I Am the Messenger Page 3

  He stares at me.

  I stare back.

  Well? I see him think. What the hell do you want?

  Nothing.

  Good.

  Fine.

  And we leave it at that.

  It doesn't change the fact that I'm still holding the Ace of Diamonds in my hands, wondering.

  Call someone, I tell myself.

  The phone beats me to it. It rings. Maybe this is the answer I've been waiting for.

  I pick it up and shove it to my ear. It hurts, but I listen hard. Unfortunately, it's my mother.

  "Ed?"

  I'd know that voice anywhere. That, and this woman shouts into the phone, every time, without fail.

  "Yeah, hi, love."

  "Don't 'Yeah, hi, love' me, you little bastard." Great. "Did you forget something today?"

  I think about it, trying to remember. No thoughts or memories arrive. All I can see is the card as I turn it in my hands. "I can't think of anything."

  "Typical!" She's getting a bit ropable now. Aggravated, to say the least. "You were s'posed to pick up that coffee table for me from KC Furniture, Ed." The words are spat through the phone line. They're loud and wet in my ear. "Y' big dickhead." She's lovely, isn't she?

  As I've alluded to earlier, my mother really has quite a swearing habit on her. She swears all day every day, whether she's happy, sad, indifferent, everything. She blames it on my brother, Tommy, and me, of course. She says we used to swear our heads off when we were kids, playing soccer in the backyard.

  "I gave up trying to stop you," she always tells me. "So I figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

  If I can go through a conversation with her without being called a wanker or dickhead at least once, I'm in front. The worst thing about it is the sheer emphasis she swears with. Whenever she calls me something like that, she spits it from her mouth, practically hurling it at me.

  She's still going at me now, even though I'm not listening.

  I tune back in.

  "...and what should I do tomorrow when Mrs. Faulkner turns up for morning tea, Ed? Should I just get her to put her mug on the floor?"

  "Just blame me, Ma."

  "Too bloody right I will," she snaps. "I'll just tell her that Dickhead Ed forgot to pick up my coffee table."

  Dickhead Ed.

  I hate it when she calls me that.

  "No worries, Ma."

  She goes on for quite a while longer, but again I focus on the Ace of Diamonds. It sparkles in my hand.

  I touch it.

  Hold it.

  I smile.

  Into it.

  There's an aura to this card, and it's been given to me. Not to Dickhead Ed. To me--the real Ed Kennedy. The future Ed Kennedy. No longer simply a cabdriving hopeless case.

  What will I do with it?

  Who will I be?

  "Ed?"

  No answer.

  I'm still thinking.

  "Ed?" roars Ma.

  I'm stunned back into the conversation.

  "Are you listening to me?"

  "Yeah...yeah, of course."

  45 Edgar Street...13 Harrison Avenue...6 Macedoni Street...

  "Ma, I'm sorry," I say again. "It just slipped my mind--I had a lot of pickups today. A lot of work in the city. I'll get it tomorrow, all right?"

  "You sure about that?"

  "I'm sure."

  "You won't forget?"

  "No."

  "Good. Goodbye."

  "Hey, wait!" I rush my voice through the phone.

  She comes back. "What?"

  I struggle to get the words out of my mouth, yet I have to ask her. About the card. I've decided I should really ask everyone I suspect of sending it to me. I may as well start with Ma.

  "Yes, what?" she asks again, a bit louder this time.

  I let the words out, each one tugging and pulling at my lips as they fight to stay in.

  "Did you send me something in the mail today, Ma?"

  "Like what?"

  I pause a moment. "Like something small...."

  "Like what, Ed? I don't really have time for this."

  All right. I have to say it. "It's a playing card--the Ace of Diamonds."

  There's silence at the other end. She's thinking.

  "Well?" I ask.

  "Well what?"

  "Was it you who sent it?"

  She's had enough now, I can tell. The feeling reaches a hand through the phone line and shakes me.

