The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland omnibus E-Book

Paul Tremblay

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 724

Beschreibung

Award-winning Paul Tremblay's debut noir novels back in print after a decade, for fans of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Raymond Carver and Dashiell Hammett.This omnibus brings Paul Tremblay's debut novels - classic noirs, The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland – back in to print for the first time in over 10 years. Darkly comedic and carrying all the hallmarks of Tremblay's later work, they introduce Mark Genevich, a narcoleptic detective operating out of his mom's apartment in South Boston.In THE LITTLE SLEEP, Genevich is hired to identify the girl in a couple of photos – except the girl looks a lot like the reality TV star and DA's daughter, and he can't remember who gave him the job because he was asleep at the time. Wrangling deception, intrigue, cataleptic hallucinations and a body that could fall asleep at any moment Genevich follows the trail that leads him into his own family history, and his memories of his dear departed father.NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND sees Genevich dropping out, forced into group therapy by his landlord mother or face eviction. His new friend, Gus, finds out he's a PI and asks him to help find a local suit's lover. But soon Genevich is pulled into events over his head – rescuing a child from a burning house, maybe?; drug deals with a local bouncer and dealer; possibly getting a girlfriend. But solving mysteries is what Genevich does, starting with the mystery of what happened to him whilst he was asleep…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Paul Tremblay and available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

The Little Sleep

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Acknowledgments

No Sleep Till Wonder Land

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Acknowledgments

About the Author

“Part noir throwback, part medical mystery, part comedy, and thoroughly, wonderfully entertaining. Highly recommended.”

— LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)

“It’s hard not to root for the loopy Genevich… [in this] promising debut.”

— BOOKLIST

“Rejoice, Chandler fans … Paul Tremblay slices, dices and spins the neo-noir in his own strange way and delivers a fast, smart, and completely satisfying read.”

— STEWART O’NAN

“Original and different, and yet somehow good kin folk to what has gone before in the tradition of Raymond Chandler.”

— JOE R. LANSDALE

“The Little Sleep offers up an interesting gloss on the detective genre, in which the deepest and most profound mystery has less to do with any crime per se than with the enduring enigma of self.”

— LOS ANGELES TIMES

“The Little Sleep is one of the most engaging reads I’ve come across in a good long while. Tremblay does the near impossible by giving us a new take on the traditional PI tale.”

— TOM PICCIRILLI, AUTHOR OF THE COLDEST MILE AND THE COLD SPOT

“If Philip K. Dick and Ross Macdonald had collaborated on a mystery novel, they might have come up with something like The Little Sleep...”

— BILL CRIDER, AUTHOR OF THE SHERIFF DAN RHODES MYSTERY SERIES

“No Sleep till Wonderland delivers on the tremendous promise of The Little Sleep, simultaneously paying homage to classic noir fiction while creating a damaged and irrevocably lost antihero in PI Mark Genevich, who is always on the verge of emotional and physical collapse. This is a novel filled with black humor but an even blacker subtext that makes the reader question the nature of reality and self; heady stuff for a crime novel, for sure, but Paul Tremblay is a fearless writer and No Sleep till Wonderland is positively magnetic fiction.”

— TOD GOLDBERG, AUTHOR OF OTHER RESORT CITIES AND SIMPLIFY

“Snappy prose, a brilliantly original detective, and a cast of sharply drawn lowlifes—Paul Tremblay mixes it up with style. In the end, No Sleep till Wonderland is much more than just a crime book—it’s all about the narrator’s unique take on the world. Thoroughly recommended.”

— SIMON LEWIS, AUTHOR OF BAD TRAFFIC

“Paul Tremblay somehow manages to channel Franz Kafka, write like Raymond Chandler, and whip up a completely original, utterly whack-a-doodle reinvention of the detective novel. This book rocks.”

— MARK HASKELL SMITH, AUTHOR OF SALTY

THE LITTLE SLEEP

AND

NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND

Also by Paul Tremblay and available from Titan Books

A Head Full of Ghosts

The Disappearance at Devil’s Rock

The Cabin at the End of the World

Growing Things and Other Stories

Survivor Song

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The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland

Print edition ISBN: 9781789096316

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096323

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: April 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Paul Tremblay 2009, 2010, 2021.

Paul Tremblay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Lisa, Cole, and Emma

I was more intrigued by a situation where the mystery is solved by the exposition and understanding of a single character, always well in advance, rather than by the slow and sometimes longwinded concatenation of circumstances.

—RAYMOND CHANDLER

ONE

It’s about two o’clock in the afternoon, early March. In South Boston that means a cold hard rain that ruins any memories of the sun. Doesn’t matter, because I’m in my office, wearing a twenty-year-old thrift-store wool suit. It’s brown but not in the brown-is-the-new-black way. My shoes are Doc Martens, black like my socks. I’m not neat and clean or shaved. I am sober but don’t feel sober.

There’s a woman sitting on the opposite side of my desk. I don’t remember her coming in, but I know who she is: Jennifer Times, a flavor-of-the-second local celebrity, singing contestant on American Star, daughter of the Suffolk County DA, and she might be older than my suit. Pretty and brunette, lips that are worked out, pumped up. She’s tall and her legs go from the north of Maine all the way down to Boston, but she sits like she’s small, all compact, a closed book. She wears a white T-shirt and a knee-length skirt. She looks too spring for March, not that I care.

I wear a fedora, trying too hard to be anachronistic or iconoclastic, not sure which. It’s dark in my office. The door is closed, the blinds drawn over the bay window. Someone should turn on a light.

I say, “Shouldn’t you be in Hollywood? Not that I watch, but the little birdies tell me you’re a finalist, and the live competition starts tomorrow night.”

She says, “They sent me home to do a promotional shoot at a mall and at my old high school.” I like that she talks about her high school as if it were eons removed, instead of mere months.

“Lucky you.”

She doesn’t smile. Everything is serious. She says, “I need your help, Mr. Genevich,” and she pulls her white-gloved hands out of her lap.

I say, “I don’t trust hands that wear gloves.”

