A Drink Before the War Read online

  In the living room, Jenna’s eyes were fastened firmly on the floor and if she kneaded that skirt any harder the thread would begin pooling at her feet. She said, “Whyn’t you tell me why you’ve come up here for me.”

  I thought about it. I’ve been wrong about people before. Several times. I go on the presumption that everyone’s full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead. But every now and then, I think a person has proven himself otherwise, only to discover the shit later, usually in painful ways. Jenna didn’t strike me as a liar. She didn’t look like she knew how, but often it’s people just like that who wouldn’t know the truth if it was wearing an ID card on its lapel.

  I said, “You have certain documents. I was hired to retrieve them.” I spread my hands, palms up. “Simple as that.”

  “Documents?” she said, spitting it. “Documents. Damn.” She stood and began pacing and suddenly she looked a lot stronger than her sister, a lot more determined. She had no trouble meeting my eyes now. Hers were red and hard, and I realized, once again, that people aren’t born weary and beaten, they get that way.

  She said, “Let me tell you, Mr. Kenzie”—and pointed a stiff finger at me—“that’s one hell of a funny word. ‘Documents.’” Her head was down again and she was pacing in a tight circle with borders only she could see. “Documents,” she said again. “Well, OK, call them what you will. Yes, sir. Call them what you will.”

  “What would you call them, Mrs. Angeline?”

  “I ain’t no missus.”

  “OK. What would you call them, Ms. Angeline?”

  She looked at me, her whole body beginning to quiver with rage. The red of her eyes had darkened and her chin was pointed out straight and unyielding. She said, “All my life, nobody ever need me. Know what I mean?”

  I shrugged.

  “Need,” she said. “Nobody ever need me. People want me, sure. For a few hours or so, a week maybe, they say, ‘Jenna clean room one-oh-five,’ or ‘Jenna, run down the store for me,’ or real sweet they say, ‘Jenna, honey, come on over here and lie down a spell.’ But then, when they done, I’m just a piece of furniture again. Don’t care if I’m around; don’t care if I ain’t. People can always find someone to clean for ’em, or run to the store for ’em, or lie down with ’em.”

  She walked back to her chair and rummaged through her purse until she found a pack of cigarettes. “Hadn’t smoked in ten years—until a few days ago.” She lit one, blew the smoke out in a rush that clouded the small room. “Ain’t no documents, Mr. Kenzie. You understand? Ain’t no documents.”

  “Then what—”

  “There are things. There are things.” She nodded to herself, stabbed her cigarette downward into the air, kept pacing.

  I leaned forward in my chair a bit, my head following her like I was at Wimbledon. I said, “What things, Ms. Angeline?”

  “You know, Mr. Kenzie,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me, “all of a sudden, everyone looking for me, hiring people like yourself, hiring worse people probably, trying to find Jenna, to talk to Jenna, to get what Jenna got. All of a sudden, everyone need Jenna.” She crossed the floor quickly to me, her cigarette poised over me like a butcher knife, her jaw clenched. She said, “Nobody getting what I got, Mr. Kenzie. You hear me? No one. ’Cept who I decide to give it to. I make the decision. I get what I want. I do a little using myself. Send someone to the store for me, maybe. See people work for me for a change. See them fade into furniture when I don’t have no use for them anymore.” She stabbed the glowing cigarette in toward my eye. “I decide. Jenna Angeline.” She leaned back a bit, took a drag on the cigarette. “And what I got ain’t for sale.”

  “Then what’s it for?”

  “Justice,” she said through a stream of smoke. “And lots of it. People going to be in pain, Mr. Kenzie.”

  I looked at her hand, shaking so badly the cigarette quivered up and down like a recently abandoned diving board. I heard the anguish in her voice—a torn, slightly hollow sound—and saw its ravages on her face. She was a wreck of a person, Jenna Angeline. A heart beating fast in a shell of a body. She was scared and tired and angry and howling at the world, but unlike most people in the same situation, she was dangerous because she had something that, at least as far as she was concerned, would give her something back in this world. But the world usually doesn’t work that way, and people like Jenna are time bombs; they might take a few people down with them, but they’ll go up in the inferno too.

