back in my room.
In truth, such reactions were becoming increasingly common as the years went on. I suppose I had always been frightened as I faced situations like that night’s—anyone who has found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, or confronting the possibility of injury or death, and claims to have done so without fear is either a liar or insane—but the more often you do it and survive, the more aware you become that the odds are inevitably swinging against you. If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.
I also wanted to watch Sam, my daughter, grow up. She was long past those early years when children, though cute, don’t do a whole lot except babble and fall over, much like a certain type of really old person. I found her endlessly fascinating, and regretted the fact that I was no longer with Rachel, her mother, although I didn’t think Rachel was about to move back in just so that I could spend more time with Sam. Then again, I didn’t want Rachel to move back in, so the feeling was mutual. Still, with Rachel and Sam in Vermont, and me in Portland, arranging to spend time with my daughter took some planning. I supposed that I could always move to Vermont, but then I’d have to start voting socialist, and finding excuses to secede from the Union. Anyway, I liked Portland, and being close to the sea. Staring out over Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen wasn’t quite the same thing.
I checked my cell phone messages as I lay on the bed. There was only one, from a man in Portland named Jude. He was one of a handful of the local street folk who’d proved helpful to me in the past, by providing either information or the occasional discreet surveillance service, as people tended not to notice the homeless, or pretended not to. Naturally there was no callback number for Jude. Instead, he had suggested leaving a message with the folk at the Portland Help Center or on the bulletin board at the Amistad Community on State Street to let him know when I might be available to meet.
I hadn’t seen Jude around in a while, but then I hadn’t really been looking out for him. Like most of Portland’s homeless, he did his best to stay off the streets in winter. To do otherwise was to risk being found frozen in a doorway.
Me, I wasn’t doing so badly. Work had picked up over the winter because I’d developed a nice sideline in process serving. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid reasonably well, and occasionally required the exercise of more than a handful of brain cells. The day before I headeddown to Newark to join Angel and Louis, I’d cashed a check for two thousand dollars, including a goodwill bonus payment, for just one job. The subject of the subpoena was an investment analyst named Hyram P. Taylor, who was involved in the initial stages of serious and hostile divorce proceedings with his wife, who was represented by my lawyer—and, for the most part, my friend—Aimee Price. Hyram was such a compulsive fornicator that even his own lawyer had privately acknowledged the possibility of his client’s possessing a penis shaped like a corkscrew, and eventually his wife had just become tired of the humiliation. As soon as she filed for divorce, Hyram set about hiding all records relating to his wealth, and moving said wealth as far as possible from his wife’s reach. He even abandoned his office in South Portland and tried to go to ground, but I tracked him down to the apartment of one of his girlfriends, a woman called Brandi, who, despite having a stripper’s name, worked as an accountant in New Hampshire.
The problem was that Hyram wouldn’t so much as pick up a piece of paper from the street for fear that it might be attached to an unseen piece of string ending in the hand of a process server. He didn’t go anywhere without Brandi in tow, and she was the one who paid cash for newspapers, groceries, and drinks in bars. Hyram didn’t put his hand on
In truth, such reactions were becoming increasingly common as the years went on. I suppose I had always been frightened as I faced situations like that night’s—anyone who has found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, or confronting the possibility of injury or death, and claims to have done so without fear is either a liar or insane—but the more often you do it and survive, the more aware you become that the odds are inevitably swinging against you. If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.
I also wanted to watch Sam, my daughter, grow up. She was long past those early years when children, though cute, don’t do a whole lot except babble and fall over, much like a certain type of really old person. I found her endlessly fascinating, and regretted the fact that I was no longer with Rachel, her mother, although I didn’t think Rachel was about to move back in just so that I could spend more time with Sam. Then again, I didn’t want Rachel to move back in, so the feeling was mutual. Still, with Rachel and Sam in Vermont, and me in Portland, arranging to spend time with my daughter took some planning. I supposed that I could always move to Vermont, but then I’d have to start voting socialist, and finding excuses to secede from the Union. Anyway, I liked Portland, and being close to the sea. Staring out over Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen wasn’t quite the same thing.
I checked my cell phone messages as I lay on the bed. There was only one, from a man in Portland named Jude. He was one of a handful of the local street folk who’d proved helpful to me in the past, by providing either information or the occasional discreet surveillance service, as people tended not to notice the homeless, or pretended not to. Naturally there was no callback number for Jude. Instead, he had suggested leaving a message with the folk at the Portland Help Center or on the bulletin board at the Amistad Community on State Street to let him know when I might be available to meet.
I hadn’t seen Jude around in a while, but then I hadn’t really been looking out for him. Like most of Portland’s homeless, he did his best to stay off the streets in winter. To do otherwise was to risk being found frozen in a doorway.
Me, I wasn’t doing so badly. Work had picked up over the winter because I’d developed a nice sideline in process serving. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid reasonably well, and occasionally required the exercise of more than a handful of brain cells. The day before I headeddown to Newark to join Angel and Louis, I’d cashed a check for two thousand dollars, including a goodwill bonus payment, for just one job. The subject of the subpoena was an investment analyst named Hyram P. Taylor, who was involved in the initial stages of serious and hostile divorce proceedings with his wife, who was represented by my lawyer—and, for the most part, my friend—Aimee Price. Hyram was such a compulsive fornicator that even his own lawyer had privately acknowledged the possibility of his client’s possessing a penis shaped like a corkscrew, and eventually his wife had just become tired of the humiliation. As soon as she filed for divorce, Hyram set about hiding all records relating to his wealth, and moving said wealth as far as possible from his wife’s reach. He even abandoned his office in South Portland and tried to go to ground, but I tracked him down to the apartment of one of his girlfriends, a woman called Brandi, who, despite having a stripper’s name, worked as an accountant in New Hampshire.
The problem was that Hyram wouldn’t so much as pick up a piece of paper from the street for fear that it might be attached to an unseen piece of string ending in the hand of a process server. He didn’t go anywhere without Brandi in tow, and she was the one who paid cash for newspapers, groceries, and drinks in bars. Hyram didn’t put his hand on