She looks at me like I chose the worst possible words, like I missed the whole point of her story, the story I haven’t heard yet. She takes off her right glove and her fingers are individually wrapped in bandages, but it’s a bad wrap job, gauze coming undone and sticking out, Christmas presents wrapped in old tissue paper.

She says, “I need you to find out who has my fingers.”

I think about opening the shades; maybe some light wouldn’t be so bad. I think about clearing my desk of empty soda cans. I think about canceling the Southie lease, too many people double-parking in front of my office/apartment building. I think about the ever-expanding doomed universe. And all of it makes more sense than what she said.

“Say that again.”

Her blue eyes stay fixed on me, like she’s the one trying to figure out who is telling the truth. She says, “I woke up like this yesterday.

Someone stole my fingers and replaced them with these.” She holds her hand out to me as if I can take it away from her and inspect it.

“May I?” I gently take her hand, and I lift up the bandage on her index finger and find a ring of angry red stitches. She takes her hand back from me quick, like if I hold on to it too long I might decide to keep those replacement digits of hers.

“Look, Ms. Times, circumstantial evidence to the contrary and all that, but I don’t think what you described is exactly possible.” I point at her hand. I’m telling her that her hand is impossible.

“Granted, my subscription to Mad Scientist Weekly did run out. Too many words, not enough pictures.”

She says, “It doesn’t matter what you think is possible, Mr. Genevich, because I’ll only be paying you to find answers to my questions.” Her voice is hard as pavement. I get the sense that she isn’t used to people telling her no.

I gather the loose papers on my desk, stack them, and then push them over the edge and into the trash can. I want a cigarette but I don’t know where I put my pack. “How and why did you find me?” I talk slow. Every letter and syllable has to be in its place.

“Does it matter?” She talks quick and to the point. She wants to tell me more, tell me everything about every thing, but she’s holding something back. Or maybe she’s just impatient with me, like everyone else.

I say, “I don’t do much fieldwork anymore, Ms. Times. Early retirement, so early it happened almost before I got the job. See this computer?” I turn the flat-screen monitor toward her. An infinite network of Escheresque pipes fills the screen-saver pixels. “That’s what I do. I research. I do genealogies, find abandoned properties, check the status of out-of-state warrants, and find lost addresses. I search databases and, when desperate, which is all the time, I troll Craigslist and eBay and want ads. I’m no action hero. I find stuff in the Internet ether. Something tells me your fingers won’t be in there.”

She says, “I’ll pay you ten thousand just for trying.” She places a check on my desk. I assume it’s a check. It’s green and rectangular.

“What, no manila envelope bulging with unmarked bills?”

“I’ll pay you another fifty thousand if you find out who has my fingers.”

I am about to say something sharp and clever about her allowance from Daddy, but I blink my eyes and she is gone.

TWO

Right after I come to is always the worst, when the questions about dreams and reality seem fair game, when I don’t know which is which. Jennifer Times is gone and my head is full of murk. I try to push the murk to the corners of my consciousness, but it squeezes out and leaks away, mercury in a closed fist. That murk, it’s always there. It’s both a threat and a promise. I am narcoleptic.

How long was I asleep? My office is dark, but it’s always dark. I have the sense that a lot of time has passed. Or maybe just a little. I have no way of knowing. I generally don’t remember to check and set my watch as I’m passing out. Time can’t be measured anyway, only guessed at, and my guesses are usually wrong, which doesn’t speak well for a guy in my line of work. But I get by.

I paw around my desk and find a pack of cigarettes behind the phone, right where I left them. I light one. It’s warm, white, and lethal. I’d like to say that smoking keeps me awake, clears the head, all that good stuff normally associated with nicotine and carcinogens, but it doesn’t. Smoking is just something I do to help pass the time in the dark, between sleeps.

On my desk there is no green and rectangular ten-thousand-dollar check. Too bad, I’d quickly grown fond of the little fella. There is a manila envelope, and on my notepad are gouges and scratches in ink, an EKG output of a faulty heart. My notepad is yellow like the warning traffic light.

I lean back in my chair, looking for a new vantage point, a different way to see. My chair complains. The squawking springs tease me and my sedentary existence. No one likes a wiseass. It might be time for a new chair.

Okay, Jennifer Times. I conclude the stuff about her missing fingers was part of a hypnogogic hallucination, which is one of the many pithy symptoms of narcolepsy. It’s a vivid dream that occurs when my narcoleptic brain is partially awake, or partially asleep, as if there is a difference.

I pick up the manila envelope and remove its contents: two black-and-white photos, with accompanying negatives.

Photo 1: Jennifer Times sitting on a bed. Shoulder-length hair obscures most of her face. There’s a close-lipped smile that peeks through, and it’s wary of the camera and, by proxy, me. She’s wearing a white T-shirt and a dark-colored pleated skirt. It’s hiked above her knees. Her knees have scabs and bruises. Her arms are long and closed in tight, like a mantis.

Photo 2: Jennifer Times sitting on a bed. She’s topless and wearing only white panties. She sits on her folded legs, feet under her buttocks, hands resting on her thighs. Her skin is bleached white, and she is folded. Origami. Arms are at her side and they push her small breasts together. Her eyes are closed and head tilted back. A light fixture shines directly above her head, washing her face in white light. Ligature in her neck is visible, as are more than a few ribs. The smile from the first photo has become something else, a grimace maybe.

The photos are curled, a bit washed and faded. They feel old and heavy with passed time. They’re imperfect. These photos are like my memories.

I put the photos side by side on my desktop. On the lip of the Coke-can ashtray my cigarette is all ash, burnt down to the filter. I just lit it, but that’s how time works for me. My constant enemy, it attacks whenever I’m not looking.

All right. Focus. It’s a simple blackmail case. Some entrepreneur wants Jennifer to invest in his private cause or these photos go public and then she gets the gong, the hook, voted off the island on American Star.

But why would a blackmailer send the negatives? The photos have likely been digitized and reside on a hard drive or two somewhere. Still, her—and now me—being in possession of the negatives is troubling. There’s more here, and less, of course, since I don’t remember any of our conversation besides the finger stuff, so I light another cigarette.

