Triptych Read online

  Every two weeks, John’s mother had made the drive from Decatur down to Garden City to see him, but as glad as John was to see her, that wasn’t the kind of woman’s voice he wanted to hear. Emily was always positive, happy to see her son, even if he could tell by looking in her eyes that she was tired from the long drive, or sad to see that he’d gotten another tattoo, that his hair was in a ponytail. Aunt Lydia came, but that was because she was his lawyer. Joyce came twice a year with their mother, once at Christmas, once on his birthday. She hated being there. You could smell it on her. Joyce wanted to be out of that place almost more than John did, and whenever she talked to him, he was reminded of the way the black gangbangers and Aryans talked to each other. You fucking nigger dog. You fuck-eyed white motherfucker. I’ll kill you soon as I get the chance.

  His father came to see him twice in all the time he was locked up, but John didn’t like to think about that.

  “Excuse me?” The woman with the cell phone was beside him. He could smell her perfume. Her upper lip was a little bow tie, gloss making her mouth look wet.

  “Hello?” she said, half-laughing.

  “Sorry,” John managed, shocked that she’d gotten this close to him without him even noticing. In prison, he would be dead right now.

  “I said ‘thank you,’ ” she told him. She held a dollar in her hand and he took it, feeling cheap and dirty at the same time.

  John made a show of putting the bill in the communal tip box, knowing every eye in the place was watching him. He did the same thing when a customer handed somebody else a tip. No one trusted anybody around here and for good reason. You didn’t need a college degree to figure out why a bunch of middle-aged guys were working for minimum wage plus tips at the Gorilla Car Wash.

  Art came out of the office, yelling, “First shift, lunch,” as he walked over to the cop standing by the vending machine. Shit, John hadn’t noticed that, either. The cop had come outside, had been watching him, and he hadn’t seen it happen.

  John tucked his head down as he went into the back, clocking out and grabbing his lunch off the shelf. He had a soda in the refrigerator, but there was no way he was going back out there until the cop was gone and Art was back behind his desk counting his money.

  Chico, one of the other workers, was sitting on the cement wall under the shade of a big magnolia tree that grew in the strip of grass in back of the car wash. John liked to sit there under the tree, enjoyed the solitude and the shade, but Chico had beaten him to it today. This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in the joint. Taking a man’s space was like fucking his sister up the ass. Nothing happened in that place that didn’t have some kind of price attached to it.

  “How’s it going?” John said, nodding at Chico as he walked past him to the carport that served as a detail shop. The detail guys went out for lunch. They made enough money to afford the luxury.

  John sat on the ground under the canopy. He took off his ball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. November used to mean winter, but now it meant you were lucky if the jacket you put on in the morning didn’t have you sweating by noon.

  Christ, even the weather had changed without him.

  He glanced around before pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket. The credit report. Part of him had wanted to shove it back in the trash bag last night, just let it go. So some motherfucker was pretending to be him. What did that mean to John Shelley? Obviously, the poser wasn’t running some fraud. Why would he pay off the credit cards every month for six years? John had heard about all kinds of scams in prison, and though he hadn’t really had access to any computers, he knew that the Internet was the best way to run an identity fraud. This, though. This was nothing like that. You took the money and ran. You didn’t stick around and pay your monthly bills on time. It was like that old joke of ordering fifty pizzas to somebody’s house, only you paid for them yourself with your credit card.

  He folded the report and tucked it back into his pocket. He should leave it be. No good would come out of any of this. What John should do is exactly what his parole officer said: Concentrate on rebuilding your life. Get a steady job. Show people you’ve changed.

  It bothered him, though. Like a splinter that wouldn’t come out, he had picked at it all night, trying to see the angle. There had to be an angle. Why else would someone do this? Maybe somebody with a past was using John’s vitals as a cover. Could be some escaped ax murderer or blue-collar guy was on the lam and John Shelley seemed like a good cover.

