The old man laughed. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an orange prescription tube. Mickey looked at it, confused.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Antabuse,” Jack said. “My little blue pill.”
“I don’t get it,” Mickey said. “What’s that, for depression or something?”
“No, think of it as insurance. You’re supposed to take one of these babies once a day. The chemicals in this tiny pill, when mixed with alcohol, make you feel like Keith
Richards after a six-month bender. Kind of the negative reinforcement equivalent for alcoholics of sticking your finger in an electrical socket.”
“So, what, you drink and you get sick?”
“So sick you’ll never want to drink again.”
“Does it work?”
Jack shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
“I thought you said you took a pill once a day.”
“You’re supposed to,” Jack said, “but I haven’t taken a single pill.”
“Well, why the hell not?”
Jack stood up. He tugged a crumpled twenty from his wallet, flattened it out and put it on the table. He then took the pill bottle and placed it on top of the money.
“Because when I decide to do something, whether it’s track down a story, get a source to open up, or quit drinking,” Jack said, “I don’t need a damn pill to motivate me.
See you around, Mickey.”
Jack walked outside. He stood outside the bar for a moment, looked up and down the street. Some days he could barely recognize this city. Since his return he’d become more sensitive to what it used to be. Keenly aware of what it was not anymore and never would be again.
Even his old habits like drinking could not be enjoyed, replaced by something artificial that was meant to fill the void. If not for Henry, if not for the injection of new blood into his old, tired veins, Jack O’Donnell knew there was a good chance his disease would have been the end of him.
Tomorrow was a new day, and would hopefully bring new leads. He was proud of Henry for finding out information on Brett Kaiser’s possible killer. That the doorman had seen this blond man coming and going at odd hours, while Kaiser’s wife left the apartment, left him no doubt that this man held the key to many, many questions.
Tomorrow they would hopefully answer those, but he also could be certain that new questions would be asked.
The key to reporting was answering the questions faster than new ones could be asked, catching up with the trail of lies while it was still warm. Give any suspect enough lead time, they would cover their tracks sufficiently, prolonging the investigating or snuffing it out altogether.
Tomorrow they’d be back on the trail. Jack felt invigorated, for the first time in years knowing he was working on something important, that his job and reputation were no longer being held hostage by the bottle.
At some point they would unravel the whole spool of thread. At some point, Jack would restore his damaged reputation.
And at some point, Jack would need to know why
Henry Parker was lying to him.
23
Thursday
“So tell me about this Mr. Joshua.”
Curt Sheffield held a pad of paper in his hands and a small pen. The pen hovered above the pad as he waited for me to speak.
We were sitting on a bench next to each other in Madison Square Park. It was early morning, just after seven o’clock. The day was crisp and cool, and the park was crowded with couples walking their dogs and sipping coffee. I wasn’t surprised to see a line already beginning to form outside the world-famous Shake Shack. Possibly the best burgers in the city, but the kind of meal your intestines could only handle once or twice a year.
Before Curt had taken out his writing utensils, there had been a breakfast burrito that disappeared down his throat in about 1.2 seconds. His breath smelled like fried grease, but that’s not the kind of thing you tell someone you’re approaching for help. Especially when they’re armed.
“Mr. Joshua?” I said.
“Mr. Joshua? You know, from Lethal Weapon? Played by crazy-ass Gary Busey, who got his blond ass handed to him by the man from down under at the end?”
“Oh right,” I said. “I kind of stopped watching Mel
Gibson movies after the whole sugartits thing.”
“You know it’s weird. Who would have thought that between Gary Busey and Mel Gibson that Busey would turn out to be the less crazy dude.”
“So what’s with the Joshua reference?”
“Well, you said this dude you’re looking for is blond,
Mr. Joshua was blond, thought I’d give him a nickname since you don’t know who the hell he is.”
“That’s why I’m coming to you. So we can eventually call him by his real name.”
“Gotcha. One more anonymous baddie, coming up.
Like we don’t have enough to worry about right now.”
Curt spoke these words with a little more bite than I was used to. He wasn’t above bitching about his job, but there was a current underneath this that caught my attention.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked.
“Yeah, just, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
Curt shifted, blew into his hands and rubbed them together. “Department has been hit hard lately. The city’s budget’s been slashed beyond belief so the mayor could make his budget targets, and we’re taking it in the ass just like everyone else.”
“In what way?”
“Well, frankly, the city has no money.”
“Yeah, I remember the governor’s press conference where he made it seem like we were some sort of third world country outpost.”
“You wouldn’t think it, you know? That a city where they can charge fifteen bucks for a martini would go broke?”
“Tourists,” I said. “The dollar is so weak that people from pretty much all over the world can come here and buy anything basically half off. They pay it because they can, and we get stuck with the inflated prices because we have no choice.”
“The rich get richer and…you know how the rest goes,” Curt said. “But right now there are parts of the city with less cops. And less cops means less supervision, means the bad guys get emboldened.”
“But the NYPD?” I said, confused. “Isn’t that one area they don’t have a choice but to keep fully loaded?”
“They’re trying,” Curt said. “Louis Carruthers, the
Chief of Department, said the brass is looking into more funding, but it might take a little while. At the state and city level right now, they have less money than Michael
Jackson. A lack of money means the city is cutting back on pretty much everything that the government picks up the tab on. Overtime, patrol routes, even new recruits.
Starting pay for a first-year police officer is just below your average hot dog vendor.”
“Which is just above that of a journalist,” I said with a smile.
“Yeah, at least you get those fancy suit jackets with elbow pads.”
“I’ve never heard anybody claim to be jealous over those.”
“You can never guess where fashion trends go. If tomorrow Kanye shows up with one of those tweed jackets, five million kids will show up at Diesel begging for them. So what do you got for me on this guy besides hair color?” Curt said.
“First off, you need to know that anything you do could come back and bite you in the ass.”
“Isn’t that why we’re friends?” Curt said. “I don’t have enough problems at work or at home, so I come to you to satisfy my daily craving for emotional and physical trauma.”
“Your breath is terrible,” I said.
“Point proven,” Curt said.
“Seriously. It smells like you ate a hot dog, then burped up that hot dog, then fried the burped-up hot dog, ate it, and burped it up again.”
Curt stared at me. “I think my stomach just threw up inside of itself.”
“Then my job here is done.”
“You’re a laugh riot. Go on. Tell me what you know about this dude.”
“I was outside of Brett Kaiser’s building right before it turned into something out of Dante’s Inferno. The doorman told me a guy with blond hair came and went at freaky hours.”