The Jennifer in the photos doesn’t look exactly like the Jennifer I’ve seen on TV or the one who visited my office. The difference is hard to describe, but it’s there, like the difference in taste between butter and margarine. I look at the photos again. It could be her; the Jennifer from a few years ago, from high school, the Jennifer from before professional makeup teams and personal stylists. Or maybe the photo Jennifer is margarine instead of butter.

I pick up my notepad. There is writing only on that top page. I was dutifully taking notes while asleep. Automatic behavior. Like tying your shoes. Like driving and listening to the radio instead of actually driving, getting there without getting there. Not that I drive anymore.

During micro-sleeps, my narcoleptic brain will keep my body moving, keep it churning through some familiar task, and I won’t have any memory of it. These acts belong to my secret life. I’ve woken up to find e-mails written and sent, soup cans stacked on my desk, peeled wallpaper in my bedroom, pantry items stuffed inside the refrigerator, magazines and books with their covers torn off.

Here’s the top page of my notepad:

Most of it is likely junk, including my doodle arrows. The narcoleptic me is rarely accurate in his automatic behavior. The numbers don’t add up to any type of phone number or contact information. But there’s south shore plaza, Jennifer’s public mall appearance. She and I need to talk. I get the hunch that this blackmail case is about as simple as quantum physics.

THREE

All my mornings disappear eventually. Today, some of it disappeared while I was on the phone. I tried to reach Times via her agency. No luck. I couldn’t get past the secretary without disclosing too much information, not that I’m in possession of a bucketful of info, and I’ve always had a hard time with improv.

I did ferret out that my automatic self was wrong about the South Shore Plaza. There’s just no trusting that guy. Times’s mall meet-and-greet is at Copley Plaza, downtown Boston, this afternoon.

It’s later than I wanted it to be, it’s still raining, my black coffee is somehow hazelnut, and the line to see Times is longer than the Charles River. I hate hazelnut. The other coffee I’m carrying is loaded with cream and sugar. It’s a cup of candy not fit for consumption, which is fine, because I don’t intend to drink it.

Copley is cavernous, brightly lit in golden tones and ceramic tile, and caters to the high-end designer consumer. No Dollar Store here, but it’s still just a mall, and its speakers pump out American Star promo ads and tunes sung by Times. I think I prefer the old-school Muzak.

There are kids everywhere. They wait in line and they lean over the railings on the upper levels. Escalators are full in every direction. There’s even a pint-sized pack of punks splashing in the fountain, taking other people’s dimes and quarters. Everyone screams and waves and takes pictures. They hold up posters and signs, the i’s dotted with hearts, love spelled luv. Times is getting more mall worship than Santa and the Easter Bunny combined.

Because waiting in lines is detrimental to my tenuous conscious state, I walk toward the front. I growl some words that might sound like Excuse me.

I’m not a huge guy, but kids and their reluctant parents move out of my way. They do so because I walk with an obvious purpose, with authority. It’s an easy trick. A person carrying two coffees has important places to go. Or, just as likely, people let me by because they’re afraid of the hairy guy wearing a fedora and trench coat, the guy who’s here without a kid and has a voice deeper than the pit of despair. Hey, whatever works.

I’m only ten or so people from the front of the line, far enough away not to be cutting in plain view of the cops and security guards circling Times and her entourage, but close enough that my wait will be mercifully brief. So I stop and step in front of a father-daughter tandem.

The father wears a Bruins hockey jersey and he’s built like a puck, so the shirt works for him. His daughter is a mini-puck in jeans and a pink T plastered with Times’s cheery face. This will be the greatest moment of her life until she forgets about it tomorrow.

I hold out the second coffee, my do-not-stop-at-go pass, and say, “Ms. Times wanted me to get her a coffee. Thanks, pal.” My voice is a receding glacier.

The hockey puck nods and says, “Go ahead,” and pulls his daughter against his hip, away from me. At least somebody is thinking of the children.

No one in our immediate vicinity questions my new existence at the front of the line. There are grumbles of disapproval from farther back, but nothing that needs to be addressed. Those grumblers only complain because they’re far enough away from me to be safe, to be anonymous. If they were in the puck’s shoes, they wouldn’t say boo. Most people are cowards.

I sip my coffee and stain my mustache and smell hazelnut. Goddamn hazelnut. I want to light a cigarette and chew on the smoke, scorch that awful taste out of my mouth, but that’s not going to fly here. At least the coffee is still hot.

The line moves with its regimented torpor, like all lines do, and my wait won’t be long, but my lights are dimming a bit already, an encroaching numbness to the excitement and bustle around me. Thoughts about what I’m going to say to Times can’t seem to find a foothold. I cradle the coffees in the crook of an arm, reach inside a pocket, and pinch my thigh. Then I regroup, shake my head, and take another sip of the ’nut. All keep-me-awake tricks that sometimes work and sometimes don’t.

I scan the crowd, trying to find a focus. If I lock eyes with someone, they look away quick. Folks around me are thinking, If he really got her coffee, why is he waiting in line at all? It’s too late for any kind of revolt, and I’m next. Two bodyguards, each with heads the size of Easter Island statues, flank Times, though they’re set back a lunge or two. The background distance is there to encourage a ten-second intimate moment with every fan.

My turn. Maybe she’ll John Hancock the brim of my hat, or my hand. I’ll never wash it again.

Times sits at a table with stacks of glossy head shots, blue Sharpie in hand, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, showing off the crabapple cheekbones. She wears jeans, a long-sleeve Red Sox shirt, and very little makeup. All hints of sexuality have been neutralized; a nonthreatening just-a-sweet-young-American-girl-in-a-mall look.

She’s probably not going to be wild about seeing me here. No probably about it. And I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to come out of this impromptu tête-à-tête in a positive light. She is my employer and I’ll be admitting, in not so many words, that I was asleep on the job before it even started.

I step up to the plate and extend the candy coffee out to her, a gift from one of the magi, the defective one, the one who’s broken. No frankincense or myrrh from this guy.

