A novel
One
The park, Martin Eckhardt thought, with its walkers and runners and idlers, was exactly as he remembered, which surprised him because his first visit had been on a Thursday morning and now it was a Monday evening and nearly ten. He didn’t think so many people would be out at night, or that the paths would be as brightly lit as they were. But the lamps in Riverside Park were their own full moon. People’s faces were nearly as well-illuminated as during the day.
He would be seen. And afterwards, he would be remembered, like the time he dressed up as Frankenstein for an office party. His co-workers had kidded him about that for years. His impersonation became a department joke. But for the hours of the party, amusement wasn’t what he’d observed in his colleague’s eyes when they glanced at him, only an ill-ease, as if people couldn’t see past the face paint and electrodes. His costume had been too perfect. His size had made the monster real.
He glanced over his shoulder to check for patrolmen.
Every person he passed would be a witness. The fake mustache he had pasted to his lip, the darkened hair, the extra layer of clothes wouldn’t be enough once the police artist started his sketch. Together, the people in this park would come up with a drawing that actually looked like him. The extra clothes were only a burden on this warm evening.
Another thing he didn’t anticipate. He didn’t think a September evening by the river would be this mild. But the evening was very mild; and the Hudson wasn’t carrying much breeze.
Martin reached down and tried to get the sleeves of his windbreaker over the muscles of his forearms; but his forearms were too large. He would have liked to have taken off the windbreaker, but it was hiding a gun; and the Yankees logo on the back was part of his disguise.
A pair of rollerbladers slipped past on his left. A woman on a bicycle was coming toward him on the right, but Martin didn’t really notice; his attention had been caught by a young man on a bench who was also heavily muscled. This man was staring at him and had a question in his eyes, and with a flush of embarrassment Martin realized what that question was: this man wanted him to sit down on that bench; this man was looking for company and maybe something more.
Martin swung his eyes back to the front, like a soldier on parade. This wasn’t an invitation he was interested in; he didn’t even want to RSVP. Spending the night with another man wasn’t the adventure he’d had in mind when he set out this evening.
Martin passed the bench and picked up his pace; but the feel of the other man’s eyes lingered. A whistle would be next.
It hadn’t occurred to him that the park in the evening would be a pickup scene. He’d thought these paths would be deserted and dangerous. But of course, evenings were exactly when a person would be out socializing. People worked during the day. Most people.
“Hey, Sweetmeats! Whatcha running from?”
The man’s laughter was a highway between them. Everyone who heard turned and understood. But no one snickered, because Martin was six feet seven inches tall and had shoulders that touched both sides of most door frames.
A trickle of sweat began to work its way down his back. Drops of moisture already dotted his upper lip and brow. Martin wiped them away.
Someone studying him would decide he was ill.
But then Martin thought that was probably naïve. In a city like New York, a person looking at him would decide he was strung out, a junkie. That person would grow tense, in part because of his size; then everyone nearby would grow tense, because tension, like the plague, was contagious. A policeman on patrol would zero in on him. When that man patted him down, he would discover the gun.
“Hey, Sweetmeats!”
Martin didn’t turn; the man wasn’t following him. In another minute, those cries wouldn’t carry.
He slowed his pace. He was practically jogging, while everyone around him was strolling. He was out of sync with the mood of the hour.
Martin was on the park’s main concourse, an avenue, really, considering its width and the frequency of the lamps.
Almost everyone in the park was on this path; and almost everyone was walking a dog. The man in front of Martin had a Doberman at his heel. The next man up was walking a Chow. The woman Martin had just passed was trying to untangle three Chihuahuas that had managed to braid their leads. Lined up, these people were a community patrol, border guards for the neighborhood. They kept this park safe.
Martin edged over to the side of the path, and the stone guardrail on his left.
Beyond the rail, and thirty feet down, the lower park stretched to the Henry Hudson Parkway and the river. No one was walking a dog down there. The lower park, a narrow strip of land that was partly wooded and partly covered with sports fields, was empty and isolated and not as well lit as the upper park. That was where he had to go.
Martin pushed down on the gun in his waistband. Immediately, it started to work its way back up. Walking was the problem. With each step, his thigh bumped the end of the gun barrel. Someone watching would guess what he was doing. That person would use a cell phone to alert the police.
Martin glanced over his shoulder again.
But the people on the benches behind him weren’t reaching for their phones; they didn’t have their hands on their own guns. It was only in his mind that he was a spectacle.
The man walking the Doberman stopped, so his dog could relieve itself.
On impulse, Martin veered to the right, stepping onto a side path. This path was only lit by the occasional lamp. Still, there was enough light to see that mountain trolls weren’t lurking in the shadows.
The path crept slowly upward, through a band of trees and toward the massive stone retaining wall that supported Riverside Drive. Even in the dark Martin could sense that wall, a shadow that rose like the wall of a castle into the air above him. With the trees to the west, the retaining wall made a tunnel of the path he was on, and for a moment the sound of cars on the parkway below disappeared.
He paused.
The chirring of katydids filled the night; and the deep thunder of a plane overhead. On the sidewalk above, people were talking.
This corner of the park was a refuge, a place where a person could catch his breath and partly escape the sounds of the city for a moment. Except for the lamps, he might have been in his own backyard in Connecticut. The smell of the earth was the same, a heavy rich odor, maybe from the oak leaves on the ground.
The first leaves had begun to fall, even though the trees hadn’t turned color yet—a premature conclusion to the year. Thinking about his own life, he could have drawn a comparison.
An overly dramatic pairing probably, given that he was healthy and only in his early fifties. But a sentiment that could perhaps be excused, given the sudden collapse of his fortunes.
After twenty-seven years as an engineer for the same company, he didn’t have a job anymore because his company didn’t really exist anymore. An international conglomerate had bought them out.
His boss delivered the news on a Tuesday morning, at 10:13.
“They’re firing everyone, Martin. We’re all out of a job.”
Martin had stared back at his boss in disbelief. Being unemployed was something that happened to someone else, like dying in a plane crash.
An hour later, Martin was sitting in his car, a box containing the things he’d had on his desk beside him. They’d had boxes for everyone.
A severance package had seen him through the last year. But in nineteen days those benefits would run out. Then he and his family would have to dip into their savings to make their mortgage payments. They would have to pay their own health insurance, another impossibly large monthly check. His children would have to rethink their college plans. And it was becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that Martin wouldn’t be riding to the rescue, because he’d found it impossible to find another job.
