Ray Kowalski knew the price of everything in Cleveland.

Not because he was a businessman or a broker or anything like that. He was just a guy who had too much time and a brain that wouldn't let him forget. A factory job for eighteen years, then the factory closed, then the job closed with it, and then Ray had nothing but time and a mind that cataloged everything.

The price of a gallon of milk at the A&P on Euclid Avenue: $1.89. The price of a pack of cigarettes at the corner store: $2.45. The price of a night in a flopper on West 25th: $8. The price of a bottle of whiskey from Doc's back room: $5, or $4 if you knew someone.

He knew all of this because he had noticed it. That was the only talent he had—notice things. Remember things. Not in some magical way, just in the way that happens when you have nothing else to do but look around and pay attention.

Fast Eddie found him at the diner on Superior. Eddie was twenty-two and wore his hair too long and his jacket too clean for a guy who made his living doing nothing legal.

"Ray," Eddie said, sliding into the booth. "I got a problem."

Ray stirred his coffee. "Everyone's got a problem, Eddie. What's yours?"

"I owe somebody money. And I need someone who can remember who owes me money."

Ray looked at him. Eddie owed people money. That was Eddie's problem, not Ray's. But Eddie also knew people, and knowing people was the only currency that mattered in the parts of Cleveland where Ray was starting to spend more time.

"Talk," Ray said.

Eddie talked. He talked about a guy named Vinnie who owed him forty dollars. He talked about a woman on Lorain Avenue who sold bootleg pills out of her apartment and knew where to get cheap medicine. He talked about a truck that passed through Cleveland every Thursday with pharmaceuticals heading west, and the price at the source, and the price in Chicago, and the price if you could get them here.

Ray listened. He remembered it all. Not because he wanted to, but because that's what his mind did now. It stored things. Names, prices, routes, schedules. It was a warehouse of useless information in a city that was running out of use.

Marge came by once a week. She worked the register at a grocery store on East 55th, standing for eight hours a day counting change, and she brought her son on Saturdays because there was nobody else. Her son was seven and had Ray's eyes—wide and watchful and always taking things in.

"How's the boy?" Ray asked one Saturday.

"Good. He's learning to read."

"Good."

"He asks about you. Says you're the only man who can look at a room and know everything in it."

Ray looked at the boy, who was sitting at the table drawing with crayons. "Tell him I can't know everything. I just remember what I see. There's a difference."

But maybe there wasn't. Maybe remembering was the same as knowing in a city like this, where everything was already known to somebody and the only question was who could hold it all at once.

Doc Henderson was sixty and sick. His hands shook when he poured pills into paper cups, and his eyes were yellow in the way that meant liver, and he didn't talk much anymore. He used to talk—about the old days at the plant, about the women he'd dated, about the time he'd served in the army and seen things he never mentioned. Now he just sat behind his counter of counterfeit antibiotics and expired painkillers and watched the line of people who came because they couldn't afford real medicine.

Ray remembered the first time he came to Doc. It was winter, and Marge's son had a fever that wouldn't break, and the clinic had turned them away because they couldn't pay. Ray had walked three miles in the snow to Doc's back room, and Doc had looked at the boy, looked at Ray, and handed him a bottle of something that came from somewhere between Canada and nowhere.

"Five dollars," Doc had said.

Ray had five dollars.

Now Doc sat behind his counter and watched the line, and Ray sat across from him and remembered everything—every patient Doc had treated, every price he'd charged, every person who had died because the pills didn't work.

"Doc," Ray said one afternoon. "You should close up."

Doc looked at him. "And go where?"

"I don't know."

"I've been in this room for twenty years, Ray. Twenty years. I know everybody who comes through that door. I know what they need and what they can pay and what they're lying about. You think anybody else will remember?"

Ray didn't have an answer.

Sheriff Briggs came to see him on a Wednesday. Tom Briggs was a big man with a face that had been hit too many times and a reputation that was mostly bad. He sat in Ray's apartment—the top floor of a building on West 63rd, one room with a kitchenette and a bathroom down the hall—and looked around at the bare walls and the single chair and the table.

"Eddie Walsh is in trouble," Briggs said.

"I know."

"You know more than you let on. That's your thing, right? You remember everything."

Ray said nothing.

"Big Tony's men are looking for Eddie. They want the money he owes, and they want it yesterday. And I need you to tell me something, Ray."

"What?"

"Where's the shipment coming through on Thursday?"

Ray looked at him. The shipment—Eddie had told him about it, the truck with the pharmaceuticals. But this wasn't pharmaceuticals. Briggs knew. Or at least he suspected.

"I don't know," Ray said.

"You do. You remember everything." Briggs leaned forward. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to stop the shipment. Big Tony's operation is going to get disrupted. And Eddie's going to get himself killed because he's too stupid to know when to walk away. Unless you tell me what I need to know."

Ray thought about Eddie. He thought about Doc. He thought about Marge and her son. He thought about the line at Doc's door, the people who came because the system had failed them, and Doc was the only thing standing between them and nothing.

If Briggs stopped the shipment, Big Tony would come after everyone connected to Eddie. Doc's shop would be destroyed. The people who depended on his pills would have nowhere to go.

If Ray didn't tell Briggs, the shipment would come through, and Big Tony would expand his operation, and the city would get a little more poison, and Eddie would probably get killed anyway because that's what happened to guys like Eddie in a city like this.

There was no good choice. There never was.

"I can't help you, Tom," Ray said.

Briggs stood up. He didn't look surprised. "Then you're a foolish man, Ray. And this city eats foolish men for breakfast."

He left. Ray sat in his chair and remembered everything—Briggs's face, the exact words, the exact tone. He remembered Eddie's smile, Doc's shaking hands, Marge's tired eyes, the boy's crayon drawings. He remembered the price of everything in Cleveland, and he understood that the most expensive thing in the city was hope, and nobody could afford it.

He went to Doc's shop that night. Doc was locking up.

"Doc," Ray said. "Close the shop."

"What?"

"Close it. Pack up what you have and go somewhere. Somewhere they don't know you."

Doc looked at him. "And the people?"

"I don't know about the people. But you should go."

Doc nodded slowly. He didn't ask why. He just went inside his back room and started packing.

Ray went to the diner and waited. At midnight, Eddie came in, and Ray told him to leave Cleveland. Tonight. Now. Don't pack, don't call anybody, just go.

"Why?" Eddie asked.

"Just go."

Eddie went. Ray watched him walk out into the night, and he remembered the exact moment Eddie turned the corner and disappeared.

The next morning, Doc's shop was empty. Eddie was gone. Big Tony's men came looking and found nothing. Briggs drove past the shop twice and said nothing.

Ray sat in his apartment and remembered it all. The way it was. The way it wasn't. The way it would be tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, until the city was gone and he was gone and everything he had remembered was remembered by nobody.

He stood up, brushed the dust off his pants, and walked out the door. There might be a job at the scrap yard on 91st. Or there might not. He would find out. He always found out.

That was the only thing he was good at.

END

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