Pleading Guilty (3 page)

Inside his head, Bert seems to live in his own Boys Town. Most of my partners are men and women with fancy degrees-

Harvard, Yale, and Easton--intellectuals for a few minutes in their lives, the types who keep The New York Review of Books in business, reading all those carping articles to put themselves to sleep. But Bert is sort of the way people figure me, smart but basic. He'd been law review at the U., and before that an Air Force Academy grad and a combat pilot in Nam in the last desperate year of war, but the events of his later life don't seem to penetrate. He's caught up in the fantasies that preoccupied him at age eleven. Bert thinks it's nifty to hang out with guys who hint about hits and scores, who can give you the line on tomorrow's game before they've seen the papers. What these fellas are actually doing, I suspect, is the same thing as Bert--talking trash and feeling dangerous. After their steam bath, they sit around card tables in the locker room in their sheets, eating pickled herring served at a little stand-up bar and telling each other stories about scores they've settled, jerks that they've set straight. For a grown-up, this sort of macho make-believe is silly. For a guy whose daytime life is devoted to making the world safe for airlines, banks, and insurance companies, it is, frankly, delusional.

The bath was down the stairs and I held tight to the rail, full of the usual doubts about exactly what I was up to, including going someplace I didn't know without my clothes on, but it proved to be a spot of well-worn grace, full of steam and smoke, a breath of heat that rushed to meet you. The men sat about, young guys shamelessly naked, with their dongs hanging out, and older fellas, fat and withered, who'd slopped a sheet across their middles or slung it toga-like over their shoulders. The bath was a wood construction, not your light color like a sauna that reminds you of Scandinavian furniture, but dark planks, blackened by moisture. A large room rising fifteen feet or more, its scent was like a wet forest floor. Tiers of planked benches stepped up in ranks on all sides and in the center was the old iron oven, jacketed in cement, indomitable and somehow insolent, like a goo-pound mother-in-law. At night the fire
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urned there, scalding the rocks that sit within the oven's belly, a brood of dinosaur eggs, granite boulders scraped from the bottoms of the Great Lakes, now scarred white from the heat. Every now and then some brave veteran struggled to his feet with a heavy, indigenous grunt and shoved a pitcher of hot water in there. The oven sizzled and spit back in fury; the steam rose at once. The higher up you sat, the more you felt, so that even after a few minutes at the third level you could feel your noggin cooking. Sitting, steaming, the men spoke episodically, talking gruff half-sentences to one another, then stood and poured a bucket of icy water, drained from flowing spigots in the boards, over their heads. Watching this routine, I wondered how many guys the paramedics have carried out. Occasionally someone lay down on the benches and another fella, in a bizarre ceremony, soaped him from head to toe, front and back, with callus sponges and sheaves of oak leaves frothing heavy soap.

These days, of course, a bunch of naked men rubbing each other leads to a thought or two, and frankly, exactly what gives with Bert is not a matter I'd put money on. But these guys looked pretty convincing--big-bellied old-world types, fellas like Bert who've been coming here since they were kids, ethnics with a capital E. Slays. Jews. Russians. Mexicans. People steeped in peasant pleasures, their allegiance to the past in their sweat.

From time to time I could catch the sideward glances. Many gay blades, I suspected, had to be stomped into recognizing that Kindle County isn't San Francisco. This crowd looked like they made fast judgments about newcomers.

"Friend of Bert Kamin's," I muttered, trying to explain myself to a solid old lump who sat in his sheet across from me. His graying hair was soapy and deviled up, going off in three or four different directions so he looked mostly like a hood ornament. "He's always talked about it. Had to give it a try."

The fella made a sound. "Who's that?" he asked.

"Bert," I said.

"Oh, Bert," he said. "What's with him? Big trial or somethin? Where all's he gone to?"

I took a beat with that. I had figured that would be my line. I could feel the heat now, agitating my blood and drying my nostrils, and I moved down a level. Where does a fellow go with five and a half million dollars? I wondered. What are the logical alternatives? Plastic surgery? The jungles of Brazil? Or just a small town where nobody you'd know would ever appear? You'd think it's easy, but try the question on yourself. Personally, I figured I'd favor a simple agenda. Swim a lot. Read good books. Play some golf. Find one of those women looking for a fellow who's honest and true.