I say, “Thought you might need a coffee.” A good opener for the uncomfortable revelations to come, and it reinforces that I’m willing to work for her.

She opens the curtain on her practiced, polished smile. One thousand watts. It’s an egalitarian smile too. Everyone has been getting that flash of teeth and gums. There’s not a hint of recognition in her face. Her smile says I’m faceless, like everyone else. She’s already a pro at this. I’m the one who’s amateur hour.

She says, “I don’t drink coffee, but thank you, that’s so nice.” One of the Easter Island statues moves in and takes the coffee. Maybe he’ll analyze it, afraid of death by hazelnut and cream and sugar. I can’t think of a worse way to go.

I try to be quiet and discreet, but my voice doesn’t have those settings. Check the manual. “Sorry to do this here, you as conquering local hero and all that stuff, but I dropped by because I need your direct phone line. Your agency treated me like a refugee when I tried to call earlier.” It isn’t smooth. It’s bumpy and full of potholes, but I’ll explain if she asks.

“Why were you calling my agency?” She looks over both her shoulders. That twin-generator smile has gone, replaced with a help-me look. The giant heads stir, angry pagan gods, awake and looking to smite somebody’s ass. They exchange nonverbal communication cues, signs that the muscle-bound and intellectually challenged understand by instinct: puffed-out chests, clenched jaws, tightened fists.

Is Times serious or putting on a public show, acting like she doesn’t know me because she’s not supposed to know me? Either way, this isn’t good. This is already going worse than I imagined.

My head sweats under the hat. Beard and hazelnut mustache itch. Being stressed out won’t exactly help me avoid some of my condition’s less pleasant symptoms. But I sally forth.

I say, “I was trying to call you because I had some questions about your case, Ms. Times.” I use her name in a formal but familiar way, reassuring and reestablishing my professional status.

“Case?”

“Yeah, the case. Your case.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I lean in to try a conspiratorial whisper, but she slides back in her seat, and it’s too loud in here anyway, with all the chattering and screaming. Can’t say I practice our culture’s celebrity worship, and it’s downright inconvenient right now. This place is the monkey house. I lose my cool. “Christ. You know, what was inside that manila envelope you left me certainly wasn’t a set of Christmas cards.”

All right, I’m not doing well here. Wrong line of questions, no tact. Okay, she clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, or talk to me in public. I should’ve known that.

She says, “I don’t understand.”

I’ve been standing here too long. Everyone is staring at us, at me. Nothing is right. We’re failing to communicate. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes over to break up our verbal clinch.

“Fine. Just sign me a picture,” I say, and pause, waiting to see if my pointed word has any effect on her. Nothing. She appears to be confused. She appears to be sincere in not knowing who I am. I add, “And I’ll leave.” It’s weak. An after-afterthought.

Her mouth is open and she shrinks into a tightened defensive posture. She looks scared. She looks like the girl in the first photo, the clothed girl. Does she still have those bruises and scabs on her knees?

“My mistake. Sorry to bother you,” I say, and reach into my coat for a business card. I’ll just leave it on the table and walk away. Yeah, she contacted me first, which means she likely has my number, but I have to do something to save face, to make me feel like something other than a stalker.

I pull out the card between two nicotine-stained fingers and drop it on the table. The statues animate and land their heavy hands on each of my shoulders. There’s too much weight and pressure, underlining the banner headline I’m already fucking this up completely. I’ve angered the pagan gods with my ineptitude. I don’t blame them.

I guess I’m leaving now, and without an autograph. As the statues escort me toward one of Copley’s many exits, I have enough leisure time to consider the case and what comes next. A cab ride to my office, more phone calls to Jennifer’s agency, Internet searches. A multimedia plan B, whatever that is.

FOUR

Chapter 147: Section 24. Applications; qualifications of applicants

An application for a license to engage in the private detective business or a license to engage in the business of watch, guard, or patrol agency shall be filed with the colonel of the state police on forms furnished by him, and statements of fact therein shall be under oath of the applicant.

George and I dropped out of Curry College together, each with three semesters of criminal justice under our belts. We didn’t like where it was going. We spent our last weekend in the dorm skimming the yellow pages, fishing for do-it-yourself career advice. At the end of the weekend, we closed our eyes and made our choices.

I picked private investigation. I figured my mother, Ellen, who would not be pleased about my dropping out, might eventually be receptive given that a PI was somewhat related to my brief collegiate studies. I was right.

Eight years ago I got my license. According to Massachusetts law, having fulfilled the outlined requirements and submitted the fifty-dollar application fee makes me, officially, Mark Genevich, Private Detective.

Such application shall include a certification by each of three reputable citizens of the commonwealth residing in the community in which the applicant resides or has a place of business, or in which the applicant proposes to conduct his business—

Eight years ago I was sitting in the passenger seat of George’s van, hurtling back to South Boston from Foxwoods, one of the Connecticut reservation casinos.

George was an upper-middle-class black kid from suburban New Jersey, but he pretended to be from Boston. He wore a Sox hat and talked with a fake accent when we were out at a bar. He played Keno and bought scratch tickets. He told bar patrons that he was from Southie and he was Black Irish. More often than not, people believed him.

George’s yellow-pages career was a start-up rug cleaning business. I cleaned rugs for him on the weekends. He had only one machine and its exhaust smelled like wet dog. After getting my private detective’s license, I was going to share my Southie office and charge him a ridiculously small rent. I could do that because Ellen owned the building. Still does.

The rug business name was Carpet Warriors. His white van had a pumped-up cartoon version of himself in standard superhero garb: tight red spandex, muscles bulging over other muscles, CW on his chest plate, and a yellow cape. Our buddy Juan-Miguel did the stenciling. George was not really a superhero. He was tall and lanky, his limbs like thin tree branches, always swaying in some breeze. Before getting into his Carpet Warrior van, George would strike a pose in front of his buff superhero doppelgänger and announce, “Never fear, the Carpet Warrior is here,” reveling in the innuendo.

