Since the Layoffs (10 page)

“Later, dude,” I tell him.

BANG
.

A fountain of blood spurts from his chest. He sighs heavily. Then there is another spurt, much smaller this time. Then a third, smaller still, then some blood pooling in the sheets. He sighs again. He’s dead. One shot, just like I promised.

There’s some smoke in the room, but not as much as I remember from before. Maybe it’s the gun, or maybe I’m just getting used to it. The noise with this gun was almost as bad, though, and my ears ring. No more shooting people without a silencer, I promise myself. Absolutely, must, get a silencer. Note to self: Try
Soldier of Fortune
Magazine. I’m sure they sell them there, isn’t that what Gardocki suggested?

Okay, time to go break and steal stuff.

I wander around, dump out a few drawers, looking for something valuable to steal. There’s an old candlestick holder in a pewter stand. No self-respecting burglar would bring that to a pawn shop. The television looks like the last show it picked up clearly was
Bonanza,
back when it was on prime time. Besides, it’s one of those three hundred pound affairs from the ’70s when TVs were furniture. I dig around some more. Some old towels, a busted coffee maker. Shit, this guy isn’t exactly Howard Hughes. I figure if there was anything valuable, from what I know of human nature, the nurse probably helped herself to it some time back. I smash the lock on the door and kick some stuff around for a while, then decide I’ve had enough of this and slide the window open to leave …

BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP!

Goddamn, what a racket! My first thought is that the window is alarmed, but I remember I came in this way. What kind of alarm only goes off when you’re leaving? Then I notice it appears to be coming from the wall beside the bed. It’s one of his life support systems. Just a tad late. I look around to see how to turn the damned thing off.

BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP!

Jesus, this’ll bring cops, it’s so damned loud. Is the nurse deaf? Where’s the setting for this thing? I see it on the far wall, and there are more controls there than a 747’s flight panel. By the time I figure it out there’ll be a SWAT team in the lobby. I pick up the pewter candle holder and hurl it at the thing which appears to be making the noise. It ricochets off the wall and hits poor Jason in the head.

“Fuck!” I scream.

The plug is under the bed, but I can’t get under the bed, there isn’t room, and …

BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP!

… there’s no way I’m getting
on
the bed because it’s soaked in blood, and AIDS blood at that. I can’t leave the apartment with this noise going off. Shit.

There’s a breaker panel on the far wall. I run over, pull it open and slam shut every breaker.

BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP! Beee …

Thank God. Silence fills the room. I can hear my own panicked breathing. I listen for sounds in the hallway. Nothing.

I walk over to the window, where noises from the street are filtering up. Trucks are going by, an air horn goes off. In the distance, I can hear a train clattering along tracks, from above there is the roar of a jet approaching La Guardia. Life goes on in the big city. No one has even noticed this little disturbance.

I hop out the window, climb down the fire escape, and in a few seconds I am back out in the street, my heart still pounding. I walk away, taking care to walk normally, in a way no one will notice. I see a dumpster, look around quickly, and drop the gun in it.

I find myself suddenly exhausted by all this crap, the need to walk normally, to not be noticed, the obsession with evidence. This killing people, it’s a job, and I need a day off. Screw sightseeing. I call a cab and head to the airport, wishing I was already at Tulley’s.

Ten hours later, I am.

There is actually a crowd here, because Tony Wolek, God bless him, has arranged a darts league, and tonight is the night of the big championship. With shit falling apart everywhere, Tony has appointed himself the morale officer of the town. Now he organizes things that he thinks will keep people’s spirits up. He encouraged some talentless teenagers to start a band and play on Friday nights. He hosted a costume party with a best-costume contest for Halloween. All these events have done fairly well, considering, and as I get progressively drunker at the bar, I find myself feeling some love for the guy, for the decent way he never stops trying. Then I see him, gray-faced, as he hands a beer to an underage kid and I think again that he doesn’t have long to live, another battle casualty of the layoffs.