Over the last year, he’d sent out hundreds of resumes, and had filled out eighty-six job applications. Those applications resulted in five interviews. At the first interview, he discovered he’d forgotten how to just relax and chat it up with strangers. At the second interview, he tried too hard. Then he got nervous. Then defensive.
He had another interview in the morning, with a firm of patent attorneys. But after a year of failures, Martin wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic. His wife had given up on him months ago.
A movement caught his eye, a flash of light like a firefly.
A woman was on the path in front of him, maybe twenty feet away. She was perched on a ledge outcropping, her legs tucked under her like the White Rock girl. Except this woman wasn’t dressed in white, and she didn’t have blond hair; she was wearing black leather and had dark hair. She was the New York version of the White Rock girl. She’d moved and her earrings had caught the light.
The White Rock girl raised her hand.
In greeting, Martin thought, so he raised his hand.
But this woman wasn’t saying hello; she was lifting an unlit cigarette. Martin saw it now, suspended above her fingers like an exclamation point. He’d misunderstood her gesture, probably because he didn’t smoke.
“Do you have a light?” she asked.
He didn’t have a light, because he didn’t smoke. The Surgeon General had determined smoking was bad for your health.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t.”
The White Rock girl lowered her hand, then smiled. She wasn’t really interested in a light; she was interested in his shoulders. This woman was in the park looking for company, too.
Martin took a few steps forward, until he was next to the rock she was on.
The White Rock girl was in her late twenties or early thirties and was lean in a way that the women who lived near his Connecticut home were not, even the women who went to the gym. Hollows marked the insides of her thighs; and the muscles that ran along the top of her legs were flat, like bands of steel. There was a spareness to this woman, as if that were all the city could support.
“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the White Rock girl said.
She liked that Martin’s shoulders were as wide as a doorway.
“I don’t live around here,” Martin said.
“You’re from the provinces.” The White Rock girl was thinking the Bronx, or maybe Queens.
“That’s right,” Martin answered.
The White Rock girl smiled. Someone from the provinces wouldn’t be taking his evening stroll in the middle of Manhattan, not on a weekday.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you? You look ridiculous in that getup.”
Her statement caught Martin by surprise. He’d been so concerned he would be questioned by a policeman, it hadn’t occurred to him the people in this park might take him for one.
“You don’t think I fit in?” he asked.
“You’re too big to fit in.” The White Rock girl smiled again, a little more broadly this time.
She wasn’t thinking about his shoulders anymore, and to make sure he understood, she slowly lowered her eyes, and then raised them. This woman had just invited him home.
This woman, like the White Rock girl on the soda bottle, was leaning forward so that her blouse hung away from her body revealing her breasts, right to the nipples. This woman had small breasts that looked as hard as she did.
“Are you looking for drugs?” she asked. Her eyes had followed his.
“I’m just supposed to keep an eye on things,” Martin said.
The woman’s smile grew even wider. “I can see that.”
This woman was laughing at him. She’d announced her interest, and he was still making small talk. A real cop would have already had an arm around this woman’s waist and a hand up her blouse; he would have been suggesting what he might do to make her breasts a little larger.
Martin snuck another look at the White Rock girl’s breasts.
He could go home with this woman, as he probably could have gone home with the young man he’d seen on that bench. A dalliance. A mini-adventure. Something unplanned, and out of character, and a tad reckless. A complete departure from his usual life. Martin was ready for that. At his age, it was now or never.
But going home with this woman would mean abandoning his plans for the evening; all his preparations would have been wasted. He wouldn’t return to this park after they made love. It would be too late; the park would be empty. And he wouldn’t come back some other time, and not only because New York was hours from his home. He wouldn’t come back because the thought of actually walking the paths of the lower park at night scared him.
Sitting around the house the last year, staring at the walls and at the things he and his wife had put up on the walls, reexamining the decisions he’d made over the years, all Martin had been able to focus on was how fear had governed his choices, right from the start.
He never imagined he would spend his life as an engineer, a profession in which he’d had absolutely no interest. He grabbed that idea out of thin air in a panic one evening as he reread, for the fifteenth time, the letter he’d received from the Selective Service System informing him he had to register.
“They register everyone,” his father told him, seeing his concern. “You won’t have to serve; you’ll be in college. The war won’t last another four years.”
His father had served, and his grandfather. His father had fought, and had the scars to prove it.
His mother, sitting on the living room couch, the nightly news on the television, had tears in her eyes. The news anchor had just announced that day’s casualties.
Martin was on the phone to the dean of students the next morning. A mechanical-engineering program ran five years.
Two months after Martin graduated college, the war finally did end. Playing it safe saw him through. It was a lesson he didn’t forget, and for the last thirty years he had played it safe.
But now, looking back at the things he’d done and hadn’t done, taking account, Martin had to wonder whether he’d played it too safe. He’d never tried for a better job. He’d never gone off on an adventure, not something that qualified as an adventure, where there’d been the chance of dying. Taking that great a risk had always seemed imprudent.
He hadn’t led a cautious life; he’d led a cowardly life, never daring anything, an extra irony given his size. Had he served in the military, he would have had to take risks; he would have come to accept risk as a part of life. By missing that, he’d missed a fundamental rite of passage.
Not a very clever, or original, thought; and of course if he hadn’t lost his job, he wouldn’t have been thinking about this at all. Nevertheless, over the last year the thought of who he might have been had he served pulled at him more and more.
Out of curiosity, he went to the library and took out a book written by a veteran. Then he took out all the books he could find.
The violence that those men wrote about (both the things they did, and the things they witnessed) was so far removed from anything Martin had experienced, he’d literally been unable to imagine what combat had been like. His life, quite simply, provided no comparisons. He had missed a fundamental rite of passage.
It left him feeling ashamed, as he’d felt ashamed half a year earlier when he and his daughter passed three young men roughing up a woman in a mall parking lot. Martin had already started to turn away, when his daughter, without a glance in his direction, marched right up to the group and walked the woman off.
His daughter was braver than he was, even though she was half his size. Size didn’t matter; courage mattered. And he didn’t have any.
He’d turned himself into a coward over the years. At least, he wanted to believe he’d turned himself into a coward. He didn’t want to think he was born a coward, or that being a coward was an irremediable condition. There had to be the possibility of change.