George was twenty-two years old. I was twenty-one. At Foxwoods, I played roulette and he played at the tables: blackjack and poker. We lost a shitload of money. In the van, we didn’t talk until he said, “We blew ten rugs’ worth.” We laughed. His laugh was always louder than mine and more infectious. We might’ve been drunk, we might’ve been fine.

A tire blew out. I heard it go and felt the sudden drop. The van careened into a drainage ditch and rolled around like a dog trying to pick up a dead squirrel’s musk. Everything was dark. I don’t remember seeing anything. The seat belt wasn’t tight against my chest because I wasn’t wearing one. My face broke the passenger’s side window and was messed up worse than a Picasso, everything exaggerated and in the wrong spots. Nose and septum pulverized, my flesh as remolded clay that didn’t set where it was supposed to.

I broke the window but my body stayed in the van. George’s didn’t. He went out the windshield, ahead of the van, but he didn’t fly far. Like I said, he wasn’t a superhero. The van fishtailed sideways, then rolled right over him. George died. I miss him.

—that he has personally known the applicant for at least three years, that he has read the application and believes each of the statements made therein to be true, that he is not related to the applicant by blood or marriage—

After the accident and the surgeries, I grew a beard to hide my damaged face. My left eye is now a little lower than my right, and smaller. I’m always winking at you, but you don’t know why. Too bad the beard never covers my eyes. The fedora—I wear it low—comes close.

Post-recovery, I lived with Juan-Miguel and another college buddy in the Southie apartment above my office. My narcolepsy symptoms started as soon as I got back from the hospital, a creeping crawling terror from a bad horror flick. I was Michael Landon turning into the teenage werewolf. I was always tired and had no energy, and I fell asleep while working on the computer or watching TV or eating breakfast or on the phone with potential clients. So I rarely answered the phone and tried to communicate solely by e-mail. I stopped going out unless it was to drink, which made everything worse. I know, hard to believe alcohol didn’t make it all better.

Juan-Miguel came home one night to find me half inside the tub, pants down around my ankles, hairy ass in the air. I’d fallen asleep on the toilet and pitched into the tub. I told him I was passed out drunk. Might’ve been true.

When I was supposed to be sleeping, I didn’t sleep well. I had paralyzing nightmares and waking dreams, or I wandered the apartment like the Phantom of the Opera, man turned monster. I emptied the fridge and lit cigarettes I didn’t smoke. They left their marks.

Worst of all, I somnambulated into the TV room, freed myself from pants and underwear, lifted up a couch cushion, and let the urine flow. Apparently I wasn’t even considerate enough to put the seat down after. I pissed on our couch every other week. I was worse than a goddamn cat.

—and that the applicant is honest and of good moral character.

I denied it all, of course. I wasn’t asleep on the couch. If I was, it was because I drank too much. I wasn’t doing any of those horrible, crazy things. It wasn’t possible. That wasn’t me even if my roommates saw me. They were lying to me. They were pulling cruel practical jokes that weren’t at all practical. They were leaving lit cigarettes on the kitchen table and on my bedspread. One of them had a cat and they weren’t admitting it. The cat was pissing on the couch, not me. I wasn’t some animal that wasn’t house trained, for chrissakes.

The kicker was that I believed my own denials. The truth was too embarrassing and devastating. I argued with my roommates all the time. Argument became part of my character. Nothing they said was true or right, even the mundane proclamations that had nothing to do with me or my narcoleptic actions. The only way I could consistently deny my new symptoms and odd behavior was to deny everything. I became even more of a recluse, holed up in my room until the asleep me would unleash himself, a midnight, couch-pissin’ Kraken. My roommates moved out within the year.

Narcolepsy is not a behavioral disorder. It’s neurological. It’s physical. Routine helps, but it’s no cure. Nothing is. There’s no pattern to the symptoms. I tried prescription drugs, but the chemical stimulants resulted in paranoia and wild mood swings. My heart raced like a hummingbird’s, and the insomnia worsened. So I stopped. Other than the coffee I’m not supposed to drink and the cigarettes I’m not supposed to smoke, I’m au naturel.

Eight years ago I got my private detective’s license and narcolepsy. I now live alone with both.

That said, I’m waking up, and there’s someone in my apartment, and that someone is yelling at me.

FIVE

Sleep is heavy. It has mass. Sometimes it has supreme mass. Sleep as a singularity. There’s no moving or denying or escaping. Sometimes sleep is light too. I’ve been able to walk under its weight. It can be light enough to dream through, but more often than not it’s the heavy kind. It’s the ocean and you’re pinned to the bottom of the seafloor.

“. . . on fire? Jesus Christ! Wake the hell up, Mark!”

The impossible weight lifts away. I resurface too fast and get the bends. Muscles twitch and my heart pushes past my throat and into my head where it doesn’t belong, making everything hurt.

It’s Ellen, my mother. She stands in the doorway of the living room, wearing frilly blue oversized clown pants and a T that reads LITHUANIA. The shirt is an old favorite of hers, something she wears too often. The clown pants I’ve never seen before. I hope this means I’m having another hypnogogic hallucination.

I’m sitting on the couch. My mouth is still open because I was asleep with it that way. I blink and mash the back of my hand into my eyes, pushing and squeezing the sleep out. I have my cell phone in my right hand. On my left side is smoke and heat.

The couch is smoking, cigarette and everything. It’s a nasty habit the couch can’t seem to break. The couch doesn’t heed surgeon generals’ warnings. Maybe it should try the patch.

I lift my left leg and twist away from the smoke, but the cigarette butt rolls after me, leaving a trail of red ash. In the cushion there’s a dime-sized hole, the circumference red and still burning. I’d say it’s just one blemish, but the reality is my couch has acne.

I pick up the butt. It’s too hot and I drop it on the floor. I pat the couch cushion. Red ashes go black and there’s more smoke.

I say, “I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t smoking.” Ellen knows what I mean when I’m lying: I don’t want to talk about it, and even if I did want to talk about it nothing would change.

