Castle forgot to wake me that night, but my body woke itself, and I saw him. I never told him that I had seen him, but I did. I saw him like a vision, clinging to that single sheet of goldenrod, staring at it in the darkness with his big white eyes.
I don’t know if it was ten minutes after I got off the phone with Bridge or five hours, but when I came around out of it I was in the middle of the room with my hand clamped over my mouth, breathing hard and heavy through my nose.
Castle! Jesus Christ, what was I doing thinking about Castle? I had not thought about him, not the man or even the name, had not wondered about where he had ended up-not in years. In years.
But here I was, all of a sudden; I was just surrounded by those memories. Just swarmed, man, just absolutely fucking fly-bit, like I was right back there, hip deep in that stinking fucking pile. When usually I was able never to think of it at all. When I wasn’t thinking on my cases, turning over the pages of files, I kept myself busy with enjoying the world, with savoring freedom, breakfast buffets and hotel sheets and birdsong and my MJ tapes in the Altima. Even though I knew they were down there in me, all those scenes and feelings, beating just behind my heartbeats, rushing through my veins behind my blood. Like all I had to do was get cut and they’d come oozing out, a thick pulp of bad memories.
I worked so hard to keep everything inside, but now here I was. A poor boy at the Crossroads Hotel, pacing the thin flowered carpeting, feeling the squish of old blood beneath my feet, feeling blisters on my toes burning in my boots.
I don’t know when or how I fell asleep. I must have at some point, but I know I lay awake in my bed a long hour, many long hours, just working that shit out of my system.
10.
“Mr. Dirkson? You better get up. Come on and wake up now.”
I opened my eyes, and there he was, legs kicked up on the rickety hotel desk, eyes bright with laughter. The cop from the restaurant. The black one. Car number 101097.
He saw that I was up and he raised his eyebrows and his smile widened, crocodile wide. “You’re mumbling in your sleep there, man,” he said. “You having some bad dreams?”
I found Mr. Dirkson’s voice before I opened my mouth: timid fellow, nervous, waking up confused from a restless slumber. “Oh, my goodness,” he said. I said. Fumbled for the spectacles that he wore, which I’d kept folded by the bedside clock. “Officer? What-what seems to be the problem?”
The cop chuckled and swung his legs off the desk, planted his sturdy brown patrolman’s shoes on the carpet. He palmed his chin and leaned forward. I slipped the glasses onto my nose and pushed them up, my eyes darting from his eyes down to his belt, to the service pistol snug against his hip. A Glock. A lot of major metro forces, they carry Glocks.
His skin was moderate chestnut, sunflower highlights, number 145. When my eyes found his face again, he was smiling, but his eyes were no longer laughing.
“Now, Mr. Dirkson,” he said calmly. “We need to have us a little talk, don’t we?”
I thought, Goddamn it all to hell, but what I said was, “Goodness gracious.” In Mr. Dirkson’s mouse voice, eyes widening with surprise. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“Funny thing about that question,” said the cop. “Any time anybody ask if they in some kind of trouble, they know that they are. And they usually know what kinda trouble they in, too.”
He laughed; I could tell from his face that the man liked to laugh. He was a handsome devil, this grinning young cop. Nice nut-brown skin and nice white teeth, nice big, expressive eyes, nice neat Afro, short and sharp. He sat tipped back on the chair, fingers laced behind his head, amused as all heck, waiting for me to say something. I wondered how far he had gotten. Did he know simply that I was not Jim Dirkson and that I had no wife? Or had he gotten as far as Mr. Bridge? As far as Gaithersburg, Maryland? Had he cracked the trunk of the Nissan, broken into the double-locked false bottom, and found the bag of fake IDs and hundred-dollar bills?
I wondered, too, if there was a silencer on the Glock. That wasn’t standard equipment for a policeman’s gun, but there are plenty of cops who put ’em on.
Car number 101097 stood up and scratched the back of his neck, advanced casually toward me across the room. On the notepad on the bedside table was a ballpoint pen, and there was a way to drive it through a man’s trachea, but he would drop me first with the Glock. He had reflexes. I could see it in his movements, graceful and self-controlled, like a ballplayer.
“I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m uh…well, I’m a bit confused. What is it that I can do for you?”
I half rose out of the bed, and he motioned with two hands, palms down, stay where you are. He sat right next to me.
“You had supper a couple nights ago with Father Patrick Barton, the parish priest of Saint Catherine’s Church on Meridian Street.”
He said this as a grand announcement, like I was supposed to be amazed already by how much he knew, and so I took it that way, letting my mouth drop open.
“You ate down at the Fountain.” He winked. “I do believe you had the fish.”
“Oh, my goodness,” I said. “How did you-”
“I was there, brother.” He grinned, his face practically glowing with satisfaction. “Love that place.” He patted his stomach. “Love it a little too much, I think. Anyway, I caught the basic gist of your conversation, know what I’m saying?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are you-are you watching Father Barton?” Then I furrowed my brow and leaned in, catching a hunch, trusting a feeling. “Are you with Father Barton?”
“You got it.” The grin widened. “Fact, you might say I’m more with Barton than Barton is.”
My racing heart slowed a little. Poor old Jim Dirkson remained flummoxed and uncertain, licking his lips and adjusting his glasses, but inside I was performing a series of recalibrations. Thinking that what was emerging here might, in fact, be a positive development.
“So you’re like a, a what-a bodyguard?”
“Bodyguard? Shit.” The cop made a sour face. “Let’s say I keep an eye on the man, okay? Keep the shepherd from coming into any harm while he’s doing the work of the Lord.”
“Wait, wait.” I snapped my fingers, scratched my chin, put up a little playlet called Man Remembering Something. “There was another officer…”
“White man? Big thick neck? That’s Officer Morris. He’s my shift partner sometimes. We have dinner most nights, so I take him along when I’m babysitting, ’cause he’s a simple man. If I begged off, he might get his feelings hurt. Start asking questions.”
“So he doesn’t know that you’re…you’re…?” I left it there, wide-eyed and tentative.
“That I’m moonlighting with a flight crew? Running peebs up out of the Hard Four? Shit.” This time he slow-danced with the word, pulling the vowel sound out like taffy: Shiiiiiiit. “Officer Morris wouldn’t know he was on fire ’less a pretty girl told him so.”
“So-so, I’m sorry, Officer,” I said and shrugged meekly. “I don’t understand.”
This cop got up suddenly from the bed and stared down at me. The grin shut down to a tight line, the eyes stopped twinkling. “I heard your whole pitch, man, and I know that the padre shot you down. ‘You got the wrong man, nuthin’ I can do for you,’ the whole dog and pony. And he’s just being cautious, is all, because that’s how we do. Especially because…” He hunched forward and raised his brows. “Especially because we just did one.”