by J. D. Barker
“They’re not gonna let her go,” I replied. I knew what I had to do. “I’ll find the house. I’ll get her out.”
“I’ll help you,” Dunk said. “After my nose grows back.”
13
When we woke the following morning, Raymond Visconti was all over the news, his body found less than a block from our building, in a very familiar alley. One of the most infamous human traffickers in Pennsylvanian history, now nothing more than a husk, a shriveled up dead thing. The condition of the body was the same, too—dried and black, as if the result of some kind of fire that ate the man from inside out, leaving his clothing untouched. Unlike Flack, the local television network KTOD managed to not only get a shot of the body but show that shot on live television no less than four times before the police chief and finally the mayor stepped in and got them to pull the footage.
I knew how Raymond Visconti died, therefore I also knew how Andy Olin Flack died.
As we did five years earlier with Flack, the day Raymond Visconti’s body was found, Dunk and I sat at my apartment window and watched the police put up their tape and invade our small block. We watched Detective Faustino Brier arrive, disappear into the alley for nearly thirty minutes, then step back out on the street, and look directly at our building. I half expected him to wave at my window, but he didn’t.
“See that van down there?” Dunk said before finishing off his third Coke and crushing the can.
“Carmine’s Carpet?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re narcs. They’ve been watching me. Trying to get to Crocket.”
“The carpet guys are narcs?”
“The narcs are pretending to be carpet guys.”
“You sure?”
Dunk went to the kitchen, got another soda, then returned to his place at the window. He held the cold can to his now very black eye and purple, swollen nose. “They rotate. One day it’s Harwood Electric, the next day we’ve got Cloister Plumbing and Supplies, then there’s the carpet guys. They’ve been out here so many times, if they were for real, the sidewalks would be carpeted by now. Nobody needs that much carpet.”
“How long now?”
Dunk shrugged. “Six months? Maybe longer. Hard to say. They’ve got my place bugged, too. We found four mics in there. Not the best tech but good. Better than I figured local PD would have.”
“You need to stop working with Crocket. You’re going to land your ass in jail.”
Dunk popped the top on his Coke and took a drink, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I made almost 30k last month. I’m on track to beat that next month. Crocket says it’s good we know where they are. If the cops are here, they’re not there, they’re not watching him. It’s kinda fun. We feed them bogus info from my apartment and watch them chase their tails. They have no idea what we’re really doing.”
“He’s just using you. You get popped, and he’ll find another pansy to take your place.”
“He’s teaching me the business. Introducing me to people. He gets popped, and I end up running everything one day.”
“That’s your goal? To be the biggest drug dealer in Pittsburgh after your boss catches a bullet?”
“30k last month,” he repeated. “I’d make ten times that if I was in charge. I can’t wash dishes for a living.”
“Krendal lets me cook, too.”
“See? The future is bright all around,” Dunk said. “No student loan debt, either. Win, win.”
I had all but given up trying to talk Dunk out of his current career path. I’d talked to walls that were more receptive. I knew the guy had a good heart somewhere in there and hoped that would prevail. There was little more I could do.
“Who’s the woman with Faustino? Do you recognize her?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Police for sure, but I don’t recognize her.”
Auntie Jo snorted in her sleep behind us.
“She’s getting much worse,” Dunk said.
“I know.”
The next thirty days ticked by at a snail’s pace as I expected a knock on the door from the police that never came. The murder of Raymond Visconti faded from the press, as did the bruises on Dunk’s face.
As promised, on the evening of September 8, 1992, Dunk appeared at my door with six of his “coworkers,” three of whom I recognized, three of whom I did not. All were carrying firearms. Two of them had duffle bags. I didn’t ask what was in the duffle bags.
“We’ll keep an eye on Auntie Jo while you’re working,” Dunk said, pushing past me at the door. “When your fairy godfather shows up, I’ll say hello for you.” He flashed a set of brass knuckles on his right hand. Dunk then ordered his crew to “set up” around the apartment—I didn’t want to know what that meant, either.
“Try to get Jo to eat,” I said, walking past them into the hall. “She didn’t touch dinner.”
At about nine-thirty that night, Gerdy found me in the kitchen at Krendal’s, I was rinsing out one of the coffee makers in the large sink.
She handed me an envelope. “Somebody left this on the counter for you.”
John Edward Thatch was scrawled across the front of the white envelope. Inside was five hundred dollars in twenties.
For each month that followed, the envelopes seemed to find me. Three more at the diner, a few more in my locker at school, one even at the public library—it appeared in my cubicle after I got up to return a book to the stacks. A new envelope on the 8th of every month, clockwork.
Dunk continued to watch Jo for me, but he eventually stopped inviting his friends.
I’d spend the better part of the next year looking for the house and not finding it. For five hundred dollars, Dunk even found a guy willing to run the name Latrese Oliver through several national databases, including the Internal Revenue Service. He found three women with that name living in the United States, none in Pennsylvania. When he showed me pictures, none were familiar.
When spring of the following year came, I began hanging the posters. Only a few at first, around my neighborhood, but soon I found myself in unfamiliar places, hanging them on the sides of buildings and tacking them to telephone poles. A simple sketch of Stella Nettleton, followed by the words:
Have you seen me?