I get a whiff of perfume, and look around to see a woman with thick black hair leaning up against the bar, waiting to get Tony’s attention. I remember her from the factory secretarial pool, remember on several mornings admiring her legs and ass while walking behind her up the factory drive, at 6:55 a.m., back when we had jobs. The beer compels me to tell her this fascinating bit of information.

“I remember you,” I say, and stop before I get to the ass and legs part.

She looks around at me, studies me for a second without expression. I thought she was pretty then, but now after months of womanlessness, I think she is positively beautiful. I wonder if it’s possible for a fairly drunk guy watching ESPN highlights to make a positive impression. I doubt it. She keeps looking at me but doesn’t smile.

“Yeah,” she says. “From the factory.”

Her voice is smoky and a little rough, which turns me on. Then, if it was completely different, say high-pitched and squeaky, that would turn me on, too. Pretty much everything about her turns me on. It also turns me on that she takes a long swig of her beer and keeps looking at me, as if she is now expecting the great pick-up line that will sweep her off her feet.

“Nice seeing you again,” I say. Brilliant. Okay, I’m out of practice.

“You too.” She doesn’t leave. I’m sure there is at least one man over at the darts game waiting for her to return, but she doesn’t seem in any particular hurry. And she’s only bought a beer for herself. And she’s still looking at me. I’m being given a chance. But my mind’s still a blank. This whole thing kind of came out of nowhere. I wasn’t ready, I want to start over, I need to do a little mental preparation.

She looks at me. I look back. Finally she pushes away from the bar and quickly says, “Seeya” and is gone. My chance is over. I blew it. I try to catch a glimpse of her fine ass as she disappears into the crowd, hoping she’ll turn around and give me a knowing, over-the-shoulder glance, but she is gone.

I want to bang my head on the bar. I have a sinking feeling, sure that everyone else in the room must have noticed my humiliating idiocy. I look around. Everyone is still doing what they were doing. The place is exactly the same. Only I have changed.

“How was New York?” It’s Ken Gardocki, calling me from a pay phone at 8 in the morning.

“Busy town. Full of people,” I tell him. As usual, he has woken me from a deep sleep.

“How’d everything go?”

I realize that this isn’t a social call. “Oh, fine. Everything went fine.”

“According to plan?”

“According to plan.”

“I’ve got something else for you.”

“Jesus.” I hadn’t expected to be put to work again so quickly. Or even ever. At least one major marketplace around here is booming. I’ve gotten in on the ground floor at just the right time, as the business analysts say. “Already?”

“This one’s kind of a rush job,” Ken says.

“No problem.”

“Come round the bar tonight.”

“See you there.”

“I’ll send Karl.”

“Good. I’ve missed him.”

I get up, stretch, look out the window at the snowy back yard, the dying tree and the rusted tool shed, and realize that in my sock drawer I now have almost three thousand dollars, and Ken Gardocki owes me five thousand more, which he’s probably going to give me tonight. I am no longer poor.

But the mind-set of poverty sticks around longer than the poverty itself. Therefore, I still find myself planning to go down to the convenience store and ask Tommy for cigarettes, even though I could buy a truckload of them. I still have a moment of stress when I think that my little old car is running low on gas and needs new tires. I could buy a much better car just with what I have in the sock drawer, I know, but the stress is still there.

I know, now, how quickly it can disappear, all of it. Not just the money, but the life, the stability. None of it is real. The poor know this. That is why they so rarely invest, or do anything with money which will net them more money. Investing in the future is a luxury of the rich. The poor just look for ways to make the present bearable. Money can provide moments of pleasant reality, be what they may. It’s why money never moves into different hands. Ways to blow all the cash in the drawer go through my mind, as I imagine myself across a table from last night’s mystery girl at the bar, in a fine restaurant, encouraging her to order the most expensive bottle of wine. Then I imagine a giant bag of coke for me and Tommy and a few other guys, a night out, some high-priced call girls …

I start thinking about that. Hmmm. I lie back in bed and wonder how much a night with two high-priced call girls goes for, anyway. Are there any left in this town? Probably not. I’m sure they left with the money. Probably the day the factory closed. I wonder if that’s a leading economic indicator that Wall Street minds have already thought of, the migration of high end pros. Maybe there’s some anthropologist somewhere who tags them and follows their movements on a giant map so they can find out where the money is, the best place to open restaurants and car dealerships. It sure ain’t here.

