The Sticking Place Read online

  Henreid pulled a pack of Kools from his hip pocket. Hartson accepted his invitation to join him by flicking both cigarettes alight with his Bic.

  Luke flinched at the smoke, but kept his mouth shut.

  “It’s not totally true saying I wanted to fix something between us,” Henreid said. “It’s more like I needed somebody to talk to.”

  His confession belied his earlier statements, but verified what Luke already knew.

  “Does that make sense?”

  Hartson blew smoke rings over Henreid’s head.

  Henreid seemed to accept the action as an affirmative response. “I did decide to die that night, but you stopped me by saying I’d take a piece of you with me. I couldn’t do that to another human being.”

  Henreid blew a line of progressively smaller smoke circles across the table that joined with the ones already dissipating in the air above them.

  Luke marveled at the modern smoke signal language the two men were inventing as they accepted the give and take of conversation and the billowing circles of expanding and contracting smoke. The circles slowly melded into a mist, drifted through the room and sneaked outside in willowy clouds as people opened the side door and made their way into the busy restaurant.

  “Unless I could’ve gotten a bet down on the outcome,” Henreid said. There was obvious shame in the timbre of his quavering voice. “Still, things worked out for the best.”

  “How’s that?” Hartson asked.

  “You helped by treating me like a human being instead of a piece of shit the way O’Malley did. Officer Jones here talked too much, but he cared whether I lived or died. The shrink convinced me to call my sponsor who treated me like a man. I thought I’d betrayed him, but he told me the only way to betray somebody’s to give up on them.”

  “Based on that definition you almost betrayed yourself that night,” Hartson said.

  Henreid nodded and lit another cigarette. How much should he tell Hartson? Should he reveal how he’d manipulated people into making bets when he couldn’t cover the action? How understanding were these police officers facing him? What would they say if they knew he’d taken his own daughter’s piggy bank money to lose on the daily double? Henreid knew the Fifth Step called for admitting his wrongs, but he was on a roller-coaster of ups and downs that might never settle into a level life and his guts were held together by a tether of thread.

  “So,” Henreid continued, “I kept insisting that I loved my family more than anything, all the while sacrificing their needs for mine, telling myself I only needed one big score to get us out of debt.

  “I’ll win them back, though.” Henreid made the proclamation about his wife and daughter and genuinely seemed to mean it. “My wife’s name is June,” he said. “She used to call me Ward, like we were the perfect couple.” Henreid settled back into the booth and the monstrous gravity of his words shook through his body like a temblor. “I ruined everything, but I know she loves me and we’ll work things out.”

  Hartson puffed and blew smoke while Luke compared the situation of his companions in the booth to the lyrics of a popular song. They talked about a guy who needed to make just a few changes to his life and circumstances. Then he’d be the same as the king who used to be a frog. The lyrics were an anthem to impossible dreams coming true that left the dreamers feeling empty and hopeless inside. It was a declaration that happy endings did not exist.

  The smoke drifted out into the room and made a meandering turn toward the salad bar.

  Should Hartson tell Henreid how he understood everything; that he’d lost his own family to booze? Should he warn Henreid that winning his family back wasn’t a likely benefit of stopping his gambling; that changing his life couldn’t erase the accumulated effects his selfish actions had had on others?

  “That’s all really good,” Hartson said.

  “I have a good job again and things are getting better,” Henreid told them.

  “Doing what?” Hartson asked.

  Luke saw a red-faced man of about forty hurrying toward the table before Henreid could answer.

  “Officer, there’s a guy over at the Plaza. I just dropped him off, and he’s refusing to pay his fare.”

  The two officers, Henreid and the cab driver walked outside. “He’s over there,” the cabby said. “See him, the one with the crack of his ass showing?”

  “Dos Tacos,” Hartson said in disgust.

  “What?” Henreid asked.

  “Dos Tacos,” Luke said. “Every couple days we get a radio call about this guy. He goes in to some dive, orders two tacos and walks away without paying. We’ve arrested him at least fifty times.”

