Good Neighbors (8 page)

Alan nodded, but he didn’t really understand.

He understands now, though.

Alan pulls his police cruiser to the curb behind a Ford F-100 ambulance which is already parked in front of Al’s Coffee Shop. The driver sits waiting for his coffee and donuts, looking at himself in his sideview mirror, picking at his teeth with a match book. Probably sent his partner in for the goodies. One of the benefits of being the driver on an ambulance team. That and the extra few cents an hour.

Alan pushes his door open and steps from the car.

He walks by the ambulance and its driver, who’s still picking away at his goddamn teeth.

‘Keep up the good work,’ Alan says as he walks by.

The driver gives him an ironic salute.

‘You too,’ he says smiling. And then, after Alan has taken a few more steps, ‘Asshole.’

‘I heard that.’

‘Good,’ the guy says. ‘Now you know what I think of you.’

Alan fights a violent urge, and turns away from the ambulance, gritting his teeth.

Last time Alan went to get his teeth cleaned his dentist commented on his grinding problem. ‘You’re gonna end up with nothing but nubs by the time you’re sixty.’ As far as Alan is concerned, nubs are enough – as long as they’re sharp and can tear out a throat.

He pushes his way into the coffee shop.

Duke stands behind the counter, handing a couple coffees to a uniformed paramedic in his mid- or late-thirties. The guy looks like he hasn’t slept in a decade. Bags under his eyes like pig-bladder canteens.

‘Nice friend you got out there,’ Alan says.

The paramedic looks at him, says nothing.

‘Will that be all?’ Duke asks.

Although the place is called Al’s Coffee Shop, no one named Al has been involved in running it for at least fifteen years. Duke is the owner-operator. Alan once asked Duke how he came up with the name and Duke told him that’s what it said on the front when he moved in back in’49 and he saw no need to change it – so Al’s it was and Al’s it is.

The paramedic continues to scan the case of donuts.

‘Um,’ he says. ‘Let’s see.’

‘Take your time,’ Alan says. ‘It’s not like anyone’s waiting.’

And then there’s a yelp of siren and a brief flash of light from the ambulance on the other side of the window.

The guy looks over his shoulder, then looks back to Duke. ‘Guess that’s it,’ he says. ‘How much?’

‘On the house,’ Duke says. ‘Go save some lives.’

‘Thanks. ’Preciate it.’

Then the guy heads out the front door.

Alan watches him jump into the ambulance through the passenger’s side, and then the thing wheels off, all lights and noise.

Once the ambulance is gone Alan turns to Duke. ‘How’bout a large coffee, huh?’

‘No thanks,’ Duke says. ‘I’m wired as it is.’

‘Smart ass. Pour me my cup.’

Duke turns around, grabs a paper cup off a large stack of them, and pours.

‘Donut?’

Alan shakes his head. ‘Any messages for me?’

‘Your phone rang,’ Duke says, ‘but I couldn’t get to it.’

‘Couldn’t?’

Duke nods.

‘You couldn’t get to it.’

‘That’s right,’ Duke says.

‘What’s so important you couldn’t get to the fucking phone?’

‘Had a turtle-head poking out.’

‘What?’

‘I was taking a shit, Alan.’

‘Well, I hope you washed your fucking hands.’

Alan grabs a dime from the tip jar and, with his coffee in hand, heads back out into the night. He heads toward the phone booth he uses to conduct business, but some guy is hugging the corner of the thing, his back to the open accordion door, whispering loudly into the mouthpiece about you bitch, I can’t believe you fucked my brother after all I did for you, I’ll fuckin’ kill you for this.

Alan walks over, stands on tiptoe in order to put his coffee on top of the booth, and then taps the man’s shoulder.

The guy turns around and looks at Alan with blazing eyes which are pressed into the doughy, pockmarked face of a man plagued by boils. There’s one above his left eyelid that looks ready to burst, in fact – hanging down over the eye like a gourd – and Alan decides that’s where he’ll punch first if it comes to blows. That would be some serious pain.

‘Can’t you see I’m on the fucking phone?’ Boil says, and then he sees Alan’s uniform, and his face blanches. He covers the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Sorry, officer. I didn’t realize it was you.’

