The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “Think nothing of it,” Greely said, stopping his typing for a moment.

  Harry looked out the window and saw that his driver had returned. As he was about to say goodbye and walk out of the house, he turned back to Greely. “I nearly forgot the cellar,” he said.

  “Nearly forgot the cellar,” Greely said to the typewriter.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” Harry said, looking to Greely for some response. But Greely just sat like a stone, his dark eyes watering from the tartness of the lemon.

  Harry went to the cellar door, turned on the light, and walked downstairs, from where, through the floorboards, he was able to hear the forceful clacking of Daniel Greely’s typing. It was a dirt-floor cellar lined with cords of firewood. There were some metal washtubs, an old rusted lawn mower, and a pile of mouse traps. Near the wall closest to the road, a boat tarp hanging on metal hooks descended from a beam to the floor. As Harry started walking over to the tarp, Greely suddenly stopped his typing again. Harry could hear the hollow thud of the typewriter case close; he heard the latch click shut; he heard Greely walk to the living room, back to the kitchen, and then the front door opened and the screen door crisply slammed against its jamb like a frozen branch snapping in a windstorm. With the door open, a slight breeze of frigid air descended into the cellar through the floorboards and the tarp began to sway and creak on its hooks. Harry, feeling uneasy, removed his gun from his holster, cautiously approached the tarp, reached out to it, and swept it aside, to find, lining the wall, about fifty boxes with Murray Crown’s face on them. Crown Saltcrisp Crackers.

  Crown Crackers was Murray Crown’s legitimate enterprise and was located on the Southside Docks a few doors down from American Allied Pharmaceutical. Aside from manufacturing morphine that went to hospitals, pharmacies, and doctors’ offices, Allied supplied Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth with the heroin, laudanum, and smoking opium that made its way to the gangsters’ statewide network of crooked pharmacies. Crown’s fleet of trucks made the deliveries.

  Harry, who on a number of occasions had posed for the press next to a large stack of confiscated Crown Crackers boxes, knew full well what to expect. He opened one of the boxes before him and found it full of ready-to-sell heroin packets. He raised the butt of his gun to his head and started pacing. He paced back and forth, now understanding why the deed to the property had been transferred into his name.

  Harry put his gun back into his holster and walked upstairs. The kitchen table had been cleared and the screen door was knocking against the house in the wind. Harry walked outside and shut the door behind him. He could see Daniel Greely’s footprints tracking out into the snowy marsh.

  “You all set?” the driver asked when Harry climbed into the backseat of the car.

  “Yeah,” Harry said as though he had just gotten knocked in the head by a two-by-four.

  “Peculiar that that man walked off in that direction with a typewriter and a heavy bag.”

  Harry didn’t say anything. He was in no mood to make small talk.

  “Must know someone on the other side of the ridge.”

  Harry stayed mute.

  “Where would you like to go?” the driver asked.

  “Back to town. To Donello and Sons on Main Street.”

  “Sure thing.” The driver pulled out of the driveway and drove away from the house. As they drove along the meadow, and as the house quickly receded into the distance, a gust of wind blew and the snow whirled, extinguishing the house’s facade from view.

  “I thought you might like a nice hot cup of coffee,” the driver said to Harry, as he handed back a thermos. “I filled up, so help yourself. The cup’s clean.”

  “Thanks.” Harry held on to the warm thermos in his lap, but he didn’t do anything with it. All he could think of was how he was being set up, how it was possible that Katrina would know Benny Rudolph, how this was looking even worse for him than he initially thought.

  “I got to talking to Peggy in the coffee shop while I was waiting for you,” the old man said with his eyes on the road. “She told me it’s about three months that Katrina left Ten Lakes.”

  “She have anything else to say?”

  “Just that a couple of really big fellas came out and picked her up in a nice car. They stopped by the coffee shop on their way over to the house. They sat in a booth and bickered over some game of cards or something. She said she remembered the day so well because she had such a bad flu and she had to close up early. . . . What else did she say? Just that she thought Sylvia got it bad around here and didn’t really deserve to be treated so poorly. That’s all.”

