Charlie Huston - Caught Stealing

CAUGHT STEALING

CHARLIE HUSTON

BALLANTINE BOOKS

New York

TABLE OF CONTENTS

For Scotty
A toughguy who loved his mom and dad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Maura Teitelbaum at Abrams Artists for believing in this book and hustling it to anyone and everyone. To Simon Lipskar of Writers House and Mark Tavani, my editor at Ballantine, for making the deal to get me published and, more importantly, for their hard work and support as the book was knocked into shape. Thanks also to Robyn Starr and Simone Elliot for the key roles they played in getting this book published. This book would not have been published without all of these people, but my greatest thanks are reserved for my friend, Johnny Lancaster, without whom none of them would ever have seen it. Thanks, J., youre a good friend.

Above all, thank you Mom and Dad for a life of unconditional love and support. I love you more than I can ever say.

And thank you, Virginia. Wife, I am nothing without you.

PART ONE

SEPTEMBER 2228, 2000

Eight Regular Season
Games Remaining

My feet hurt. The nightmare still in my head, I walk across the cold wood floor, shuffling my feet in the light grit. Im half-drunk and I have to pee. Im not sure which woke me, the piss or the nightmare.

My john is just a bit smaller than the average port-o-potty. I sit on the pot and rest my forehead against the opposite wall. I have a pee hard-on and if I try to take a leak standing up, Ill end up hosing the whole can. I know this from experience. Plus my feet still hurt.

It takes a while. By the time I finish Im just about asleep again. I get up, flush, and shuffle back to bed. On the way, a last bit of piss dribbles onto my thigh. I pick up a dirty sock from the floor, wipe the urine off and toss the sock in a corner.

I crawl back under the covers and twist around a bit until Im arranged. I start to drift back asleep and the nightmare begins to rise up again in my mind. I force myself fully awake to keep it from getting back in. I think happy thoughts. I think about a dog I used to have. I think about Yvonne. I think about baseball: long, lazy games of baseball, plastic cups of cold beer between my thighs, peanut shells crunching beneath my sneakers. Fly balls soaring over loping outfielders. The beautiful ease of the long pop fly out... No! Wrong! Baseball is a mistake and the nightmare is rushing back in. I think about home. Home does the trick and I start to ease back asleep. And only then as I finally fall asleep do I register the blood I saw on the sock when I wiped my leg, the blood from my piss. I sleep.

These things are not related: my aching feet, the nightmare, the blood. My feet have hurt for years because of the job. The nightmare has been going on for half my life. The blood in my piss is brand new, but I know exactly where I got that too.

I got the bloody piss from the beating I took from a couple of guys last night. By last night I mean a few long hours before the nightmare woke me up. And when I say I took a beating from these guys, I really mean they gave it to me. Free. I got lucky; they both had small hands. Go figure, two big guys with small hands. It happens. They didnt want to bust up those little hands working on my face, so they gave it to my body. It didnt take long. They put some good ones in my gut and ribs and I dropped. Then I took a couple boot shots in the kidneys. Thats where the blood is coming from.

The alarm goes off at 8:00 A.M. Now that the booze has worn off I hurt everywhere, but my feet are whats really killing me. I go to the can, sure enough: more blood. I brush my teeth and hop in the shower. Bruises are starting to well up all over my torso and the hot water feels good. I leave the shower running and walk dripping to the fridge, grab a cold beer and take it back to the shower. The water feels good, but the beer is better. It takes the edge off my hangover, kicks up the dust of last nights drunk and gives it life. I take the washcloth from the shower caddie and gently scrub my feet.

Out of the shower now, I finish the last of the beer while trimming my toenails. I clip them very short and even and make sure there is no grit hiding at the edges. I find a clean pair of socks with no holes and get dressed. I head out the front door. Theres time for breakfast.

At the diner I have bacon and eggs and another beer. The first beer was good, but the second is even better. Im heading into the third week of a pretty good binge and the first couple drinks of the day are always the best. I have to ease into it with beer because my job starts late. If I hit it too early Ill be drooling by the time the shift begins. I sip the beer, eat my chow, and look over the sports pages.

As a rule, the Daily News consists of equal parts violent sensationalism, feel-good human interest, celebrity gossip and advertising. I read it every day and feel dirty all over. But its New York, and everybody gets dirty sooner or later. Today its all election coverage and stories about yet more dotcoms biting the dust. I flip past the photos of the interchangeable candidates and get to the important stuff. See, the reason I started buying this rag in the first place is because its the only way to get West Coast scores in the morning. Unless you have cable. I cant afford cable.

Back in California, the Giants are suffering their usual late season collapse. A week ago they were in striking distance of first place. But after a seven-game skid, theyve been eliminated from contention for the division and are trailing the Mets for the wild card by four games with eight games left in the season. Meanwhile the Dodgers are red hot and have the division clinched after winning twelve of their last fourteen.

I look at my watch and its time to go see the doctor.

I hate the Dodgers.

Ive had this appointment for a week. Im not here about the blood, Im here about my feet. Ive tried every kind of shoe and insert I can find and my feet are still killing me. So now, after years of bitching, Im finally seeing a doctor. I could ask about the blood while Im here, but what the hell is he gonna tell me? Hes gonna tell me to go to an emergency room and theyre gonna tell me that its not life-threatening. Theyre gonna charge me a few thou I dont have to tell me to rest a bit and not to drink alcohol or caffeine. I dont drink caffeine. It makes me jittery. I sit in the waiting room and think about that second beer and how good it was.

Im not worried about the kidney. If the kidney was serious, Id be unconscious by now. Its contused: my kidney is scraped and its bleeding a bit. Dr. Bob comes out of his office and calls my name.

Dr. Bob is a great guy. Hes an Ivy League med school graduate who came to the Lower East Side and opened a community practice. Hell take anybody as a patient insurance or no insurance, his rates are as low as they get, and you pay your bills whenever you can. All of which suits my situation. He told me once he didnt want to make people healthy just to make them poor. Like I said, a great guy.

I told him about the feet a week ago and he sent me out for some X rays. Now, in his tiny office, he turns from where the X rays are clipped to one of those light things on the wall and sits on the stool in front of me. He starts to look at my feet. He really takes his time, inspecting them. He holds each foot, first one and then the other, and kneads a bit, searching for some imperfection. All the while, he directs his eyes upward, as if they might interfere with the examination: a safecracker with his eyes shut.