They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Fazio stood up as Hurley returned with my drink. She was nursing a glass of champagne. She seemed ill at ease when she sat down.

  “I know you’re grieving, but . . .” She cleared her throat, hesitated, her face reddening. “This is awkward, but when you’re feeling better would it be all right with you if I took you to dinner sometime?”

  I didn’t answer right away.

  “I know this is odd for you,” she said, “but it’s no good for me pretending that I don’t like you. And don’t be valiant or anything. Catching you on the rebound is better than not catching you at all.”

  Now I hesitated. “Listen. Sergeant—”

  “—Cathy,” she corrected.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready, Cathy.”

  “That’s okay,” she lied.

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “Please, I’d like that.”

  As she excused herself, I found myself reaching for her hand.

  “What is it?” she wondered.

  “I think I changed my mind,” I said. “Is that invitation for dinner still on the table?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give me two weeks, okay?”

  “Two weeks?” She winked. “I can wait two weeks.”

  I wrote my number down on a bar nap, stood and kissed her cheek. I spilled some of my Black and Tan on her shoes. I don’t think she noticed.

  “Two weeks,” she reminded me.

  “Better call or I’ll come looking for you.”

  “I’d hate that,” she purred.

  Smiling with substance for the first time in weeks, I continued making the rounds. As I moved through the crowd, I received an odd mixture of congratulation and condolence. MacClough was in his element, pouring beers and weaving tales to anyone who would listen. They all listened. I knew his stories by heart as if they’d been passed onto me for safekeeping, but I could listen to them still. He had the gift of making them fresh with each recounting. As I finished my pint, I lip-synced the words along with John as he captivated Guppy and my brother Josh with one of his favorites: the one about walking off his traffic post in Coney Island on the Fourth of July so he could bang a Puerto Rican nurse in the back of an ambulance. MacClough caught me watching, gave me a nod, and kept going without missing a beat.

  Before John got to the part where his captain catches him with the nurse, Larry Feld grabbed me by the elbow and ushered me to a more private part of the room. Larry understood very little about people beyond greed and desperation. He had always been too hungry and ambitious himself to notice much else. But Larry understood pain. It was the engine of his life, though I doubt he ever thought of it as such. And for the first time since his mother’s funeral, I saw real sorrow in his eyes. He held my hand as he held it that day. This time, however, it was his hand pulling me up from the depths. When he noticed the first hints of appreciation in my expression, he let go of my hand and disappeared.

  The bulk of the crowd had turned into pumpkins and rats well before the witching hour. There were only a few of us left. MacClough, of course. Fazio and Hurley, like any two self-respecting cops, were in it until last call. Jeffrey, looking for his heart in a bottle of single malt scotch, was lingering in a corner somewhere. Bob Street from the Star Spangled Deli and old man Carney, the proprietor of Carney’s Cabs, were playing a game of Buzz at the end of the bar with shots of Remy Martin and Grand Marnier. Card-carrying Bud drinkers, Street and Carney had expensive tastes when someone else was picking up the tab.

  Curious, I wandered over to Jeffrey’s lonely corner. “Did you pay for this?” I asked.

  Staring oddly at the bottle, he seemed not to understand the question. Then, realizing I wasn’t asking about the scotch, but the party, he had a good laugh at himself. It was a rare sight, seeing my big brother laugh at himself.

  “I paid for part of it,” he said. “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not, not really.” I sat down across from him. “I think there are some things we need to get out in the open.”

  “Cut to the chase, little brother.”

  “Was it your idea to cover-up what happened between MacClough and Hernandez?”

  “It’s not like you to be euphemistic, Dylan. What’s this ‘what happened between’ crap?” Jeff pointed to the bar. “Your buddy over there blew a suspect’s brains out and I turned him into a hero detective. So sue me.”

  “MacClough says it was suicide,” I defended.

  “Sure it was, little brother. Christ, I don’t know. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s convinced himself that’s what really happened. It’s a rather moot point, don’t you think?”

  “So John made detective on the strength of a corpse and Fazio’s career.”

  “Careers have turned on much less. MacClough was in the right place at the right time. It was his street contacts that led him to Hernandez, not mine. He was a damned beat cop, for chrissakes, a uniform. If he had just let it alone, worked his shifts and gone home, history would have been very different for all of us. But once he stuck his nose into things, he became the beneficiary of circumstance.”

  “Or,” I differed, “its victim.”

  “Or its victim.”

  “But why the cover-up? Why not—”

  “Because,” Jeffrey cut me off, “police corruption was rampant then. The department was in disarray, still reeling from the Knapp Commission. There had even been some rumblings of state or federal intervention. The last thing the NYPD needed at that moment was the fallout from a rogue cop torturing and killing a suspect. Remember, cops were still called pigs back then. Hernandez would’ve been seen as a convenient minority fall guy, another victim of the big bad police. So I seized the moment. Me, the ambitious little pis-sant A.D.A., turned a sow’s ear into a career for myself and a gold shield for your friend. With a bit of cooperation from the police brass—they were so fucking desperate to preserve their precious department, they would have done almost anything—MacClough’s promise to keep his mouth shut and a few favors from the press, I spun a potential disaster into shining glory.” Looking almost wistful, he said: “It’s too bad, really, you couldn’t have seen the headlines.”

