Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  “I don’t want your whiskey, Jimmy.”

  “No? Suit yourself. But put that gun away. Killin’ me ain’t gonna solve either of our problems.”

  “Not right away,” I say.

  That gets his attention, stops him from sitting down in mid-sit, his skinny frame slinking back up like a snake ready to strike. “You’re not gonna kill me, Cantor. You got more brains than that. It would bring too much trouble on your head from my associates. And I don’t mean the lugs out there at the bar, but my associates higher up, the guys who run this city with steel guts and iron fists. You know the guys I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know. And if I don’t get the information I want from you, maybe I can get it from them. And even if I do get the information from you, if I don’t like what I hear I might kill you anyway.”

  His laugh, sharp as razor blades, cuts through me and feels like it’s slicing its way up my spine. “I never figured you for such a lousy bargainer, Gold! You’ll kill me if I talk about whatever it is you want me to talk about, you’ll kill me if I don’t talk about it. Some deal. And anyways, just this morning you told me you don’t like killing. If you ask me, you ain’t got a hand to play. So why don’t you just sit down and have a drink, tell me what’s on your mind.” His good humor all dried up, he adds, “And then I’ll tell you what’s on mine.”

  I don’t sit down. I don’t have a drink. And I don’t put my gun away. I just say, “Are you in the flesh business, Jimmy?”

  “Ain’t you? Ain’t everybody? Lotta money in flesh.” He sits down at the table as casually as if I’d asked him if he’s good to his mother.

  My hatred of him now runs through me like fire, burning around my trigger finger, curling it to shoot. But I can’t let my hate get the better of me, at least not yet, not until I get what I came for. So I’d better stiffen up, choke back my hatred of Jimmy, my desperation to find Sophie. I’d better be hard as stone.

  Cold and steady, I say, “Then you’ll know about a boat, a freighter that hauled women off Pier 8 about two and a half years ago, March of ’48. One of the women fought back, made a scene until one of the slavers threatened to slice her. Word about that night might’ve gotten around. Somebody might remember the story, even the name of the slaving outfit or the freighter.”

  “And you think I know such a story?”

  “Cut the crap, Jimmy, you know every boat that comes in and out of this port, and Pier 8’s right down the street. You can see it from the front window of the bar, so maybe you even saw that boat on that night. I want the name of that freighter, Jimmy, and I want to know where she sailed.”

  He’s looking at me like he’s about to laugh again. It’s all I can do not to blast the smirk off his bony face, char it to a blackened skull.

  He says, “You want me to tell you about some flesh boat that sailed two years ago? You must think I’m Mr. Memory.”

  “I told you to cut the crap, Jimmy. You’ve got eyes and ears on the docks. There’s very little that goes on along this waterfront that you don’t know about. And what you don’t see yourself, you’ve got written down somewhere. Every nickel’s worth of cargo, every kickback, every boat that comes in and goes out. You have those books in here, Jimmy? Maybe in that strongbox you pushed out of my sight? The secret books with all the Mob’s deals? Look up the shipping news for a night in March of 1948 and tell me the name of the freighter that sailed from Pier 8 and where it went.”

  Even with a gun aimed at him, Jimmy’s calm as an airless night. It’s me who’s feeling edgy, so close to finding out what happened to Sophie, so close…

  “Why?” Jimmy says.

  That’s it. The scary question. The one I didn’t want him to ask. I don’t dare show my hand, and worse, my heart. Love cuts no ice with Jimmy. Jimmy is ice.

  But he’s not stupid. And he’s not blind. “Well, how about that,” he says, smirking again, his eyes crinkling around a vicious twinkle. “I’m guessin’ you knew someone on that boat, right? Maybe a girlie of yours? Sweet Jesus”—he’s actually chuckling now, a nasty sound that could make people run for their lives—“it must be eating you alive, Gold, knowing your girlie’s getting pawed over and fucked day and night by guys who all got something you ain’t got. Not a real one, anyways!”

  I’m as close to murder as I’ve ever been, trigger close, close to madness, tangled up in the ugly scenes Jimmy’s thrown at me, scenes of Sophie that—yeah—eat me alive.