Martin was too old to join the Army, but the books he’d read had given him an idea what basic training was like.
He joined a gym and started in, working up to an hour of calisthenics each morning, followed by a one-hour run. In the evening, he did two hours on the weight machines.
The transformation was astounding. The exercise made him huge. After six weeks, he had to buy himself new clothes. A month later, he’d needed even larger clothes. He picked out muscle shirts and chinos, which made his wife laugh.
“You’ll be getting a tattoo next.”
The rebuke caught him by surprise. For the first time in his life he felt good about himself—he’d set a goal and had succeeded in accomplishing it—and here his wife was making fun of him.
“Those clothes aren’t going to make you young again,” she said.
The clothes didn’t make the man, any more than going to the gym had anything to do with combat. Basic training only lasted so long; after that, soldiers went to war.
That was why Martin was in this park on this September evening: to prove to himself he had what it took. He wanted to see whether he could face a mugger without panicking. Walking through a New York City park at night was the nearest thing to combat he could think of, short of joining a mercenary army.
A pathetic test, Martin understood, and morally questionable besides. If he was attacked and had to shoot his assailant, he wouldn’t be acting in self-defense, not really. In a way, he was stalking the men he hoped would mug him. And of course with the gun, any danger he faced was largely illusory.
The White Rock girl lifted an eyebrow. She was waiting for him to make up his mind, but she wasn’t going to wait forever. His inability to decide was insulting.
“What time is your shift over?” she asked.
She was growing impatient. It would be the same in bed.
“Three o’clock,” he said.
“That’s too late.”
If he went off with this woman he wouldn’t get his taste of combat, not until he got home and had to face his wife.
*
The lower park was both noisier and quieter than the upper park: the rush of cars on the highway was like the sea during a storm; but no one was walking the paths. The lowest retaining wall was a night-time line in the sand.
Martin stopped at the top of one of the stairways that headed down. Once he was in the lower park, he would be trapped between the retaining wall and the parkway. There would be no easy escape.
The upper park and lower park were only linked by a few sets of stairs, and those stairs were blocks apart. If Martin got into trouble he would have to use the gun, something, he suddenly realized, he’d neglected to train for. He’d fired this gun twice, to make sure it worked. Under pressure, in a panic, he might forget to release the safety, or even aim.
He descended a step. The gun began to work its way up. He pushed it back down and kept going.
Part of the problem was that he’d fitted a silencer to the barrel, which made it too long to fit in his pants.
An extra precaution, he’d told himself. If he was forced to use the gun, the shots wouldn’t be heard; he would be able to walk away afterwards. But even as Martin was forming that argument in his mind, he’d known it was a lie. He’d put a silencer on the gun because he knew he would be more likely to use a silenced gun. Actually shooting someone would place him on the battlefield for a moment. It would be his taste of war.
Another bit of self-delusion. In war, the enemy knew you were coming. If he shot a mugger, it would simply make him a murderer.
An eight-foot high wrought-iron gate stood open before him, like the entrance to Hell. Unlike the gates of Heaven, the gates of Hell were never locked or guarded. Everyone was welcome down below.
Martin passed through the gate and descended the remaining stairs. Behind him, the lamps of the upper park faded.
A fence on the left cut him off from the basketball courts.
Woods hid the land to the right.
Martin hadn’t explored these woods. And he didn’t know whether there were breaks in the fence around the basketball courts that he could slip through. He hadn’t reconnoitered the lower park because his plan had been to stay in the upper park. He’d thought that would be dangerous enough. But it might be hours before these dog walkers cleared out. He typically walked his dog, a golden retriever, at eleven.
Martin took another step, and stopped.
He heard footsteps—they seemed to be everywhere, like the katydids. But when he turned, he didn’t see anyone on the path behind him.
On the Henry Hudson Parkway, cars rushed past.
A bird whistled and then fell silent.
Martin took a step, and heard someone in the upper park laugh. There was the ring of metal against metal, and then a grating, and then a crash. The gate he’d walked through had just been closed behind him. The stairs he’d come down were no longer a way out.
He started walking again.
The gun worked its way up. He pushed it back down. His heart was pounding wildly.
He had three long blocks to go before the next set of stairs and only a vague idea what lay in between. This park might not be a war zone, but in the dark it was scary enough.
The echo of footsteps returned, but this time they seemed impossibly loud, as if giants were approaching.
Martin stopped.
A group of teenagers was in front of him, in the skate park on his left, maybe thirty kids in all. They were slouched against the chain-link fence smoking cigarettes and listening to music. The heavy bass line of a rap song was what he’d heard.
Martin eased forward a step, and the scent of marijuana reached him. These children weren’t smoking cigarettes; they were getting high.
These children had spotted him and were staring. They were breaking the law, and he might be a cop. The White Rock girl had thought that. These children were waiting for him to say something, and maybe flash a badge.
These kids were wearing immensely baggy shorts that hung down to their calves, and almost equally long T-shirts. Most had skateboards. A few had bikes. Martin knew what those skateboards and bikes cost because he’d had to buy those things for his children. And he had an idea what marijuana cost, from reading magazines and the newspaper. He didn’t think these kids were getting that kind of money from their parents, which meant they were used to taking what they wanted. If they came after him, he was dead. He couldn’t shoot a child.
These children had started to whisper among themselves. He wasn’t acting like a cop—a cop would have been all over them. These children were angry now, because earlier they’d been scared.
As a group, they began to stir. They knew they had him. They were between him and the next set of stairs.
Martin checked the path behind him.
He hadn’t expected to come across a group of children this late on a school night. These kids should have been home studying, or getting ready for bed. He hadn’t planned for this.
One child snickered and called out to the others. That child had decided Martin was down there looking for a sweetie.
In two seconds, these kids were going to rush him, because beating up guys who liked other guys was something teenage boys did. His size wouldn’t help him, not against thirty kids swinging skateboards. The gun would be his only option.
Martin slipped his hand inside his jacket, undid the safety on the pistol, and grabbed hold of the gun. Shooting a child wasn’t the test he’d had in mind when he set out this evening. That wasn’t the taste of war he was looking for.
“Yo, pretty boy!”
Half these kids leapt to their feet.
Martin’s stomach began to creep up into his throat. His legs were shaking.
A cop would have just gotten angry. He had to get angry. That was his only way out of this.
He forced himself forward a step and unzipped the windbreaker so that the gun showed.