  I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Jenna, but I was even more certain that I wasn’t going to get hit with any shrapnel if she self-destructed. I said, “Jenna, here’s my problem: we call this sort of case a ‘find-and-a-phone-call’ because that’s pretty much all I’m paid to do—find you and call the client and then go on my merry way. Once I make the phone call, I’m out of it. The client usually brings in the law or deals with it personally or whatever. But I don’t stick around to find out. I’m—”

  “A dog,” she said. “You run around with your nose on the ground, sniffing through bushes and piles of warm shit until you find the fox. Then you step back and let the hunters shoot it dead.” She stabbed out her cigarette.

  It wasn’t the analogy I would have chosen, but it wasn’t entirely false no matter what I wanted to think. Jenna sat back down and looked at me and I held her dark eyes. They had the odd mixture of terror and resilient bravery of a cat backed into a corner; the look of someone who isn’t sure she’s up to the task, but has decided there’s no other way out but straight ahead. It’s the look of the crumbling soul trying to pull it all together for one last worthwhile breath. It’s not a look I’ve ever seen in the eyes of people like Sterling Mulkern or Jim Vurnan or Brian Paulson. I never saw it on the Hero’s face or a president’s or a captain of industry’s. But I’ve seen it in the faces of most everyone else.

  “Jenna, you tell me what you think I should do.”

  “Who hired you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, it was either Senator Mulkern or Socia, and Socia’d just have you shoot me where I sit, so it got to be Senator Mulkern.”

  Socia? “Is Socia any relation to Roland?” I asked.

  I could have broadsided her with a wrecking ball and had less impact. She closed her eyes for a moment and rocked in place. “What you know about Roland?”

  “I know he’s bad news.”

  “You stay away from Roland,” she said. “You hear? Away from him.”

  “That’s what people keep telling me.”

  “Well,” she said, “you listen.”

  “Who’s Roland?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “OK. Who’s Socia?”

  Another head shake.

  “I can’t help you, Jenna, if—”

  “Ain’t asking for your help,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. I stood up and walked over to the phone. I reconnected it, began to dial.

  She said, “What’re you doing?”

  I said, “Calling my client. You can talk to him. My job’s done.”

  She said, “Wait.”

  I shook my head. “Sterling Mulkern, please.”

  An electronic voice was telling me the time when Jenna pulled the phone cord out of the wall again. I turned and looked at her.

  She said, “You got to trust me.”

  “No, I don’t. I can leave you here and walk down to the nearest phone booth and make my call there.”

  “But what if—?”

  “What if what?” I said. “Lady, I got better things to do than fuck around with you. You got a card to play? Play it.”

  She said, “What sort of documents you supposed to be looking for?”

  No point in lying. I said, “They pertain to an upcoming bill.”

  “Oh, they do?” she said. “Well, Mr. Kenzie, someone been lying to you. What I got don’t have nothing to do with bills and politics or the State House.”

  Everything
has to do with politics in this town, but I let it go. “What do they pertain—No, fuck it. What do you got, Ms. Angeline?”

  “I got some things in a safety-deposit box in Boston. Now, you want to find out what those things are, you come with me tomorrow when the banks open, and we’ll see what you’re made of.”

  “Why should I?” I said. “Why shouldn’t I call my client right now?”

  She said, “I think I know people pretty well, Mr. Kenzie. Ain’t much of a talent for a poor black woman to have, but it’s the only one I got. And you, well, maybe you don’t mind being someone’s dog every now and again, but you sure ain’t nobody’s bag boy.”

  10

  Angie said, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” It came out in a harsh whisper. We were sitting in the alcove, looking out at the street. Jenna and Simone were in the kitchen, probably having a similar conversation.