‘Do we know each other?’

‘Uh, no. I just mean I didn’t know you were a cop. A policeman, I mean.’

‘Cop is fine. Didn’t I put you in jail before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You sure?’

A nod.

‘Well, you’re on my phone.’

Boil looks confused. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘You don’t have to apologize,’ Alan says. ‘Just hang up the phone and walk away.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘Hang up the phone,’ Alan says, ‘and walk away.’

He walks his fingers across the air to demonstrate.

Boil nods and his moonface shakes like gelatin, mouth agape. He hangs up the phone without saying goodbye. Then he looks at Alan as if awaiting further instruction.

‘Walk the fuck away.’

Boil nods, ‘Right,’ then turns and heads off down the sidewalk. He glances once over his shoulder, but only once, and Alan thinks it’s fear on his face, nothing more. And fear is fine.

Alan grabs his coffee and then steps into the booth. He picks up the phone, wipes it off on his uniform. He doesn’t think boils are contagious, but that was one filthy son of a bitch. Once the phone’s wiped off, he drops his dime into the coin slot and dials.

‘Charlie. Alan. What’s the news?’

He takes a bitter mouthful of coffee and nearly spits it right back out, but manages to swallow. It goes down hard, like a stone.

‘He what? That motherfucker. Where’d he say to meet him? Tell him I’ll be there.’

Alan slams the phone down and steps from the urinestinking booth. He looks at the coffee in his hand as if it’s an alien thing and then throws it against the brick wall in front of him. It explodes, splashing liquid in every direction, including onto Alan.

‘God
damn
it!’

He kicks at the booth several times, grabs it, tries to shake it but it’s bolted to the concrete, steps back into the booth, grabs the phone, and repeatedly slams it into its pronged cradle until there’s nothing left of it but three mangled pieces of plastic held together by wires.

‘God fucking
shit
fuck!’

He runs his fingers through his hair, tilts his head left to crack his neck, and then tilts it right, producing a sound like a playing card flapping against bicycle spokes.

About six months ago Alan and Charlie decided to shake down a local drug dealer for a little extra cash. They thought it was a small-time operation: figured the guy had five or six people working for him who were throwing his mediocre shit to the niggers and spics. They figured on an extra forty dollars a month. Hazard pay, they called it. But when Alan and Charlie put the guy they thought was top in a corner, he squealed like a pig, oh God, man, please don’t send me to jail, I got six kids (six fucking kids) I gotta take care of, oh man, this is fucked, I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, I swear, I’ll fucking talk.

Now Alan and Charlie didn’t even know this dumb son of a bitch had anything worth talking about till he told them he did, but they went along with it, of course. What else are you gonna do? Someone starts telling you an interesting story, you listen to the end. The story led them to a bigger fish, who they paid a visit to the next day. At first Big Fish claimed he didn’t know what they were talking about, he’s a respectable businessman, the whole line of shit. But Alan can be persuasive when he needs to be, and he really laid on the charm, laid it on with a ballpeen hammer, first breaking the pinky toe on Big Fish’s left foot, and then the next toe, and then the next. Before Alan could get to the guy’s last toe, Big Fish was talking plenty, would have told them anything, would have told them his very own mother was a ripe cunt.

So they managed to work out a pretty good arrangement, a pretty good deal that everyone seemed happy with: three hundred dollars a month to both Alan and Charlie and Big Fish gets to keep his operation going. Not a bad arrangement – not bad at all.

Except now, after six months of everything running smooth as a baby’s ass, there’s a problem.

Some son of a bitch calls up Charlie at home two days ago – doesn’t explain how he got Charlie’s home number either – and claims he knows what’s going on, has seen it several times from his office window across the street. Claims he even brought out his Bell and Howell Zoomatic and filmed them making a collection. Claims it’s damning evidence, what he has on film. Claims he can get ’em kicked off the force, maybe even put ’em in jail.

‘And you know what happens to cops in jail,’ he says.

But he says he’ll sell it to them, the film he’s got. Sure. He knows the salary of a cop isn’t great. He understands the need to make a little extra cash. Hell, he says, he’s a reasonable man, and he’d like to make a little extra cash himself.

