The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  At the age of fourteen, Frankie Murrow was put in reform school for arson. He’d burned his own house down while his old man was at work. He’d timed it pretty well, so that Mr. Murrow was turning on to his street just as the fire engines were arriving behind him. Frankie was sitting on the wall of the house opposite, watching the flames rise and laughing and crying at the same time.

  My father was not a heavy drinker. He didn’t need alcohol to help him relax. He was the calmest man I had ever known, which made the relationship between him and his partner, and closest friend, Jimmy Gallagher, so difficult to understand. Jimmy, who always walked near the head of the town’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, who bled Irish green and cop blue, was all smiles, and almost-playful punches. He was taller than my father by three or four inches, and broader too. If they stood side by side on those occasions when Jimmy came to the house, my father would look a little embarrassed, as though he felt himself to be somehow wanting when compared to his friend. Jimmy would kiss and hug my mother as soon as he arrived, the only man, apart from her husband, who was permitted such intimacies, and then he would turn to me.

  ‘There he is,’ he would say. ‘There’s the man.’

  Jimmy wasn’t married. He said that he had never met the right woman, but he’d enjoyed meeting a lot of the wrong ones. It was an old joke, and he used it often, but my mother and father would always laugh, even though they knew it was a lie. Women didn’t interest Jimmy Gallagher, although it would be many years before I understood that. I often wondered how difficult it must have been for Jimmy, keeping up a front for all those years, flirting with women in order to fit in. Jimmy Gallagher, who could make the most incredible pizzas from scratch, who could cook a banquet to please a king (or so I had once heard my father tell my mother) but who, when he hosted a poker game at his house, or had his buddies around to watch a ball game (because Jimmy, being single, could always afford the best and most modern TVs), would feed them nachos and beer, potato chips and store-bought TV dinners or, if the weather was good, cook steaks and burgers on the barbecue. And I sensed, even then, that while my father might have spoken to my mother of Jimmy’s secret culinary skills, he did not make such references carelessly among his brother cops.

  Jimmy would take my hand and shake it just a little too hard, testing his strength. I had learned not to wince when this occurred, for then Jimmy would say, ‘Ah, he has a way to go yet,’ and shake his head in mock disappointment. But if my face remained still, and I returned the grip as best I could, Jimmy would smile and slip me a dollar, with the admonition: ‘Don’t spend it all on booze, now.’

  I didn’t spend it all on booze. In fact, until I turned fifteen, I didn’t spend any of it on booze. I spent it on candy and comic books, or saved it for our summer vacation in Maine, when we would stay with my grandfather in Scarborough and I would be taken to Old Orchard Beach and allowed to run riot on the rides. As I grew older, though, booze became a more attractive option. Carrie Gottlieb’s brother, Phil, who worked for the railroad and was believed to be of slightly subnormal intelligence, was known to be willing to buy beer for underage kids in return for one bottle out of every six. One evening, two of my friends and I pooled our cash for a couple of six-packs of PBR that Phil picked up for us, and we drank most of them in the woods one night. I had liked the taste less than the frisson of pleasure I experienced from breaking both the law and a rule of the house, for my father had made it clear to me that there was to be no drinking until he said it was okay. Like young men the world over, I took this and other rules to refer only to things about which my father knew since, if he didn’t know about them, then they couldn’t possibly be of any consequence to him.

  Unfortunately, I had brought home one of the bottles and stashed it in the back of my closet for future use, which was where my mother found it. I’d taken a cuff on the head for that, and was grounded, and required to take an involuntary vow of poverty for at least a month. That afternoon, which was a Sunday, Jimmy Gallagher had come by the house. It was Jimmy’s birthday, and he and my father were going to hit the town, as they always did when one of them celebrated another year of not being shot, stabbed, beaten to a pulp, or run over. He had smiled mockingly at me, a dollar bill held between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

  ‘All those years,’ he said, ‘and you never listened.’

  And I had answered sullenly: ‘I did listen. I didn’t spend it all on booze.’

  Even my father had been forced to laugh.

  But Jimmy didn’t give me the dollar, and after that he never gave me money again. He never got the chance. Six months later, my father was dead, and Jimmy Gallagher stopped coming around with dollar bills in his hand.

  They had questioned my father after the killing, for he admitted his involvement as soon as they confronted him. They treated him sympathetically, trying to understand what had taken place so that they could begin to limit the damage. He had ended up at the Orangetown PD, since the local cops were the primaries. IAD had been involved, as had an investigator from the Rockland County DA’s office, a retired NYPD cop himself who knew how these things were done, and who would smooth the feathers of the local boys prior to taking over the investigation.

  My father had called my mother shortly after they came for him, and told her what he had done. Later, a courtesy call was paid to the house by a pair of local cops, one of them Jimmy Gallagher’s nephew, who worked out of Orangetown. Earlier that evening, when he was not yet on duty, he had come to our house in his casual clothes and had sat in our kitchen. He had a gun on his belt. He and my mother had pretended that it was merely a normal visit, but he had stayed too long for that, and I had seen the tension on my mother’s face as she served him coffee and cake that he barely touched. Now, as he stood again in our house, this time in uniform, I understood that his earlier presence had been connected to the shootings, but I did not yet know how.