She shakes her head and says, “You’re gonna burn yourself up one of these days, Mark. I don’t know why I bother.” Her admonishment is by rote, perfunctory. We can get on with our day, now that it’s out of the way.

I make my greeting a subtle dig at her for no good reason other than I’m embarrassed. “Good to see you too, Ellen. Shut the door on the way out.” At least this time she didn’t find me asleep with my pants around my ankles and an Edward Penishands porno on the TV.

Ellen stays at my apartment a couple of nights a week. If pressed, she maintains she stays here because she wants to play Keno and eat at the Italian American and L Street Diner with her sister and friends. She won’t admit to being my de facto caregiver. She’s the underwriter of my less-than-successful private detecting business and the landlord who doesn’t want her property, the brownstone she inherited from her parents, to burn to the ground. I can’t blame her.

Ellen is Southie born and bred and, like every other lifelong resident, she knows everything about everybody. Gentrification has toned down the small-town we-are-Southie vibe a bit, but it’s still here. She starts right in on some local dirt, mid-story, assuming I know what she’s talking about when I don’t.

“Davy T said he knew she was lying the whole time. He told me weeks ago. He could just tell she was lying. Do you know when someone’s lying, Mark? They say you watch the eyes. Up and left means recall, down and right means they’re making stuff up. Or it’s the other way around. I don’t know. You should take a class in that. You could find a class online, I bet.”

Davy T is the centuries-old Greek who owns the pizza joint next door. That’s the only part of her monologue that registers with me. I check my cell phone, no messages. It has been a full day since Jennifer’s mall appearance.

Ellen says, “Anyway, Davy T knew. It’ll be all over the news tonight. They found her out. She was making it all up: the cancer, her foundation, everything. What kind of person does that?” Ellen crosses the room as she talks, her clown pants merrily swishing away. She opens my windows and waves her hands. The smoke obeys and swirls in the fresh air. Magic. Must be the pants. “Maybe you should’ve been on that case, Mark. You could’ve solved that, don’t you think? You could’ve saved folks a lot of money and aggravation.”

To avoid discussing my condition or me burning up with the apartment, Ellen defaults into details of already solved cases that presumably I could’ve tackled; as if I’ve ever worked on a case that involved anything more than tapping keys in front of my computer or being a ghost at a library or a town hall registrar.

Still patting the couch like I can replace the burned and missing upholstery with my Midas touch, I say, “Sure thing, Ellen.” Truth is, my confidence and self-esteem are fighting it out in the subbasement, seeing which can be lower.

Jennifer hasn’t returned any of my calls to the agency. I fell asleep up here, waiting for a callback. Waiting for something to get me going, because I have nothing. I don’t know how she was contacted by the blackmailer, if the pictures were mailed or left on a doorstop, if there had been earlier contact or contact since. It’s kind of hard to start a case without a client, or at least a client that will talk to you.

I say, “So what’s with the Bozo the Clown getup?”

Ellen walks into the kitchen. “I was shooting some kid’s portrait today and the little bastard wouldn’t stop crying until I put the pants on.” When Ellen isn’t her force-of-nature self in my apartment, she lives in the old family bungalow in Osterville, a small tourist haven on the Cape. In downtown Osterville she has a photography studio and antiques shop. She shoots kids, weddings, graduation pictures. Nothing fancy. She’s been doing it since my father died.

“Wouldn’t a red nose and a horn get the job done? Maybe one of those flowers that shoots out water. You need to rely on cliché a little more.”

“What, you’re an expert now? I got the shots.” She plays with her clown pants, pulling them up at the knee, making mini circus tents. “I need to change.” Ellen abruptly disappears into my bedroom and shuts the door.

I pick up the cigarette butt off the floor and try to tidy things up a bit, putting dirty glasses and dishes in the sink, stacking magazines, moving dust around. I eyeball the couch to make sure it’s not still burning.

I check my cell phone again, even though I’ve already checked for messages. Why wouldn’t she call me back? If this is supposed to be some super-special double-secret case, it’s not going to work out. The sleeping me should’ve told her thanks-but-no-thanks when she dumped those pictures on me. The sleeping me is just so irresponsible on my behalf.

Earlier, I did a cursory Web search, reading blogs and message boards, finding no hint or threat of the existence of the photos, or a stalker, or a potential blackmailer. Everything from her camp seems as controlled and wholesome as can be. No one has even posted fake nudes of Jennifer yet, which is usually an instantaneous Internet occurrence once there’s a new female celebrity. I don’t get the lack of buzz. The irony is that if I posted the pictures, I’d likely be helping her career, but I’m not her agent.

Ellen emerges from the bedroom. Her shoulder-length gray hair is tied up and she has on her black-framed glasses, thick lenses that enlarge her eyes. She’s still wearing the clown pants but has on a gray sweatshirt over LITHUANIA.

I say, “Are you going to take my picture later? Maybe tie me up some balloon animals? I want a giraffe, a blue one.”

She says, “Everyone at the Lithuanian Club will get a kick out of the pants. And they are comfortable. Nice and roomy.” She walks by and punches my shoulder. “So, should we do something for dinner?” Ellen never makes dinner a declarative statement. She’s earnest in the illusion of a choice being offered. It’s not that I can’t say no. I never have a reason to do so.

I say, “Something sounds delicious, Ellen.” I have a gut feeling the case is slipping away, and if I let it get away I’ll be screwing up something important. This is my shot, my chance to be something more than Ellen’s charity-case son who works on glorified have-you-seen-my-lost-puppy cases and sleeps his days away in front of his computer.

So let’s skip from plan B down to plan X. I know that Jennifer’s father, the DA, grew up in Southie and is around the same age as Ellen. Maybe, a long-shot maybe, she knows something about Jennifer, the first bread crumb in the trail.

I say, “Hey, do you still watch American Star?” Plan X: asking Ellen delicate no-I’m-not-working-on-anything-really questions to defibrillate my dying case. I don’t have a plan Y or Z.

Ellen looks at me funny, like I stepped in something and she’s not sure if she should admit she smells it. She says, “You’re kidding, right? I don’t miss a show. Never have missed a show in five seasons.”