  He laughed at this idea, taking a bite of his peanut butter and banana sandwich. You had to be pretty desperate to assume the identity of a convicted murderer and registered sex offender.

  The peanut butter caught in his throat and he coughed a couple of times before getting up and going to the coiled hose on the ground. John turned on the spigot and took a drink, watching Ray-Ray talking to some woman over by the vacuums. John could tell the other man was doing his usual jive, trying to work his magic on the woman. Judging by the way she was dressed, Ray-Ray could have saved some time and just given her some money. Most of the guys around the Gorilla availed themselves of the local talent. Straight up Cheshire Bridge Road, you ran into the Colonial Restaurant, a meat-and-potatoes kind of joint with hookers a’plenty trolling the apartments behind them. John had often heard the guys arguing Monday mornings about which was best: get them early when they were fresh and pay more, or go later when they were sloppy and pay less.

  Street economics.

  “Fuck off, asshole!” the hooker screamed, slamming her hands into Ray-Ray’s chest.

  Ray-Ray growled something and pushed her back until she fell on her ass.

  John’s first impulse was to stay exactly where he was. You didn’t get involved in other people’s shit. That was how you got yourself killed. This was a woman, but she worked the streets. She knew how to take care of herself. At least it seemed that way until Ray-Ray hauled off and punched her square in the face.

  “Damn,” Chico muttered, ringside at a championship wrestling bout. “Didn’t even give her time to stand up.”

  John looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet. The hose was still on. He could get into trouble for that. He went back to the spigot, turned it off, forgetting for a minute that it was righty-tighty and turning it lefty-loosey. He coiled the hose back in place. When he looked back up, Ray-Ray’s foot was in the air, sailing down toward the hooker’s face.

  “Hey!” John said, then, “Hey!” again when Ray-Ray’s foot made contact.

  John must have run over to them. He must have said something else along the way, something loud that called even more attention to the situation. By the time his brain caught up with his actions, John’s fist hurt like a hornet had stung him and Ray-Ray was splayed out on the ground.

  “What the fuck,” Art yelled. He barely topped five feet on a good day, but he stopped about two inches from John’s chest, screeching up at him, “You fucking monkey!”

  They both looked down. One of Ray-Ray’s teeth was on the sidewalk swimming in a puddle of blood. The guy looked dead, but no one was dropping to check his pulse.

  The cop stood in the doorway. Slowly, John let his eyes trace up the man’s thick black shoes, following the sharp crease in his pants, skipping past his gunbelt where a large hand was resting on the butt of his gun and forced himself to look the guy in the face. The screw was staring straight back at John as he turned his radio down, the calls from the dispatcher turning to a whisper. “What’s going on here?”

  It took everything John had in him not to just assume the position right then and there. “I hit him.”

  “Well, no shit, asshole!” Art barked. “You are so fucking fired.” He prodded Ray-Ray with his foot. “Jesus Christ, Shelley. What’d you hit him with, a fucking hammer?”

  John’s head dropped, and he looked at the ground. Oh, Jesus. He couldn’t go back to prison now. Not after all of this. Not after everything he’d been through
.

  “I’m sorry,” John said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right it won’t,” Art snapped. “Christ.” He looked at the cop. “This is the thanks I get for giving these guys a second chance.”

  “I apologize,” John offered again.

  “Hey!” the hooker yelled. “Somebody wanna give me a hand?”

  All of the men looked down, shocked, like they had forgotten her existence. The whore had a hard face, the kind that told her life story in the millions of lines wrinkling her skin. Blood poured from her nose and mouth where Ray-Ray’s foot had done its damage. She was propped up on her elbows, a filthy white feather boa wrapped around her scrawny neck, a purple plastic-looking miniskirt and a black tank top that showed the bottom of her sagging breasts barely covering her wasted body.

  Nobody wanted to touch her.

  “Hey, Knight in Shining Armor All,” she said, shaking her hand toward John. “Come on, stallion. Help me the fuck up.”