“I want some names!” He barked the words and hardened his stare, as he imagined a policeman would. “You kids’ve got school tomorrow. You oughta be in bed.”
A few of the children laughed, but most didn’t. Two or three slipped off in the opposite direction, vaulting the six-foot fence as easily as gymnasts.
It occurred to Martin that in addition to drugs these children probably had guns. When they pulled out those guns, he would get his taste of war. It would be the Little Bighorn all over again.
Martin forced himself forward another step, until his nose was against the fence. “I want some names now!”
It was as if the recess bell had sounded: every kid there leapt up and ran. Their parting curses were like the jeers of losing fans.
Martin took a breath, and then another breath. He thought his heart was going to explode. But after a minute, it began to return to normal. Six months working out at the gym had made him fit.
A stillness settled in around him, as after guests have departed. The rush of cars on the highway grew less. The chirring of the katydids diminished.
He hadn’t panicked, and he hadn’t run. He’d stared Death in the face without blinking. A miracle, if a bit of an overstatement, unless Death came in petite sizes. He could go back to the hotel feeling good about himself.
Martin started forward again. The gun worked its way up. He pushed it back down and zipped his jacket. He felt a sudden sense of well-being, maybe from the marijuana.
He realized he hadn’t expected to succeed at this test. The loss of his job, and his inability to find another, had sapped his confidence. Or perhaps, he’d never been confident to begin with. That might explain why he’d chosen to live such a cautious life. A person who never dared anything could never fail: he would never be turned down for a date by the prom queen; he would never lose a bet. He would also never win. By choosing a safe life, he’d gotten a boring life. But he could change that, as he’d changed his physique. He could set himself challenges—scaling the Empire State Building with sticky pads—until he became the man he wanted to be.
Martin reached the path that led to the stairs and the upper park, and paused. There were other stairways further on—this park ran for miles. He didn’t have to rush back to his hotel; no one was going to be doing a bed check. The evening didn’t have to be over. It could just be beginning.
Up ahead, the dirt surface of the baseball field was a pale shadow against the darker shadow of the trees beyond. The path that bordered that field wasn’t lit; in places it was obscured by shrubs. It would be a mistake to go that way.
Martin realized he didn’t care. He never dared anything, but suddenly he was ready to. He would dash across that field like a soldier charging the enemy. He would run the length of this park and then back again, until the dawn finally lit the sky.
He crossed the strip of land that separated the skate park from the ball field and passed the last lamp.
His shadow leapt out in front of him, like a perpetrator fleeing the scene of a crime. Then his shadow disappeared and the dark closed in. The noise from the parkway suddenly became a roar.
Martin stopped.
The pounding of the tires on the pavement was overwhelming, and the flash of headlights left him blind. He wouldn’t be able to hear a mugger sneaking up. He wouldn’t see that person, not before the guy was right on top of him.
Martin took a step to the side, trying to see past the bushes that lined the path. But right there the bushes were as thick as a hedge.
Martin took another step to the side.
The feeling of euphoria he’d felt a moment before was gone. Uncertainty had taken its place. He’d been brave for a moment, but that moment had passed.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The skate park stairs were still in sight. He could be up them in a minute and back on the promenade with those people and their dogs. That would be the smart thing to do. He’d dared enough for one evening.
But running for those stairs would spoil his earlier victory. This fear would be what he remembered. Now that he’d started for the ball field, he had to keep going.
The lamp at the top of the landing was a porch light that had been left on, but not for him.
Martin turned and took a step forward, and nearly collided with a man the size of a refrigerator. If the man hadn’t lifted a hand, they would have bumped noses.
“You lose your dog, Sport?” the Maytag man drawled.
This man’s mouth was so close to his, Martin thought the guy was going to kiss him. Instead, the Maytag man pushed the tip of a knife into his stomach and lifted, bringing him to his toes.
“Let’s have your wallet, and your watch, and anything else that’s worth a buck.” The Maytag man tipped the knife upward another inch.
Martin didn’t want to breathe; he was afraid that would force the knife in farther. When he got home, he would have to get a tetanus shot.
The Maytag man smiled. “Nice and slow, now. I don’t want to have to kill you, so don’t make me.”
Emptying his pockets wouldn’t be enough. The Maytag man would also pat him down, to make sure he hadn’t held anything back. The guy would find the gun, and the pocket knife he always carried, and would laugh—one more humiliation.
Martin slammed both palms into the Maytag man’s chest and flung himself free. The knife slipped out with a pop.
He had only to turn and run. The Maytag man would never catch him. Jesse Owens wouldn’t have been able to catch him. But Martin didn’t run. It was time to finally stop running.
The Maytag man was staring at him. The guy sensed something was wrong.
“Whatcha thinking there, Sport?”
Martin was thinking that now that it came to it, he wanted to kill this man. Killing was what soldiers did; that was what transformed them. If he wanted a combat experience, he would have to kill.
The Maytag man was inching forward, his knife at the ready, his muscles bunched for a lunge. This man had guessed this was a test and had decided he would win.
But this would only be a test if it was knife against knife, something Martin knew he wasn’t ready for. That would be too much of a test.
He hopped back a step, turned and sprinted across the ball field, toward the trees and stairs ahead.
Clumps of grass tried to trip him up, and the dirt beneath his feet felt as soft as beach sand. For a second, Martin heard the Maytag man behind him. But then the man’s breaths grew distant and his footfalls faded. The Maytag man didn’t run every day.
Martin pushed down on the gun in his pants. It started to work its way back up.
This gun was a joke; he couldn’t even use it. Murdering a mugger wouldn’t transform him, not into anything he wanted to be.
This entire outing was a mistake. He wasn’t going to find what he was looking for in this park, maybe because he didn’t have a clear idea what he was looking for. This test he’d set for himself was more complicated than he’d realized.
A man was suddenly in front of him, like an apparition, and before Martin could stop or veer to the side, that man lunged forward, driving the end of a stick into his chest.
The blow knocked the air right out of him. Martin’s legs buckled, as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. One knee hit the macadam; the other felt as if it were filled with jelly. He leaned forward and almost threw up.
A second man materialized at his side, and a third man. These men had sticks, too. They were going to beat him senseless and take whatever he had.
But when Martin looked up at their faces, their long scraggly hair like steel helmets, Martin understood he’d misjudged the situation. These men weren’t going to stop once they started; they weren’t going to leave a witness behind.