  I want to put several bullets into Jimmy’s filthy mouth, blast his tongue to a pulp and his teeth to splinters, but I know that same mouth can give me the information I need. And Jimmy knows it, too. His smirk dissolves into something lazier, a smile more easygoing and confident, and even colder.

  In the glare of the overhead bulb, his face and neck bleached white, his arms and hands dissolving in the shadows across his lap, he looks like the Grim Reaper. He sounds like it, too, his wheezy whine drifting through the gloomy room like a noxious gas. “Now you listen to me, Gold. Here’s what’s on my mind. You know how I operate. You know I don’t give somethin’ for nothin’, not even with a gun in my face. You want information from me? You gotta give something back. Only now, you ain’t got much to give. You ain’t given me anybody for the Jacobson killing like I asked you this morning. And now there’s that messy business with the old lady’s brother. Yeah, I know all about that. That’s what’s on my mind, Gold, that guy’s head blasted right there in your car. That’s not the sort of result we had in mind, you understand? More bodies brings more attention from the newspapers, brings more cops nosing around.”

  It’s my turn to smirk, throw the lie back in Jimmy’s face about his worry over unwanted attention from the cops. But I pull the smirk back as soon as it creeps into the corner of my mouth because if I let on that I know about Jimmy’s early morning meeting with Lieutenant Huber, then Iris Page is as good as dead. It wouldn’t take long for Jimmy to figure that Iris must’ve overheard Huber’s visit and turned the story into a little cash.

  Jimmy’s left arm moves, just a little, his rumpled suit jacket catching light, but when I figure it, when I realize he’s pressed a button hidden under the table, it’s too late: I hear the buzz in the barroom, hear the door burst open, and feel a meaty arm around my neck, squeezing the air out while Jimmy pulls the gun from my hand. The glare of the light bulb gets dimmer. Jimmy’s shout, “Don’t kill her, Screwy!” sounds like it’s coming from far away.

  Then the pain around my neck lets up a little, the darkness that almost swallowed me opens up again. I can breathe a little easier and I can fight back, so I jab behind me at Screwy, my elbow digging into his fat belly over and over again, but he doesn’t let go, even when there’s a sharp slam across the left side of my face from something cold and hard. When my head snaps back I see what it was: Jimmy’s slammed me with the butt of my own gun.

  Jimmy’s sneer could sour milk. His hiss is the stuff of nightmares. “Do I have your attention, Gold? Look at me. I said look at me!”

  The left side of my face stinging, my choked throat pulling in all the air it can, I look at him, at that sneer, that icy brutality in his eyes, and then I spit in his face. It counts as one of life’s more satisfying moments, even when the inevitable punch to my gut comes from Jimmy’s fist.

  With Screwy still on my neck, I can’t even double over. I just have to take the pain while Jimmy hisses at me, “I could kill you right now, Gold,” before he even wipes my spittle from his face with his pocket handkerchief and restores his stony calm.

  He says, “I’d love to kill you right now, take your body apart and scatter it in the harbor from here to…well”—he’s sneering again, a lewd curl stretched along his teeth—“to wherever that freighter sailed. But I’m not finished with you, and you haven’t finished what you’re supposed to do.”

  “Why don’t you just hand me over to Huber, Jimmy? You want to.”

  “I might, if you don’t come through. But I’d rather give the cops the real killer. It’s
neater and cleaner that way. No inconvenient questions later. If we give them you, well, that might work in the short run—but hell, maybe that’s good enough.” His sneer curdles into a smile, sharp, brittle, and deadly.

  He’s still smiling when he opens my coat, slips my gun into its rig. “You’re gonna need this out there, Gold, if you’re goin’ up against a killer. Now be a good—what do I call you? Girl? Bull?” Laughing, he says, “Get her outta here, Screwy.”

  With his arm around my neck, I can’t see Screwy’s face, but I can tell he’s enjoying dragging me out of Jimmy’s office and across the bar while I shout, “You’re gonna tell me, Jimmy! You’re gonna tell me about that boat!”