Dunk was right. I should have let her go.
I couldn’t, though.
I couldn’t.
April 23, 1993
Seventeen Years Old
Log 04/23/1993—
Dr. Helen Durgin in Observation. Corporate Executive No. 6491 in Observation. Subject “S” scheduled and in attendance for visitation. Subject “D” within expected parameters.
Audio/video recording.
“For the record, this is Dr. Helen Durgin. I’m in the observation booth. Subject “S” is at the outer door. Subject “D” is in his room, sitting on his bed. We have confirmed his mask is on and properly secured.”
“If he puts the mask on himself, how do you know it’s ‘properly secured?’ Maybe he’s faking it somehow.”
Durgin read his lips and frowned. “Who are you again?”
“That doesn’t matter. Answer my question.”
“You people from corporate think you run the show.”
“Answer my question,” the man repeated.
“If you had gotten here on time rather than five minutes late, you would have seen the safety protocols as well as our procedure.”
“Answer, Doctor. I’m not going to ask you again.”
Dr. Durgin sighed. “The bands over the top of his head and the two on the sides all come together at a lock on the back. Once all three are fastened, an LED changes from red to green. They can only be released with this remote.” The small key fob dangled from her finger. “Once the girl is inside and the door is secured, I’ll release the lock so he can remove the mask.”
“And he’s going to speak to her? Without hurting her? They’ve done this before?”
“He won’t harm her. Never has. They’ve been meeting since
they were children.”
“Does she understand the risk?”
“Not only does she understand, I think she thrives on it. Her handler says she goes on about each visit for days after leaving. Feeds off the rush of it.”
“Who’s her handler?”
“Latrese Oliver.”
The man nodded. “Okay, let her in.”
Dr. Durgin pressed the microphone button. “Releasing the door lock. Let her in.”
She pressed another button. An audible click! popped from the speakers, and a red light above the control board blinked to life.
Through the observation glass, they watched the door swing open, and Stella Nettleton stepped inside. Thirty seconds later, the event repeated on the video monitors.
Dr. Durgin saw the man’s eyes bouncing from the window to the monitor at his left. “Because of the delay, it’s easier to observe on the monitor and ignore the realtime events at the window.”
The man nodded, his gaze returning to the monitor.
Through the glass, Dr. Durgin saw the guard close the door behind Stella. The red light above the control board went off. Durgin raised the remote. “I’m releasing the lock on the mask.”
Thirty seconds later, the man from corporate watched Subject “D” put his hands to the mask and remove it from his face. He smiled up at Subject “S.”
The man from corporate couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. She certainly was beautiful.
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
Auntie Jo died on Wednesday at two thirty-seven in the afternoon, the last week of April, 1993. It had been three months since she left the apartment. I used the last of my cash to buy a hospital bed and pay a moving company to haul it up through our building, get it through our door, and set it up at Auntie Jo’s favorite window in the living room, her chair pushed off to the side to make room.
The woman who took her last breath on that Wednesday was no longer my aunt but a shell of the woman I remembered. The medication and treatment took her hair long before. On any given day, she either wouldn’t eat or couldn’t eat, and the weight melted away until there was nothing left. Her eyes sunk deep into her head, and her lips thinned to a tiny, chapped line on her face. When she opened her mouth to try to speak, nothing came out but stale air, as if she died from the inside out, spoiled somewhere deep.
On that Wednesday, at two thirty-seven in the afternoon, the spring sky was blue, and a handful of white puffy clouds rolled through the heavens. The temperature was seventy-three degrees, and the people moving about their day on the sidewalk below had no idea what was happening in our small apartment on the third floor. I remember thinking that and hating all of them as I sat on the edge of the coffee table beside Auntie Jo in her bed, looking out her window at everyone below. Some laughing, others deep in thought, all moving about briskly toward some destination, toward some event, toward some happening that had nothing to do with cancer or death.
Auntie Jo’s hand was limp in mine, small and so frail. If not for the occasional twitch as she slept, there was nothing to signify life. No warmth or movement, no pressure or relaxing of grip. I doubted she knew I was there at all, holding her hand.
I didn’t want her to wake. She appeared peaceful in sleep, content. Every few hours when she did break from slumber it would begin with a tightness in the lines on her face, soft groans and moans, finally the fluttering open of her eyes. That was followed quickly by the disjointed feeling of wonder at where she was. Then the pain would come, always the pain. At the end, the pain filled her every waking moment as surely as the little bit of air she managed to drag down into her tired lungs.
Each time she began the inevitable rise from sleep, as the first of those grimaces twitched across her face, Danny Reams, the nurse provided by Pennsylvania Hospice, would set down the tattered paperback that had engrossed him since his arrival, open his black leather duffle bag, and prepare another syringe of morphine, carefully measuring out the draw from a tiny glass ampoule, tapping the needle to expunge any air that may have found its way in. When satisfied, he would set the needle aside on the coffee table and wait.
