Chapter Text
“I’ll take the shitkid home.” Vicquemare grinds out the sentence with the naked displeasure of a man who knows himself best suited to an unpleasant job.
Once the others have been dropped off at their MCs or flats or the precinct, Harry is left the only passenger, still in the back. It’s barely quitting time.
“You don’t remember where you fucking live, do you?”
A faraway look, and then a trembling, “No.”
Vicquemare growls a sigh. “Do you even have keys?”
Harry’s only response is despairing silence.
“In the MC?”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking okay. I have a copy.”
“I’m sorry, Jean. For everything, whatever it’s been, I don’t know, I know I’ve been—”
“Shut up.”
Harry barely has time for some sad wet noises and sniffling before they arrive. The two walk up to the worse half of a rundown duplex, maybe a couple kilometers from the precinct, stuffed up against a train track under an overpass. Vicquemare jingles the keys in his hand, but doesn’t open the door yet.
“Lieutenant Kitsuragi said you were sober ten days now.”
Harry nods.
“Probably feels like hell. You earned it.”
“I don’t remember not feeling like hell.” He makes a weak attempt at a smile.
Vicquemare frowns harder somehow. “It’s not funny. Are you really serious about getting straight this time, Lieutenant double-yefreitor Du Bois, you sack of shit?”
“I think so.”
“You think so? You fucking think so?” Vicquemare shoves him, and his back hits the wall.
Harry drops his face into his palms, rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands, and takes three hard breaths.
“Yeah. I’m serious.”
Vicquemare nods. “Okay. You want me to sweep your sty?”
“Yes. Please. S—”
“Don’t you tell me you’re sorry. You don’t even know what you should be sorry for. Fucking wreck. You smell like shit, Du Bois. Like a sewage leak in an abandoned distillery. I’m going to start with your bathroom and then I’m going to work your place over while you take a fucking shower. If you start beating it in there while I’m picking amphetamines out of your rug I will murder you myself. Right now, you sit on this stoop and don’t move. You’re stoopcop until I say you can come in and scrape the stink off. Or try.”
“I’m stoopcop.” His voice cracks a little. He nods and sits. Vicquemare nods back and lets himself in, closing and locking the door behind him.
Fifteen minutes later, the door unlocks and Vicquemare emerges with a rattling garbage bag in his fist.
“C’mon.” He hauls Harry up by the arm and drags him inside, past the wreckage of what was probably once a meager but adequate little home, and deposits him in the bathroom, where every drawer, cupboard, and container is open. The medicine cabinet has been removed from the wall and is on the ground, empty. No part of the bathroom looks like it’s been cleaned in years.
Harry stares at the opening in the wall where the medicine cabinet used to be for a minute, then shakes his head and starts reading and closing the containers that were deemed innocent enough to stay.
“I don’t hear a shower, shitkid!”
“Figuring out what’s soap!”
“Does it matter? None of it’s for your nose, so just get to it.”
Harry looks at the door, puts his hand on the doorknob, then takes if off and slaps himself. Vicquemare bangs on the door.
“None of that bullshit, if you need your ass kicked the line starts behind me. Shower!”
Harry turns on the shower and begins to strip.
On the other side of the door, Vicquemare nods. He returns to his task, emptying bottles into the sink, picking up anything that looks like a pill or a powder and tossing it into the garbage bag. Obvious work happens fast, and then it’s the less obvious. Hiding spots, cabinet corners, tops of things and behind things, cushions with tears. He knows how to do this and has done it before. There’s another hole in the wall behind a Guillaume Le Million poster, made by a fist, and Vicquemare fishes a small pouch of pills out of it. He doesn’t put the poster back. He finds a space in the base of a lamp, a music box with a false bottom, a string to pull a sack down from the ceiling crawl space, a toy soldier whose weapon was cheerfully replaced with a paper tube. No amphetamines in the rug, but some in the fridge. No food beyond ancient take-out containers. He opens one, reels back, and then dumps them all in a new garbage bag. This one goes to the bin round the side. The one with the drugs goes in the MC. Vicquemare looks at his watch, then looks at the bathroom door, to where the shower is still on. He bangs on the door again.
“No way you still have hot water, stop the weeping and wrap it up.”
There’s a long, tense moment of silence, during which Vicquemare slowly sets his hand on the doorknob.
