6
I had a ticket for the 8:55 PM fight with US Airways out of Philadelphia, if I chose to use it, but I realized that I would either kill myself trying to make it, or end up with a ticket for speeding. Neither possibility particularly appealed to me, so I changed my fight to 9:30 AM the following morning and checked into a motel off Bartram Avenue. I had dinner in a bar that was one step up from eating food off the street, but I didn’t care. Once the adrenaline had stopped flowing after the events in Newark, I had experienced a comedown that left me shaking and nauseous. It didn’t matter what I ate: it would have tasted foul anyway, but I thought I needed something in my stomach. In the end, I left most of the food on the plate, and what I ate didn’t stay in my system for long once I was back in my room.
In truth, such reactions were becoming increasingly common as the years went on. I suppose I had always been frightened as I faced situations like that night’s – anyone who has found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, or confronting the possibility of injury or death, and claims to have done so without fear is either a liar or insane – but the more often you do it and survive, the more aware you become that the odds are inevitably swinging against you. If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.
I also wanted to watch Sam, my daughter, grow up. She was long past those early years when children, though cute, don’t do a whole lot except babble and fall over, much like a certain type of really old person. I found her endlessly fascinating, and regretted the fact that I was no longer with Rachel, her mother, although I didn’t think Rachel was about to move back in just so I could spend more time with Sam. Then again, I didn’t want Rachel to move back in, so the feeling was mutual. Still, with Rachel and Sam in Vermont, and me in Portland, arranging to spend time with my daughter took some planning. I supposed that I could always move to Vermont, but then I’d have to start voting Socialist, and finding excuses to secede from the Union. Anyway, I liked Portland, and being close to the sea. Staring out over Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen wasn’t quite the same thing.
I checked my cell phone messages as I lay on the bed. There was only one, from a man in Portland named Jude. He was one of a handful of the local street folk who’d proved helpful to me in the past, either by providing information or the occasional discreet surveillance service, as people tended not to notice the homeless, or pretended not to. Naturally there was no callback number for Jude. Instead, he had suggested leaving a message with the folk at the Portland Help Center or on the bulletin board at the Amistad Community on State Street to let him know when I might be available to meet.
I hadn’t seen Jude around in a while, but then I hadn’t really been looking for him. Like most of Portland’s homeless, he did his best to stay off the streets in winter. To do otherwise was to risk being found frozen in a doorway.
Me, I wasn’t doing so badly. Work had picked up over the winter because I’d developed a nice sideline in process serving. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid reasonably well, and occasionally required the exercise of more than a handful of brain cells. The day before I’d headed down to Newark to join Angel and Louis, I’d cashed a check for $2000, including a goodwill bonus payment, for just one job. The subject of the subpoena was an investment analyst named Hyram P. Taylor who was involved in the initial stages of serious and hostile divorce proceedings with his wife, who was represented by my lawyer – and, for the most part, my friend – Aimee Price. Hyram was such a compulsive fornicator that even his own lawyer had privately acknowledged the possibility of his client possessing a penis shaped like a corkscrew, and eventually his wife had just become tired of the humiliation. As soon as she fled for divorce, Hyram set about hiding all records relating to his wealth, and moving said wealth as far from the reach of his wife as possible. He even abandoned his office in South Portland and tried to go to ground, but I tracked him down to the apartment of one of his girlfriends, a woman called Brandi who, despite having a stripper’s name, worked as an accountant in New Hampshire.
The problem was that Hyram wouldn’t so much as pick up a piece of paper from the street for fear that it might be attached to an unseen piece of string ending in the hand of a process server. He didn’t go anywhere without Brandi in tow, and she was the one who paid cash for newspapers, groceries and drinks in bars. Hyram didn’t put his hand on anything if he could help it. He probably had Brandi check him before he peed in the morning, just in case someone had attached a subpoena to his manhood while he slept.
His weakness – and they all have a weakness – was his car. It was how I found him. He drove a six-liter black Bentley Flying Spur Speed: ten miles to the gallon in the city, 0–60 in 4.8 seconds, and $200,000 worth of vehicle, at the very least. It was his pride and joy, which was probably why he stood up so suddenly that he poured coffee over himself when I walked into the Starbucks on Andrews Road and asked if anyone owned a hell of a nice Bentley because I’d just knocked off the wing mirror on the driver’s side.
Hyram wasn’t a slim man, but he could move fast when the need arose, even with hot coffee scalding his thighs. He went past me at full sail and arrived at his car to find that, sure enough, the mirror was hanging on only by wires to the body of the car. It had been harder to knock off than I’d anticipated, requiring two blows from a hammer. The Bentley might have been expensive, but it was clearly built well.
‘I’m real sorry,’ I told him when I arrived to find him stroking the car as though it were a wounded animal that he was trying to console. ‘I just wasn’t looking. If it’s any help, I got a brother who runs an auto shop. He’d probably give you a good deal.’
Hyram seemed to be having trouble speaking. His mouth just kept opening and closing without sound. I could see Brandi hurrying across the parking lot, still trying to struggle into her coat while juggling her coffee and Hyram’s jacket. Hyram had left her in his wake, but she’d be with us in seconds. I needed to hook Hyram before she got here, and while he was still in shock.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘here are my insurance details, but if you could see your way clear to just letting me pay cash to cover the damages, I’d surely be grateful.’
Hyram reached out for the paper in my hand without thinking. I heard Brandi cry out a warning to him, but by then it was too late. His fingers had closed on the subpoena.
‘Mr Taylor,’ I said, ‘it’s my pleasure to inform you that you’ve just been served.’
It said a lot about Hyram P. Taylor’s relationship with his car that he still seemed more upset by the damage to it than he was by being in receipt of the subpoena, but that situation didn’t last long. He was swearing at me by the time I got to my own car, and the last I saw of him was Brandi flinging her coffee at his chest and walking away in tears. I even felt a little sorry for Hyram. He was a jerk, but he wasn’t a bad guy, whatever his wife might have thought of him. He was just weak and selfish. Badness was something else. I knew that better than most. After all, I’d just burned a man’s house down.
I made a note to get in touch with Jude, then turned out the light. The post-adrenaline dip had passed. I was now just exhausted. I slept soundly as, back in Portland, Jude twisted on his basement rope.