  “So, three months ago then.”

  “That’s right.”

  When the two men returned to downtown Ten Lakes, the driver dropped Harry off in front of Donello and Sons Realty, and Harry handed the man back the thermos, paid him, and said goodbye. The Donello and Sons office was a small rustic storefront advertising seasonal rentals and lakeside homes. When Harry stepped through the door, a cluster of bells hanging on the door handle rang out, and a small corpulent man in his fifties, wearing a navy jacket and dark trousers, approached Harry with a forced smile.

  “How do you do?”

  “Just fine, thanks. Would you happen to be Frank Donello?”

  “Yes, that’s me. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I just came out from the Lowenstein house, and the man renting told me that you were handling the property. Is that so?”

  “Yes.” Frank Donello suddenly lost his smile and looked a little confused. He took notice of Harry’s well-tailored suit and expensive hat. “You’re not actually interested in that place, are you?”

  “No,” Harry said, now smiling himself. “No. I’m trying to locate Katrina Lowenstein about an urgent matter and was wondering if you might have an address for her.”

  “Oh, I see,” the man said. “Sure, sure, I have it. I’ve been mailing the checks to her once a month. Let me just get it for you.” Frank Donello walked to his desk and pulled an index card from a box. He wrote the address on a piece of paper and then returned to Harry. “Here you are,” he said, holding the paper at his side. “What’s this urgent matter all about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Harry, having no patience for this, held his hand out for the address.

  “Do I know you from somewhere, mister?” Mr. Donello asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Harry said.

  “You look awfully familiar. You come up from the City?”

  “Yes.”

  “My wife and I spend a lot of time down in the City in the winter, with her sister.”

  Harry shook his head.

  “Come to think of it, you look an awful lot like . . .”

  Mr. Donello reluctantly raised his arm as he was about to say Harry’s name. Just as he was about to say it, Harry took hold of the paper. “Thank you, Mr. Donello,” Harry said, cutting him off.

  Frank Donello was taken aback. “Yes,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

  “Have a nice day, Mr. Donello.” Harry left the office and once outside read the address Frank Donello had written: The Beekman Hotel for Women. 470 Central Boulevard. Room 9F. He placed the address in his pocket and headed down to the train station. He trudged through the snow, sinking into it, feeling his legs buckling beneath him, feeling as though he were made of something less than flesh, something more like clay or putty. Harry couldn’t help but feel all the matter that made him what he was decomposing, rapidly, from whatever it was that made him a man in the first place into whatever it was that made someone a little less of a man.

  Chapter 12

  After Freddy Stillman left Cuccio’s Bakery, he aimlessly walked the streets for a while. When he could no longer bear walking against the arctic gales and the feeling of the cold biting into his fingers and toes, he made the long descent underground into the Central Boulevard subway station, where, hovering above the platform, was a tile mosaic of nondescript bodies packed ten rows deep, waiting ca
lmly, staring blankly. Freddy pressed himself into the narrow gap between the rush-hour crowd in the picture and the rush-hour crowd on the platform. He walked as far into the station as he could until the inert bodies before him weighed so heavily against his back, shoulders, and chest that all he could do was stop, stare blankly, and wait calmly.

  When the train arrived, as if through a sieve, the platform filled the cars, the bodies moving like small Japanese women constricted within the confines of a kimono. Freddy slipped his hand through a cracked leather strap and while swaying against the same bodies he had pressed against on the platform, he contemplated the grip the leather strap had on his bare wrist. A ring of taut pink flesh. It reminded him of the blood pumping from his heart and through his legs. It reminded him of what the body looked like when the blood became still, when the blood leaked out, when a body was emptied of all blood and rigored in the sun. In the slate-gray window, he watched faces morbidly reflect back at him, without detail, without feeling. He being the dimmest of all. He was without eyes or mouth, hunched over, his image trailing against the steel arteries running parallel to the train’s path. He could suddenly see the image he had been keeping in his thoughts when he was talking to the police, the image of the hands in the window choking Janice across the air shaft. He imagined the powder-blue robe with the undone sash, the small arc of flesh around Janice’s belly, a lock of swaying auburn hair dangling in front of her nose. And then, he suddenly saw himself in those same hands, his throat in those hands across the air shaft.

