Playland Page 5

  “I don’t have a deal yet, Maury.” We were sitting in a window booth at the coffee shop across from St. Cyprian’s Roman Catholic church. Through the peeling red letters on the window—CAFÉ CYPRIAN, named after the church, I supposed—I watched the small knots of blue-uniformed policemen on the far side of the church slowly disperse. A cop funeral. With all the trimmings that accrued to the rank of the deceased, a decorated captain. An honor guard and the mayor and the chief of police in attendance, the cardinal on the altar. A death not in the line of duty, but a stroke at age fifty-one. In his prime, the monsignor delivering the homily had said. In the saddle, Maury Ahearne had corrected. On top of his girlfriend. Human fallibility seemed to comfort Maury Ahearne. It was an attitude we shared. Maury, with his soft hands wrapped around his coffee cup, his blue patrolman’s uniform unbuttoned and peeled back so that the badge and the brass buttons did not show. The uniform appeared to make him uneasy, embarrassed. Worn only at department funerals and at parades he could not escape. I hate the fucking bag, he said, a rare confidence, the bag his blue uniform I figured out after a moment. You know why I never took the sergeant’s exam? Because I’m back on patrol wearing the bag if I make it. Department regs. Promotion puts you back in uniform. Out on the fucking streets. Or in a black-and-white with a fucking siren. With some jiveass kid, wants to run upstairs and go break down doors, gets himself decorated and me iced. Fuck that shit.

  Maury Ahearne was persistent. “What do you usually get?”

  “Never enough.”

  “Stop jerking me around.”

  I concentrated on the manicure, the soft hands, hands that had delivered abuse to miscreants who expected to be abused. “I’m not jerking you around, Maury. It varies.”

  “You know how I find out how much you get?” he said reasonably. I did not reply. This was the kind of cop SOP I was there to learn. You had to hang out to get it. Be available. “I call a pal in the LAPD. I met him once, I had to go out to L.A., pick up a guy, bring him back here for trial. A real sweetheart, this guy. He ties his girlfriend to a chair and throws her out the window. Fourth floor in the back. You know with that thing in her mouth that she sticks up her cunt so she don’t get knocked up, you know what I mean …”

  He snapped his fingers. My cue. “Diaphragm.”

  “That’s it.” As always I was struck by Maury Ahearne’s ability to find a deviant footnote for every situation. It was as if the stories lent weight to his place in the world. “So she wouldn’t scream, I guess. Then he heads for L.A., this guy. LAPD picks him up, holds him till I get there. Which is how I meet my pal. A dumb fuck in Robbery-Homicide, but I got to think he can handle something like this. He knows people who know people in the picture business. He asks around, finds somebody he can squeeze. Everybody can be squeezed one way or the other, you get right down to it. I tell my pal to ask around, maybe squeeze somebody, get me a quote on your last price.” A large smile. “I think I get the quote on what your last price is. L.A., Detroit, it’s all the same, the way cops operate.”

  I did not doubt it for a second.

  “Marty, he wants half.”

  “Half of what?”

  “Half of my fee.”

  “I can hang with that, Jack.”

  “I tell you how Jimmy Jesus gets it?” Maury Ahearne asked the next afternoon. I was riding shotgun in a beat-up police department Chevy Nova, tape recorder at the ready. Hollywood screenwriter picking up gritty gutter wisdom.

  “I don’t think so.” Don’t interrupt, no detours, don’t ask how Jimmy Jesus got his name.

  “He’s having a sitdown with the spades. Ribs, collard greens, the works. Fixing things. This is my side of the street, this is yours. I sell here, you sell there. He picks himself up a slab of ribs, Jimmy, and the dumb fuck chokes on it. Face turns blue. One of the spades gives him the Heimlich hold. I don’t know where the fuck he learned it. I thought they were too dumb. Anyway this big spade, Milk Shake I think his name is, he puts his arm around Jimmy’s chest, and when he starts to heave, he feels the wire Jimmy’s wearing under his shirt. He’s looking at fifteen in Jackson, Jimmy, a narcotics beef, so he’s working undercover for some federal strike force, he wants to get into witness protection. The spades let him choke. An accident. Nothing on the fucking tape, it turns out except Jimmy dying.”

