Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [45]
So, if it wasn't Sally, or any of Sally's people . . . Who the fuck could it be? Why would the cops be watching him? Well . . . he knew why they might want to watch him . . . But how could they know about Freddy? There had been nothing in the papers . . . Nobody had come around the restaurant looking for Freddy. No cops asking questions, looking for evidence. Sally and Skinny sure weren't going to say anything . . . Why would the cops be watching him? Except for the other night, Tommy had stayed away from all that for years and years . . . If something was going on with the cops, Sally would have warned him, right? Wouldn't he? Tommy considered this for a moment. He decided that Sally would have told him if there was some kind of investigation, if only for his own protection. Sally and Skinny wouldn't want him going down to an interrogation unprepared. They'd be ready with the lawyers, their lawyers . . .
Tommy looked out the window again. Still no van. He sat down in front of the TV The volume was down all the way. He tried to get interested in some footage of Stuka dive-bombers dropping high explosive on Warsaw. The Discovery Channel. Cheryl called it the War Channel. Panzer tanks rolled silently across the screen, scenes of bridges blowing, farmhouses burning, the Polish cavalry making a heroic, futile charge against the mechanized Nazi hordes . . .
He got up again and walked over to the window. He heard the distant warble of a car alarm from the direction of the river. There were no pedestrians, only a homeless guy, sorting through garbage bags across the street. In the spot where the van had been, Tommy noticed a Jeep Explorer, its windows tinted dark. Somebody could be in there, Tommy thought. Fie felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. Somebody could be in there, looking up at me right now, and I wouldn't know it. He stepped back from the window, moved forward again carefully. He tried to make out a shape or shapes behind the tinted glass, but he couldn't.
He considered going down to look, but that would be stupid. He didn't even know if he wanted to know for sure. Would that make it better? He didn't think so. It would only make it worse. If somebody really was following him . . . waiting for him at work, watching his apartment . . . If somebody was so interested in him they were following him around in a van, in a Jeep . . . Tommy didn't want to know. He wished he could forget about it. Put it out of his mind. He wanted to run away. He looked again at Cheryl on the bed, sleeping soundly with Tommy's cat. He wished he were someplace else with her. In the country maybe, a nice country inn. He'd cook, Cheryl would run the front desk. No Sally. No Skinny . . . no strange vans. Freddys killing a distant, faraway memory, growing fainter and fainter until he had no memory of it at all. . .
No reason for anybody to be worried about him keeping his mouth shut, he thought, thinking again of Sally and Skinny. They had to know he was a stand-up guy. Of course, his father had been a stand-up guy too. Look where it had gotten him. He still didn't know. They never found his father. Maybe if things had been different. If he'd met Diane sooner. Met Cheryl sooner . . . Maybe if Sally were dead and his father still alive . . . Maybe if his mother had been more like Diane's mother, not so willing to go along. If she hadn't let that endless procession of budding and veteran criminals traipse through her kitchen and into Tommy's life. Tommy was ashamed of himself. Trying to blame his mother! Who was he kidding?
He sat down on the bed next to Cheryl, brushed the hair off her forehead. He ran a bent finger gently down her spine. He leaned over and