  “If he doesn’t pay the fare, I have to pay it,” the cabby said.

  “I can guarantee this asshole doesn’t have any money.” Hartson said it as he witnessed one of Dos Tacos’ other favorite criminal specialties. “Hey! Cut that out,” Hartson yelled.

  A woman with a filial resemblance to a beached sea lion was sleeping on the grass near the Plaza’s fountain. With her knees high and the soles of her bare feet planted firmly into the turf, the strained elastic waistband of her sweat pants afforded Dos Tacos the opportunity to slip his hand inside. Like his previous victims, this one could only aspire to a better life as trailer trash. The others had all gotten just outraged enough to raise a ruckus about the disgusting state of Dos Tacos’ humanity, but not outraged enough to show up in court when the time came.

  “Hey,” Hartson shouted again as the quartet jogged across the street. “Get your hands out of that woman’s pants.”

  “Huh? What?” Dos Tacos toothed a hyena grin. “I don’t do nothing.” He heavily accented the O in the word “nothing,” making it sound like a prolonged “NO” before drawling out the “thing” that followed. “Officer T.D., I swear. I no do nothing.”

  “You goddamned prevert,” the woman shouted as she rolled over onto her stomach to start the difficult ascent to her knees as a prelude to the ever-so-much-more-difficult task of standing. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Nothing,” Dos Tacos insisted. “I promise you, lady. I no do nothing.”

  “Do you want this asshole arrested?” Hartson asked, confident of a negative answer.

  “Damn skippy,” the woman said. “Put his ass in jail.”

  Shit. Luke could see that Hartson’s hangover had robbed him of any desire to write a case report for sexual battery and an arrest narrative on a case that would never make it to court.

  “You know you’re going to have to testify,” Hartson said.

  “I know.”

  Hartson took a long look at her, obviously deciding how much effort to put into dissuading her from generating the work that would surely die somewhere up the prosecutorial chain when the victim withdrew her participation. “Just a minute, I’ll go get my clipboard,” he told her. He collected Dos Tacos and took him to the car.

  “Why don’t I take the case report,” Luke told Hartson as he followed along. “You can take the 10-16 to jail and we can hook up later to put the package together.”

  Hartson ordered Dos Tacos to put his hands on the trunk and spread his legs. An uneventful search followed until Hartson reared back in disgust.

  Luke sniffed the unmistakable stench of urine. Dos Tacos’ peeing took the form of a silent protest against the indignity of his being arrested.

  “I no do nothing, Officer T.D.,” he insisted as Hartson backed away.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” Hartson told his grinning prisoner.

  “Maybe next time you remember. Maybe next time you no arrest me for doing nothing.”

  Hartson pulled a fifth of cheap whiskey from a pocket in Dos Tacos’ windbreaker and poured it into the gutter. “Maybe next time you remember,” Hartson said. “Maybe next time you no piss your pants when I arrest you for nothing.” The accent was on the O in the word “nothing” as Hartson’s way of declaring Dos Tacos’ status as a raging asshole.

  Dos Tac
os sat behind the cage, stewing in the warmth of his percolating urine as Hartson filled out the top sheet for the arrest report.

  The impatient cab driver waited on the sidewalk. “What about my fare?” the driver finally asked.

  “There’s nothing I can do about that,” Hartson told him.

  The forlorn cabby shifted his weight from one foot to the other, emanating his status as the victim of an injustice somebody needed to set right. “This’ll come out of my paycheck,” he said. The financial devastation was etched on the cabby’s face.

  Luke tried to ignore it. “Couldn’t you tell he wasn’t a decent fare when you picked him up?” Luke asked, trying to divert the driver’s attention so Hartson could get out of there.

  “It’s my first day on the job,” the cabby said. “I’ll go broke at this rate.”

  “We’re sorry,” Hartson said. “You’ll need to be more careful next time.”