I know that, of course. She’s obsessed with American Star. She watched the first two seasons from Osterville and still had me tape all the episodes here.

She says, “Why do you ask? Are you telling me that you’re finally watching it too?”

I shrug. Shoulders don’t lie. My fedora doesn’t hide enough of my hairy face. It’s the proverbial only-a-mother-could-love face because the mug was reshuffled partway through the game. Ellen hasn’t once suggested that I shave. That means what it means.

I say, “The show is kind of hard to avoid now. I had it on the other night, but I fell asleep.” Ellen is waiting for more, so I add, “Been hearing stuff about the local girl. She’s the DA’s kid right?”

Ellen smiles. “I might be crazy, but it sounds like you’re pumping me for information. If you got something to ask, just come out and ask it. I’ll help. You know I want to help.”

I can’t. I can’t let her know that I’m working on a case that potentially involves extensive fieldwork. Leaving the apartment and going out by myself. There will be no dealing with any of that conversation. She wants to be supportive only as long as I’m safe in the apartment.

I say, “Nothing like that. Just having a conversation, Ellen. For someone who wears clown pants, you’re tightly wound.”

Ellen goes into the kitchen and roots around in the freezer. She says, “Yes, she’s his daughter. She’s—what, about ten years younger than you?”

Might as well be fifty years younger. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Ellen says, “There’s nothing good in there,” and closes the freezer. “I didn’t have time to pick up anything. We’ll have to go out. At least I’m dressed for it, right?”

I stand in the kitchen doorway, holding up the frame. “Isn’t DA Times from Southie originally?” A softball question, one I know she can’t resist.

“Hell yeah, he’s from Southie. He still owns a brownstone at the end of East Broadway. He doesn’t stay there anymore though. He rents it out.”

“Do you know him at all?”

“I know him well. Or knew him well, anyway. Billy Times and your father were close, used to pal around as kids. They lived in the same building in Harbor Point.”

She hits the softball out of the park. Her answer isn’t what I was expecting. Not at all. I talk even slower than normal, making sure I don’t mess anything up, stacking the words on the kitchen table like bricks, making a wall; maybe it’ll protect me. “Really? You never told me that before.”

Ellen says, “Come on. I’ve told you that before.”

“No. You haven’t.” I’m not offering subterfuge here. I’m more likely to find Spanish doubloons in a handful of loose change than get nuggets of info concerning my father, Tim, from Ellen. She’s miserly with it, hoards it all for herself. I stopped asking questions a long time ago.

“That can’t be right.” Ellen is trying for a light, jovial, fluffy-banter tone, but it’s faltering. “You just forgot.” She adds that last bit as an afterthought, each word decreasing in volume. The sentence runs out of gas, sputters, and shuts off. The sentence goes to sleep. Everything goes to sleep if you wait long enough.

Now, what she said is not fair. Yeah, I forget stuff all the time, but she can’t pass off years of silence and daddy awkwardness on the narcoleptic me like that. I’d call her on the cheap shot, but that’s another argument I don’t want right now. Need that primed pump to keep spilling. I say, “Cute. So Tim and the DA were BFFs and wore each other’s varsity jackets?”

“Yes, actually, they were best friends but no jackets.” Ellen laughs, but I’m not quite sure why. Nothing is that funny. “Those two used to be inseparable, always causing trouble. Nothing big, you know, typical Southie boys who thought they were tougher than they were.”

She waves her hand, like she’s clearing the air of more smoke. Further details won’t be forthcoming unless I keep pecking away at her.

Okay. This goes a long way toward explaining how Jennifer Times landed in my office with her slide show. Her daddy can’t take the case because people talk, word gets out, media sniffing around the DA, especially with his flavor-of-the-minute daughter smiling and primping all over the airwaves. So Daddy DA has Jennifer take her blackmail case, which is as sticky and messy as an ice cream cone on a summer Sunday, to an unknown lower-than-low profile investigator in South Boston, family friend and all that, a schlub willing to do all kinds of favors and keep things quiet with a capital Q, all in the name of his own dear old dad. This makes sense, but the only problem is I don’t know any of this. I’m guessing. Maybe I was told a few days ago while the doctor wasn’t in. Or maybe I wasn’t told anything. Maybe . . .

“Hey, Mark!”

“What?” My body catches itself in mid-slide against the wall. Heavy feet move to get my weight back over them. They’re neither graceful nor quiet. They kick a kitchen chair and clap against the hardwood floor. Don’t know what my feet have against the floor, but they’re always trying to get away.

Ellen is now sitting at the kitchen table, smoking one of my cigarettes. She says, “You were getting ready to go out, Mark.” She won’t say sleep. Not around me.

As difficult as it is to cobble together some dignity after almost falling asleep mid-conversation, I try to patch it up. I’ve had a lot of practice. I say, “Would the DA recognize the Genevich name, you think?”

“Of course. There’s no way he’d forget your father.” Ellen leans forward fast, stubs out her cigarette like she’s killing a pesky ant. She’s adding everything together and doesn’t like the sum. She’s going to tell me about it too. “Why do you care? What’s going on here, Mark? There’s something you’re not telling me. You better not be messing around with stuff that requires involvement with the DA. Leave that shit to the people who carry guns.”

“Relax. There’s nothing going on. It’s just this all might be useful information. I’m supposed to ask questions for a living, right? Besides, a guy in my line of work having a potential family friend in the big office could help my cause.”

Ellen stands up. Chair falls down. She’s not buying any of it. “What cause?”

I like that she’s so riled up, on edge. She doesn’t know for sure I’m working on a case, but even she can sense something big is going on. It’s real. It’s legit. And thanks to her, I finally have my bread-crumb trail, or at least one crumb. I sit down at the table, take off my hat, run my fingers through my thinning hair.

“I was speaking figuratively, Ellen. My general cause. Or some-day, when I have a cause.” I wink, which is a mistake. My face doesn’t have a wink setting anymore.

“You’re being awful strange tonight.” She says it to the table. I’m supposed to hear her but not give anything back. Fair enough.

