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“How do you know?” I asked, surprised to find myself burning for the answer.
“I believe it from my own experience. If you told me I’d never drink or do drugs again, I couldn’t take it. But I can get through one day.” Jake pursed his lips. “You know, lately I study Buddhism. I find it helpful in my meditations and the like. There’s a monk named Milarepa, and he says, ‘At the beginning, nothing comes, in the middle, nothing stays, and in the end, nothing goes.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
“He was talking about his spiritual practice but it applies to my sobriety. In the very beginning, in that first month or so, I had a hard time. I skipped meetings, I didn’t commit to the program. For me, everyminutewas hard.” Jake rolled his eyes. “And in the middle, I relapsed, I picked up again. But now I’m sober and I think I’ll stay, one day at a time. Be here now. It’s very Zen. Now I know inside thatnothing goes.” Jake leaned back, with finality. “Again, only one day at a time.”
“One day at a time, Batman.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next morning, I couldn’t get Mango from under the couch for her fix. Meanwhile I’d barely slept, thinking about Barry Rigel in the Hyundai, Jake, the burglary, my mother, and all that was going on. I hated not following the lead on Rigel but I had to give in to John, and I needed to follow up on the appointments that Gabby had made for me.
“Here’s your bribe,” I told her, setting a dish of flaked tuna in front of the couch.
Mango blinked.
“Come on, honey, please.” Mango didn’t budge, so I reached underneath, pulled her out, and set her on the rug. I held her in place, then pulled two folds of the skin behind her neck together to form a tent, the way Lillian had taught me. I picked up the needle filled with insulin, stuck the needle into the tent, and depressed the plunger. I gave junkies an A for effort. It was so much easier to open a can.
Mango meowed, then scurried away.
“I’m sorry,” I called after her.
I don’t think she believed me.
But I was surprised at how much I meant it.
•••
I was back in the Subaru, trying not to think about Rigel. I’d looked out for the Hyundai or Volvo, but I didn’t see them. Either Rigel had switched cars or I wasn’t being followed.
I hit the Schuylkill Expressway and headed into Philly, following directions through the hardscrabble neighborhoods north of the city. Run-down brick rowhouses lined the blocks among vacant lots, check-cashing agencies, dollar stores, and bodegas. Bars covered the windows of the houses, porches sagged, and potholes were everywhere.
I pulled up in front of Tony Bales’s rowhouse, got out of the car, and knocked on the door.
•••
Tony was eighty-two, Black, and bald with sunken cheeks. His neck was so thin that the collar of his Phillies T-shirt gapped and his sweatpants bagged on him. His weight loss was due to skin cancer, now in remission, and congestive heart failure. He hosted me at a round wood table in a small, clean kitchen with a wooden cross over the entrance. A church calendar hung on the wall and bulletins for women’s choir practice were stuck to the refrigerator under a Phillies magnet.
“So you’re gonna sue those bastards?” Tony asked with a smile. His eyes were rimmed with cataracts, but his aspect was remarkably sharp behind his trifocals.
“Yes, my sister is. I’m helping.”
“Like a paralegal? My granddaughter does that, in Center City. She likes it.”
“I do, too.” I slid the Complaint from my messenger bag, turned to his section, and skimmed it quickly. “Let me confirm a few facts, if I can.”
“Fine.” Tony shrugged. “I got nowhere to go. Game’s not on till the afternoon.”
“So you were in Holmesburg from 1963 to 1965.”
Tony thought a minute. “Yes.”
“Then you left Pennsylvania from 1966 to 2021?”
Tony thought again. “Sounds about right. Met my wife, she was from Athens, Georgia, so we went down there and got married. She wanted to be near family. My boys are still down there. My daughter, this is her house. She’s at work.”
“I understand. And you didn’t know anything about the controversy over the testing, that came out in the newspapers later?”