  I was struck once again by the element of theatricality in Maury Ahearne’s performance, the sense that the 9-mm Beretta in his shoulder holster and the handcuffs hanging from the back of his heavy leather belt were the ultimate social equalizers that made him more than my match. There was about him a tendency to show off, a willingness, perhaps even a need, to push. I was only a tourist in Maury Ahearne’s world, a visitor with a limited visa, while he was in harm’s way, as contemptuous of my civilian airs and screen credits and brush with the world of fame and money as Al and Leo had been in New York.

  “You talk to the Jewboy?”

  I had to remember to tell that to Marty Magnin. “He said to say hello, give you his best.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me. You’re deadweight, you know that? I’m supposed to carry you around. Fuck you.” His voice began to rise, his face turned a choleric red, and I suspected that were I a felon I would at any second be on the receiving end of those soft manicured hands. “You could get me killed. For a handshake and a couple of cees stuffed in my pocket like I’m some kind of fucking headwaiter.”

  With that Maury Ahearne picked up my tape recorder and threw it out the car window. I looked back and saw it bouncing on the street, three hundred dollars’ worth of Sony rechargeable, and in the gathering dusk I could see a pack of black children suddenly appear and begin fighting over it, as if they were predators feeding at a carcass too small to provide for all of them. Then Maury Ahearne stopped the Nova, reached over and opened the door on my side, and said, “Out.”

  I got out. He drove off. The children abandoned the fight over the tape recorder and surrounded me, demanding money, not really children on closer look, but fifteen-year-olds in hightops and turned-around baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts, hardened by schoolyard basketball and petty street crime, as big if not bigger than I. I gave them everything I had. It did not seem the place to argue, nor to hope that Maury Ahearne was just circling the block and, like the cavalry, would soon return. In retrospect it seemed that there was a kind of justice in this humiliation, the revenge of Shaamel Boudreau from beyond the grave. But of course that idea derived from my propensity for seeing all sides of every question, my ability to dispense benefit of the doubt as if it was a sacrament. They had my money and had rejected my digital Casio watch as cheap honky shit. Then they simply melted into the early evening, leaving only the echoes of their slurs on my color and my manhood and my wristwear. On the skyline I saw a skyscraper and headed for it, the point on a one-man patrol.

  Which was how I happened to be having dinner alone that night on the seventy-third floor of the Renaissance Plaza. With a panoramic view of downtown Detroit. Where the bills from my wallet were helping prime the ghetto economy. Not quite listening to the tube, remote in hand, changing channels as often as I blinked my eyes. Click. Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan would have kept his money and given them the watch. Click. M*A*S*H. Alan Alda would have reasoned with them. Had them get in touch with their feelings. Turned them into caring feminists. I hate fucking Alan Alda. Click. Geraldo. Geraldo would have had them onstage, we didn’t do the dude, what’s the big fucking deal, man. Click.

  I contemplated the room-service cart. The iceberg lettuce salad was wilted, the Salisbury steak congealed in its gravy, the coffee cold, the creamer turned. The minibar would have to provide dinner. Macadamia nuts and house-brand vodka, no ice, the ice machine was not working. Why should it? Nothing else at the hotel seemed to work. Options. It was too late to get a plane back to New York. Anyway I would have to take at least a shot at mending fences with Maury Ahearne. Personally I hoped he had suffered a myocardial infarction, but in the event he hadn’t, M
arty Magnin had said he would go to five large. He had actually said “five large.” As always trying to master the lingo. Until then I had a free night on my hands.

  To Maury’s tapes. Anything to make the time pass. “You got a wife?” I had asked. Getting personal. Dangerous territory. Because as usual I had avoided sharing confidences about myself, volunteering only my name, credits, and, reluctantly, my current widower marital status. I have discovered that my family’s history and the millions or the billions I am alleged to have as sole surviving Broderick heir tend to inhibit free discourse.