  "Of course it wasn't me!" It's like she's retaliating for something. "Why would I bother sending you a playing card in the mail? I should have sent you a reminder to pick up"--she raises her voice to a roar again--"my goddamn coffee table!"

  "Okay, okay...."

  Why am I still so calm?

  Is it the card?

  I don't know.

  But then, yes, I do know. It's because I'm always like this. Too pathetically calm for my own good. I should just tell the old cow to shut up, but I never have and never will. After all, she can't have a relationship like this with any of her other kids. Just me. She kisses their feet every time they come to visit (which isn't that much), and they just leave again. With me, at least she's got consistency.

  I say, "All right, Ma, I was only checking to make sure it wasn't you. That's all. It just seemed like kind of a weird thing to get in the--"

  "Ed?" she interrupts me, complete boredom attached to her voice.

  "What?"

  "Piss off, will you?"

  "All right, I'll see you later."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  We hang up.

  That bloody coffee table.

  I knew I was forgetting something when I walked home from the Vacant Taxis lot. Tomorrow old Mrs. Faulkner will show up at Ma's place wanting to talk about my heroics in the bank a few days ago. All she'll hear is that I forgot to pick up the coffee table. I'm still not sure how I'm going to fit it in my cab, anyway.

  I force myself to stop thinking about it. It's irrelevant. What I need to focus on is why this card's turned up and where it's come from.

  It's someone I know.

  That's certain.

  It's someone who knows I play cards all the time. Which should make it either Marv, Audrey, or Ritchie.

  Marv's out. For sure. It could never be him. He could never be that imaginative.

  Then Ritchie. Highly unlikely. He just doesn't seem the type to do this.

  Audrey.

  I tell myself that it's most likely Audrey, but I don't know.

  My gut feeling says it's none of them.

  Sometimes we play cards on the front porch of my house or on the porch at someone else's place. Hundreds of people might have walked past and seen us. Once in a while, when there's an argument, people laugh and call out to us about who's cheating, who's winning, and who's whingeing.

  So it could be anyone.

  I don't sleep tonight.

  Only think.

  In the morning I get up earlier than normal and walk around town with the Doorman and a street directory, finding each house. The one on Edgar Street is a real wreck of a joint, right at the bottom of the street. The one on Harrison is kind of old, but it's neat. It has a rose bed in the front yard, though the grass is yellow and stale. The Macedoni place is up in the hilly part of town. The richer part. It's a two-story house with a steep driveway.

  I leave for work and think about it.

  That evening, after delivering Ma's coffee table, I go to Ritchie's place and we play cards. I tell them. All at once.

  "You got it here with you?" Audrey asks.

  I shake my head.

  Before I went to bed last night, I placed it in the top drawer of the cabinet in my bedroom. Nothing touches it. Nothing breathes on it. The drawer is empty but for that card.

  "It wasn't any of you, was it?" I ask. I've decided I can't skirt around the question.

  "Me?" asks Marv. "I think we all know I don't have the brains to come up with something like this." He shrugs. "That,
and I wouldn't invest that much thought into the likes of you, Ed." Mr. Argumentative, as usual.

  "Exactly," agrees Ritchie. "Marv's far too thick for something like this." Now that he's made his statement, he becomes silent.

  We all look at him.

  "What?" he asks.

  "Is it you, Ritchie?" Audrey questions him.

  He jerks a thumb over at Marv. "If he's too dumb, I'm too lazy." He holds his arms out. "Look at me--I'm a dole bludger. I spend half my days at the betting shop. I still live with my mum and dad...."

  To fill you in, Ritchie's name isn't even really Ritchie. It's Dave Sanchez. We call him Ritchie because he has a tattoo of Jimi Hendrix on his right arm but everyone reckons it looks more like Richard Pryor. Thus, Ritchie. Everyone laughs and says he should get Gene Wilder on the other arm and he'll have the perfect combination. They were a dynamic duo if ever there was one. How can you argue with movies like Stir Crazy and See No Evil, Hear No Evil?

  Exactly.

  You can't.

