I stepped back and walked around MacClough into the empty barroom. It was still an hour till the opening bell. My hands held what was left of my ribs together. They made a lousy patch. Most of the fog in my head had lifted, leaving only a migraine as a residue of its visit. I waited for MacClough to follow. He did not. He would not.
“I know about her, Johnny, about who Carlene Carstead wasn’t,” I shouted through the door, not certain my sparring partner was still back there to hear me. “I know who she was to you,” I paused waiting for him to stir. I might’ve waited forever. I took up again: “Ya know, MacClough,” I got conversational; loud, but conversational, “I’m no stud at crossword puzzles, but even I couldn’t trip over my own dick on this one. Down or across, it spells ‘Witness Protection Program,’” I finally gave voice to the hunch I’d been playing all morning.
Still, there was no answer. Outside, beyond the windows, brass-handled doors and neon beer signs, a winter fishing boat blew a mournful horn for some nautical reason beyond my citified comprehension or maybe just to protest the long hush of winter. But its protest had come too late. Christmas Eve gunfire had already broken that long silence.
“There’s some stuff, alotta stuff, I haven’t worked out yet,” I continued ray one-way discussion with the walls. “I don’t know who she rolled over on or when. Christ, MacClough, I don’t even know her real name. But something made her come outta hiding, something made her come looking for Johnny Blue. What was it?” I paused to give space for an answer that would not fill it.
“There’s a stiff buried in Dugan’s Dump,” I tried a new tack. “It’s wearin’ a gold and onyx pinky ring. But maybe you know about that already. I figure he’s—sorry—he was the shooter. Maybe you figured that, too. Maybe you planted him there. Why don’t we talk about it, MacClough? Come on.” Again nothing. “Listen, I’m not the only one interested in this. Soon, the whole neighborhood’ll be working on the puzzle,” I paraphrased Kate Barnum’s warning.
This time I gave him a pause pregnant enough to have two sets of twins. I was willing to wait. My ribs were not so patient. I dragged my coat sleeve across my face, smearing the cracked leather with scarlet-laced mucous, bitter tears and sweat from the pain. I poured myself a sip of stout to wash away the pasty vomit coating in my mouth. It didn’t work and the sweet, pungent flavor of the syrupy brew made me want to puke again.
I popped a lonesome quarter into the jukebox, punched up three numbers and started back toward the alley and the front seat of my car. Patsy Cline was singing the second line of “Crazy” by the time the back room door slammed behind me. MacClough hadn’t moved. He just stood there blank-faced and cold-eyed, unmoving but probably not unmoved. I wanted to say something to him, but the ripe odor of my thrown-up breakfast wouldn’t let me. I ran past him and fumbled with the exit door handle.
“Stay out of it, Klein,” MacClough muttered over my shoulder, reaching around me and pulling the door open to the fresh, freezing air. “By the time anyone else puts things together, my business will be done.”
Business! What’s he talking, business? Murder wasn’t business. Murder was murder no matter how you dressed it up. I’d worry about that later. For now, I was preoccupied with folding myself into the driver’s seat and cursing the day I met John Francis MacClough. After the drive began, the target of my disdain switched to manual transmissions. On the journey to the hospital, my ribs made certain to point out every bump, pothole and road hazard. Every fucking one!
A great feature of eastern Long Island is the less tainted attitude of its health care professionals. Unlike the “if it’s not a gunshot wound above waist, sit down, shut up and wait your turn” attitude which prevails at city hospitals, local trauma units will treat the non-terminal without a notarized letter from a clergyman certifying you have valid health insurance, and you won’t even have to wait half as long as Penelope did for Ulysses to see a physician.
I had mixed feelings about my doctor. He was male. That was good because I didn’t feel obliged to suck in my gut, which might have killed me, or to flirt. On the other hand, flirting in my current state would’ve been a real challenge. The doctor was young. That meant his education was still fresh and his techniques current. Unfortunately, his only application of those techniques might have involved lab cadavers that tended not to complain or litigate.
His nameplate indicated he was Jewish. That was, unless Steven Cohen had suddenly become a popular moniker in the Christian world. Oh, did I mention, he was wearing a yarmulke? I could be so observant. Normally, a doctor’s religion didn’t move me, but today I had a question.
“That was some nasty fall you took, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen muttered sarcastically, reaching around my back to grab the roll of tape. “Lucky they’re only bruised. There!” he patted down the edge of the tape with equal amounts pride and aplomb. “In a few weeks they’ll be like new. As for your nose . . .” he referred back to the X-ray, “it’s fine, but you may wake up tomorrow with a black eye or two.”
“Assuming I ever get to sleep,” I slapped the binding about my ribs and immediately regretted the gesture.
“I see your point.”
“Hey Doc,” my smile surprised him, “I got kinda an odd question for you.”
“Ask away, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen liked questions.
“How good are you with the Torah?”
“That is the oddist question I’ve been asked today,” he smiled back, self-conscously adjusting his skullcap. “I’m fair. Why?”