  Jimmy’s nephew confirmed for her all that had occurred, or appeared to have occurred, on the patch of waste ground just a short distance from the house, without ever referring to the fact that it was his second visit to the house that evening. She had wanted to join her husband, to offer him support, but he told her that there would be no point. The questioning would go on for some time, and then he would probably be suspended on full pay pending an investigation. He would be home soon, he promised her. Sit tight. Keep an eye on the boy. Tell him nothing for now. It’s up to you, but, you understand, it might be better to wait until we all know more . . .

  I heard her crying after my father’s call, and I went down to her. I stood before my mother, dressed in my pajamas, and said: ‘What’s wrong? Mom, what’s the matter?’

  She had looked at me, and for a moment I felt sure that she had failed to recognize me. She was upset and in shock. What my father had done had frozen her responses, so that I seemed a stranger. Only that could explain the coldness of her stare, the distance it placed between us, as though the air had frozen solid, cutting us off from each other. I had seen that expression on her face before, but only when I had done something so terrible that she was unable to bring herself to speak: the theft of money from her kitchen fund, or, in an abortive attempt to create a bobsled for my G.I. Joe, the destruction of a plate bequeathed to her by her grandmother.

  There was, I thought, blame in her eyes.

  ‘Mom?’ I said again, uncertain now, frightened. ‘Is it Dad? Is he okay?’

  And she found it in herself to nod, her upper teeth clamped down hard on her lower lip, so hard that, when she spoke, I saw blood against the white.

  ‘He’s okay. There was a shooting.’

  ‘Was he hurt?’

  ‘No, but some people . . . some people died. They’re talking to your father about it.’

  ‘Did Dad shoot them?’

  But she would not say anything more.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  I did as I was told, but I could not sleep. My father,
the man who could barely bring himself to cuff the back of my head, had drawn his gun and killed someone. I was sure of it.

  I wondered if my father would get into trouble.

  Eventually, they released him. Two IAD goons escorted him home, then sat outside reading the newspapers. I watched them all from my window. My father looked old and crumpled as he walked up the path. His face was unshaven. He glanced up at the window and saw me there. He raised his hand in greeting, and tried to smile. I waved back before leaving my room, but I did not smile.

  When I padded halfway downstairs, my father was holding my mother tightly as she wept against him, and I heard him say: ‘He told us they might come.’

  ‘But how could that be?’ my mother asked. ‘How could it be the same people?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it was. I saw them. I heard what they said.’

  My mother began to cry again, but the tone had changed: it was now a high keening, the sound of someone breaking apart. It was as though a dam had burst inside her, and all that she had kept hidden away was pouring through the breach, sweeping away the life she once had in a great torrent of grief and violence. Later, I would wonder if, had she managed to hold herself together, she might have been able to prevent what happened next, but she was so caught up in her own sorrows that she failed to see that, in killing those two young people, her husband had destroyed something crucial to his own existence in the process. He had murdered a pair of unarmed teenagers, and, despite what he had said to her, he was not sure why; that, or he was unable to live with the possibility that what he had told her was true. He was tired, wearier than he had ever been. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.

  They became aware of my presence, and my father removed his right arm from around my mother, and he welcomed me into their embrace. We remained that way for a minute until my father patted us both on the back.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can’t stay like this all day.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ my mother asked, wiping her eyes on her apron. There was no emotion to her voice now as though, having given vent to her pain, she had nothing else left to give.

  ‘Sure. Eggs would be good. Bacon and eggs. You want some bacon and eggs, Charlie?’

  I nodded, although I was not hungry. I wanted to be near my father.

  ‘You should take a shower, change your clothes,’ my mother said.

  ‘I’ll do that. I just need to do something else first. You worry about those eggs.’

  ‘Toast?’

  ‘Toast would be good. Wheat, if you have it.’

  My mother began bustling around the kitchen. When her back was to us, my father held my shoulder tightly and said: ‘It’ll all be fine, understand? You help your mother, now. Make sure she’s okay.’

  He left us. The back door opened, then closed again. My mother paused and listened, like a dog sensing some disturbance, then returned to heating the oil in the pan.

  She had just broken the first egg when we heard the shot.

  3

  The movement of the clouds against the sun caused the light to change rapidly, disconcertingly, brightness briefly fading to a wintry dusk in the blink of an eye, a taste of the greater darkness that would soon encroach. The front door opened and the old man appeared on his doorstep. He was wearing a hooded jacket, but he still had his slippers on. He trotted to the end of the path and stopped at the edge of his property, his toes lined up with the lawn, as though the sidewalk were a body of water and he was fearful of falling from the bank.

  ‘Can I help you with something, son?’ he called.

  Son.

  I crossed the street. He tensed slightly, wondering now if it had been such a good idea to confront a stranger after all. He glanced down at his slippers, probably thinking that he should have taken the time to put on his boots. He would have felt less vulnerable in boots.