Worry lines march all around Ellen’s face, and not in formation. She taps the all-but-empty pack of cigarettes with her wedding ring. Tim Genevich is twenty-five years dead, and Ellen still wears the ring. Does she wear it out of habit, superstition, or true indefinable loss, so the loss is right there in plain sight, her life’s pain waving around for anyone to see? The ring as her dead husband, as Tim. My father on her hand.

I lean over and snatch the last cigarette out of the pack. Ellen stops tapping with Tim. I light up and inhale as much smoke as I can, then I take in a little more. Exhale, and then I do some reiterating, just to be clear in our communication.

I say, “Don’t worry, Clowny. I have no cause. The DA and I are just gonna get acquainted.”

SIX

Tim was a landscaper, caretaker, winterizer of summer cottages, and a handyman, and he died on the job. He was in the basement of someone else’s summer home, fighting through cobwebs and checking fuses and the sump pump, when he had an explosion in his brain, an aneurysm. I guess us Genevich boys don’t have a lot of luck in the brain department.

Three days passed and no one found him. He didn’t keep an appointment book or anything like that, and he left his car at our house and rode his bike to work that morning, so Ellen had no idea where he was. He was an official missing person. Got his name in the paper, and for a few days everyone knew who Tim Genevich was.

The owners of the cottage found him when they came down to the Cape for Memorial Day weekend. The basement bulkhead was open. Tim was lying facedown on the dirt floor. He had a fuse in his hand. I was five years old, and while I’m told I was at the funeral and wake, I don’t remember any of it.

I don’t remember much of Tim. Memories of him have faded to the edges, where recollection and wish fulfillment blur, or they have been replaced, co-opted by images from pictures. I hate pictures.

Too much time has passed since my own brain-related accident, too many sleeps between. Every time I sleep—doesn’t matter how long I’m out—puts more unconscious space between myself and the events I experienced, because every time I wake up it’s a new day. Those fraudulent extra days, weeks, years add up. So while my everyday time shrinks, it also gets longer. I’m Billy Pilgrim and Rip Van Winkle at the same time, and Tim died one hundred years ago.

That said, I do have a recurring dream of my father. He’s in our backyard in Osterville. He puts tools back in the shed, then emerges with a hand trowel. Tim was shorter than Ellen, a little bent, and he loved flannel. At least, that’s what he looks like in my dreams.

Tim won’t let me go in the shed. I’m too young. There are too many tools, too many ways to hurt myself. I need to be protected. He gives me a brown paper bag, grocery-sized, and a pat on the head. He encourages me to sing songs while we walk around the yard picking up dog shit. We don’t have a dog, but all the neighborhood dogs congregate here. Tim guesses a dog’s name every time he picks up some shit. The biggest poops apparently come from a dog named Cleo.

The song I always sing, in my dreams and my memories, is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Tim then sings it back to me with different lyrics, mixing in his dog names and poop and words that rhyme with poop. He doesn’t say shit around the five-year-old me, at least not on purpose. The dream me, the memory me—that kid is the same even if he never really existed, and that kid laughs at the silly improvised song but then sings “Ball Game” correctly, restoring balance and harmony to the universe.

Our two-bedroom bungalow is on a hill and the front yard has a noticeable slant, so we have to stand lopsided to keep from falling. We clean the yard, then we walk behind the shed to the cyclone-fenced area of weeds, tall grass, and pricker bushes that gives way to a grove of trees between our property and the next summer home about half a block away. Tim takes the paper bag from me, it’s heavy with shit, and he dumps it out, same spot every time. He says “Bombs away” or “Natural fertilizer” or something else that’s supposed to make a five-year-old boy laugh.

Then we walk to the shed. Tim opens the doors. Inside are the shiny and sharp tools and machines, teeth everywhere, and I want to touch it all, want to feel the bite. He hangs up the trowel and folds the paper bag. We’ll reuse both again, next weekend and in the next dream. Tim stands in the doorway and says, “So, kid, whaddaya think?”

Sometimes I ask for a lemonade or ice cream or soda. Sometimes, if I’m aware I’m in the dream again, I ask him questions. He always answers, and I remember the brief conversation after waking up, but that memory lasts only for a little while, an ice cube melting in a drink. Then it’s utterly forgotten, crushed under the weight of all those little sleeps to come.

SEVEN

William “Billy” Times has been the Suffolk County DA for ten years. He’s a wildly popular and visible favorite son. All the local news shows are doing spots featuring Billy and his American Star daughter. He hosts now-legendary bimonthly Sunday brunch fund-raisers—the proceeds going to homeless shelters—at a restaurant called Amrheins in South Boston. All the local celebs and politicians show their faces at least once a year at the brunches.

Although I am Tim Genevich’s kid, I haven’t been on the brunch guest list yet. That said, Tim’s name did manage to get me a one-on-one audience with DA Times at his office today. What a pal, that Tim.

I fell asleep in the cab. It cost me an extra twenty bucks in drive-around time. I stayed awake long enough to be eventually dumped at 1 Bulfinch Place. Nice government digs for the DA. Location, location, location. It’s between the ugly concrete slabs of Government Center and Haymarket T stop, but a short walk from cobble-stones, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and the two-story granite columns and copper dome of Quincy Market, where you can eat at one of its seventeen overpriced restaurants. It’s all very colonial.

Despite naptime, I’m here early when I can’t ever be early. Early means being trapped in a waiting room, sitting in plush chairs or couches, anesthetizing Muzak tones washing over me, fluffing my pillow. An embarrassingly large selection of inane and soulless entertainment magazines, magazines filled with fraudulent and beautiful people, is the only proffered stimulus. That environment is enough to put a non-narcoleptic in a coma, so I don’t stand a chance. I won’t be early.

I stalk around the sidewalk and the pigeons hate me. I don’t take it personally, thick skin and all that. I dump some more nicotine and caffeine into my bloodstream. The hope is that filling up with leaded will keep all my pistons firing while in the DA’s office. Hope is a desperate man’s currency.