime during the night I moved from my desk chair to my unmade bed. I was never conscious of the act; it had been reflexive action and not part of any deliberate decision to hit the sack. I simply blacked out at some point; the next thing I knew, a heavy fist was pounding on the apartment door.
“Rosen! Yo, Rosen …!”
Long, bright rays of sunlight were cast through the dusty loft windows. My eyes ached, my mouth tasted like the bottom of a cat’s litter basket, and my brain was stuffed with thousands of shorted-out wires. Somewhere out there, birds were chirping, bees were humming, cows were giving milk to blissful farm girls, happy little dwarves were humming as they marched in lockstep on their way to work.
But that was far away, because here in my rank loft, on this beautiful morning in late April, I felt like a hundred and eighty-five pounds of bat guano.
“Rosen! Get the fuck outta bed!”
I shoved away the blanket and swung my legs over the side of the bed. My right foot knocked over a half-empty beer bottle as I sat up; I watched as it rolled across the bare wooden floor until it bounced off the kitchen table and came to rest by the door, leaving a small trail of stale beer in its wake. Somehow, that seemed to be the most fascinating thing I had ever seen: an elegant demonstration of Newtonian physics.
“Rosen!”
“Okay, all right,” I muttered. “Don’t wet yourself on my account.” My legs were still functional, at least to the degree that I was able to stand up without a pair of crutches. I found an old T-shirt on the floor and slipped it on, then stumbled across the room to the door, twisted back the dead bolt and opened it.
Earl Bailey, two hundred and sixty pounds of malice stuffed into six feet and two inches of ugliness, was the last person I wanted to see while suffering from a hangover. He stood outside my door, glowering at me like I was a rat the exterminators had forgotten to kill. Not that the exterminators ever visited this building since he had owned it.
“What’s wrong with you?” he snapped. “I’ve been banging on the door for five minutes.”
I stared back at him. “Sorry, but I was taking a long-distance call from the president. He wanted to know if I would come over today to help him fight for world peace, but I told him I needed to deal with you first.”
Pearl’s fleshy nose wrinkled with disgust as he took a step back from the door. “Your breath stinks. You been drinking this morning?”
“No, but I was drinking last night.” I reached down to pick up the beer bottle I had knocked over. “I think there’s a little left,” I said, swirling around the half-inch of warm beer remaining. “Here, want some?”
“Lemme in here,” he growled, pushing my hand aside.
I stood back as he marched into the loft. He stopped in the middle of the room, his fists on his broad hips as he took in the clothes and empty pizza boxes heaped on the floor, the dead plants hanging from the rafters, the half-full carafe of cold coffee on the hot plate, the disarray of papers and books on my desk next to the computer. “Man, this place smells like a dumpster.”
“C’mon, Pearl,” I murmured, “who did you think you were renting to, the pope?”
“No. I thought I was renting to a responsible adult.” He looked back over his shoulder at me. “You told me you were going out to Forest Park to find a story.”
“I did. Got one, too.”
“Huh.” He walked over to my desk to gaze down at the books and papers. “Morning paper says there was an ERA raid at the park last night,” he said as he bent down to shove some trash into an overturned wastebasket. “The Post claims they arrested a bunch of people who were trespassing at the Muny.”
“That’s an understatement if there ever was one,” I said. “Did it say anything about shootings?”
He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised slightly in surprise. “Nothing about shootings. Why, did you see any?”
I shook my head. “No, but I heard gunfire. Sorry, but I didn’t stick around to-”
“Didn’t stop to see, huh?” He set the can upright and stood erect, dusting off his hands on his jeans. “Why didn’t you?”
I gently rubbed the back of my sore neck with my hands. “Well, boss, you know what they say about someone shooting at you. It’s nature’s way of telling you it’s time to go home.”
“Bullshit. You’re a reporter. First you get the story, then you worry about letting your ass get shot off.”
“Easy for you to-”
“But you didn’t see anyone get hit, right?” I shook my head, and Bailey closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Then there weren’t any shootings,” he said softly. “Not unless we can produce any bodies.”
“Ah, c’mon, Earl!” I shouted. “I was there. I heard the gunshots, for cryin’ out-”
“But you didn’t see anyone actually get hit, did you?” He stared back at me. “Oh, I believe you, all right … and, yeah, I think you were actually there, not just holed up here drinking yourself stupid.”
He walked over to the bed, picked up the pair of mud-caked boots I had struggled out of last night, and dropped them back on the floor. At least I had some tangible proof that I hadn’t blown off the assignment. “But unless you can find me a corpse with an ERA bullet lodged in its chest, you know what the stadium will say.”
I nodded my head. Yeah, I knew what the official spokesmen for the Emergency Relief Agency would say, if and when questioned about gunshots heard during last night’s raid. The troopers had been fired upon by armed squatters and had been forced to protect themselves. That, or complete denial, were the usual responses.
This wasn’t the first time ERA grunts had opened fire at unarmed civilians in St. Louis, yet no one, from the press to the ACLU, had yet to make a successful case against ERA on charges of unnecessary use of deadly force. Life in my hometown was becoming reminiscent of a third-world banana republic; allegations were often made, but material evidence had a habit of disappearing. So did material witnesses …