  Up close, I could see that he was seventy or more, a small, fragile-looking man yet with enough inner strength and confidence to face down a stranger who was staking out his home. There were men younger than he was who would simply have called the police. His eyes were brown and rheumy, but the skin on his face was relatively unwrinkled for someone his age. It was especially taut around his eye sockets and cheekbones, giving the impression that his skin had begun to shrink, not loosen, against his skull.

  ‘I once lived here, in this house,’ I said.

  Some of the wariness left him.

  ‘You one of the Harrington boys?’ he asked, squinting as he tried to identify me.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  I didn’t even know who the Harringtons were. The people who bought the house after we left were named Bildner. A young couple, with a baby daughter. But then, over a quarter of a century had passed since I had last seen the house. I had no idea how many times it might have changed hands over the years.

  ‘Huh. What’s your name, son?’

  And each time he said that word, I heard the echo of my father’s voice.

  ‘Parker, Charlie Parker.’

  ‘Parker,’ he repeated, chewing on the word as though it were a piece of meat. He blinked rapidly three times, and his mouth tightened in a wince. ‘Yes, I know who you are now. My name’s Asa, Asa Durand.’

  He held out his hand, and I shook it.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Twelve years, give or take. The Harringtons were here before us, but they sold it and moved to Dakota. Don’t know if it was North or South. Don’t suppose it matters much, seeing as how it was Dakota.’

  ‘You been to Dakota?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Either.’

  He smiled mischievously, and I saw clearly the young man now trapped in an old man’s body. ‘Why would I want to go to Dakota?’ he asked. ‘You want to come inside?’

  I heard myself say the words before I even realized I had made the decision.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if it’s not an imposition.’

  ‘Not at all. My wife will be home soon. She plays bridge on Sunday afternoons, and I cook dinner. You’re welcome to stay, if you’re hungry. It’s pot roast. Always pot roast on Sundays. It’s the only thing I can cook.’

  ‘No, thank you. It’s good of you to offer, though.’

  I walked alongside him up the path. His left leg dragged slightly.

  ‘What do you get in return for cooking dinner, or am I allowed to ask?’

  ‘An easier life,’ said Durand. ‘To sleep in my bed without fear of suffocation.’ The smile came again, soft and warm. ‘And she likes my pot roast, and I like it that she does.’

  We reached the front door. Durand went ahead and held it open. I paused on the step for a moment then followed him inside, and he closed the door behind me. The hallway was brighter than I remembered. It had been painted yellow with white trim. When I was a boy, the hallway had been red. To the right was a formal dining room, with a mahogany table and chairs not dissimilar to the set we had once owned. To the left was the living room. There was a flat-screen high-definition TV where our old Zenith used to stand, in the days when VCRs were still a novelty and the networks had instituted a family hour to protect the young from sex and violence. When was that, ’74, ’75? I couldn’t recall.

  There was no longer a wall between the kitchen and the living room. It had been removed to create a single, open-plan space, so that the little kitchen of my youth, with its four-seat table, was now entirely gone.

  I could not picture my mother in the new space.

  ‘Different?’ asked Durand.

  ‘Yes. This is all different.’

  ‘The other people did that. Not the Harringtons, the Bildners. They the ones you sold to?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It was vacant for a time too. Couple of years.’ He looked away, troubled by the direction the conversation was taking. ‘Would you like a drink? There’s beer, if you want. I don’t drink so much now. Goes through me like water down a pipe. Hardly in
one end before it’s out the other. Then I have to nap.’

  ‘It’s a little early for me. I’ll take a cup of coffee, though, if I don’t have to drink it alone.’

  ‘Coffee we can do. At least I don’t have to nap after it.’

  He switched on the coffeemaker, then rounded up some cups and spoons.

  ‘Would you mind if I looked in my old bedroom?’ I asked. ‘It’s the small one to the front, with the broken pane.’

  Durand winced again, and looked a little embarrassed. ‘Damned pane. Kids broke it playing baseball. I just didn’t get around to fixing it. And then, well, we don’t use that room for much other than storage. It’s full of boxes.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’d still like to see it.’

  He nodded, and we went upstairs. I stood at the threshold of my old bedroom, but I did not enter. As Durand had said, it was a mass of boxes, files, books, and old electrical equipment that was now gathering dust.

  ‘I’m a packrat,’ said Durand apologetically. ‘All that stuff still works. I keep hoping someone will come along who might need it and take it off my hands.’

  As I stood there, the boxes disappeared, vanishing along with the junk and the books and the files. There was only a room carpeted in gray; white walls covered with pictures and posters; a closet with a mirror on the front in which I could see myself reflected, a man in his forties with graying hair and dark eyes; shelves lined with books, carefully ordered according to author; a nightstand with a digital alarm clock, the height of technology, showing a time of 12:54 p.m.

  And the sound of the gunshot carrying from the garage at the back of the house. Through the window, I saw men running—