For another, he had a pistol strapped to his hip.
He came up to the bar, his eyes focused on Theresa, not me. He introduced himself as Detective Sean Williams.
“Are you Theresa Matthews?” he said.
She nodded, her eyes confused.
“And your brother is Glen Matthews?”
She nodded again, her eyes changing from confused to scared.
“I regret to inform you that your brother has been murdered.”
I closed the bar, told all the remaining customers that their tabs were on the house tonight, and then Theresa sat down with Williams at the same table where she and I shared the joint a few hours ago. She was in shock. She hadn’t cried yet. She had a dazed look on her face, a little like she was stoned but without the pretty smile that usually accompanied her highs.
Theresa asked if I could sit with them, and when I explained that Fender—i.e., Glen—was my college roommate and a longtime friend, Williams agreed.
He asked her questions about when she’d last seen Fender, if she was aware that he was a drug dealer. I knew which answers were lies and which were the truth.
When he came to me, I told him that I’d seen Fender earlier that day, that we’d each had a beer. I figured my fingerprints would be all over the place: the bottle, the bathroom faucet.
“What was the nature of your visit?” Williams asked.
“Just visiting,” I said. “We’re friends.”
“And were you aware that your friend was one of the biggest drug dealers in the city?” he said.
“We didn’t talk about that stuff,” I said.
“What kind of stuff did you talk about?” he said.
“The girls we slept with in college,” I said. “The time we stole a ceramic cow head from a fraternity party. Classes we failed. Stuff we did when we were eighteen and drunk and stupid.”
This was all true. Fender and I had very little in common these days. I sold dope, and he sold it to me—and I gave his kid sister a job when she needed one—but that was pretty much it. Otherwise, we lived worlds apart. We talked about old times—remember that one time?—and that was usually it. Discussing his latest boutique drug purchase was out of the ordinary for us.
“Did he mention a drug called Y?” Williams asked.
“Look,” I said, “Theresa and I don’t know anything about what Fender did. We don’t know what the hell is going on. What can you tell us?”
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said bureaucratically.
“Cut the shit,” I said. “Either you tell us what happened or we won’t say another word until we get a lawyer.”
Williams took a deep breath. He turned to Theresa.
“Your brother’s throat was slashed,” he said.
She gasped, bringing her hands to her face.
“But he was tortured first.”
She started sobbing. Then she rose from the table and ran into the back room.
Williams turned his stare to me.
“His apartment was ransacked. His safe was emptied. His guitars smashed.”
For some reason, that last bit hurt me the most. Fender loved those fucking guitars.
After the cop gave me his card and left, I found Theresa sitting in the cooler, her arms wrapped around her, covered in goose bumps. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, which had started to crystallize in the cold.
“I came in here because I wanted to feel some kind of pain besides what’s inside of me,” she said, her lips quivering, her teeth beginning to chatter.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll walk you home.”
I didn’t bother to put out rat poison that night. Didn’t balance the books. Didn’t even take the tips out of the tip jar. I just grabbed my knapsack and locked the door.
On our walk, the warm summer air erased the goose bumps on Theresa’s arms.
“What’s this Y he was talking about?” Theresa asked.
“Some new drug,” I said. “Your brother said it was super-rare.”
“Do you think they killed him for it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t ask her who she meant by “they.”
She lived in a small one-bedroom. There wasn’t much to it. A thrift-store futon that she used for a bed and a couch. An old box TV. She had some movie posters on her walls from back when she used to work at a theater.
Back in her heavy drug days.
Fender had introduced her to the hard stuff when she was a teenager, then paid for rehab when she was out of control. He asked me to hire her when she was out, told me to keep her away from anything stronger than pot. Since I didn’t deal in chemicals—and because I’d been through something similar to her, back in my own dark days—he thought I was the right person for the job.
She sat down on her futon and pulled her legs up underneath her. She hugged herself like she had in the cooler even though her apartment was stuffy.
“Do you have anything stronger than pot?” she asked.
“No.”
“Let’s smoke a bowl then.”
I opened up my backpack to get the new brick that Fender had sold me.
The bag of Y was inside.
I didn’t tell Theresa the Y was there. I pretended like everything was normal. I pulled out a pinch of dope, packed her pipe, and passed it to her.
I took a couple hits, but that was just to give her the impression she wasn’t smoking alone. My mind was reeling, reliving my last conversation with Fender.
Had he acted unusual in any way? Had he seemed scared?
No, he seemed perfectly normal. Yet when I went to take a piss, he slipped the Y into my backpack. It must have been an impulse move. He wouldn’t have known I was going to pee before I left.
Still, he must have feared that someone would come looking for the stuff. I wondered if they’d tortured him for the combination to the safe, then killed him, only to find out that the safe didn’t have what they were looking for. Or did they know the combination and torture him afterward when they didn’t find what they were looking for?
They probably smashed every guitar looking for a secret hiding spot.
Theresa lay out on the futon and put her feet in my lap. I rubbed them. She had delicate feet, perfectly smooth, her nails painted an ugly purple color.
She groaned, “God, that feels good.”
“I need to get going,” I told her.
“No,” she said. “Stay. I’m afraid of what I might do if I’m alone.”
I was afraid of what I might do if I stayed. But I told her I would.
She sat up onto her knees and put one hand on my shoulder.
“This dope isn’t strong enough,” she said. “I need something else.”
I stared at her, knowing what she was going to ask for.
“Make love to me, Charlie. I know you want to. The only thing stopping you was my brother.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” I said.
She put her hand to my crotch, where my cock was hardening like quick-drying concrete.
“It feels right to me,” she said.
We never bothered to fold the futon out. We spent the night curled together, cramped on the couch cushion. No sheets or blankets. Just our skin, clammy in the humid air. We talked for a long time. I knew she needed to be distracted, so I filled the silence with talk about my life and how I didn’t know how I’d ended up where I was.
I should have been thankful, I guessed, that I kicked the coke that once brought me so close to ruin. But the cost was a partnership with the Chechen mob—a lifetime contract unless I could think of a way out.
“Why didn’t you ask my brother for the money?” Theresa asked.
“Pride,” I said. “Fender and I were friends back when we were nobodies. He was a somebody and I was back on track to becoming a bigger nobody than ever. Besides, Fender touched more drugs in one day than most people do in a lifetime, but he’s never really been hooked on anything. The willpower that son of a bitch had. I was embarrassed to admit I needed help.”