Always the same sequence—a groan from Auntie Jo in her sleep, the setting down of his book, the drawing of the needle, and wait. There would be a short period of lucidity in Auntie Jo’s eyes, a minute respite between the second she woke and the moment her pain realized she was awake and came rushing in. For that briefest of moments, my Auntie Jo was back—she spoke, she laughed, she even found cause to curse my father. And each time I saw her coming back from slumber, when those dry, sunken eyes of hers opened, I considered asking her about the dream, about the box. The selfishness of that thought sickened me, and I quickly forced it away, but it would come again the next time, as surely as her pain would come again.
Danny Reams would watch her closely, take her blood pressure, and make note of her vitals in a small logbook. Then he would wait for the pain to come. It never took long, a few minutes at most. He would swab her frail arm, take the needle from the table, and jab it into her flesh, forcing the drug into her blood.
Then there was sleep again.
Then there was peace.
Danny Reams went back to his book, and I went back to holding Auntie Jo’s hand.
On this Wednesday in the last week of April, 1993, at two-thirty in the afternoon, Auntie Jo groaned, Danny Reams reached for his needle, and he filled it from the ampoule of morphine. Only this time he didn’t fill it to the line just beyond his thumb, he filled it nearly to the last line of the needle, before setting it down on the edge of the coffee table and returning to his paperback without so much as a glance in my direction.
I stared at that needle. My eyes fixed on the liquid inside, on the air gathered at the tip, air he hadn’t expunged.
Auntie Jo woke, and this time the pain didn’t grant her that short respite. This time the pain came on with a vengeance, this time her hand did squeeze in mine with enough pressure to turn my fingers white, and this time I found myself crying. I tried my damnedest to hold those tears back, to project strength and resolute, to somehow tell Auntie Jo that everything was going to be all right, very soon.
Danny Reams marked his page, set down his book, and retrieved the needle. He took a moment to force out the air that had gathered near the tip before plunging the needle into Auntie Jo’s arm.
Her grip on my fingers loosened.
A breath escaped her lips.
She closed her eyes.
Her body relaxed.
Then she was gone.
2:37 p.m.
The sidewalk below, bustling with strangers.
The tears came then, and I couldn’t stop them.
2
Gerdy McCowen squeezed my hand.
I glanced at her, standing beside me in a long, black dress, black hat, and black gloves, and I forced a smile.
Dunk stood on my left in a dark suit, one I had never seen him wear before and would never see again, his head bowed low. Mr. Krendal stood beside him, having closed the diner for the day. I told him he should stay open, Auntie Jo would have wanted him to stay open, but he would have none of that. He scribbled out a sign on the back of one of the menus and placed it in the window beside the diner’s door for all to see:
Join us Friday at 2 p.m., April 30, in South Side Cemetery for the funeral of our beloved Josephine Gargery, loving aunt and friend, gone too soon.
Most of Brentwood had turned out for the funeral, hundreds of people. Some I recognized, most I did not. I didn’t realize how many people Auntie Jo had touched throughout her life until that very moment, and I was grateful they all came. As people arrived, I felt eyes find me, seeking me out among the mourners before finding a seat or a place in the crowd to stand. At first, I shied away from this, then I welcomed it, a warmth put out for her I somehow felt.
Her sealed casket rested on cloth bands above a hole next to my mother’s grave, the displaced dirt hidden beneath a green blanket of
f to the side. I thought of Auntie Jo, so close to my father with only my mother between as a buffer. I pictured her reaching over at the first opportunity and smacking the side of his head.
This thought caused me to chuckle softly, and Gerdy looked up at me, a puzzled look on her face. She squeezed my hand again.
We had gone on several dates over the past few months—movies, dinner, even a party at Willy Trudeau’s house the weekend his parents went to the Bahamas. The alcohol had been flowing at that party, Dunk saw to that, somehow arranging a keg and enough bottles to stock a bar, and Gerdy had gone home with me. The both of us beyond tipsy, the both of us wanting a little something more from each other and comfortable enough to give it.
A first time for me, and although she hadn’t said anything, I knew it was the first time for her too. She swiped a bottle of Captain Morgan from the party, just a small fifth, and she pulled it from her oversized purse outside my apartment door as I fumbled with the keys. She took a long, hard drink, shivered, then passed the bottle to me, and I followed suit, the liquor warm and welcomed by my electric nerves.
As I pushed open the door, I held a finger to my lips and nodded toward Auntie Jo, sleeping soundly in her chair at the window, then led Gerdy through the dark apartment into my darker room, and closed the door behind us. When we entered my apartment, Gerdy had been wearing a pink sweater and tight jeans. When I turned back to her in my room, having turned away only long enough to pull off my noisy shoes, she was standing before me in nothing but a pink bra and matching panties. A glimmer twinkled in her eyes, and she raised the bottle to her lips again, turning slightly to her side as she drank, just enough for me to realize she wore thong panties. When she passed me the bottle, I gulped it down, then set it on my dresser, fumbling with my own clothes as she backed up to my bed and sprawled across the top.
When I woke the following morning, I found Gerdy already awake, sitting up in the bed with the sheets held over her small, perky breasts, her eyes roaming the walls of my room, the dozens of drawings of Stella covering nearly every inch. “This is really awkward,” she said softly.