The three men nodded, like judges concurring at a sentencing. Leaving a witness behind would be a decidedly unwise thing to do, even more foolish than going for a stroll in the lower park.
The man in front of Martin slowly raised the stick he was holding.
That was the last thing Martin remembered.
The next thing he knew, the gun was in his hand, the man in front of him was down, the other two men were running, and Martin was pulling the trigger as fast as he could. He felt as if he were at an arcade, except the targets wouldn’t fall. And then the targets were gone. The tinkle of falling cartridges striking the macadam was the only sound.
Martin lowered the gun.
The walkway in front of him was empty, and so still, with perfect circles of light at the base of the lamps, he might have been staring at a photograph. The trees around him were so still, he might have been looking at an etching. Martin had the sense that if he didn’t move, the moment would last forever. But even as he thought that, a breeze stirred the leaves and time started again.
The rush of cars on the highway reasserted itself, and the chirring of the katydids.
In the upper park, a dog barked. That dog had heard the shots.
Martin looked down at the man at his feet.
He’d killed that man, though he had no recollection of it. He couldn’t recall having turned to fire at the other two men. Someone else had done those things: a Martin who’d panicked.
The man in front of him was lying on his back, his eyes empty, a window onto nothing. This man didn’t see the leaves on the branches above him, or the dark of the sky, or the stars. He wasn’t reflecting on the past, or considering where he’d gone wrong in his life. Those things had to be done before one died.
An obvious, and even silly, observation, but still something to think about. If this man had hit Martin in the head with that stick, instead of in the chest, he would have been the one lying on the ground staring up at nothing.
The thought left Martin giddy. He’d literally just beaten the Reaper. But he also felt queasy—he’d only just beaten the Reaper. It was dumb luck he’d survived.
He put away the gun.
And then, without really considering the consequences, and without really understanding why (maybe so he’d remember something about this moment), he bent down and, using his pocketknife, sliced off the left ear of the man he’d just killed. Martin knew soldiers sometimes took ears off the dead. It was a practice that, until that moment, had struck him as barbaric, like putting a deer head on the wall. But cutting off this ear didn’t feel barbaric. It felt like exactly the right way to end the evening.
He placed the ear in his jacket pocket, and the knife in his pants pocket, and walked out of the park.
Two
The city, Detective Alan Weiss thought, studying the street out the passenger-side window of the car, was quiet, despite the murder in Riverside Park and despite the warmth of the evening. A last summer evening. The sidewalks were filled with couples, and old men playing dominoes. Most evenings were like this now. In the last ten years, the city had begun to calm down.
Bob Kurtz, his partner and the man driving the car, let out a snort.
The city might be quieter than it used to be, but that didn’t mean the streets couldn’t erupt in a heartbeat. To think otherwise was to delude oneself.
“A guy’s gotta keep his guard up,” Bob declared.
They passed an intersection, and a kid running down the side street.
On the avenue, two bums were scuffling.
After fifteen years as partners, Alan and Bob didn’t need to actually speak to communicate, though usually Bob did. A glance, or a turn of the head, was enough to get across a thought.
Bob aimed a finger at the police radio. “That prick’s got a lot of nerve sending us on this call. We’ve got what—twenty minutes left on the shift?”
Bob was drumming the steering wheel with his fingertips and thinking that if they could get lost for twenty minutes the shift would be over and the stiff in Riverside Park would be someone else’s problem.
“This is the third night in a row.”
They passed another intersection.
On the left, in the middle of the block, a five-story brick building stood above a grocery, the upper floors linked by a fire escape, like the mark of Zorro.
That fire escape had recently been repainted a glossy black. The bricks on the facade had been sandblasted, signs that the building had gone upscale. A guy would have to be a corporate lawyer to be able to afford the rent now.
Ten years ago, that building had been slum housing and had stunk of urine and puke. Alan knew that because ten years ago he’d been inside that building on a call. A mother, in a drunken rage, had tossed her infant out a third-story window, not noticing or remembering that the window was protected by an iron grate.
The child fell three feet, then got stuck between the vertical bars of the grate and the spears of cracked glass in the lower sash.
They’d had to call in a Fire Department rescue team to cut through the grate. Touching the window might have loosened those spears of glass.
Alan could still hear the child’s screams above the shriek of the gas-powered saw.
“A baby girl,” Bob recalled. “Lydia. She was two months old.”
Social Services took the child into custody. But after a year in foster care, the courts returned her to her mother. A week later, she was beaten to death.
“I don’t know why we bother.”
The city, in Bob’s view, was like a child: the majority of the time it needed tough love, like his own kids. Bob had three kids and the oldest was in jail, which was partly how Bob had come to hold this view.
Bob eased back on the gas, but not because he was trying to kill the few minutes they had left on their shift. Bob had seen something.
Bob drove the streets the way a dog walked a trail: if five things struck his interest, he stopped five times, even if they were on their way somewhere, like tonight. Protest was useless, because Bob was driving.
“Fucking Eddie Diaz,” Bob said, “and look what he’s wearing!”
Alan saw Eddie now, down at the end of the block. And he saw what had caught Bob’s attention. Eddie had two young women with him, probable cause, because Eddie Diaz was a pimp and dope dealer.
People were walking past Eddie; they saw the women and sometimes stared, as one might at a department store display. But no one stopped. These people weren’t out shopping; they were on their way home. The city was on its way to bed, one part of the city, the daytime retailers. But another part of the city was just getting going, the nighttime retailers—Eddie Diaz in a tropical-green suit.
Alan had never seen a suit that color before, and didn’t imagine he would again. Amazingly, the green set off Eddie’s coffee-colored skin perfectly.
Bob was shaking his head. “That little piece-of-shit cocksucker snitched his way out of jail, and now we have to deal with him again.”
For a two-dollar bill, Bob would have stuffed Eddie down the nearest sewer.
“Why do we bother?”
The store behind Eddie had its shutter down, as did every other store on the block. It was as if the city had closed its eyes. The city didn’t want to know what went on after dark; it didn’t want to see Eddie Diaz in his tropical-green suit.
Bob slowly rolled by, giving Eddie the hairy eyeball.
Eddie stared back.
Over the years, Alan had been in every one of these buildings, or at least he imagined he had. But that was a conceit. Even this small corner of the city was too vast to know that well.
A hiss of static brought the radio to life.
This was the second time the dispatcher had checked in. They were taking too much time getting over to Riverside Park.