  Screwy would kill me, too, just to shut me up, if his boss would let him. But since Jimmy’s decided to keep me alive, at least for now, Screwy will just have to be satisfied with some minor vengeance for the humiliation of me getting the jump on him in front of the thugs at the bar. He takes that vengeance when we’re at the front door. First he tosses me out to the street with enough force to send me tumbling to the gutter, my face scraping the cobblestones. Then he comes outside and kicks me, first in the ribs, then to the gut, then to my face. He doesn’t stop until I roll away from the next blow, pull my .38 and aim it up at him, shouting, “Listen, you galoot, Jimmy wants me alive! You, though, I’m not so sure about. You’d better get outta here, Screwy.”

  *

  Driving home was one long and brutal ache, and I’m not sure which hurts more, my beaten-up body or my beaten-up soul.

  Vivienne is gone from my apartment. I’m alone in my bed, alone except for my visions of Sophie. They follow me into sleep.

  There’s a woman screaming but I can’t see her, can’t get to her. It’s Sophie, screaming from somewhere inside a black cloud that’s drifting all around me, circling my body, rising up to surround my head, blinding me with black nothingness. There’s only Sophie’s scream, shrill and seeping through the black, a wail that tumbles into something thinner, weaker, older, Hannah Jacobson crying…crying…crying for her lost husband, her murdered children, Hannah Jacobson wailing. I can’t see her, just hear her, hear her horrible wail that keens through the blackness surrounding me like a whirlwind. The whirlwind roars, suffocating Hannah Jacobson’s cry, the deep roar getting louder, changing, becoming a howl, a terrifying howl flung at me from inside the black cyclone, the howl of a man dying, Marcus Stern dying, exploding, exploding the whirlwind—

  I bolt up from my bed. The nightmare scares me awake.

  Chapter Eleven

  Morning comes too early—a little after six by my bedside clock—after my lousy night’s sleep, if you can call it sleep. My bedsheets look like there was a war on. And I guess that’s what it was: a grinding, toss-and-turn war between my battered body and my nightmares.

  A long, hot shower soothes some of the ache left behind by Screwy’s pummeling, and strong coffee clears my head. But as I get dressed, finish tying my tie, slip my .38 into my shoulder rig, and put on my black suit jacket, what’s looking back at me in my bedroom mirror is a horror show. My face—already bruised from my crash on Drogan’s tug, nicked by flying glass and Marcus Stern’s exploding skull, and marred by Huber’s fist—is now rough with red scrapes from getting tossed onto the cobblestones outside Jimmy’s saloon, and blotchy where Screwy mashed my face with his foot.

  But the same urgency that woke me at an unholy hour this morning is pressing at my back now. There’s no time to wallow in my pain. I have to get to the root of last night’s nightmares. I have to find a murderer and the stolen Dürer. And I have to find Sophie.

  I start by phoning Judson.

  He mumbles, “What time is it?”

  “Nearly seven. I’ve got an important job for you, Judson.”

  “At this hour?”

  “At every hour from now on. There’s a boat you have to find.”

  Still groggy, he mutters, “Boat?”

  “A freighter. It sailed from Pier 8 on a March night in ’48. I need to know the name of the freighter and where it was going. Captain’s name, too.”

  “March?” He’s more awake now. “In 1948? You want me to trace a freighter that sailed two and a half years ago? Why? What was it carrying? Something of ours?”

  “It was carrying Sophie, Judson. It was a slaver, and it was carrying Sophie.”

  *

  There’s something terribly wrong in the soul of the world when you have to go to the same cemetery two days in a row to bury two members of the same family. The same rabbi who buried Hannah Jacobson is chanting the same prayers for her brother. Marcus Stern’s coffin glints in the same glow of morning sunlight. His wife wears the same dark coat and feathered hat, his daughter Francine is in the same blue coat she wore to her aunt Hannah’s funeral, the sunlight again dancing on the waves of her short blond hair. But there are more people at Marcus Stern’s burial than there were at Hannah Jacobson’s. Some look like front-office and executive-suite types, probably from Stern’s plastics factory. A few others look like workers from the factory floor come to pay their respects to the boss. But the extra attendees aren’t only mourners. There’s a handful of uniformed cops.