  Just, if you ever meet him, don't mention the Gene Wilder thing. Trust me. It's the one thing that sends Ritchie into a bit of a frenzy. He can't stand it. Especially when he's drunk.

  He's got dark skin and permanent whiskers on his face. His hair is curly and the color of mud, and his eyes are black but friendly. He doesn't tell people what to do and expects the same in return, and he wears the same faded jeans day in, day out--unless he's simply got several pairs of the same type. I've never thought to ask.

  You can always hear him coming because he rides a bike. A Kawasaki something or other. It's black and red. Mostly he rides it without a jacket in summer because he's ridden since he was a kid. He wears plain T-shirts or unfashionable shirts that he shares with his old man.

  We're all still staring at him.

  It makes him nervous, and he turns his head now, with all of us, to Audrey.

  "All right." She begins her defense. "I'd say out of all of us, I'm the most likely to think up something this ridiculous--"

  "It isn't ridiculous," I say. I'm almost defending the card, as if it's part of me.

  "Can I go on?" she says.

  I nod.

  "Good. Now, as I was saying--it definitely isn't me. I do, however, have a theory on how and why it ended up in your letter box."

  We all wait as she gathers her thoughts.

  She continues. "It all stems from the bank robbery. Someone read about it in the paper and thought to themselves, Now there's a likely-looking lad. Ed Kennedy. He's just the sort of person this town needs." She smiles but turns serious almost immediately. "Something's going to happen at each of the addresses on that card, Ed, and you'll have to react to it."

  I think about it and decide.

  I speak.

  "Well, that's not real good, is it?"

  "Why not?"

  "Why not? What if there are people kicking the crap out of each other and I have to go in and stop it? It's not exactly uncommon around here, is it?"

  "That's just luck of the draw, I guess."

  I think of the first house.

  45 Edgar Street.

  In a shithole like that, I can't imagine anything too good happening.

  For the rest of the night, I push thoughts of the card away, and Marv wins three games in a row. As usual, he lets us know it.

  I'll be honest and say I hate it when Marv wins. He's a gloater. A real bastard of a gloater, puffing on his cigar.

  Like Ritchie, he still lives at home. He works with his father as a carpenter. In truth, he works hard, though he doesn't spend a cent of what he earns. Even those cigars. He steals them from his old man. Marv's the maestro of meanness with money. The prince of penny-pinchers.

  He has thick blond hair that stands up almost in knots, wears old suit pants for comfort, and jangles his keys in his pockets with his hands. He always looks like he's laughing with sarcasm at something, privately. We grew up together, which is the only reason we're friends. He's actually got a lot of other acquaintances, too, for a few reasons. The first is that he plays soccer in winter and has mates from there. The second and main reason is that he carries on like an idiot. Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends?

  It's just an observation.

  None of that helps me, though. Slagging off Marv doesn't solve the Ace of Diamonds problem.

  There's no avoiding it, as much as I try.

  It always sidles up to me and makes me recognize it.

  I come to a conclusion.

  I tell myself, You have to start soon, Ed. 45 Edgar Street. Midnight.

  It's a Wednesday night. Late.

  The moon leans down on me as I sit on my front porch with the Doorman.

  Audrey comes over, and I tell her I'm starting tomorrow night. It's a lie. I look at her and wish we could go inside and make love on the couch.

  Dive inside each other.

  Take each other.

  Make each other.

  Nothing happens, though.

  We sit there, drinking some suburban cheap-shit passion-pop alcohol she brought, and I rub my feet on the Doorman.

  I love Audrey's wiry legs. I watch them a moment.

  She looks at the moon as it holds itself up in the sky. It's higher now, no longer leaning. Risen.

  As for me, I hold the card again in my hand. I read it and get ready.

  You never know, I tell myself. One day there might be a few select people who'll say, "Yes, Dylan was on the brink of stardom when he was nineteen. Dali was well on his way to being a genius, and Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being the most important woman in history. And at nineteen, Ed Kennedy found that first card in the mail."

  When the thought passes, I look at Audrey, the white-hot moon, and the Doorman, and I tell me to stop kidding myself.