  I said, “You don’t like it?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t like it.”

  “Twelve hours more or less won’t make much difference.”

  “Bullshit. Patrick, this is retarded. We were hired to find her and call Mulkern. OK. We found her. Now, we should be making the call and going home.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?” she hissed. “How nice. Except you’re not the only component in this equation. This is a partnership.”

  “I know it’s—”

  “Do you? I have a license too. Remember? You may have started the agency, but I’ve put my time in now too. I get shot at and beat up and sit on forty-eight-hour stakeouts too. I’m the one who had to sweat out the DA’s decision whether to indict on Bobby Royce. I have a say, here. Fifty percent of one.”

  “And you say?”

  “I say this is bullshit. I say we do what we were hired to do and go home.”

  “And I say…” I checked myself. “And I ask that you trust me on this and give me till morning. Hell, Ange, we’d end up sitting on her till then anyway. Mulkern’s not going to get out of bed and drive up to Wickham at this time of night anyway.”

  She considered that. Her olive skin was darkened to the shade of coffee in the ill-lit alcove and her full lips were pursed tightly. She said, “Maybe. Maybe.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I said and started to get up.

  She grabbed my wrist. “Not so fast, boy.”

  “What?”

  “Your logic is good, Skid; it’s your motives I have a problem with.”

  “What motives?”

  “You tell me.”

  I sat back down, sighed. I looked at her, gave it my best “Who me?” look. “I don’t see that it hurts to learn everything we can while we have the chance. That’s my only motive.”

  She shook her head slowly, watching me steadily and with some sadness. She ran a hand through her hair, let the loose bangs fall back down on her forehead. “She’s not a cat somebody left out in the rain, Patrick. She’s a grown woman who committed a crime.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  “Either way it’s irrelevant. We’re not social workers.”

  “What’s your point, Ange?” I said, suddenly tired.

  “You’re not being honest with yourself. Or me.” She stood up. “We’ll play it your way if you want. I can’t say it’ll make all that much difference. But, remember something.”

  “What?”

  “When Jim Vurnan asked us if we’d take the job, I was willing to refuse it. You’re the one who said working for Mulkern and his kind wouldn’t be a problem.”

  I held out my hands. “And my position hasn’t changed.”

  “I hope it hasn’t, Patrick, because we’re not so goddamn successful that we can afford to botch a job like this.”

  She walked out of the alcove, into the kitchen.

  I looked at my reflection in the glass. It didn’t seem too pleased with me either.

  I pulled my car in front of the house where I could keep an eye on it from the alcove. Nothing was stolen or broken or keyed and I thanked the great auto god in the sky.

  Angie came back out of the kitchen and called Phil to tell him she’d be staying overnight and it turned into an ordeal, his voice plainly audible through the receiver as he ranted on about his fucking needs, damnit. Angie got a blank, faraway look on her face, and she held the receiver in her lap and closed her eyes for a moment. She turned her head and opened her eyes. “You need me?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow around ten or so.”

  She spoke back into the phone in a voice so soft and placating that it made me nauseous, and shortly after she hung up, she was gone.

  I’d checked to see that it was the only phone and bolted the back door so no one could open it without making noise. I sat in the window seat and listened to the house. Through the bedroom wall, I could hear Jenna still trying to explain our deal to Simone.

  Earlier, Simone had made some squawking noises about kidnapping and federal offenses, quoting me a whole shitload of legal references that she learned from L.A. Law. She was on something of a tear, babbling at the top of her voice about “enforced incarceration” or some such nonsense, when I assured her that the alternative to my handling of the situation would be a swift legal execution of her sister’s affairs by Sterling Mulkern and company. She shut up.

  The voices in the bedroom died out and a few minutes later I heard the door open and Jenna’s reflection rose up over my shoulder in the window. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt over a pair of old, gray sweatpants, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. She held two cans of beer in her hand and when I turned, she put one in my hand. She said, “My sister made me promise to replace these.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She smiled and sat on the window seat across from mine. “She told me to tell you to stay out of her fridge. She don’t want you touching her food.”

