Depraved Indifference. Joseph Teller
Meaning of Life: since God had given each of them two eyes, He must’ve intended one for watching tits and the other for watching football on a screen the size of Connecticut. Though not necessarily in that order.
He’d found the End Zone by going undercover—if you wanted to stretch things again. He’d dug out an old New York Giants jacket, pleased to discover it still fit him. He’d matched it up with an even older Yankees cap, and had completed the outfit with dirty sneakers and a pair of faded jeans. Then he’d headed up to Nyack and started stopping total strangers and asking them if they happened to know where a guy could find a nice place to sit, have a beer or two, and maybe watch a ball game. A few folks seemed put off by the ancient Mercury, but one or two actually admired it. “Cool wheels,” said one young man. “Retro, huh?” And not only did Jaywalker receive near unanimity in advice to try the End Zone, but he even got company, a fellow who answered to the name Bubba, who’d been thinking of heading that way himself, and allowed that he’d be more than happy to climb in and navigate. Bubba had a baby face and an easy grin. He could have been twenty-five or forty-five, or just about anything in between. But either way, his best years were clearly behind him. To Jaywalker, he was a perfect case study in what happens when muscle meets malt and converts to marshmallow.
Between the Giants jacket and Bubba’s first-name familiarity with the End Zone’s late-afternoon regulars, Jaywalker had little difficulty locating one bartender and two customers who’d been in the place nearly a month ago, when Carter Drake had been throwing back shots of tequila.
“Might not’ a remembered him,” said the bartender, a large woman whom everyone referred to as Twiggy, irony apparently being no stranger at the End Zone. “But a few weeks back, a coupla detectives came in with a picksher of him, askin’ a lotta questions. But the guy you wanna talk to is Riley. He kept the tab on the table the guy was at, and they had him testify at the whatchacallit, the grand union.”
“The grand jury?” Jaywalker asked.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Any idea where I might find him?”
“Yeah,” said Twiggy. “Stay put. He comes on at eight.”
So Jaywalker stayed right where he was, drinking Cokes, eating salted peanuts, and leaving a couple of twenties on the bar in front of him, the way he’d seen big tippers do it. And sure enough, just before eight o’clock, a second bartender materialized in front of him, a wiry Irishman who couldn’t have gone more than five foot four, but looked like he could take anyone in the place.
“You Riley?” Jaywalker asked him after a bit.
“Who wants to know?”
Jaywalker slid one of the twenties a few inches toward the back edge of the bar. “I’m a P.I.,” he said, immediately regretting it. It made him sound like a bit player in a Raymond Chandler movie.
Riley said nothing, but he didn’t turn away, either. Jaywalker had made sure that he’d noticed the bit with the twenty. Not that he’d had to; he was pretty sure this was a guy who didn’t miss much.
“I understand the D.A.’s people talked with you,” said Jaywalker. “And I was hoping you could tell me what you told them.”
Riley began drying glasses with a towel. “Who you workin’ for?” he asked.
It was a fair question. “Guy’s wife,” he said.
Riley kept drying glasses. He was good at it.
“The thing is,” said Jaywalker, “they’re looking to throw the book at him. Want to give him twenty-five to life.”
“Maybe he’s got it comin’.”
“Maybe,” said Jaywalker. “I’m not saying he doesn’t. I’d just like to know, one way or the other. That’s all.”
Riley glanced down at the bar. Jaywalker took it as a cue, and slid the second twenty toward the first one, until the two of them were touching.
“He was drunk,” said Riley, “if that’s what you want to know.”
“How drunk?”
“I cut him off, made him call home.”
This was news. Drake certainly had made no mention of it. Then again, maybe Riley was making it up, to cover his own butt. Jaywalker decided to call him on it. “Anyone show up to drive him home?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Riley, “as a matter of fact. A kid showed up, maybe eighteen or nineteen, young enough looking that I woulda carded him. But even before they was out the door, your guy was startin’ in with him, saying he was okay to drive hisself.”
More news.
“Tell me,” said Jaywalker, “before they took you into the grand jury, did they make you sign any papers?”
“Papers. What kinda papers?”
“Something called a Waiver of Immunity.”
“Nah,” said Riley, “I didn’t sign no papers. I’da remembered if I did.”
They talked for a little while longer. Drake and the other people at his table had not only been doing shots of tequila, they’d been downing a “designer brand” that went for fifteen bucks a shot. Riley reached behind him at that point and produced a bottle. Jaywalker paid little attention to the name, other than spotting the word oro, which he was pretty sure meant “gold” in Spanish. Instead he looked for, and found, the alcohol content. According the label, the stuff was 120 proof.
As for the bar bill, the detectives had taken that, then had Riley decipher it during his grand jury appearance. There’d been no way for him to tell from it exactly how many of the shots had found their way into the man whose photo Riley recognized, but Riley had estimated the number at eight to ten.
Walking through the End Zone’s parking lot, Jaywalker replayed the conversation in his mind. According to Riley, not only had Carter Drake had more to drink than he’d admitted to in his written statement, but the shots had been stronger. Ordinary tequila ranged from 86 proof to 100, with proof being the alcohol content doubled. Drinking 120-proof tequila changed the formula a bit, and pushed Drake’s blood alcohol content even higher, up around the .20 percent range.
The other noteworthy piece of information to come out of the discussion was that the D.A. hadn’t asked Riley to waive his own immunity from prosecution before putting him into the grand jury. A bartender who continues to serve an intoxicated customer commits a crime, and if that customer drives off and kills somebody—as Drake had done—that crime becomes a very serious one. But by having Riley testify without a waiver, Abe Firestone was giving him a pass: he was now immune from prosecution for whatever law or laws he may have broken. Evidently Firestone had made a decision as to his priorities. He didn’t want some bartender minimizing how much he’d served a customer in order to protect his own ass.
Firestone had apparently wanted truthful answers out of Riley, even if they came at the expense of never being able to charge him for his contribution to the nine deaths the tequila had led to. It was a reasonable trade-off, Jaywalker knew. After all, Riley might have been guilty of serving his customers too much and too long, but he hadn’t killed anyone. So, forced to choose, Firestone had decided he didn’t want Riley.
He wanted Drake.
Jaywalker found his Mercury, unlocked it and got in. He would have liked to revisit the scene of the crash—he figured it couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes away—but knew it would be too dark to make the detour worth it. He started the engine, put the car in Reverse, and had just backed out of the spot he’d been in, when the driver of another vehicle, off to his right, evidently decided he was taking too much time doing it. The headlights of the vehicle headed straight toward him, or at least straight toward the side of his car, and for an instant Jaywalker braced for a collision. Then, at the last possible moment, the other driver veered off sharply