“You guys get lost out there, or what?” the dispatcher wanted to know.
“Three nights in a row,” Bob complained.
“Pick up that mike, Kurtz. I know you’re there.”
“We’ll be interviewing those goddamn dog walkers until morning.”
“Weiss?”
But the defeat in the dispatcher’s voice was obvious. The guy already knew Alan wasn’t going to pick up. Alan never picked up.
Bob pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “My fucking wife has me in court again.”
Bob’s ex-wife had decided it was his fault their son was in jail.
“I spend half the week in court with street scum, then I gotta go back on my day off to face my fucking wife.”
Bob drove and talked. Alan watched and listened.
Gardens on the roofs of the buildings had made the city’s skyline fuzzier, less angular. If one equated the city to the seasons, the city was thinking about shedding its mood of eternal winter to finally welcome spring.
A change Alan didn’t understand, though he did understand that a critical mass of change had been achieved. The streets were no longer clogged with garbage; the buildings and trains were almost free of graffiti; the parks had become relatively safe. New
businesses had even stopped buying shutters for their display windows.
That the city was on its way to becoming an easier place to live surprised him. He would have thought the opposite would have occurred as the cost of housing and everything else continued to rise. But it had been years since rioters closed the streets. People seemed content to dip into their savings for a cup of coffee.
“You can always move back to Queens if you think your rent’s too high. Your daughter would be pleased as punch.”
Until his divorce, Alan lived in Queens, only a couple of miles from his daughter’s apartment. It was easy to visit. Now that he was living in Manhattan, he saw his daughter once a month. The drive took half an hour, if the traffic wasn’t too bad and if he made a few lights.
“It could be worse,” Bob decided.
His kid could be in jail.
“How is Rachel?”
“She’s good.”
“And your ex?”
Alan had no idea, because he never heard from her. His alimony checks were always on time.
“A kid’s at a wedding with his mom,” Bob said.
This was Bob’s fourth joke of the evening, two less than the average, though Bob typically picked up the pace toward the end of the shift, when he was getting antsy to get home.
“Looks up and wants to know how come the lady down the aisle is all in white. The mom smiles and says that white shows that the bride is happy. The kid nods and takes another peek down the aisle, then says, ‘So how come the guy’s dressed in black?’”
Alan used to think if he didn’t laugh at Bob’s jokes Bob would get discouraged and stop. But Bob didn’t seem to notice or care whether he was amused. They had eight hours to kill, and telling jokes beat chewing gum.
They turned a corner.
Three women were on this street, and seven men. Two of the men were walking by themselves. Three, were chatting it up with a woman who obviously wasn’t interested. The last four people were sitting on a stoop. The guys were playing cards; the women were knitting.
When Alan studied the streets, he didn’t think of the people he saw as individuals but as members of a group. Usually the groups were easy to identify—young or old; male or female; black, white, Hispanic, Asian. But there were also more subtle divisions: rich or poor; fit or unfit; watcher or watched. This last division was everything. The people on the street were either combatants or civilians. The combatants were his enemies. The civilians were who he was supposed to protect. But by the time he showed up, it was usually too late.
Bob let this thought pass. Bob wasn’t interested in metaphysics, or the attributes of red wine.
They turned another corner, then hit a red light.
Bob stopped the car, and half a dozen pedestrians started across the street: two Latino men as wide as bowling balls, waddling like ducks; a twenty-something dressed in designer black; a woman pushing a stroller; a blond. The blond was wearing a thin fitted dress, which showed off every one of her curves, which were impressive. If she was a hooker, Alan hadn’t seen her on the street before.
“So what do you call a blond with brains?” Bob wanted to know.
It was time for the blond joke, one per shift. Over the years, that had added up to thousands.
“A golden retriever!”
The light had changed, the blond was gone, but Bob just sat there, ignoring the honking behind them.
A group of punks was marching down the avenue, older teens looking for trouble. They had their eye on a young woman walking up the avenue.
As the woman came abreast of these kids, they grabbed her and forced her against the building they were beside. One kid smacked her in the face. Another, pulled down her blouse and bra strap, exposing one breast.
A man was walking by. But that man didn’t step forward to help. He turned his head and pretended he hadn’t noticed.
Bob let out a laugh. “Exactly the sort of guy you’d want for a neighbor.”
Bob slammed down on the gas, cut across three lanes of traffic, and drove the car right up onto the curb, the car’s headlights pinning the group as if they were a herd of deer.
Alan leapt out of the car.
Bob leapt out of the car.
The punks turned, read the situation, and took off up the street.
Bob was right behind them, his twenty-dollar nineteen-sixties plaid sport jacket flapping in the breeze. When a guy sometimes had to crawl through a dumpster to snuggle up to a corpse, he didn’t need nice clothes.
Bob was six feet three inches tall, six inches taller than Alan, and as skinny as a nail. Bob would run these bastards down and spend a minute or two teaching the slowest a lesson.
Alan stepped up to the woman who’d been assaulted, stopping a few feet away. He pulled out his badge and shield.
The woman glanced at them.
This woman was about his daughter’s age, and it made Alan sick to think this could have been his daughter, standing alone on some street somewhere as passersby did nothing.
The woman pulled up her blouse strap, covering herself.
“Are you okay?” Alan asked.
The woman raised her eyes, then lowered them again.
There were tears in her eyes; and her cheek was red where she’d been slapped. She was only sort of okay.
Alan glanced up the avenue. God only knew where this woman was headed at this time of night, and if those punks were still around.
“We’ll give you a ride,” he said, “as soon as my partner gets back.”
Three
The crime scene was lit as brilliantly as an arena, and the photographers and TV crews and reporters were the fans. Alan saw these same people at every catastrophe, a sort of club. He was a member, too.
Alan was standing at the back of the crowd, on the civilian side of the yellow tape, not too far from the ambulance on the scene.
Bob was under the lights, a few steps from the victim, talking to the sergeant in charge. Bob would get the details, then send patrolmen out to interview everyone in the park. If anyone knew anything, Bob would soon know, too.
The reporters started to press forward with questions, like pigeons clamoring for crumbs. Bob ignored them. He had to stay and work, so they could stay and work.
Thirteen people were standing between Alan and Bob, not counting the reporters and camera crews—dog walkers from the upper park drawn by the emergency lights. These people were curious. Something bad had happened, but not to them. This couldn’t happen to them. They had dogs and, except on extraordinary occasions, like this occasion, didn’t venture into the lower park at night. The man who was dead had overstepped.