  John hesitated, but then he reached down and pulled her up. She smelled of cigarettes and bourbon, and had a hard time standing on the spike heels of her shoes. Her hand dug into his shoulder as she steadied herself. He tried not to shudder in revulsion, thinking about where that hand had been. In the sunlight, her skin was sallow, and he guessed her liver was desperate enough to shit itself out of her navel if it was ever given the opportunity. She could have been thirty, she could have been eighty.

  The cop took charge. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

  “He wouldn’t pay me,” she said, tilting her chin, indicating the prone Ray-Ray. Her voice was like loose rock rolling in a cup of phlegm. What words she didn’t slur were probably not worth hearing.

  “You gave him one on credit?” the cop asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity. The man had a point. John wouldn’t sell Ray-Ray a petrified turd on credit.

  “We was in there,” she said, meaning the Port-a-John behind the building. “He tried to sweet-talk me, the lousy fucker. Said he was gettin’ paid tomorrow.”

  The cop’s eyebrow shot up. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “He followed me out here, trying to make a deal,” she continued, clutching John’s arm again as she swayed. “Like it’s double coupon day at the fucking Kmart. Stupid cocksucker.” She lifted a patent-leather heel and kicked Ray-Ray in the arm.

  “Hey, hey, now,” Ray-Ray said, groaning as he rolled over onto his back. John figured the asshole had been playing possum and wanted to beat him again for causing all of this.

  The cop prodded Ray-Ray with his shoe. “You try to get a freebie, you stupid mope?”

  Ray-Ray put his hand over his eyes, shielding the sun so he could look up at the cop without being blinded. “No, no, man. That ain’t the thing. Ain’t the thing at all.”

  “Get up, you fucking idiot,” the cop ordered. “You.” He pointed at the whore. “Where’s your drag?”

  She was busy wiping the concrete off her elbows. “Up by the liquor store.”

  There was a crash of static from the cop’s radio, then, “Unit fifty-one, fifty-one?”

  The cop clicked the mic, said, “Check,” then pointed to John, talking over the information the dispatcher gave but obviously still listening. “You. Prince Charming. Make sure she gets back home safe. You,” he pointed to Ray-Ray. “Don’t make me tell you one more fucking time to get the fuck up or I will run your ass in so quick your P.O. won’t even have time to call you a cab back to the pen.” Ray-Ray jumped up and the cop clicked on the radio and said, “Roger, I’m there in ten minutes.” As an afterthought, he asked Art, “You okay with all this?”

  Art frowned, his forehead sloping into a V. “Yeah, whatever,” he finally agreed. “Shelley, take the day off. Come back with your head in the right place tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” John said, so relieved he could have cried. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

  The respect brought him some back. “You want me to get rid of this stuttering freak?” Art asked John as he jabbed his thumb at Ray-Ray.

  John thought about it for a good second, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for this asshole. “We’re fine,” he said. “Right, Ray?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ray-Ray said. “We cool. We cool.”

  “Shut up,” Art said. “I don’t want to see you back here until Wednesday morning, you got that?”

  Ray-Ray nodded. Twice.

  Art gave the prostitute a scathing look, then told John, “Get her out of here before we start losing customers.”

  John didn’t think he had a choice. The whore had grabbed on to him again, her bony fingers pressing into his arm just above the elbow. He started walking alongside her because something told him if he didn’t, she’d end up face-first in the street.

  Traffic whizzed by as they walked up Piedmont Avenue. John saw about a zillion SUVs and sports cars going up and down this road every day. With Buckhead at one end and Ansley Park at the other, the only crappy cars John saw on the road belonged to the maids, landscapers, pool boys and all the other hapless souls who made their living doing the shitwork rich folks didn’t have to do.

  “Fucking asshole,” the pross muttered as they waited for the light. Her bony fingers pressed deeper into his flesh as she tried to steady herself on her ridiculously high heels. “Hold up a minute,” she finally relented, keeping her grip on him as she took off one, then the other shoe. “Fucking heels.”

