Lamentation by Joe Clifford Page B

said he’d have a prowl car patrol the neighborhood, which I told him was unnecessary, but he insisted. I soon realized that it had less to do with my safety and more to do with my brother; if he came knocking, they wanted to be nearby to pick up his ass. Even though Pat was doing most of the talking, the way McGreevy loomed over him made it clear who was running this show.
    No one but me seemed convinced it hadn’t been Chris who’d broken in. I’d certainly startled someone though, and there was no doubt he’d been in the middle of looking for something. It broke down to two possibilities: either it was my brother, and he’d been jonesing bad enough to coldcock me; or, that computer hard drive was real, and there was something damning enough on it that people were willing to break, enter, and assault to get it.

    The telephone ringing ripped me from a deep sleep, from somewhere soundless and beyond dreaming. My head throbbed worse than any hangover I’d ever had. And I’d endured some brutal ones.
    I rolled over and gripped a pillow around my ears, but whoever it was had no intention of giving up. I dragged my ass out of bed, scuffled into the kitchen, kicking aside the junkyard that was my new floor. I swiped the phone from its cradle and fell into the chair.
    As soon as I put the receiver to my ear, she started in.
    “You want to tell me why the police are calling my house at two a.m., asking my
boyfriend
if I arrived home safely from
your
apartment?”
    Rubbing a hard hand over my face, I searched for a clock. That’s another problem with the dead of winter up here, you never know what the hell time it is. The only clock in the kitchen, the one on the microwave, had stopped working when it had been jerked from the wall during the robbery. Out the window, rolling dark clouds dimmed the light. It could’ve been eight in the morning or nine at night. I reached out in the cold darkness for my Marlboro Lights on the table, located the pack, and clamped one with my teeth.
    “What time is it?” I asked, wearily leaning over to light the cig off the stove.
    “Almost noon,” Jenny snapped. “What the hell have you been up to that you’re still in bed at twelve o’clock in the afternoon?”
    I didn’t have much in this life, no fancy sound systems or nice cookware, practically every possession lifted from homes I’d cleaned for Tom, or bartered in trade at swap shops. My apartment was decorated primarily with dead people’s trash, and now, spread across the tattered old carpets and stained, cracked linoleum, I saw it for what it truly was: the crap nobody else wanted.
    “Are you going to answer me?” Jenny demanded. “Do you have any idea how
pissed
Brody was to be woken by the police? To learn I was over at your house at eleven o’clock at night when I should’ve been working? When I’d only gone there in the first place because I was so worried about—”
    “I was attacked,” I said, inhaling.
    “What do you mean, you were ‘attacked’?”
    I tried to find an ashtray. The whole place was nothing but. I grabbed one of the dozen empty beer cans on the floor. “Somebodywas waiting in my apartment when I got home from meeting Charlie last night. They hit me with something, knocked me out.”
    “Oh my God, Jay, are you all right?”
    “I got a goose egg on the back of my head. But, yeah, I’m fine.”
    “Did you call the cops?”
    “They’re the ones who found me.”
    “Did they catch whoever it was?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, they hadn’t when I went to bed last night.”
    “Who’d want to rob you?”
    She didn’t bring up Chris, at least not right away, even though I knew that’s what she must’ve been thinking.
    “Sorry about Brody,” I said. “I told the cops to call and make sure you were all right. I didn’t know if you were still here when whoever broke in. I guess I should’ve called myself.”
    “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that.