  Hartson walked to his car, put it in gear, drove to the corner of the Plaza, shook his head, put the car in reverse, got out of the car and reached into his pocket for his money clip. “How much does he owe you?” he said as Luke and Henreid watched in amazement.

  Andee Bradford parked her patrol car behind Luke’s and walked up to the two men in time to hear Luke making plans to take Henreid on a ride-along.

  28

  THE DAY AFTER HENREID’S RIDE-ALONG with Luke it was the Professor’s turn.“Do you always start your shift with dinner?” the Professor wanted to know.

  “This is a special occasion,” Luke said. “You kept your promise to stay sober for two weeks so I could take you on a ride-along.” The Professor was such an infamous downtown drunk the Lieutenant had ordered Luke to verify the two weeks of sobriety and promise the Professor would be properly groomed and wouldn’t stink like an outhouse privy as he sat in the front seat of a police car.

  Luke took in the skittering activity inside the dining room as he lectured the Professor on appropriate behavior for ride-alongs. The walls of the dingy restaurant were covered with faded brown wallpaper stenciled with Chinese teapots, bamboo shoots and Pandas sitting in rows about an inch apart. The ambient light camouflaged the age of the bamboo chairs and frayed carpet. The delicious and plentiful fare assured a loyal clientele and a pungent odor wafted out from the kitchen and into the crowded dining room.

  Luke picked at his food, mumbling under his breath. “What are these cashews doing in my Kung Pao chicken?” The presence of the cashews totally exasperated Luke, who wanted peanuts.

  “What’s that?” the Professor asked.

  “These blasted cashews,” Luke said, his voice raising a little. “I come here once or twice a week for my Kung Pao chicken with spicy peppers, a nice portion of white rice and a generous dose of peanuts, thank you very much. Is that too much to ask?”

  The Professor leaned back in the booth. “Too much to ask?” he said.

  “Excuse me.” Luke called the owner over as he passed by. “How come there’re cashews in my Kung Pao chicken? That’s not normal, is it?”

  “No, not normal.” The owner showed a row of teeth stained various shades of brown from drinking green tea and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. “Cashew nuts special, just for you.”

  “Oh, special just for me?” Luke said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “We close next week,” the owner said. “You favorite customer. Do something nice for you before go out of business.”

  “Going out of business?” Luke said, looking around at the dining room full of customers. “Why?”

  “Center City say so,” the owner replied. He explained that the Centre City Development Corporation, the City’s downtown redevelopment agency, had ordered the Rice Palace to renovate or close its doors and he couldn’t afford to renovate to the City’s specifications.

  It was unfathomable. Luke was sitting in a pleasant restaurant with a robust clientele and someone other than the business’s owner had decided to close the place down.

  “I can’t say I’d give a penny for your thoughts, because I don’t have one,” the Professor said.

  Luke looked across the table at the clean-shaven Professor. His unruly salt and pepper hair and persistent cowlick made him a dead-ringer for the indefatigable comedian, Professor Irwin Corey, making his new Pendleton shirt and Levis seem like a poor choice.

  Luke reached for water to wash away the lingering effects of a hot pepper. “I’m upset with this joint for putting cashews in my chicken, and it turns out they’re a gesture to thank me for being a good customer. Who’d figure?”

  “Didn’t you know cashews are more expensive than peanuts?” the Professor asked, finally allowing a slight grin to explode into a full-on smile.

  “All I know is I prefer peanuts, is that so wrong?” Luke finally allowed a smile of his own. He didn’t need the Professor to tell him he could be insufferable sometimes.

  “Tell me more about you,” the Professor said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, for starters, what did you do about Viet Nam?”

  “Nothing,” Luke said. “I was a sophomore in college the year Nixon pulled us out.”

  The Professor’s astonishment showed. “That makes you only about twenty-four-years old,” the Professor said. “You look a lot older.”

  “I turn twenty-four on April 23rd.” Luke leaned back in the booth and waited for the Professor’s response.

