Around eleven-thirty a couple of kids came in and started playing nothing but country and western on the jukebox. I can usually stomach that as well as anything else, but for some reason or other it wasn't what I wanted to hear just then. I settled my tab and went around the corner to Armstrong's, where Don had the radio set to WNCN. They were playing Mozart, and the crowd was so thin you could actually hear the music.
"They sold the station," Don said. "The new owners are switching to a pop-rock format. Another rock station is just what the city needs."
"Things always deteriorate."
"I can't argue the point. There's a protest movement to force them to continue a classical music policy. I don't suppose it'll do any good, do you?"
I shook my head. "Nothing ever does any good."
"Well, you're in a beautiful mood tonight. I'm glad you decided to spread sweetness and light here instead of staying cooped up in your room."
I poured bourbon into my coffee and gave it a stir. I was in a foul mood and I couldn't figure out exactly why. It is bad enough when you know what it is that is bothering you. When the demons plaguing you are invisible, it is that much more difficult to contend with them.
IT was a strange dream.
I don't dream much. Alcohol has this effect of making you sleep at a deeper level, below the plane on which dreams occur. I am told that DTs represent the psyche's insistence upon having its chance to dream; unable to dream while asleep, one has one's dreams upon awakening. But I haven't had DTs yet and am grateful for my generally dreamless sleep. There was a time when this, in and of itself, was a sufficient argument for drinking.
But that night I dreamed, and the dream struck me as strange. She was in it. Portia, with her size and her striking beauty and her deep voice and her good English accent. And we were sitting and talking, she and I, but not in her apartment. We were in a police station. I don't know what precinct it might have been but remember that I felt at home there, so perhaps it was a place where I had been stationed once. There were uniformed cops walking around, and citizens filing complaints, and all of the extras playing the same roles in my dream that they play in similar scenes in cops-and-robbers movies.
And we were in the midst of all this, Portia and I, and we were naked. We were going to make love, but we had to establish something first through conversation. I don't recall what it was that had to be established, but our conversation went on and on, getting ever more abstract, and we got no closer to the bedroom, and then the telephone rang and Portia reached out and answered it in the voice of her answering machine.
Except that it went on ringing.
My phone, of course. I had incorporated its ring into my dream. If it hadn't awakened me with its ringing I'm sure I would ultimately have forgotten the dream entirely. Instead I shook myself awake while shaking off the vestiges of the dream. I fumbled for the phone and got the receiver to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Matt, I'm sorry as hell if I woke you. I- "
"Who is this?"
"Jerry. Jerry Broadfield."
I usually put my watch on the bedside table when I turn in. I groped around for it now but couldn't find it. I said, "Broadfield?"
"I guess you were sleeping. Look, Matt- "
"What time is it?"
"A few minutes after six. I just- "
"Christ!"
"Matt, are you awake?"
"Yeah, damn it, I'm awake. Christ. I said call me, but I didn't say call me in the middle of the night."
"Look, it's an emergency. Will you just let me talk?" For the first time I was aware of the band of tension in his voice. It must have been there all along, but I hadn't noticed it before. "I'm sorry I woke you," he was saying, "but I finally got a chance to make a phone call and I don't know how long they'll let me stay on. Just let me talk for a minute."
"Where the hell are you?"
"Men's House of Detention."
"The Tombs?"
"That's right, the Tombs." He was talking quickly now, as if to get it all out before I could interrupt again. "They were waiting for me. At the apartment. Barrow Street, they were waiting for me. I got back there about two-thirty and they were waiting for me and this is the first chance I've had to get to a phone. As soon as I finish with you I'm calling a lawyer. But I'm going to need more than a lawyer, Matt. They got the deck stacked too good for anybody to straighten things out in front of a jury. They got me by the balls."
"What are you talking about?"
"Portia."
"What about her?"
"Somebody killed her last night. Strangled her or something, dumped her in my apartment, then tipped the cops. I don't know all the details. They booked me for it. Matt, I didn't do it."
I didn't say anything.
His voice rose, verging on hysteria. "I didn't do it. Why would I kill the cunt? And leave her in my apartment? It doesn't make any sense, Matt, but it doesn't have to make any sense because the whole fucking thing is a frame and they can make it stick. Matt, they're gonna make it stick!"
"Easy, Broadfield."
Silence. I pictured him gritting his teeth, forcing his emotions back under control like an animal trainer cracking his whip at a cageful of lions and tigers. "Right," he said, the voice crisp again. "I'm exhausted and it's starting to get to me. Matt, I'm going to need help on this one. From you, Matt. I can pay you whatever you ask."
I told him to hang on for a minute. I had been asleep for maybe three hours and I was finally becoming awake enough to realize just how rotten I felt. I put the phone down and went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I was careful not to look in the mirror because I had a fair idea what the face that glowered back at me might look like. There was about an inch of bourbon left in the quart on my dresser. I took a slug of it straight from the bottle, shuddered, sat down on the bed again and picked up the phone.
I asked him if he'd been booked.
"Just now. For homicide. Once they booked me they couldn't keep me away from a phone any longer. You know what they did? They informed me of my rights when they arrested me. That whole speech, Miranda-Escobedo, how many times do you figure I read out that goddam little set piece to some fucking crook? And they had to read it out to me word for word."
"You've got a lawyer to call?"