  “Yeah,” John said, because she was obviously expecting an answer.

  “It’s red,” she told him, jerking him into the street as traffic stopped for the light. “Christ, my feet hurt.” She looked up at him as they reached the other side of the intersection. “I gotta loose tooth, you know? From where he kicked me.”

  “Oh,” John said, thinking she was either stupid or crazy if she thought he had the extra money to send her to the dentist. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”

  “No, you dumb prick. I’m saying I can use my hands but you can’t put it in my mouth.”

  John didn’t realize he was clenching his teeth until his jaw started to ache. “No,” he answered. “That’s okay.”

  “Lissen.” She stopped, dropped her hand, and started swaying like a raft in the middle of a tsunami. “You can head on back, Romeo. I can make it the rest of the way myself.”

  “No,” he repeated, this time taking her arm in his hand. With his luck, she’d fall into the street and the cop would pin a manslaughter charge on him. “Let’s go.”

  “Whoops,” she breathed, her knee buckling as she slipped on a broken section of sidewalk.

  “Steady,” he told her, thinking she was so thin he could feel the bone in her arm moving against the flesh.

  Out of the blue, she told him, “I don’t take it up the ass.”

  John couldn’t think of which was worse: the thought of her mouth or the thought of her asshole. A quick glance at the sores on her arms and legs made him taste the peanut butter and banana sandwich from lunch.

  “Okay,” he said, not knowing why she felt like sharing and wishing to hell she’d stop.

  “Makes me shit funny,” she told him, giving him a sideways glance. “I thought I should tell you if that’s what you were planning.”

  “I’m just going to make sure you get back,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about that other stuff.”

  “Nothin’ comes for free,” she told him, then laughed. “ ’Cept maybe this time. Of course, the walk—now, if you consider that your payment, it ain’t exactly free.”

  “I was going this way anyway,” he lied. “I live down here.”

  “Morningside?” she asked, referring to one of the wealthier neighborhoods backing onto Cheshire Bridge Road.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Three-story house with a garage.” She stumbled again and he kept her from falling on her face. “Come on.”

  “You don’t gotta be rough, you know.”

  He looked at his hand around
her arm, saw immediately how tight he was holding it. When he let go, there were marks where his fingers had been. “I’m sorry about that,” he told her, and really meant it. Jesus, he was thinking about women all this time and he didn’t even know how to touch one without hurting her. “I’m just going to walk you back, okay?”

  “Almost there,” she told him, then mercifully fell into silence as she concentrated on navigating the bumpy path where the sidewalk ended and dirt took over.

  John let her take the lead, keeping two steps behind her in case she fell over into the street. He let the enormity of what had just happened wash over him. What had he been thinking? There was no reason to get himself involved in Ray-Ray’s troubles, and now he was losing a day’s pay so he could take this pross back to her strip, where she’d probably make more money in one hour than he made in three. Christ. He could have lost his job. He could’ve been thrown back in prison.

  Art got a nice stipend from the state for employing a parolee, plus extra tax breaks from the feds. Even with all that—all the so-called incentives that were out there—finding somewhere to work had been almost impossible when John had gotten out. Because of his status, he couldn’t work with kids or live within a hundred yards of a school or day-care center. Legally, employers couldn’t discriminate against a felon, but they always found a way around the law. John had been on nineteen interviews before finding the car wash. They always started out, “How you doing/we’d love to have you here/just fill this out and we’ll get back to you.” Then, when he called the next week because he hadn’t heard from them, it was always, “We’ve filled that job/we found a more qualified candidate/sorry, we’re cutting back.”

  “More qualified to pack boxes?” he had asked one of them, the shipping manager at a pie company. “Listen, buddy,” the guy had answered. “I’ve got a teenage daughter, all right? You know why you’re not getting this job.”