Whatever. No call girls for me. I’m going to find out if Tommy knows anything about the secretary with the raspy voice.

“How’re things, man?” I shake Tommy’s hand exuberantly as I step behind the counter down at the convenience store. He looks like the Tommy I remember, now Brecht is gone. He has a spring in his step and a ready smile.

“The cops were round here. They wanted to talk to you,” he tells me.

“To me? Why? They think I killed the fucker?” I laugh at the absurdity of the idea, but Tommy doesn’t laugh with me.

“Dude, I think they do.”

“They think I killed Brecht?” I am going a little pale, but I think even an innocent man would get nervous about the idea of being suspected of murder by the police, so I don’t try to act otherwise.

“They said that Brecht sent an e-mail to the company headquarters asking someone, a private investigator or something, to do a background check on you.”

“On me? Why?”

“I don’t know. It was his last e-mail. You’d better go down and talk to them.”

I act like this news has stunned me. It has. Little Fucker Brecht was looking for a reason to fire me, wanted to turn up some drug history. I have no police record. He would have fired me anyway, though. I know that now that I’ve read his files, but he was looking for something specific. Shit. Hadn’t thought of that. Anyway, I suppose I’d better go down to the station.

“Hey, when’s my next shift? I still work here, right?”

“Of course, man. Come in tomorrow at seven o’clock.”

“See you then,” and I add a joke. “If I’m not in jail for murder.”

Tommy doesn’t laugh.

Fuck.

I’m driving over to the police station, thinking, the very idea of being a suspect for anything has never even really occurred to me. I haven’t practiced answers in front of a mirror because I didn’t imagine anyone would be able to put pieces together to come up with anything. I imagined the police department would be in the same disarray as everything else, underfunded, indifferent. Hospitals were closing, restaurants were closing, even discount retailers were shutting their doors. Why were the police stations staying open? But here they were. The need to punish the local populace for their misdeeds is obviously more important than the need to heal, feed and clothe them.

But now I’m going to have to practice answers. I drive slowly. Where have I been? New York. No point lying about that, it’s on flight information. Why did I go there? To sightsee? How many jobless, broke men fly across the country to go sightseeing? Bad answer. To visit my sick aunt? I’ll need a sick aunt if they check, some hospital records, something. I have to go to the library, get a New York phone book and look up Skowrans, claim one of them is a cousin or something. How about for a job interview? Then they’ll ask which firm. Aaaaargh. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

I get to the police station, and notice how nice the building is. The parking lot has just been paved. Every cent of government funds is going to crime fighting, it seems. The
NYPD Blue
sets which I’ve become accustomed to seeing on television, with their dirty unpainted walls, are nowhere to be seen. The floors are clean, the desks new, the lighting perfect. The lady cop in the lobby sits behind a smooth, neatly rounded desk which accents the whole feng shui of the place. They’ve brought in an interior decorator, I think, to make the newly arrested prostitutes and petty criminals feel comfortable during their bookings.

“I’ve been asked to show up,” I tell the woman, as if I couldn’t imagine a more preposterous thing. “They want to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Ahh … Someone was killed at my place of work. Well, not
at
my place of work, but—”

“So, Homicide,” she says. “You want to talk to Homicide.”

I don’t want to talk to anyone, I’m about to say. They want to talk to me. But I just nod, and she gets on the phone and rings someone. There is a brief conversation, and she turns to me.

“What’s your name?”

“Jake Skowran.”

“What’s the name of the victim?”

“Errr …” I act momentarily like it’s of no consequence to me, then finally come up with it. “Brecht, I think.”

She repeats this information into the phone, then tells me to have a seat. I sit on a plush leather couch, surrounded by well-cared-for plants, and watch people come and go for a few minutes.

Then I see her.

The girl from the bar last night. In a police uniform. She’s a freakin’ cop! She pulls open the glass door and walks right past me.