  When the doors opened at the Eighty-fifth Street station, he squeezed his way through the crowd and stepped onto the platform, his body barely in motion as it moved up the stairs, his thoughts as still as the stark moon that followed him along the edge of the park. The moonlight dispersed into ambiance, into the dying afternoon light, and disappeared when he entered Jack’s Basement Tavern on Eighty-third Street.

  During Prohibition, Jack’s had been known as the Porter Club, a high-end speakeasy with gaming tables built into the walls and a pristine rosewood bar with brass fixtures, crystal cupboards, stained glass, and a number of safes built into the floor. Nowadays, the bar was just a bar, somewhat dilapidated, and the gaming tables that used to pull out of the wall had been replaced by wood tables with several years’ worth of initials carved into their thick shellac.

  “You’re in early,” Jack said to Freddy as he wiped down the counter with a wet rag. Jack, a solid man with a wounded face, had run the Porter Club in its day, and now he owned the place. He set the rag down, turned over a green-tinted glass, and poured Freddy a double bourbon.

  “I’m not talking today,” Freddy said as he took his whiskey from the counter and nodded to a pruned old couple he was acquainted with at the end of the bar.

  “To each his own,” Jack rebutted. “To each his own.”

  Jack leaned toward Freddy, and Freddy, out of politeness, leaned over the bar to meet Jack halfway.

  “They let Victor out,” Jack whispered. “He’s sitting right there.”

  “Is that right?” Freddy said, clearly astonished.

  “See for yourself.”

  Freddy followed the direction of Jack’s finger and discovered the back of Victor Ribe’s head sulking in the corner of the room. Freddy would have recognized the back of his old war buddy’s head anywhere in the world. His soft brown fleecy hair always stood up in tufts as though it had been whipped into a lather. Freddy, looking at the back of Victor’s head the entire time, walked away from the bar to the opposite end of the empty sipping room to one of the booths in the back, back by the bathrooms, where it smelled like cedar shavings and stale beer. He wasn’t ready to say hello just yet.

  “What do you say, Freddy?”

  Freddy turned his head to the familiar voice and found Gloria Lime walking out of the ladies’ room, her strong dimples and frail-looking pale green eyes gleaming in the yellow light of the tavern.

  “Gloria? How is it that . . .”

  “You mind if I . . .” Gloria lifted her drink off the table next to Freddy’s and leaned toward him.

  Freddy paused for a moment and then shook his head. He was taken off guard. “No, not at all. Of course not.”

  Gloria pushed Freddy’s things over, slipped her full figure over the worn leather seat of the booth, and got cozy. She took Freddy’s free hand and pulled it close to her. “Did you see Victor?” she whispered.

  “Yeah, I saw him.”

  “I didn’t say anything to him. I couldn’t bring myself to. I mean, what it really is, Freddy, is that he gives me a good scare.”

  “You know anything about it? How it is he . . . ?”

  “Paroled . . . I heard him talking to Jack.”

  “I see.” Freddy patted Gloria’s hand and let go. “It figures, I guess. It’s been a long time.” He took a drink from his glass, watching Gloria nod her head. He felt simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by her.

  “Yeah, it’s been a long time,” Gloria mused, turning her head back. She looked at Victor and turned back to Freddy. “All I can say is that he’s awful lucky they didn’t put him in the chair.” Gloria was raising her voice a little, and Freddy was starting to feel annoyed. “Awful lucky.”

  “Tell me,” Freddy said, obviously wanting to change the subject, “you still in the same place?”

  “Yeah.” Gloria daintily gripped her straw with her fingers and took a sip from her drink. “I’m still living in the same place, still at the club. I can’t really say all that much has changed since we last saw each other.”

  “But everything’s good with you?” Freddy’s tone, to his surprise, sounded tender.

  “Can’t really complain,” she said, taking pause at the sound of Freddy’s voice. “You know how it is, Freddy: some things get complicated, some things, well, some things just don’t.”