"Maybe he's got someplace with Archie and them," said the old lump. "I ain't seen him too much neither."

"Archie?"

"Don't you know Archie? He's a character for you. Got a big position. Whosiewhasit. Whadda they call it. Hey. Lucien. Whatta you call what Archie does with that insurance company?" He addressed a guy sitting near the oven, a man who looked inure or less like him, with a sloping belly and fleshy breasts pink from the heat.

"Actuary," answered Lucien.

"There you go," said the guy, sending suds flying as he gestured. He went on talking about Archie. He was here every day, the guy said. Clockwork. Five o'clock. Him and Bert always together, two professional fellas.

"I bet that's where-all he's gone, Bert. Hey, Lucien. Bert and Archie, they together or what?"

This time Lucien moved. "Who's asking?"

"This guy."

I made some demurrer that they both ignored.

"Name of?" asked Lucien, and squinted in the steam. He'd come in without his glasses and he stepped down to get a bette
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ook at me, clearly sizing me up, one of these guys too old to apologize anymore for anything. I gave my name and offered a hand, which Lucien limply grabbed backhanded, his right paw holding fast to the bedsheet around his middle. He took a breath or two through his open mouth, red as a pomegranate.

"You lookin for Kam Roberts, too?" he asked finally. Kam Roberts. Robert Kamin. I was sure it was a joke.

"Yeah," I said, and brought out some blarney smile. "Yeah, Kam Roberts," I repeated. Don't ask me why I do these things--I'm always pretending to know more than I do. Since I was a naughty kid, I've been like that, faking one thing or another; there are so many selves rollicking around in here and it is a harmful indulgence for a man often out of control. I had the thought that "Kam Roberts" was like the secret password, I could ask a few more questions once I'd said it, but something, the peculiarity of the name or my odd tone of enthusiasm, seemed to deaden the air in the room.

In response, Lumpy and Lucien more or less withdrew. Lucien said he wanted to play cards and nudged his pal along, both of them shoving off with only a bare goodbye and a quick look back in my direction.

I stayed put in the steam, blanching like some vegetable and considering my prospects. Heat has its odd effects. In time, the limbs grow heavy and the mind is slower, as if gravity's increased, as if you'd taken a seat on Jupiter. This thing of men being men amid the intense heat revived some lost thought of my old man and the firehouse where all those guys spent so much of their lives together, bunking down in that single large room in which they dreamt uneasily, awaiting the hoarse call of the alarm, the summons to danger. We always knew when there'd been fires. You could hear the engines tearing out of the little firehouse four blocks away, the clanging of the bells, 'the sireens,' as my father said, the enormous roaring motors that sounded big enough to power rocket ships. My dad came home sometime
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till carrying the fire with him, a penetrating scent that hung around him like a cloud. 'Smellin like the sinners down in hell' was how he put it, weary and beaten in by physical exertion and fear, waiting for The Black Rose to open so he could have a snoot before he slept. My dreams since are full of fire, though I can't say for sure if that's from my pa or the way my ma, when she was scolding, would pinch my ear and tell me I was in league with Satan and would need to be buried in britches of asbestos. Cooked out, I stumbled back up to the seedy locker room. I was trying to squint up the number from my key when I heard a voice behind me.

"Hey, yo, mister, you. Jorge wants to see you." It was a kid with a bucket and a mop. I wasn't sure he was talking to me, but he tossed his head of sleek jet hair and waved for me to follow, which I did, clip-clopping after him in my thongs and wet sheet, leaving the locker area for something a hand-drawn sign called "The Club Room." Maybe somebody wanted me to buy a membership, I figured. Or to tell me about Bert. Here again the furnishings were the latest, if the year happened to be 1949. Cheap mahogany paneling. Brown, speckled asbestos floor tiles such as would give any OSHA inspector an instant coronary. Red vinyl furniture with the stuffing oozing out the corners and, in one case, a black spring so long exposed it was beginning to rust. At a gray Formica table, with one of those old designs of vague forms like the sight through an unfocused microscope, four men were seated, playing pinochle. The youngest of them, a smooth-looking Mexican, nodded, and behind me the kid with the bucket scooted a chair.