These people, like good New Yorkers, had turned to scrutinize Alan—the newcomer. He was wearing a sport jacket, which was odd for that hour; and he didn’t have a dog, which was also suspicious. But he was middle-aged, and white, and probably looked tired. These people would decide he didn’t pose a threat, especially with policemen around.
Alan slipped his hands into his pockets. Four of the people studying him were wearing Nikes; two had on New Balance running shoes; two had chosen Adidas. No one was wearing Keds, the sneakers Alan had worn when he was a child.
On his doctor’s orders, in order to bring down his blood pressure, Alan was supposed to get himself out and walk every day, rain or shine. His doctor suggested a march through one of the parks, and a good pair of running shoes. So Alan had visited a fitness shop to see what sort of sneakers he could find.
There were too many choices, and the sneakers, with their reflector strips, Day-Glo colors and blobby flanges, had seemed unseemly for a man his age.
The woman behind the counter explained what he would need—a warm-up suit (so he wouldn’t tear a muscle), special socks (so he wouldn’t get blisters), a visored cap (to keep the sun off his face), and a hydration system (so he could meet his time goal without getting heat stroke).
After taking another look around the store, Alan told the woman he would think about it. But then, he decided he didn’t need to go walking in the parks; he could walk to the station house. And he didn’t need sneakers; his work shoes would do fine. So now his car, housed in a garage near where he lived, sat unused.
A uniformed patrolman slipped under the yellow tape. The man had out a notebook and was there to question people.
This patrolman was the dog. And Alan was the hunter. If the killer was still around, the man might back away from the patrolman and reveal himself.
Alan thought of these criminals who stuck around as catch-me killers, or CMKs, and he and Bob had once actually solved a case this way. But not tonight. Nobody was backing away from the patrolman.
Alan stepped up to the yellow crime-scene tape and flashed his shield at the officer standing guard. The guy waved him through.
The victim was thirty feet away, flat on his back with his arms flung wide. One hand was resting in the grass below a sycamore tree; the other hand was sitting on the macadam path and was clutching a wooden dowel. A mugger who’d targeted the wrong guy.
Blood was everywhere: across one side of the face, down the plaid shirt and blue jeans, over the top of the buff-colored construction boots.
Bob, on the far side of the crime scene, had two men in handcuffs who were dressed the same and who were also covered with blood. One man had a bandage on his arm. The other had a bandage on his leg.
Alan walked over to the corpse.
He always did the corpse, because the dead required nothing. And Bob always did the interviews, because giving people a hard time was what kept Bob going.
The victim had been shot in the chest, and maybe in the head, and didn’t look as if he’d been moved. People in the upper park would have heard the shots; they might have seen the killer fleeing the scene.
Alan removed a pair of surgeon’s gloves from his pocket and pulled them on.
Spent cartridges were scattered across the macadam path, like discarded peanut shells.
Alan picked one up, a 9mm. He didn’t know enough about guns to know which model this shell had been fired from, but the lab boys would. The lab boys might even be able to find a fingerprint for him.
Alan set the cartridge back down where he’d found it. Sooner or later, a photographer would be by to document the scene.
Alan took another step forward, and discovered a last shell sitting by itself.
The killer was standing to the north of the victim when he took his first shot. Then the man turned and continued firing.
At the men with Bob? That would explain the bandages. With witnesses, they would be able to put together a sketch of the killer.
Alan turned.
The ball field lay to the north, then the skate park and basketball courts.
The killer must have come from that direction, maybe down one of the next two sets of stairs. Someone in the upper park might have caught a glimpse. Maybe several people.
The same people probably walked their dogs at the same time every night. If he and Bob came back over the next week, they might find a couple of people who’d caught a glimpse of the killer. As a group, and with the witnesses, those people might be able to put together a drawing that actually looked like the perpetrator.
Alan knelt and turned the victim’s head, so he could see where the blood on the face had come from.
A streak of red stained the jaw, but the man’s long hair covered the wound.
Alan brushed the hair aside, and jumped.
The ear was missing, the entire ear, right to the skull. Blood had filled the ear canal, like a miniature swimming pool. The roots of the surrounding hairs were stiff, as if red mousse had been applied.
A fly was feeding on the blood that had collected in the ear. It sat motionless, as if it had drowned. The fly had lost its caution; the meal was too good. It would feed, then lay its eggs, so that the next generation could feed.
Alan stood.
The air was suddenly too thick to breathe. And the light, with the spotlights reflecting off the macadam and the underside of the leaves, had become oddly diffuse, as on a hazy summer day. The tree trunks, which a moment before had been pale and narrow, seemed darker now and wider around. The ground seemed to have softened.
Changes that weren’t possible. Misperceptions that indicated illness, a serious and obviously long-established illness, given the dramatic onset of symptoms, though if Alan were to be honest, he would have had to admit he’d been ignoring the symptoms for years.
When he looked at the corpse again, the body wasn’t lying on a path in Riverside Park, but in the shade of trees beside a river.
One of Alan’s platoon mates, the guy who towered over every other guy in the squad, Ron Hasselet, was kneeling over the body, a man Ron had just shot between the eyes. Ron had a knife in his right hand and an ear in his left hand.
A thing Alan did not see. A trick of the light.
But even as Alan closed his eyes and turned away that first time, as if to erase the memory before it could take hold, he knew what he’d seen and knew he would never forget. Each time, he knew.
A mashed and shredded cigarette butt was lying at the victim’s right ankle, a possible piece of evidence. Three inches to the left, a gob of spit had trapped two gnats.
The tech crew would collect it all. They would vacuum up everything within twenty yards of the corpse.
Staring down at the path, Alan was able to isolate the bits of rock that made up the macadam: white quartz pebbles, black flakes of slate, rectangular chips of sandstone. The mix reminded him of the pebbles on a beach, which was probably where these stones had come from.
Alan adjusted his focus to take in the spaces between the bits of rock.
Shreds of bark filled the cracks, and twigs worn nearly to dust. Alan imagined he could see microorganisms devouring these woody remnants, but knew that was ridiculous.
The details of the scene filled his mind like a narcotic gas. Focusing on the details—the number of houses on each block, the style of grate over each window, when certain windows were lit—made it possible for Alan to live his life. These details filled his dreams, displacing other, less welcome dreams. They filled his days, so he had no time to think about the thing he did not do thirty years before.