  “Oh, but I did.”

  He didn’t seem to hear what I said and, as he continued to speak, Jeffrey gestured with his hands, framing imaginary headlines that floated somewhere above our table:

  “HERO COP BEATS FEDS TO THE PUNCH”

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face to break the trance.

  “God, Dylan,” he went on, “those were heady days. It was perfect. All the rumblings from Albany and Washington came to an abrupt halt. So if you are asking me whether the life of one scumbag kidnapper and the career of one honest cop was worth it, I’d say it was. If Fazio knew all the details, he’d agree.”

  “Okay, Jeff, I just wanted to hear it from your own lips.”

  Standing now, he said: “I haven’t properly thanked you for getting Zak back to us.”

  “Forget it. His being safe should be enough thanks for both of us.”

  “When did you get so smart?” he teased.

  “Obviously, when you weren’t looking.”

  “Save my seat. I want you to tell me about Kira.” He brushed his hand gently across my cheek. “I may never have met her, but I know she was too good for you.”

  Jeffrey could not have known how much the world would change before he got back to his seat.

  Bob Street and old man Carney had had enough. They held each other, zig zagging their way to the Scupper’s door. Once at the threshold, however, they were at a bit of a loss. I set them free, pushing open the door. The two of them stumbled onto the pavement, laughing. I watched them stagger on down the otherwise silent street until they disappeared fully into the night. The cool salty air felt good on my face and made a home for itself in my lungs, but I could feel exhaustion tapping at my shoulder. I looked forward to a lengthy visit with my bed. In some sense I was relieved that Kira and I had never shared th
at bed. If we had, I could never have slept there again.

  As I began to pull the door shut, I could still hear Bob Street and Carney laughing like giddy poltergeists moving onto their next haunt. I never did get the door closed. Another hand, a powerful hand held it open. I could say little about the man on the opposite side of the door other than he had a steel grip and was bathed in darkness. Beyond that, he was a mystery.

  “Sorry,” I said, “private party.”

  “I’m looking for MacClough, man,” was his answer to that. “I think he’s expecting me.”

  The muscles in my arm ached from holding the door against his grip. I called to MacClough, still futzing around behind the bar, and told him there had been a request for an audience.

  “If I’m expectin’ the man, let him in.”

  And in that instant I let go of the door, I knew something was wrong. The night visitor yanked the door open and came charging into the bar out of his darkness. He was a short, well-muscled latino dressed in fatigue pants and a white tank top. His exposed skin was a maze of grotesque tattoos, the tank top preventing me from making sense of the stains on his body. He sported a pinstripe-thin moustache above a wicked gray goatee. His scalp was shaved and his eyes were black and feral. They saw nothing but their prey, Johnny MacClough.

  “Hey pato” he hissed at MacClough, “you know who I am?”

  “I’ve been wait in’ for you, Angel.”

  Wild eyes almost smiled at that. “So you got my letter.”

  Fazio, passive until now, jumped to his feet when he heard Angel’s name. He reached for his ankle. Hurley too went for her gun. Suddenly, Angel saw more than MacClough.

  “This is for my brother,” Angel screamed, spitting, his hand disappearing behind his back. When his hand reappeared, it held a sawed-off shotgun.

  I jumped at him, but he flicked me away like ashes. I followed the barrel of the gun to MacClough’s eyes. They held no fear that I could see. Maybe I was invested in not seeing any. His eyes were impatient. Come on, they seemed to say, let’s get it over with. I remember yelling at Fazio and Hurley to do something. And then Jeffrey threw open the mens room door. It was human to look, to hesitate just a beat. But Angel was not human. The little shotgun coughed thunder, spit smoke and fire. The impact caught John squarely, freeing him from the restrictions of gravity. The beveled mirror on the bar’s back wall ended his brief flight. John slid to the floor, a shower of shattered glass and spirits anointing his body.

  Fazio and Hurley cut Angel to pieces almost before the scatter shot hit MacClough. As far as doing Johnny any good, it could have been a month later. The damage was done. Angel sprawled out, his head landing with a crack at my feet. The bullet holes had rendered his tattoos forever nonsensical.

  John was lifeless behind the bar. There would be no good-byes. The four of us, Fazio and Hurley, Jeffrey and myself, formed a circle around his body. Glass crunched under our feet. More out of reflex than hope, Fazio knelt down and touched his fingers to Johnny’s bloodied throat. There was nothing to feel but the heat running out of him.

  “I’ll go make the call,” Hurley volunteered.

  Then Fazio said something only survivors say: “It’s better this way.”

  He must have seen the confusion in my eyes and answered my question before I asked it.

  “Liver cancer,” he said, “and it was spreading. He wanted to tell you, but with your dad, the kid, and the girl, he just never had the heart.”

  I guess Fazio was right. It was better this way. John was haunted by his own father’s death from cancer.