  “Yeah,” Freddy said, feeling all the confusion of his life at once.

  “How about yourself?”

  “You know me. Things could always be a little better.”

  “You seen Evelyn?”

  “No.” Freddy turned his glass in his hand.

  “I heard she got married, had a baby.”

  Freddy continued turning the glass in his hand. He didn’t want to be talking about this with Gloria. Not with Gloria.

  “You’re still torn up over that, aren’t you?”

  “Not so much anymore,” Freddy lied. From a reflection inside his glass, Freddy could see a sadness come over Gloria’s face. “I got other things on my mind,” he said.

  “Is that right?”

  Freddy looked up from his glass and into the whorl of blond hair hanging on Gloria’s shoulder. He hated her. He hated every inch of her. “I was down at the club a few times not so long ago.”

  “Is that right?”

  “For whatever reason, I didn’t catch you there.”

  Gloria leaned a little in Freddy’s direction. “You should’ve just looked me up.”

  “I guess I should have,” Freddy said, looking down at the table now, into the cracks between Gloria’s fingers. It was always like this between him and Gloria. No matter where they stood in a room, no matter how hard they tried to not be attracted to each other, they were drawn together.

  Gloria lifted her hand and took hold of Freddy’s chin. “To tell the truth, I’ve missed you like mad.”

  Freddy nearly smiled. With her hand still holding him, he found himself saying, “I’ve missed you, too,” without really meaning it. And then Freddy immediately felt guilty for saying this. And then as guilty as he felt, as unexpected as it was to have run into Gloria Lime, Freddy unexpectedly felt something lift inside him, as if a small parachute had opened in his chest. “I wanted to call, but . . . I mean, it’s funny running into you like this.”

  “Listen,” Gloria said, her eyes studying Freddy’s face, “why don’t you take me out tomorrow night. There’s a new picture I want to see playing down at the Castaway. We’ll have a bite, take in t
he picture.”

  “I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . make any promises, Glory. But I’ll give you a call. What do you say?”

  “I say you’re like the old Freddy I know is what I say.” Gloria’s face changed, her mood turned downcast, and she started to get up from her seat.

  “Wait a minute, Glory,” Freddy said. “Hold on.” He reached for her hand and gripped it tightly, as if it were keeping him from falling off a cliff. “What time?”

  Gloria looked at Freddy’s hand, gently took hold of it, and placed it back on the table. Her face lit up again. “I’ll meet you at the coffee shop by the theater at seven.”

  “Good. I’ll see you there.”

  “It’s the least you could do.”

  Freddy tried to smile kindly at Gloria, but wasn’t sure if he succeeded. Gloria downed the rest of her drink, bundled up, and said goodbye.

  Holding the double doors open for Gloria on her way out were a couple of large men Freddy had never seen before. One wore a thin mustache while the other wore a vibrant red carnation in the buttonhole of his coat. They both gave Gloria’s stockinged calves a nice long look as she pushed up the stairs and stepped out into the smoky cold with her face buried in her collar. With some obvious satisfaction expressed in upside-down smiles on their brows and lips, the two heavies let the doors go and swaggered over to the bar with their chests barreling out their coats.

  As the men ordered drinks, Freddy started reworking the conversation he had had with Feldman earlier in the day, and he started to fear that this drink he was currently nursing was going to be his last. That was unacceptable to him. He wanted to be good and plastered when his time came. He wanted to be good and plastered in the comfort of his home. And he decided right then that he wanted to get to work on that right away.

  As Freddy was about to stand up and make his exit, however, Victor turned around and stared across the sipping room in Freddy’s direction. Victor’s long jaw and sunken eyes might have looked menacing to some, but to Freddy, Victor simply looked tired. He looked as sad as a clarinet with a splintered reed and dry, cracked finger pads, older and weathered and beaten-down. Long in the legs, chest, and forearms, Victor rose from his seat and walked to Freddy’s booth. The two men at the bar turned their heads and watched, eyes trailing, as Victor moved across the room.