"You lookin for Kam Roberts?" the Mexican asked. His eves were on his cards. Lucien and Lumpy were nowhere in sight. "I'm a friend of Bert Kamin."

"I asked you 'Kam Roberts.' " He considered me now. This fella, Jorge, was a thin guy, one of those unshaved stringy-looking Mexicans who make such amazing lightweights, always whippin
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he fannies of these sleek black guys with bulging muscles. Unforeseen strength like that always impresses me. "You got some
I.D
.?"

I looked at my sheet, heavy and almost translucent from the steam.

"Give me two minutes."

"How far you think you get in two minutes?" he asked and threw down a card. I took a while on that.

"My name is Mack Malloy. Bert's my partner. I'm a lawyer." I offered my hand.

"No, you am," said Jorge. Story of my life. Lie and I make you smile. The truth, you only wonder.

"Who are you?" I asked.

-Who am I? I'm a guy sittin here talkin to you, okay? You're lookin for Earn Roberts, that's who I am. Okay?" Jorge studied me with what you might call Third World anger--this thing that really goes beyond skin color and echoes back across the epochs, some gene-encoded memory of the syphilis that Cortez's men spread, of the tribal chieftains that the helmeted European troops tossed into the steaming volcanic crevices. "Mr. Roberts here, that's Mr. Shit. You know what I mean?"

"I hear you."

He turned to a guy beside him, a thick old brute who was still holding his cards.

"He hears me." They exchanged a laugh.

Overall, this was not a good situation, being naked with four angry men. Jorge put both hands down on the table.

"I say you're a cop." He wet his lips. "I know you're a cop." Those dark Hispanic eyes had irises like caves and emitted no light, and I was lost in there; it was a second before I heartened with the thought that a copper was unlikely to end up beaten in the alley. "I'd make you nine days a week. You got a star tattooed on your tushy."

The three guys watching thought this was a terrific line.

I smiled faintly, that primate fear-flight thing, still trying t
o f
igure what it was this guy thought he knew about me. It had been more than twenty years, but I would bet I could remember every guy I cracked. Sort of like the kids from grade school. Some faces you don't forget.

"Whatever you lookin for, hombre, you don' find here. You check with Hans over in Six, you'll find out."

"I'm looking for Bert."

Jorge closed his eyes, heavy-lidded like a lizard's.

"Wouldn't know him. Don' know him and don' know nobody he knows. I tole the first copper what come around askin Kam Roberts, I tole him straight up, I don' want none of this shit. I tole him, see Hans, and now we got some fucker here playin What's My Line. Don' fuck with me." He worked his head around completely as if it were on a string, so that I knew I'd had it right to start: a former boxer.

I got it now, why he thought I was a cop, because the cops had already been here looking for Kam Roberts. I wanted to ask more, of course--which coppers, which unit, what they thought Bert had done--but I knew better than to press my luck.

Jorge had leaned in his confidential way across the table once again.

"I'm not supposed to have any this shit." That's what he paid Hans for, that's what he was telling me. I knew Hans too, a watch commander in the Sixth District, two, three years from retirement, Hans Gudrich, real fat these days, with very clear blue eyes, quite beautiful actually, if you could say that about the eyes on a fat old cop.

"I was on my way out," I said.

"See, that's what I thought."

"You were right." I stood up, my sheet wetting the floor beneath me. "We all have a job to do." My impression of an honest policeman didn't sell. Jorge pointed.

"Nobody got no jobs to do here. You want to sweat, that's fine. You come here runnin any scams, Mr. Roberts or whatever, we'll take a piece of your candy-ass, I don' care what kind of sta
r y
ou carry. To me, Mr. Roberts, man, I better not hear no Mr. Roberts again, you know?"