  “Two exes. And a cunt daughter doesn’t speak to me since I threw her mother out.” That terrible laugh. “She thinks I’m all broke up about not seeing her. Fat chance.”

  I pressed the Stop button and rewound the tape. It occurred to me that shock value had a law of diminishing returns, and I suspected that between Maury Ahearne and me that law was just about ready to kick in.

  I picked up the complimentary copy of the Free Press that had come with breakfast. Still folded to the obituary page. The obituaries were a new fascination since birthday number fifty. Five-oh, and the sense of days dwindling down, September, November. Most mornings I turned to the obituaries right after a cursory glance at the headlines. The obits were a relief. A first look to check the ages of the recently deceased. Fifty to sixty. Those hurt. Too close to home. Then cause of death. AIDS now, too often. Some people still hiding it: “39 … respiratory illness … survived by his mother.” More and more were to the point, like deaths in combat: “43, from complications caused by AIDS, his companion, Randy Smith, said.” Sometimes “long-term companion.” Now giving way to “lover.” “His lover, Dwight, said.” Cancer was a relief. Lung, liver, prostate, brain tumor. An automobile accident seemed a positive fucking blessing. Although maybe Lizzie wouldn’t think so. Screenwriter’s Wife. Elizabeth Innocent Broderick, 39. Erase that tape. Can’t think about it. That was what put me in Detroit in the first place. Forget accidents. Natural causes. The cardiac cases were the ones I really hated. Congestive heart failure, 52. Cardiac arrest, 50. Coronary artery disease, 57. Over sixty was a good time to check out. Closer to sixty-five, actually. Over seventy was even better. “In his sleep. Had not been ill. Two sets of tennis that afternoon.” And maybe a great fuck afterward. Even a lousy fuck. Jerking off, if that’s all that’s available. “Quietly, in his sleep.” That’s the one I would like to reserve.

  Happier stuff. There was something else, something I remembered from that morning’s quick read. Ah, yes. The page listing all that week’s singles’ get-togethers in the metropolitan Detroit area. Tonight looked busy. “If She Fixes My Breakfast, Do I Have to Buy Her Dinner?” (Discovery Singles, Haskell Unitarian Church, Admission $3.) Uh. Stay away from the Unitarians. “Everything You Need to Know About Love Bugs—Sexually Transmitted Diseases.” (Jewish Singles Connection, Newport Jewish Community Center, $4.) Jesus Christ. Under the circumstances perhaps not the most appropriate response. “After Hello …” Another Unitarian get-together. Question: Why so many Unitarian singles? Answer: Because they’re Unitarians. “I Don’t Want the Hassle and I Don’t Want to Be Alone.” (Roundtable Singles, $5.) All hassle and a lonely night, bet the mortgage on it. “Sexaholics and Sexual Selfishness.” (Elizabeth Seabury-Walsh Singles Forum, Chatham Neighborhood Nondenominational Church, $7.) A beat-up session on male chauvinist pigs. “Race & the Supreme Court—Constitutional Issues.” (ACLU Singles Chapter, $6.) Chat, chat, chat, chat. No, no, no, no. “The Death Penalty—Is It the Solution?” (Socially Responsible Singles, Beachwood YWCA, $4.)

  Socially responsible singles. A type I knew. For whom I had a rap as polished as one of Maury Ahearne’s stories. An anodyne for a very difficult day, a chance to salve a wounded sense of self-esteem.

  V

  I awoke and felt her side of the bed. She was not there. The digital clock on the bedside table said 3:47. I fumbled for the control switches and lowered the brightness level. The green fluorescent numbers always gave me a headache. A migraine warning. I wondered where she was, glad for the moment it gave me to remember her name. Frances. Francine. Fernanda. Fern, short for Fernanda. That rang a bell. Sort of. Her side of the bed was still warm. Meaning she had not been gone for long. Fern. Am I sure about Fern? The Socially Responsible Single. Divorced mother of two.

  “Did you know,” I had said at the mixer after the lecture earlier that evening at the Beachwood YWCA, “that before they strap a man into the electric chair they make him …”

  “What?” The questioner was the woman whose name I now could not remember.