  My next lovely surprise is a nice subpoena. I have to go to the local courthouse and tell my version of what happened in the bank. This has happened sooner than I thought.

  It's set down for two-thirty in the afternoon. I'll get some time off during my shift and drive back into town to the court.

  When the day arrives, I show up in my uniform and they make me wait outside the courtroom. When I go in to give the evidence, the chambers are spread out before me. The first person I see is the gunman. He's even uglier with the mask off. The only difference now is that he looks angrier. I guess a week or so in custody will do that to you. He's lost the pathetic, luckless expression on his face.

  He wears a suit.

  A cheap suit. It's all over him.

  Once he sees me, I look immediately away because his eyes attempt to gun me down.

  A bit late now, I think, but only because he's down there and I'm up here, in the safety of the witness-box.

  The judge greets me.

  "Well, I see you dressed up for the occasion, Mr. Kennedy."

  I look down at myself. "Thank you."

  "I was being sarcastic."

  "I know."

  "Well, don't get smart."

  "No, sir."

  I can see by now that the judge wishes he could put me on trial as well.

  The lawyers ask me questions, and I answer them faithfully.

  "So this is the man who held up the bank?" I'm asked.

  "Yes."

  "You're sure?"

  "Absolutely."

  "But tell me, Mr. Kennedy--how can you be so positive about that?"

  "Because I'd know that ugly bastard anywhere. That, and he's exactly the same guy they put in handcuffs on the day."

  The lawyer looks at me with disdain and explains himself. "Sorry, Mr. Kennedy, but we need to ask these questions in order to cover everything that needs to be covered, by the book."

  I concede. "That's fair enough."

  The judge chimes in now. "And as for ugly bastards--Mr. Kennedy, could you please refrain from casting such aspersions? You're not an oil painting yourself, you know."

  "Thanks very much."

  "You're welcome." He smiles
. "Now answer the questions."

  "Yes, Your Honor."

  "Thank you."

  When I'm finished, I walk past the gunman, who says, "Oi, Kennedy."

  Ignore him, I tell myself, but I can't help it.

  I pause and look at him. His lawyer tells him to keep his mouth shut, but he doesn't.

  Quietly, he says, "You're a dead man. You just wait...." His words attack me, faintly. "Remember what I'm telling you. Remember it every day when you look in the mirror." He almost smiles. "A dead man."

  I fake it.

  Composure.

  I nod and say, "All right," and move on.

  God, I pray, give him life.

  The courtroom doors shut behind me, and I walk out into the foyer. It's caked in sunshine.

  A policewoman calls me back and says, "I wouldn't worry about that, Ed." Easy for her to say.

  "I feel like skipping town," I tell her.

  "Now listen," she says. I like her. She's short and stocky and looks sweet. "By the time that chump's been through jail, the last thing he'll want is to go back." She considers it and seems confident in her appraisal. "Some people go hard in jail." She jerks her head back to the court. "He isn't one of them. He spent all morning crying. I doubt he'll be after you."

  "Thanks," I reply. I allow some relief to filter through me, but I doubt it will last very long.

  You're a dead man. I hear his voice again, and I see the words on my face when I get back in the cab and look in the rearview mirror.

  It makes me think of my life, my nonexistent accomplishments and my overall abilities in incompetence.

  A dead man, I think. He's not far wrong. And I pull out of the parking lot.

  Six months.

  He got six months. Typical of the leniency these days.

  I've told no one about the threat, choosing instead to take the policewoman's advice and forget about him. In a way, I wish I didn't read about his jail term in the local paper. (The only good fortune is that early parole was denied.) I sit like normal in my kitchen with the Doorman and the Ace of Diamonds. The newspaper's on the table, folded over. There's a sweet picture of the gunman as a child. All I can see are his eyes.

  Days pass, and gradually it works. I forget about him.

  Really, I think, what's a guy like that going to do?

  It makes more sense to look forward, and I slowly work my way toward the addresses on the card.

  First up is 45 Edgar Street.