  “Understandable,” I said and cracked the beer. “Maybe I’ll go in after you guys fall asleep, move things around just to piss her off.”

  She took a sip of the beer. “She’s a good girl, Simone. Just really angry.”

  “At?”

  “Who you got? The world in general, I s’pose. The white man in particular.”

  “I don’t suppose I’m doing much to change her impression.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She seemed almost serene, sitting there in the window, head resting against the pane, beer in her lap. Without any makeup, she looked younger somehow, less exhausted. Once, she might have even been pretty, someone men commented on as she walked down the street. I tried to picture her that way—a young Jenna Angeline with a glow of confidence flushing her face because she was young and under the illusion that her youth and her beauty gave her options—but I couldn’t. Time had laid too heavy a hand on her.

  She said, “Your partner, she didn’t seem all that pleased, either.”

  “She wasn’t. It was all up to her, we’d have made the phone call and gone home by now.”

  She nodded and took another sip of the beer. She shook her head slightly. “Simone,” she said, “sometimes I don’t understand that girl.”

  “What’s to understand?” I said.

  “All that hate,” she said. “You know?”

  “There’s a lot to hate out there,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Believe me, I know. Seems there’s so much, you got to kind of pick and choose. Earn what you hate, I guess. Simone, now, she just hate everything. And sometimes…”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes, I think she hate cause she don’t know what else to do with herself. I mean, me, I got good reason to hate what I hate, believe me. But her, I’m not so sure she’s…”

  “Earned it?”

  She nodded. “Exactly.”

  I thought about that. I couldn’t see much to argue with. I’ve learned more about the capacity to hate than anything else since I started doing this work.


  She drank some more beer. “Seems to me, the world going to give you plenty to be angry about, either way. Getting a chip on your shoulder before you’ve even seen how bad it can be, what the world can do to you when it really sets its mind to it…seems to me, that’s just foolish thinking.”

  “Damn straight,” I said and held up my can. She smiled, a small one, and glanced her can off mine, and I realized what part of me had known since I’d first seen her photograph: I liked her.

  She finished her beer a minute or so later and went to bed with a small wave behind her as she entered the bedroom.

  The night passed slowly and I shifted in my seat a lot, paced a bit back and forth, stared at my car. Angie was home now, taking another few steps in that grotesque dance of pain she called a marriage. A harsh word, a slap or two, a few screamed accusations, and on to bed until the next day. Love. I wondered again why she was with him, what possessed a person of her quality and judgment to put up with such shit, but before I slipped completely into the realms of the self-righteous, my palm rested on my abdomen, on the patch of scar tissue, which always reminded me of the price of love in its least idealized form.

  Thank you, father.

  Sitting in the quiet of the dark living room, I also remembered my own marriage, which had lasted about a minute and a half. Angie and Phil at least had a sense of dedication to the love between them, however twisted that love might be, which Renee and I never had. The only thing our marriage had taught me about love was that it ends. And looking out at the empty street from Simone Angeline’s window seat, it occurred to me that one of the reasons I’m successful at the work I do is that come three o’clock in the morning, when most of the world is asleep, I’m still up doing my job because I don’t have any place better to be.

  I played some solitaire and told my stomach it wasn’t hungry. I considered raiding Simone’s fridge but figured she might have booby-trapped it; I’d grab the mustard and trip a wire, take an arrow in the head.

  Dawn came in a faded line of pale gold that pushed up the black cover of night, then an alarm clock went off in the next room, and soon I heard the shower running. I stretched until I heard the satisfactory crack of bones and muscles, then did my morning regimen of fifty sit-ups and fifty push-ups. By the time I’d finished, the second turn in the shower had been taken, and the two sisters were standing by the door, ready to go.