  “No way,” the Professor said, his words mixing with slight laughter. “You and Mr. Shakespeare share a birthday?”

  Luke nodded and explained he’d finished his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five-and-a-half years while wrestling in the A.A.U and working part-time. He admired the works of Joe Wambaugh and thought police work might give him something to write about. He’d also become a cop because he didn’t want to teach children and, of course, as the Professor knew, he needed a doctorate or an MFA to teach college.

  “I signed up for the civil service test and got lucky with my timing,” Luke said. “I started the academy three weeks after college.”

  “Okay, but why literature?” the Professor said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean why study literature and why Shakespeare in particular?” the Professor asked.

  Luke had never really thought about it. “As far as the literature goes, I was raised in a land of absolutes. I’m not comfortable living in a land of absolutes. My dad’s a fundamentalist preacher. He’s a good man, but he can form a stronger opinion in less time, on less information, than anyone I’ve ever met. I enjoy the panorama of great ideas that come with an open mind, and books open the mind. As far as Shakespeare goes, he not only touches the soul, he does it with a conspicuous and contagious appreciation for the importance of language.”

  “How does your dad feel about your studying literature instead of the Bible?” the Professor asked.

  “He thinks I’m going to hell,” Luke said. “I’d like to give him some peace of mind about that, but I can’t just shut off my mind and swallow everything he tells me.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe in God?” the Professor asked.

  Luke paused, wondering if he wanted to head down this path without knowing what the Professor thought. He was the guy with the Ph.D. after all. “I’d like to hear what you have to say on that topic,” Luke said.

  “I asked first,” the Professor said. “But I’ll take a stab at it if you want. I didn’t before, but I sort of think I do believe in God now. Only the God I believe in is a lot different from the one your dad keeps telling you about.”

  “What’s your God like then?”

  “I wouldn’t classify him as my God exactly,” the Professor said.

  “Tell me anyway,” Luke insisted, loosening up a little. He was sitting in a comfortable place, eating great food and talking to somebody who didn’t absolutely insist the two of them had to believe the same way.

  “My God, as you call him, comes from Jack London’s
short story To Build a Fire Builder, the Professor said. “Do you know it?”

  “I know the story, but can’t for the life of me figure out where you’d come up with a God from it,” Luke said.

  “Remember how the story opens with a man and a dog trudging along on the frozen Yukon tundra?” the Professor asked. “All the action pretty much goes on in the man’s mind. He thinks about an old-timer who’d warned him it was too cold and too late to go out alone.

  “He steps onto a shallow pocket of ice and his ankle gets soaked. He has to build a fire or die. He takes off his gloves so he can work, but his hands start to freeze. The dog’s just lying there, panting and waiting for the fire to appear. The guy finally gets the fire started, but he’s built it under a snow-covered tree. The flame melts the snow and it puts the fire out. The man eventually curls up and dies with the dog lying beside him.

  “Once the dog realizes the guy’s never going to get up and build the fire, he stands up and trots off into the wilderness to fend for himself.

  “Most of us just sit around like that dumb animal, waiting for a fumbling God to build our fires for us,” the Professor went on. “It’s not that God isn’t trying to take care of business. I think He’s trying as hard as He can.” The Professor leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Look at this mess we’re living in.” The Professor made his fingers into a steeple, put the tip of the steeple against his lips, and leaned back for dramatic effect.

  “Now, this theory of an incompetent God makes more sense than the original sin whopper you’ve been told all your life,” the Professor went on. “God screwed things up in the beginning by creating an imperfect creation. It’s not Adam and Eve who messed up the world. You know what I mean?”

  Luke answered the Professor’s question with a dour expression that he held for several seconds before speaking. “Well Professor,” he said. “That’s a pretty wretched existence you’ve managed to get yourself into, don’t you think?” He was about to ask if the Professor’s vision of God was responsible for his drinking, but the dispatcher had another idea.