“I’m okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to come in.” The water turns off. Vicquemare takes his hand off the doorknob and goes to drop himself wearily into one of the chairs at the wobbly little table between the kitchen and living room. A minute or two later, Harry comes out of the bathroom, towel around his bare shoulders, same dirty disco-ass pants sticking to his legs. He looks around at the mess slightly rotated from how he saw it an hour ago, then takes the other chair at the wobbly table. Harry opens his mouth, but Vicquemare cuts him off.
“You can get rid of your own empties in the morning. Tare return at the end of the street. And then no more fucking hobocop. It’s an embarrassment.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Be decent and sober when I get here tomorrow at 10. I’m taking you to the lazareth to check your shit then I’m dropping your ass back here and you’ll follow doctor’s orders not to die of fucking sepsis. Cleaning your fucking hovel will help. Do your laundry, there’s laundromat half a kilometer west. Figure your shit out. Get your phone working. Be a fucking man, Du Bois.”
Vicquemare takes a key off his keyring and puts it on the wobbly table. Harry gives it the briefest look and says, “You stole my keys and made a copy for yourself.”
“You complaining?”
“I’ll give you a copy when I get new locks.”
“I don’t want a key to your fucking sty. I knew it’d be easier to have it if you made me need it. I was right.”
“Jean…”
“Don’t. It could have been worse. See you tomorrow, shitkid.” Vicquemare stands and gives him one hard pat on the shoulder and leaves.
In the morning, Vicquemare arrives at the duplex. Harry is freshly showered and his shirt is cleaner. Vicquemare takes him to the precinct, the lazareth re-bandages his wounds, and he’s prescribed medicine: antibiotics, and something Vicquemare recognizes from behind his own bathroom mirror. It’s nothing fun. Gottlieb tells Harry to come to him for a specific medication if he starts seeing things or shaking too bad or seizes, but does not give it to him. Vicquemare takes him back home and sticks a list of phone numbers to the peeling wallpaper above his phone.
Over the next few days, assorted filth leaves the duplex. Clothes and linens go to and from the laundromat in sackloads. Harry fixes the phone line, and the phone. He makes a lot of phone calls, and puts together where he keeps his money, when his bills are due. He spends a few hours writing an essay about the evils of rent and rent-seeking. He buys a calendar from the Frittte up the street and circles a specific day in March. He calls a locksmith and gets new locks. When it’s Tuesday, he calls the precinct to see if Kim’s transfer has gone through. He gives his phone number to Pidieu, who already has it but takes note that it now functions. He asks Pidieu to give his number to Lieutenant Kitsuragi. He fixes his radio.
Wednesday Kim calls and Harry has a short conversation with him. They agree they are both healing well, and looking forward to returning to work. Harry volunteers that he’s been cleaning, and Kim agrees that is important. Kim does not ask if Harry is still sober. They run out of steam after a few minutes. Harry sits on his stoop for the rest of the afternoon and smokes the last of his pack of cigarettes, crying into his beard. Thursday he puts the medicine cabinet back into the wall, beats his rug as if for information, mops the kitchen, buys a bag of rice and a stick of butter, and confirms he knows how to make rice with butter. He calls around to see if there are any publications who want an essay against rentiers. He figures out what part he needs to fix his reel-to-reel player, and calls around to see if one is for sale.
Friday Harry walks to the precinct. He goes to Gottlieb and begs him to clear him for work Monday. “Only if you won’t celebrate when I say yes, Harry boy.” Harry buys a fussy little pastry from a cool café on Boogie Street. The barista recognizes him and calls him “disco cop” and says he looks like shit, but smiles. Saturday he reads ten of the books in his home, figures out where the nearest library is, and is ejected from the nearest library. He returns home and sorts which of the books on his shelves are actually his. He finishes all the library books Sunday. Vicquemare calls him and tells him that if he isn’t ready in the morning by 8:50, he’s going to handcuff him to the back of the MC and drag him to the precinct.
Finally it’s Monday. At 8:52, Vicquemare pulls up to the duplex. At 8:53, Vicquemare bangs on Harry’s door. At 9, Vicquemare tells him that nobody gives a shit about his hair, at high volume, and the neighbor bangs on the shared wall. At 9:03, Vicquemare and Harry get into the MC, and at 9:06 they’re back at precinct 41.