CHAPTER 27

It occurred to Sussman that he’d been grievously robbed by someone he trusted, but here he was joking with this kid to make him feel better. Maybe he wasn’t such a fraudulent Buddhist after all. But you didn’t have to be a deep thinker to understand that whatever assets might or might not have been stolen from him were a small matter compared to two thugs trying to murder you with iron rods and no one there to help.

Bento wasn’t proud of the outcome, but he didn’t seem tortured either. It was a set of facts, like your weight or place of birth. It was also no accident that he didn’t say why he’d gone to prison. Once you admit to chewing off someone’s eye and spitting it out, you’d think there can’t possibly be any secrets left. But there was plenty of mystery surrounding this kid. Even his ethnic origins were unclear. Aquiline features, tall, straight black hair and an olive complexion. Probably not 100 percent Caucasian. There was an indefinable dash of something else. You want to know, but you don’t want to ask. His fat hippie friend was another enigma, not your ordinary loudmouth. These guys were material. You never know when it might turn up, but it was one of the best parts of being a writer. You could run straight into a cactus—or a crazy blue cop—and it hits you: wow, what luck!

“That turned out to be my last prison fight. Afterward even the craziest motherfuckers stayed clear of me. Nobody wants pieces of their face bitten off.”

“What happened to the psycho?” asked Sussman.

“I never saw him again. When he got out of the hospital they transferred him to another prison. They talked about prosecuting me for a while. And that’s no joke. You run into guys all the time doing time for something that happened inside. But I got off lucky—three months in the hole.”

“The eye,” said Speed. “What’d it taste like?”

“Like chicken.”

Sussman nodded and passed around another joint.

SUSSMAN WAS named Roland because his parents were forty-five cents short in a supermarket checkout line. His pregnant mother picked up an item to return to the cashier, but the man standing behind them put a dollar on the counter. When they thanked him, he quipped, “Just name your firstborn after me.” He, the original Roland, probably didn’t understand that his dad was too superstitious not to name him Roland. He and his pals would go to a ball game and lay down bets on whether a pitcher would complete the inning, how many times an outfielder would scratch his nuts in one inning, everything and anything. In those days the Cubs played only day games and half the guys in the ballpark were operating beyond the confines of nine-to-five life.

“Are you gonna call her?” Speed asked Sussman. They were at the door.

“I don’t know.”

“Then maybe you should get a lawyer. Know any good ones?”

“The only one I can think of is the guy who arranged the power of attorney for Pick.”

“He might not be such a good choice.”

“What about you guys? You know someone?”

“I know a guy named Horowitz,” Bento said. “He’s sharp.”

“Maybe you could call her too,” said Sussman.

“Horowitz is a he,” said Bento.

“No, I mean Pick. You’re bill collectors, right? Maybe you could call her for me.” Sussman wasn’t sure why he said that. Maybe he wanted to regain the respect of his dead father, who never would have been such a chump in the first place.

Speed: “What exactly have you said to her?”

“I left her a couple messages asking her to call me.”

Speed nodded, drinking in Sussman’s ridiculous answer. “Collection agencies charge half,” he said. “Lawyers are cheaper.”

Apparently the wording of the power of attorney complicated any criminal prosecution. All three agreed that cops might very well call it a lovers’ quarrel. Sussman couldn’t bear to call the cops anyway, especially on a friend.

“Our boss says people out to screw you from the start, they probably will find a way to screw you,” said Bento. “It’s what they’re good at. He looks like Humphrey Bogart.”

“Who? Your boss?”

“I mean exactly like him. You ought to put him in a book.”

“Somebody should,” said Sussman.

“I mean it. Tell him, Speed.”

“Exactly,” said Speed.

“You think they’re related?”

“Nobody knows,” said Speed.

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Speed: “It never comes up. The longer it doesn’t come up, the harder it gets to ask him. You know Bento’s right about Horowitz. You need him or somebody like him. You can’t let her take any more than she’s already taken, okay?”

“Okay.”

“If it’s okay, how come you’re not asking for his number?”

“Horowitz?”

“Yes, Horowitz.”

“Okay, may I have his number?”

Speed went to hunt it up on Sussman’s Internet.

“You know, I saw you once before,” Bento told Sussman. “In the police station. I think it must have been right after the break-in at your place. You were on crutches.”

“And I saw you. I remember now. You were in a little room, and they were trying to pin it on you. There was a cop with blue skin who wanted to put you away.”

“It’s the way they are, a lot of them. If you’ve done time, it’s their job to lock you up again. Before you create new problems.”

“But you’re calm about it.”

“Would it help to get upset?”

“How old are you?” asked Sussman.

“Twenty-eight.”

“You know a lot.”

Sussman would call this Horowitz and probably end up relying on him and hope for the best. Funny how you can recognize your faults at the same time you repeat them. Of all the people Sussman had relied upon, Pick was the most capable. She’d once managed an entire shopping center. It was sad to watch her stride through life with her droopy little breasts and the name Pickford because her parents thought having a Waspy last name for a first name could be socially useful. But she knew from the start not to treat him like the Lincoln Memorial. He required only a touch of worship, he used to say. There was, she responded, a joke within his joke, namely that he wasn’t joking at all. One of many clues Sussman had ignored.