Swan Dive

husband who whores around, the difference being that she didn’t just let herself go or something, she’s sick and crippled in a way she can’t control.”
    I stood up. ”Chris, like I said, you’re the lawyer. There are a lot of people screwed up in this, including me. You and I both know what you’ve got to do.” Chris brought the heels of his hands to his cheeks, then started rubbing under the eyes. ”Right,” he said quietly.

    I drove toward Boston , finding it harder and harder to accept what Chris had told me. I parked the car behind the condo and walked the two blocks to Daisy Buchanan’s, a popular sports bar on the corner of Fairfield and Newbury. I got there just early enough to get a seat, and I knew the bartenders who were on. They had some good new stories I hadn’t heard, and the screwdrivers felt healthy as they raced one another down my throat and jostled in my stomach.
    At some point, I had to’wave for another drink, surprising because they’re usually so attentive, the best in the city. I remember telling them that, that they were the best in the city. One asked me if I was walking or driving, and I sort of said walking. He said even so, just one more. I finished the drink, then had the pleasure of being escorted gently through the crowd of postcollege jocks and those who wished they were. They spared me the bouncer, telling me to be sure to come again. Place treats you with respect like that, of course you’re going to come again.
    I ricocheted off three trees and a lamppost covering the roughly two hundred yards back to the condo. nybody messing with me would have been one sorry fella, yessir. I got the keys out of the pocket on the third try and into the lock on the fourth, doing a little better upstairs at the apartment door. I kicked it shut, made it to the bedroom, and passed out across the mattress.

I woke up Saturday morning, but just barely. The clock part of the radio said 11:40, meaning I must have slept through an hour’s worth of alarm earlier. The head pounded, and my insides had that airy, rafting sensation you get from drinking on an empty stomach. I had no energy for running, so I toasted a couple of English muffins and drank a quart of ice water to réhydraté my system.
    I showered, shaved, and dressed in clean sweatclothes, then went down to the car, started up, and drove to the Jamaicaway and around the trout pond. When I was with Empire, I did a lot of driving, and I found it could clear the head and focus the thinking. After five miles, my thinking was focused all right, but not helpfully.
    My talk with Chris solved the killings, but Hanna and Vickie were left hanging in the breeze. Felicia had the money to buy off J.J., but Chris sure didn’t and was on his way to definite disgrace and probable imprisonment. J.J. wouldn’t understand why his drugs were backstroking to Portugal , and the cops weren’t interested in restraining him.
    I jammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a guy in a utility truck cutting into my lane. I hit the horn, and he threw me the finger as he turned, without any other signal, into a construction project. As I resumed speed, I watched him jounce over the rutted dirt driveway past some huge circular pipe sections that looked awfully familiar. I got my bearings and realized it was the same place J.J. and Terdell had taken me on Tuesday night.
    That’s when I got the idea. An idea that grew like Topsy.

    It took me a while to measure time and distance by car. I ran each twice, then got back to the condo by 3:00. I dialed two numbers and got slightly different versions of ”He’s not here, you wanna leave a message?” I emphasized how important it was for each party to be available to hear from me at 8:00 p.m. I hung up and removed the phone jack from the wall to frustrate any premature return calls. Raiding the fridge, I ate all the absorptive foods I had. Then I nicked the nearly empty bottle of scotch from my landlord’s liquor cabinet. I don’t drink the stuff anymore, but it has a very recognizable smell.
    I carried the bottle down to the car.

    The first place I hit was a foundering blue-collar bar in Chelsea, the city just above Boston that those in favor of the manifest destiny of gentrification now call the ”Near North Shore.” I had three screwdrivers, listening to the owner describe the trouble he was having with his stepson. When I asked how bad he was, the owner said, ”Let me put it this way: he’s the kinda