Charlie says all right, they’ll make a deal and collect the film and that’ll be that. What’s his price? The guy hesitates, then says he’ll call back once he’s had time to think about it, he’ll call back tonight – which is what Charlie’s been sitting around at home waiting for – and now he has called back, and he’s named his price. And that’s where the real problem is. Now Alan has to reason with the guy, and based on his price, he’s not the reasonable man he claims to be.

Alan runs his fingers through his hair again, glances at his coffee, which is now splashed across the brick front of Al’s Coffee Shop, and he heads back inside.

After Duke has poured Alan another cup, he decides he’ll have a donut after all.

‘Maple-glazed Long John,’ he says, and Duke grabs it for him.

‘I really hope you washed your fucking hands.’

He’s halfway to his car, mouth full of donut, when the sound of a scream pierces the air. He stops a moment, takes another bite, listens, hears another scream. He considers it for only a moment.

‘Let someone else deal with it,’ he says. ‘I got shit to do.’

12

Peter is on top of Bettie, his hands holding her arms down against the mattress, pushing fingertip bruises into her soft flesh. He can feel the jack-in-the-box buildup of orgasm almost ready to explode from within him. His hair is sweaty and hangs down in his face, dripping saltwater onto Bettie’s breasts. And then the orgasm arrives and he thrusts hard into Bettie, forcing all of himself into her one, two, three, four times, hearing her groan, holding himself in her with the last thrust, and then he’s done, and he’s breathing hard, his heart pounding against the wall of his chest like something trying to escape, like a trapped hummingbird.

He wipes his hair away from his face and looks down at Bettie, smiling, but she is not looking back. It’s as if he’s not here at all. She is looking out the window.

‘Did you hear that?’

Peter pulls himself out of her, going flaccid quickly.

‘Hear what?’ he says.

‘That scream.’

‘I didn’t hear any scream,’ Peter says, ‘except from you.’

But her mind doesn’t seem to be on sex anymore.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I’m sure.’

‘I heard a scream,’ she says. ‘Two screams. I’m sure of it. I’m positive.’

She stands, wraps a sheet around her naked body, and walks to the window to see if she can see the source of the screams she says she heard. Then she glances down at herself and uses the sheet to wipe the inside of her thighs which are, apparently, dripping.

Peter wants to ask her not to do that – to please use a wash cloth; those are high quality silk sheets and she may be ruining them – but he bites his tongue.

Now isn’t the time.

Patrick is simply sitting on the couch and looking at the static dance across the television’s gray surface when he hears the screams. One second he’s trying to imagine himself in a camouflage battle-dress uniform and jungle-boots, a rifle in his arms as he wades through a rice paddy looking for gooks, the next second he’s snapped out of his thoughts and back into reality by what sounds like a dying animal.

He stands and walks to the living-room window.

He sees several apartment lights turning on, he sees several human shapes moving to their windows, some of the shapes alone, some of them standing in twos. In one window he sees a woman, a man, and a small child, maybe six years old, all standing together like in a family portrait.

Larry’s telling Diane that he’s tired and he just wants to go to bed, can’t they talk about it in the morning – the evasive son of a bitch – when the screams come, and Diane momentarily forgets the fight and turns toward the window, and then walks to it for a better view.

The lights in the courtyard make it possible to see out fairly well even though it’s night, but Diane doesn’t see anything, just empty space. Four benches, some flower beds, and concrete.

A moment later, Larry is standing beside her.

‘What is it?’ he says.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sounded like screams.’

‘Or a dog yelping.’

‘It sounded human.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No.’

‘I think it sounded like a dog yelping.’

Thomas and Christopher both walk toward the living-room window, closer and closer, until their reflections and the reflection of the living room surrounding them disappear, and they can see the courtyard clearly, without having to look through themselves.

‘Maybe we should turn off the light,’ Christopher says. But neither of them move to do so.

‘I’m gonna go see if Ron and Anne heard anything,’ Bettie says, turning away from the window and looking at Peter, who seems bemused, who is simply sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the ether.