  So Huber’s as good as his word; he’s assigned a protective detail to what’s left of that family. If he wasn’t a cop, I’d kiss him.

  I stand back from the crowd, not as far away as I did from Mrs. J’s funeral, but far enough not to be noticed. Except I am noticed. Francine sees me after dropping her shovel of dirt into her father’s grave. She’s too far away for me to read the look on her face, but I get the general gist that it’s not warmly welcoming.

  When the service ends, and everyone heads back to the line of cars, Francine defies her mother and comes marching toward me. That’s when the cops notice me, too. One of them gets right to his protective duties and tries to stop Francine from approaching me, but she waves him off, evidently telling him she recognizes me.

  Angry at the world for destroying her family, yesterday’s pert and flirty college girl shows me another side of her: a young woman with a hard shell and a fierce heart. “You. What are you doing here? Haven’t you caused enough trouble for my family?”

  “Miss Stern, I’m here to—”

  She doesn’t give me a chance to finish, just starts hitting me, pounding me with her fists, calling me an animal, a criminal. I move to grab her wrists to stop her, then change my mind, just let her spend her anger on me. Her flailing blows are mostly absorbed by my overcoat, but they’re so careless in their fury, they wouldn’t do much damage, anyway. Francine Stern is no Screwy Sweeney.

  Her fisticuffs wind down when her anger is overwhelmed by what I’m sure is her immense grief. The curses she threw at me contract into choked sobs that sound so painful I’m afraid they’ll rip her throat. The strength to withstand her grief crumbles right down to her bones, and she falls against me, crying. “Why did you do this to us? What do you want from us?”

  “I want to help you, Miss Stern, I really do. But there are things you need to understand. If I’m going to help you, there are things we need to talk about, things you and your mother need to know. And you may even have information that I can use, information which could help free us, all of us, from all this death.”

  She pulls away and looks at me through eyes so filled with tears I’m sure I’m just a blur. But maybe that’s better. Maybe she can’t see the violence that’s been pummeled into my face, some of it the residue of her father’s killing.

  Whimpering, she says, “The police were right. You’re nothing but trouble. All your so-called help has brought this family nothing but misery and murder.”

  I take hold of her shoulders as gently as I can but firmly enough to make her face me and listen. “Miss Stern, believe me, I can help. There are things I know that might lead us to whoever killed your father and your aunt. You and your mother need to hear them. Maybe what I have to say can connect you to things you might remember, people you might remember, maybe even the k
iller. I know this is a rotten time, but the three of us have to talk.”

  Wiping her eyes with the back of her blue-gloved hand, her sniffling eventually peters out, her pretty face settling again into the sweet pathos of youth. “I still don’t get what’s your interest in this,” she says. Her distrust of me taints the conversation. “Yesterday you told me you liked my aunt Hannah. Well, so what? A lot of people liked her, but they’re not running around stirring up whoever killed her and…and…” She’s sniffling again, choking on her own words until she finally spits out, “And my father, too.”

  I take out my handkerchief and wipe her tears, ready for Francine to grab the handkerchief and defiantly do it herself. But she doesn’t. She just lets me wipe her tears away. Gently, feeling protective toward this young woman who’s been walloped by too much pain and grief in so short a time, I say, “I’ll explain all that when we talk. C’mon, let’s go get your mother.” I take her arm to escort her, but she pulls it away.

  “No, not here,” she says. “If you want to talk to us, come to the house. There’ll be a crowd of visitors, but we can escape into another room.” She gives me the address on Riverside.

  I don’t tell her I already know where she lives.

  *

  Two uniformed cops are at either side of the stairs outside the Stern town house. They’re eyeballing everyone who walks in.

  One of the cops blocks me from the stairs with his billy club. He doesn’t know who I am any more than he knows the other visitors to the house, but it doesn’t matter; he doesn’t like what’s going on on my battered face. Cuts and bruises like mine always raise the hackles in a cop’s suspicious brain. “What’s your business here?” he says.

  “I just came from the cemetery. Here to pay my respects.”