Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Forty-Two

I think I know what full-fledged depression feels like. I don't want to physically hurt myself, but my body is so chemically imbalanced by the time I finish a short, three-block walk to clear my head, I'm exhausted and collapse on my bed without so much as untying a shoelace.

Once again, Lucius, the intuitive cat who is quickly becoming my new best friend, curls up in the hollow of my chest, purring ever so gently, as I rub his back and stare into the dark.

At ten p.m. my door buzzer sounds. I assume it's Freeman and Eddie, either because or in spite of the fact that I've ignored six calls and a dozen texts between them.

I cannot ignore the buzzer because whoever's leaning on it won't stop.

The lilting voice that answers is not in search of a wingman.

Three minutes and a short elevator ride later, Trick Turner walks through my door for the second time in a week.

Normal Blake would have teased with a line like, "I'm beginning to think you'll make any excuse to be in my place after dark."

Normal Blake isn't home at the moment.

"What do you want," I ask, wobbly.

She says nothing but shakes her head, as if to say "you're pathetic," and then stalks toward me.

While one steady hand guides me toward the couch, her other hand reaches out along the way, flipping up light switches and flicking on lamps, until she remembers that I'm one of the three people left in North America, who does not live in a trailer but still proudly owns a working "Clapper."

Turner seems tickled to death that two sharp claps illuminate the rest of my apartment like the sun rising on speed.

But she doesn't pause to soak in her handiwork. After planting me on the couch and ordering me to prop my feet up on my new, but still wobbly, Ikea coffee table, she grabs the remote and turns my television to Comedy Central, where Bigger, Blacker, Un-cut, my favorite Chris Rock stand-up comedy special is re-running. It's the one where he says the government can lower the rate of gun crime if it would only practice bullet control, rather than gun control. Rock says that if every bullet cost five thousand dollars, the average would-be criminal shooter wouldn't be able to afford ammunition and would have to pay for it by layaway. And by the time he could purchase one bullet on several months of installment payments, whatever had angered him in the first place would have dissipated. There's truth in every joke, they say.

Five minutes later Turner is sitting on the opposite end of my couch staring at me, as we both sip the coffee she'd made using my Keurig pod machine, hands down the best kitchen equipment invention in fifty years.

"I don't get the appeal," she finally says.

"My appeal?"

"No, dummy, his – Chris Rock. I mean, I guess he's funny, but I don't know. He doesn't tell many jokes."

I nod silently for a moment, musing, and then explain, "He doesn't have to tell jokes. The funniest stuff is ironic stuff 'cause it's true."

She cracks a joke about not being surprised that someone dull as me would consider a storyteller with no punchlines funny.

While the levity lingers, Turner quickly admits that Brawley has told her to be prepared to take on any complexities to arise from the shootings saga while I'm on ice.

"But I have some good news for you," she says scooting closer. "It seems like no one else got anywhere on your story. So no one beat you today, sport. Your legacy's safe for now."

I give her a wry grin and slump relieved into my corner of the couch.

Turner reveals what Fishburne, my undercover officer friend, came up with when he met her at the Midway loading docks the morning after she was threatened at the courthouse. The details were vague, but he believes the assailants were city cops, not Cook County sheriff's deputies. And he thinks they're assigned to the twelfth district on the near west side, a district Internal Affairs has had him watching for months.

Little has made me smile the past few days. But Turner also shares her plan to save my job. It's a good one and just what I need to hear.