He did not protest the atrocities he saw, but stood silent, as the people who’d allowed his father to be sent to a concentration camp stood silent. Alan couldn’t tell himself these were crimes of different magnitudes, because that would have been an act of self-deception. The acts, the non-acts, were exactly equal.
He was the person Bob wouldn’t want for a neighbor. He’d seen evil being committed and did nothing, a demonstration of his cowardice. By his inaction, he’d made himself complicit.
He retreated a step, distancing himself from the body.
He might have been viewing the scene through the lens of a camera: backing away brought more and more into view. But Alan wasn’t looking for the big picture here. He was backing away because he didn’t want any part of this case. He didn’t want to remember his year at war. He didn’t want to have to hunt down Ron Hasselet, or whoever it was who’d done this. He was afraid of Ron Hasselet, and by association, the man who’d cut off this ear.
Above him, the undersides of the leaves were like the eyes of blind men.
Alan wouldn’t be getting a report from these trees. There weren’t cameras in this park. He wished there were, here and everywhere, an absolute surveillance. If he’d known someone had been watching during his tour of duty, he might have demanded more of himself. Setting out, he’d expected more of himself. He’d felt certain he would return a hero.
*
Alan spotted the missing ear beside the trunk of a tree, a curl of color that was a little lighter than the surrounding soil.
But when he bent down to take a closer look, he discovered he was staring at a leaf.
The ground was spotted with leaves, as the leaves were spotted with a brown rust. Heavy rains had caused a fungus infestation, and that had caused the leaves to fall.
Bob was leaning forward too, peering over his shoulder. “You gonna snap a pair of cuffs on it? I don’t know that we’ll get a confession.”
Bob’s words were like a hand extended to a drowning man: they lifted Alan out of the past and reminded him this was just a corpse in Riverside Park.
“We’re not going to find that ear,” Bob decided. “The guy who took it probably already has it mounted on a plaque.”
A vet, reliving the good old days.
Alan stood.
Bob wouldn’t understand why he wanted off this case, because Bob couldn’t intuit his thoughts about war. Bob never served. This caused a distance between them that Bob wasn’t aware of. If Alan wanted to walk away from this, he would have to explain things to Bob, something he didn’t think he could do. He’d never spoken to anyone about his time at war.
“Those two flea hotels I was talking to,” Bob said, “the guys in handcuffs, were with this bag of shit when he got shot.” Bob turned toward the corpse, as if waiting for the man to confirm the story. “The three of them tried to jump some guy the size of Hercules, except the guy wasn’t interested.”
Alan didn’t need to hear the rest. He could see the scene: the intended victim pulling out the gun; the would-be assailants fleeing.
Bob let out a snort. “Those two guys actually called it in, then stuck around to give a statement. They thought because their pal got shot, we wouldn’t be charging them with assault.”
Another team of detectives joined them, Patella and Thomas.
Patella had a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, because dead people stunk and Patella had a weak stomach. “So whadda we got here, Kurtz?”
“Guy’s missing an ear,” Bob replied, pointing at the body.
Patella stared.
And Thomas stared. “That’ll sell a coupla newspapers.”
“The brass is gonna be all over us on this one,” Bob predicted.
They all stared. Nobody wanted that.
Bob aimed a finger at the ball field. “The killer was running when he got jumped. And he had a silencer on his gun.”
“A biathlete,” Patella suggested.
A pro, Alan thought, maybe running from another killing.
But even as Alan thought that, he knew it was wishful thinking. A pro wouldn’t have been running; that would have drawn attention. And a pro wouldn’t have emptied the clip, not at guys who’d already taken off; he wouldn’t have mutilated the corpse, turning a nothing crime into a front-page story the media would latch onto for weeks.
“Those two guys over there didn’t see Van Gogh do the ear,” Bob said, aiming a finger over his shoulder. “That happened afterwards.”
The killer had a name now.
But when Alan pictured the man who’d done this, he would see Ron Hasselet.
The night was suddenly oppressively hot.
Alan loosened his tie, and undid the top button on his shirt. But there still wasn’t enough air to breathe.
He wasn’t going to be able to drop this case. And it wasn’t going to go away by itself. The media wouldn’t let it.
Alan pulled off the surgical gloves he’d put on and dropped them on the corpse.
Patella had his hand on Bob’s elbow. Patella had a joke for them.
“So what does a woman put behind her ears to make herself more attractive?”
Bob had told him this joke the week before. At the time, it had just been one more stupid joke.
“Her ankles!” Patella crooned.
And Alan was looking down at a woman Ron Hasselet had wrestled to the ground and pinned in exactly that position. Ron had decided a monthly paycheck, and the honor of serving one’s country, wasn’t quite enough compensation for the risks they took.
This woman was little more than a girl, a civilian; but no one protested. As with the ears, it was easier and safer to simply keep quiet. This girl wouldn’t be the one to lend a helping hand when the enemy attacked.
This woman was looking up from the ground, cursing them all: the men who were standing there smiling, and the men who’d turned away. She was covered with dust from her struggling, a rust-colored powder. But slowly, as those who wanted took a turn, a variety of fluids mixed with the dust, turning it to mud.
Looking down at that woman was when the silence began. By failing to step forward, to raise his voice in protest, Alan had forfeited his right to speak. Any pronouncements he might utter would mark him as a hypocrite.
He would have been one of those people who did nothing when his father was taken, a shame he’d brought back home with him, that he’d felt certain had marked him, like a scar.
His father had seen it immediately.
His mother and father were sitting in the kitchen, the day Alan got home from the Army. As he stepped into the room, his parents looked up. His mother smiled. His father stared. And then his father dropped his eyes and turned away.
That was the moment Alan decided it would have been better had he died.
After that, he’d felt ashamed in his father’s presence, an awkwardness he’d addressed by visiting less and less. The day his father died, Alan didn’t weep, not with sadness. All he felt was an overwhelming sense of relief. He still felt guilty about that.
Across the river, the lights on the Jersey shore rose up, like a ship foundering. Alan felt the ground shift beneath him. Then Bob had his arm and was walking him away.
Bob would take him to a bar, where they would sit and drink until he pulled himself together. Alan hadn’t gone drinking in a while and by the time they were done, he would be drunk. Then Bob would drive him home.