In the Midst of Death

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?"

"Yeah. Guy who's supposed to be good, but there's no way he can do it all."

"Well, I don't know what I can do for you."

"Can you come down here? Not now, I can't see anybody right now. Hang on a minute." He must have turned away from the phone, but I could hear him asking someone when he could have visitors. "Ten o'clock," he told me. "Could you get here between ten and noon?"

"I suppose so."

"I got a lot of things to tell you, Matt, but I can't do it over the phone."

I told him I'd see him sometime after ten. I cradled the phone and tapped the bourbon bottle for another small taste. My head ached dully and I suspected that bourbon was probably not the best thing in the world for it, but I couldn't think of anything better. I got back into bed and pulled the blankets over me. I needed sleep and knew I wasn't going to get any, but at least I could stay horizontal for another hour or two and get a little rest.

Then I remembered the dream I'd been yanked out of by his call. I remembered it, got a clean, vivid flash of it, and started to shake.

Chapter 3

It had started two days earlier, on a crisply cold Tuesday afternoon. I was getting the day started at Armstrong's, doing my usual balancing act with coffee and bourbon, coffee to speed things up and bourbon to slow them down. I was reading the Post and I was sufficiently involved in what I was reading so that I didn't even notice when he pulled back the chair opposite mine and dropped into it. Then he cleared his throat and I looked up at him.

He was a little guy with a lot of curly black hair. His cheeks were sunken, his forehead very prominent. He wore a goatee but kept his upper lip clean shaven. His eyes, magnified by thick glasses, were dark brown and highly animated.

He said, "Busy, Matt?"

"Not really."

"I wanted to talk to you for a minute."

"Sure."

I knew him, but not terribly well. His name was Douglas Fuhrmann and he was a regular at Armstrong's. He didn't drink a hell of a lot, but he was apt to drop in four or five times a week, sometimes with a girlfriend, sometimes on his own. He'd generally nurse a beer and talk for a while about sports or politics or whatever conversational topic was on the agenda. He was a writer, as I understood it, although I didn't recall having heard him discuss his work. But he evidently did well enough so that he didn't have to hold a job.

I asked what was on his mind.

"A fellow I know wants to see you, Matt."

"Oh?"

"I think he'd like to hire you."

"Bring him around."

"That's not possible."

"Oh?"

He started to say something, then stopped because Trina was on her way to find out what he wanted to drink. He ordered a beer and we sat there awkwardly while she went for the beer, brought it, and went away again.

Then he said, "It's complicated. He can't be seen in public. He's, well, hiding out."

"Who is he?"

"This is confidential." I gave him a look. "Well, all right. If that's today's Post, maybe you read about him. You would have read about him anyway, he's been all over the papers the past few weeks."

"What's his name?"

"Jerry Broadfield."

"Is that right?"

"He's very hot right now," Fuhrmann said. "Ever since the English girl filed charges against him he's been hiding out. But he can't hide forever."

"Where's he hiding?"

"An apartment he has. He wants you to see him there."

"Where is it?"

"The Village."

I picked up my cup of coffee and looked into it as if it was going to tell me something. "Why me?" I said. "What does he think I can do for him? I don't get it."

"He wants me to take you there," Fuhrmann said. "There's some money in it for you, Matt. How about it?"

WE took a cab down Ninth Avenue and wound up on Barrow Street near Bedford. I let Fuhrmann pay for the cab. We went into the vestibule of a five-story walkup. More than half the doorbells lacked identifying labels. Either the building was being vacated prefatory to demolition or Broadfield's fellow tenants shared his desire for anonymity. Fuhrmann rang one of the unlabeled bells, pushed the button three times, waited, pushed it once, then pushed it three times again.

"It's a code," he said.

"One if by land and two if by sea."

"Huh?"

"Forget it."

There was a buzz and he shoved the door open. "You go on up," he said. "The D apartment on the third floor."

"You're not coming?"

"He wants to see you alone."

I was halfway up one flight before it occurred to me that this was a cute way to set me up for something. Fuhrmann had taken himself out of the picture, and there was no way of knowing what I'd find in apartment 3D. But there was also no one I could think of with a particularly good reason for wanting to do me substantial harm. I stopped halfway up the stairs to think it over, my curiosity fighting a successful battle against my more sensible desire to turn around and go home and stay out of it. I walked on up to the third floor and knocked three-one-three on the appropriate door. It opened almost before I'd finished knocking.