“I care,” he says. Then, as if there were a need to clarify, “About you.”
“Well, this is my life we’re talking about, Jay, and I’m inviting you to chime in for once. It’s called a friendship, man, you should try it sometime.”
“You sound like Bernie.”
“Smart woman.”
He sighs. He doesn’t do this well, not at all.
But Lonnie, she is a friend, one he’s willing to wade in the muck of human emotion for. “I think if you give her an inch, she’s prepared to go ten miles, so, yes, you should make her choose. She has no kids, right? Then it’s got to be you or him. And if you don’t press her, then you are a fool.” He winces, bracing himself for the blowback, as if he thinks it’s entirely possible she might deck him.
But Lon only smiles.
“Go get your kids,” she says.
Jay nods, heading for the door.
At the threshold, he stalls, turning back. “If you’re looking for my approval or something, you got to have the balls to bring her around sometime.”
Lonnie gives him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
“And if you want to be my friend, you can’t disappear on me like you did.” It’s the first emotional need he’s expressed to another soul besides his wife.
“I know.”
“This year has been hell.”
“I know,” she says. “But I’m here now, Jay.” This case, it’s more than just a paycheck, she says. She would never let him out on a limb like this on his own. Jay nods, tapping the door’s wooden frame. “Don’t stay too late, huh?”
She nods. “Yes, sir.”
Rolly lost T. J. Cobb before he even got out of the courthouse, in a crowded swirl of bodies on the first floor near the elevators, and was too pissed at himself to call Jay; at least he couldn’t call right away, not until he tracked Cobb down. He had a name after all. He’d done more with less, and the night was long. He left the courthouse alone, heading to his El Camino, parked in a lot off Franklin, peeling layers as he went–jacket, tie, dress shirt–so that by the time he made it to his truck, he had stripped down to his white undershirt and his slacks, getting the smell of justice off him, at least the kind that comes drenched in a D.A.’s cheap cologne. He was planning to swing by his garage, to make sure it was still standing, make sure his drivers and mechanics hadn’t made off with his best tools, make sure they were still getting to their gigs on time. He’d been given the all-clear on the A.G. situation that afternoon: only one weak-ass escape attempt reported. The bluesman had claimed the toilet was backed up and when the motel’s maintenance man knocked at room 209, A.G. opened the door and ran out, knocking the super on his ass. But seeing as he had made it through half a carton of Newports, he didn’t get very far, out of breath and doubled over before reaching the motel’s stairs. Since then, “I ain’t had no trouble with him,” Rolly’s pal Bitty had said. Frankly, he was starting to suspect the old man was finding solace in his surrender, happy to put his feet up for a few days, his meals paid for, a little drink in hand. Through the stucco walls, he often heard the TV going. Reruns of Good Times and One Day at a Time. And westerns at night. It had to be better than cleaning toilets in a gin joint. Relieved, Rolly had planned a night with his girl. He owed her a steak-and-bake after her valiant service to the cause. He had a dime bag in the glove compartment of his truck and was going to pick up a couple of T-bones on the drive down to Hitchcock, some charcoal too, until the kid, strolling into the courtroom, had fucked things up, rearranging his whole night.
He was hardly through cursing his name when god himself seemed to have a change of heart about ol’ Rolly Snow, rolling a gift right across his windshield, at the corner of Franklin and Crawford, while his truck was idling at the light. He leaned over the steering wheel, peering past his headlights. It was T. J. Cobb, all right, there in front of him on the street. Long and lean, with a mean, skulking walk. Among the gray army of office workers and bank tellers, women in shoulder pads and high heels, he stood out like a peacock in a flock of pigeons. He was wearing that same faded denim jacket and black T-shirt, his right index finger curled around a cigarette.
Rolly, feeling lucky, tailed him for a few blocks.
Not so easy when the man was on foot.
He was about to ditch the El Camino and put his own two feet on the ground when T. J. Cobb ducked into the vestibule of a bar. The Last Call sat behind a windowless brick wall painted black and unadorned, save by a small wooden sign over the door. Rolly rolled past the bar’s front door just as Cobb slipped inside. He made the block before deciding to pull over and roll on him. The man had come to Jay’s home, near his kids. And Rolly wasn’t having that. He found a dirt lot and parked, not far from the old abandoned Union Station. This part of downtown, heading toward the menacing shadows of the 59 Freeway overpass, is grimly pastoral, the natural world taking back what the city no longer wants. There are weeds shooting up three feet from cracks in the sidewalk, and between the many vacant brick buildings, dirt lots dot the landscape. Rolly grabbed his piece from under the driver’s seat, the Colt .45. But he never got to use it. He was made before he even got out of his truck. By the time he got to the Last Call, Cobb was hiding in the dark vestibule, waiting for his mark, the real one he’d been eyeing in the courtroom. He put the muzzle of a handgun to Rolly’s chest, a .38 Rolly guessed, realizing too late that he’d been set up. It was his last coherent thought. He doesn’t remember the shot itself, remembers only the sound of his tooth cracking when his face hit the sidewalk, and then footsteps, sneakers on pavements, slipping far, far away.
Jay got the call this morning, after failing to reach Rolly all night.