Free I Don't Like Where This Is Going by John Dufresne Page A

carrying a cumbersome object swaddled in the bedspread and dropped the load into the trunk of his rental car. Seeley was a convicted sex offender only recently released from prison. He was picked up that evening at his mother’s house in North Las Vegas. His mother wept at the kitchen table as the officers read Ted his rights and cuffed him. She made the sign of the cross and said, “He’s sick in the head. My poor baby’s sick.” She scraped the uneaten lasagna from Ted’s plate into the toilet in the hall and flushed. We would soon learn that the victim, Ariel Gonzalez, was a fifteen-year-old crack addict, who liked to write poetry, and who had been working as a prostitute for three years. When policefinally located her family, her older sister said, “Thank god you’ve found her.”
    Elwood asked Detective Scaturro what he’d heard about the woman who fell to her death at the Luxor. Not a thing.
    â€œI did a report on the news.”
    â€œI’ll watch it.”
    â€œThey took it down.”
    I asked Detective Scaturro, “What do you think about the casino denying it ever happened?”
    â€œWant to avoid bad publicity.”
    â€œWhat about a police department denying it?”
    â€œThat would be wrong.”
    â€œBut not inconceivable?”
    He looked at Elwood and then back at me. “When you say police department, I take it to mean the high command.” And then he turned his back and the conversation was over.
    Elwood and I agreed we needed a drink. He had a well-stocked bar at home only a few minutes from here. From the backseat of his car, I said, “So what does Scaturro have, like, five kids?”
    â€œYeah, how did you know? All boys. One on the way. He’s hoping it’s a girl. He’ll never stop having kids, that guy. Every new child makes him feel more alive.”
    Elwood mixed us a drink he called a Chekhov, made with vodka, elderflower, and gooseberry liqueur, which Rachel Maddow had taught him to make at an after party at some press gathering back East. He garnished the drink with a thin slice of green apple and a sprig of mint. Delicious. And one drink led to another. We sat out on his back porch. He pointed to a mockingbird perched in the palo verde and took out his iPhone. He played the two-note text-tone tweet, and the mockingbird answered in kind. He said to me, “Why don’t you call me, so I’ll have your number.”
    I pulled out what I thought was my iPhone but was, in fact, a Trader Joe’s sardine can. So I told Elwood my number. I said, “The cat makes me crazy.”
    MY CONVIVIAL CABDRIVER suggested I browse through the advertising postcards and pamphlets in the seatback pocket in front of me. I told him I was familiar with the material, and I wasn’t looking for any action this afternoon, hoping he could detect the ironic quotation marks in my pronunciation of action.
    He said, “You don’t like it live in the lap?”
    â€œNot when I have to pay for it.” I asked him how pathetic he thought a man’s life would have to be if he had to purchase sex.
    He said, “You are what is called a brood, no?”
    â€œPrude, yes,” I said.
    He said that not all men were as fortunate and handsome as I was, and I did note the gentle ironic quotation marks around his adjectives. He said, “Loneliness corrodes the heart.” He told me his tautonymous name was Ilarion Ilarion, that he was a Macedonian from Bulgaria, spoke five languages, and had been in the USA seven years. He pointed to a photo on his visor of his wife and two young sons. “Names Joe and Tom. Americans.”
    I told him I was Wylie from South Florida.
    He told me that a ride to one of the advertised destinations would be free.
    I said, “How does that work?”
    â€œI get the juice from the grateful establishments.”
    â€œKickbacks?”
    â€œYou seem incredulous, my friend. Are