  “I’m not sure this is a proper subject … what I mean to say is …” I searched for the precise phrasing. “It’s … it’s gross.”

  “The death penalty is gross. The state’s taking a life is gross. As you put it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what do they make the victim do?”

  No backing up now. Maury Ahearne was my source. His father had been a prison guard on the death row detail at Jackson State Penitentiary when Michigan still had the death penalty. “They make him … cram cotton up his anus.” There. It was out.

  “That’s barbaric.”

  I speared a wedge of stale Gouda with a toothpick and with my thumb eased it on top of a Ritz cracker. No wine at the Y. Only a nondenominational punch. “And then they make him wear a rubber diaper.”

  “I guess I don’t have to ask why.” She was the one who had asked most of the questions during the Q-and-A session after the public defender from the Death Watch Association had made his presentation. On the racial configuration of juries in death penalty cases. On homicide rates in states that had banned the death penalty versus those in states that exercised it. On the proportion of death penalty convictions in cases involving white against white, white against black, black against black, black against white. I concentrated on the questions. Or to be more specific the questioner. On the way she absentmindedly scratched her ribs when she talked, right hand left rib, left hand right rib, the action outlining her breast against the silk blouse she was wearing, some shade of tan or beige, the half acorn of her nipple pressed against the fabric until she stopped scratching. I focused on the way the woman’s glasses slipped down her nose when she talked, and on the way her eyes seemed to lock into some further plane as her thoughts took shape. It was disconcerting to be the object of that gaze. “How do you know this, Mr.…?”

  I was not wearing a paper name tag. Nor was she, I noticed. “Broderick. It’s research. For a project I’m working on.”

  “On the death penalty?” I wondered if her commitment to the abolition of capital punishment would outlast this session of social responsibility.

  “On the law enforcement community.” A tiptoe along the fault line of truth.

  “I thought there was only one attitude in that community.”

  She had begun to scratch again. I could not concentrate on what she was saying as she scratched, even though I fastened my eyes on her face and not the swell and the acorn under the silk. Time to act. After all, how much different was a Socially Responsible Singles meeting from an ad in a magazine Personals column. She could have hung the Personal around her neck: “Classy, sensual DWF seeks gentle, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, imaginative, physically fit SWM (40–50) to share the joy of commitment.” Scratch commitment and I more or less qualified. Sudden thought about Personals: Why didn’t any SWM or DWM or SJM ever write, “So horny I’d fuck the crack of dawn.” I would like to see the response on that one. Especially from the Socially Responsible Single. “Would you like to get a real drink?” I said suddenly. No. No hard stuff. She was not the type. “A glass of Zinfandel.” Oh, God, I thought I was beyond using wine chat. “Chardonnay.” Christ. “I’m parched.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  She drove a silver four-door sedan, with a dashboard so full of climate- and audio-control buttons that it was as if you were not driving a car but commanding a spacecraft,
like the Challenger that blew up over Canaveral, with the schoolteacher from New Hampshire, and the black and the Japanese-American astronauts, and the Jewish girl from Ohio, and the three crew-cut Protestants who made up the rest of the crew, so gender- and demographically balanced, it occurred to me as I sat next to this woman, that perhaps the Challenger had to blow up, it had enough constituencies to satisfy the needs of the gods. This was the kind of extraneous idea I contemplate more and more as I get older and find myself about to couple with someone with whom I do not wish to share a commitment, that terrible word from the Personals, topped only by relationship. Irrelevant thoughts passing as conversation. Noise. An aural blockade.

  So: She drove a Cressida. Maybe that was why the automobile industry was in the crapper, even people in Detroit were buying Japanese. The women I had known in California had not driven Cressidas, nor any Toyota cars, for that matter, the Toyota was an extra car for the maid. The women I had known in California, the women Lizzie did not try to conceal her dislike for, drove BMWs in the 300 line, the bigger BMWs in the 700 class were a husband’s car. No Cressidas. Reason enough to leave L.A. right there.