  Pointing at Angel, Jeffrey asked: “Who was he?”

  “Angel Hernandez,” Fazio answered.

  “Hernandez!” The name caught in my throat.

  “That’s right, Klein, the kidnapper’s brother,” Fazio confirmed. “MacClough told me Angel had sworn to get even for his little brother.”

  Sirens replaced the laughter of giddy poltergeists as the soundtrack for the evening. Tires screeched. The Scupper was crowded once again. John always liked it when the Scupper was crowded.

  We passed the school where children played

  Their lessons scarcely done;

  We passed the fields of gazing grain,

  We passed the setting sun.

  —Emily Dickinson

  Epilogue

  Different Shades

  I had met many of John’s friends in the time we’d known one another. But I never realized what a small percentage that was until the funeral. In a way it was a shame that I met some of the faces I had only known through John’s stories. The reality could never match the broad brush of his words.

  The funeral was held at St. Mark’s, MacClough’s old Brooklyn church and parochial school. A member of the Emerald Society played the bagpipes from the balcony and one of his old schoolyard chums sang “Danny Boy.” Even the priest could not hide his tears. Half of Sound Hill was there, even some of the upper-crust summer vacationers took the time to say their good-byes. I had no idea where Angel Hernandez was buried.

  Walking my share of his coffin down the center aisle of the church, my arm ached as if it was carrying three bodies. My father’s death, Kira’s, and now Johnny’s were pulling me down. Too much of my universe had disappeared all at once. I thought my arm would float up after we slid John’s coffin into the hearse.

  Outside the church, there was the usual confusion about who was riding in what car and with whom. I had to bum a ride for Shelley Stickman, who was so worried about where I was going to find a new technical adviser that he had neglected to make his own arrangements. I grabbed Larry Feld and asked that he ride with me. Larry seemed surprised by the invitation, but didn’t put up a fight. I pointed him to the car and told him to wait for me there.

  I found Detective Fazio lighting up a Kent at the side of the church steps. We shook hands. He said all the things people say. He offered me a cigarette. I took one.

  “I hear MacClough left you the bar,” Fazio said, holding his lighter to the tip of my cigarette.

  “Me and his brother.” I handed him an envelope. “Here. I found this in MacClough’s papers. It’s addressed to you. Open it up.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  And before I could ask why not, he held his lighter to the corner of the envelope. He held it between his fingers until it was fully ablaze and then dropped it to the sidewalk. We watched the ball of ashes evaporate in the wind.

  Checking the tips of his fingers for burns, Fazio said: “I guess you’re curious.”

  “Always.”

  “It was MacClough’s sworn affidavit about the kidnapping and the coverup. MacClough promised it to me when he came to me for help.”

  “Why’d you destroy it?” I was puzzled. “You could have used it to prove you were right back then, that you were the victim of a cover-up. You could have sued the city, the department.”

  “Statute of limitations,” he said.

  “Since when are you a lawyer?”

  “Not the state’s limitations. My own.”

  Car horns cried out as Cathy Hurley found us.

  “There you two are. Everybody’s waiting for you, Dylan.”

  “I’m coming.” I smiled at her and turned to go.

  “Hey, Klein,” Fazio called to me. “If you need a barman, let me know. I’m pretty good with a beer pull.”

  “What about the Castle-on-Hudson PD?” I wondered.

  “No more make-believe for me,” he said. “Being around MacClough reminded me what it was like to be around real cops.”

  “He would have appreciated that. Thanks.”

  I led the procession in John’s fully restored ‘66 Thunderbird. I guess in his way John was trying to let me know he was dying. But when you assume a man will live forever, you don’t notice even the most obvious hints. Or maybe my father’s long crawl to death had blinded me. It was just another thing I would never know.

  Rather than heading directly to the cemetery, I circled the b
lock so that MacClough could pass the basketball courts behind the church one final time. Some kids were playing half-court and couldn’t be bothered to stop to contemplate mortality. Although I did not know him then, I could picture John as a kid, not stopping to look. He wouldn’t’ve seen the value in it. Everybody was going to die someday.

  Larry Feld just sat quietly, taking it all in. St. Mark’s was, after all, on the border of our old neighborhood. He frowned as we passed back in front of the church. I don’t suppose Larry ever understood my affection for anyone who wasn’t Jewish. As a child raised to believe in a world that consisted only of victims and victimizers, Larry had a clear sense of which role Jews historically played. Sure, most of his clients were gentiles, but that just felt like payback to Larry. It gave him a sense of superiority, power. I think Larry saw my friendships and dealings with non Jews as vaguely treasonous. The truth was that Larry saw my affection for anyone else as tantamount to betrayal.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Larry moaned as we sped down the Belt Parkway with the T-Bird’s windows wide open.

  “Is it?”

  “So, why’d you ask me to ride with you?”

  “I wanted to thank you for your help,” I said.

  “Frankly, Dylan, I would have preferred a nice bottle of Laurent-Perrier 1991. Riding in the lead car of a funeral procession for a guy I didn’t particularly care for isn’t my idea of thanks.”