“Look, uh, I’m sorry. I’m not real sharp yet. I was asleep.”
“Sounds like you still are, Billy. I have to get going. Why don’t you call me at work later?”
“Yes. Okay, if I can.”
“I think you better can, baby. ’Bye.”
And she hung up. I was left with a clear sense that she was peeved with me. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she should realize right away that it wasn’t going to work, could never work. And that she deserved better.
I fell asleep again almost instantly. I woke up an hour later thinking about Nancy. What a jerk I was. This was an incredible person, and she liked me. I had a real chance at something here, and I was about to blow it for—for what? A sense of duty or honor? Low self-esteem?
I thought about the last look I’d had of her as I snuck out, that taut, sleek back. I thought about the other side, too. I wanted her again, right now.
How could that be wrong? What did it have to do with what I was doing? Didn’t Lancelot go home at the end of the day, home to a hot bath, Guinevere, and a few hours of sleep?
I sat on the side of the bed and looked at my feet. I wiggled my toes at myself: Hello, head. I nodded my head at my toes: Hey, how’s it going? Things are getting a little rocky on this end, toes. Would you guys like to do some of the thinking for a while? We’re not doing so great up here.
Sure: dialogue between self and toes. Why not?
I stumbled into the shower and started to feel a little more like part of the world again. As I climbed out, the telephone was ringing again. I leaned out the bathroom door and looked at it for a few seconds before deciding it couldn’t possibly be Nancy. I took the three steps over and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said.
There was a long breath blown out on the other end, the sound of amused exasperation expressed as cigarette smoke. “It’s my day off, you know,” Ed said.
“You won’t make Lieutenant sitting around on your ass, Ed,” I told him.
“I won’t make it at all, they find out I’m talking to you.”
That didn’t sound good. “What does that mean?”
Another long exhale. It wa
s so loud and clear I could almost see the smoke trickle out of the receiver. “Means you not doing so good making friends, Billy. Means from now on you best leave any messages you got on my answering machine at home. And try to disguise your voice, all right? You Typhoid Billy now, and I sure don’t want to catch nothing from you.”
“When did this happen?”
“Happened yesterday. Suddenly they don’t want nobody having nothing to do with you. I’m in deep shit and officially told to mind my own fuckin’ business and stay ’way from you. Came down last night, while you out muff-diving.”
I let that go. “Who is they, Ed?”
I heard him fire up another Kool, blow out the smoke. “Hard to say for sure. Situation like this, pressure works kind of sideways. You know, somebody suggest something at the water cooler, then they walk it down the hall to somebody who mention it to their buddy while they trading memos. Hard to say where it started.”
“Uh-huh. Would it be too corny to ask if the pressure’s coming from upstairs?”
“Oh, my, no,” said Ed. “That ain’t corny at all, son. Upstairs is just exactly where the pressure is coming from, Billy.” He had never sounded more sardonic.
“What did you find out about Doyle’s neighborhood?”
“Funny you should ask. I checked those five houses. One of ’em been empty for six months. Probate thing. Another one got the dean of arts at USC.”
“It could happen.”
“I don’t think so, Billy. Not really.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t really think so either. What else?”
“One of ’em belong to Eddie Jackson.”