“I’m a freelance writer and I’m researching a story on the flight of European Jews to Palestine after the war.” Hey, it wasn’t a total lie. I was a writer and I figured my approach would hook him. “Anyway, two sources of mine have mentioned a little girl who escaped from Auschwitz and made it to Palestine entirely on her own. Unfortunately, they can’t remember her name exactly and I can’t print the story without confirmation.”
“It sounds quite amazing,” Cohen admitted, his eyes as wide as silver dollars, “but what does my familiarity with the Torah have to do with any of this?”
“Patience, Doc. Patience.” We both laughed at my inadvertent pun. “I’m getting to that. One of my sources swears she had a strange name, something biblical, something like Andrella. I don’t know. I guess I’m just grasping at straws now.”
Cohen started pacing, scratching at his hairless chin and rubbing the back of his neck. “Andrella, Andrella,” he mouthed over and over, “Andrella.” He stopped pacing: “Sorry, Mr. Klein. I’m drawing a blank, but I can check up on it and get back to you.”
“Thanks, Doc, I’d really appreciate that.” We shook hands. “And thanks for patching me up.”
He told me it was no trouble at all, suggested that I come see him in a week and gave me something for the pain we both knew I was going to have. He warned me to take it easy and apologized for his coming up with zero on the girl’s name. He assured me he’d get my number off the hospital report and that he’d call if his sources could deliver a name. He shook my hand and shook his head. Dr. Cohen didn’t like not knowing answers. This was going to eat at him.
A butterball of a nurse in old-fashioned whites, a silly hat and elastic hose with enough tensile strength to support a small office building cleaned me up a bit, helped put me back together and gave me half a roll of Certs for my breath. I winked at her. She liked that. She escorted me to the exit at no extra charge. From here to the car I would have to fly solo.
“Mr. Klein!” Dr. Cohen came sprinting after me, one hand holding his yarmulke against the wind. “Mr. Klein!” I stopped to let him catch me and to catch my breath. “I don’t know if it’s the name you’re looking for,” he was gasping for air himself. “Too much time trying to keep everyone else in shape,” the young doctor held his heart.
“The name, Doc,” I put him back on course.
“Could it have been Azrael?” he wondered sheepishly, as if regretting the speaking of those words aloud.
“I gues
s it could’ve been. It’s odd. It’s biblical-sounding,” I was non-committal and just this side of unenthusiastic. The fact was, I didn’t know.
“No,” he kicked disappointedly at the ground, “it wouldn’t be that. I don’t even know why I suggested it.”
“Educate me, Doc. Why wouldn’t it have been her name?”
“Azrael, Mr. Klein, is the angel of death. Would any parent name his or her child after the angel of death?”
“In this world, who knows?” I threw up my hands and almost collapsed in pain. “But I suppose you’re right, Doc. Nice try, anyway. Thanks.”
He left me without a farewell, walking back to the hospital like the Mighty Casey walking back to the dugout after the third strike. Doctor Cohen was a little less familiar with failure than myself. That was good for him.
Once folded in, I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes thinking about the angel of death. I thought about the angel’s trail I’d been following lately, about the stiff in the dump and the little drowned girl with the stolen name. I thought about the dead woman in orange make-up and mink. And, I thought, if her name wasn’t Azrael, God, it should have been.
And She Did
“You look like shit,” Kate Barnum noted before I had both of my legs through the door of the scavenged old whaling ship.
“The best part is, I get to feel worse than I look,” I winked, easing myself into her age-shredded sofa. “Got a beer to wash down my pain killers with?”
“Sure.” She ambled barefoot into the kitchen and reappeared holding a glass mug smeared with fingerprints on the outside and full of unnamed beer within. “How’d it happen? And don’t tell me you fell into an uncovered washing machine.”
“Nah. If that happened, I’d be dead. Can’t swim a stroke.” I got guilty quiet thinking about a little girl floating face down in Ponsichatchi Creek. Sometimes it’s not funny. What you think about, I mean.
Barnum mistook my change of expression for bad beer. “The beer sour?”
“No. Just everything else.”
She lit a butt and nuzzled up next to me, her free hand falling carelessly onto my chest. I nearly passed out when it landed.
“Ribs,” I coughed out.
“Sorry. Christ, you really are in bad shape. I thought the black eyes were just a fashion statement!” the reporter snickered nervously. “You must be getting close. Someone warn you off?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Next question.” I sat up again, breathing as normally as a man could with a hundred yards of tape around his middle.
“MacClough, huh.” Barnum lit up the room with her self-satisfaction.
“You are good.”
“I didn’t get to where I was by being dull-witted, Klein.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “but how’d ya get to where you are now?”
“Next question.” It was her turn to look like a swallow of bad beer. We were even.
“Do you still have access to the Times morgue?” I wondered.
“Not officially. Why?”
“You’re not Jewish, Barnum, so stop answering my questions with questions. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” she acquiesced.
“Go back twenty-five years and work—”
“Twenty-five years!”
“And work forward,” I continued. “You’re lookin’ for a mob trial in which a woman turns state’s evidence and then goes underground.”
Kate pulled a bottle of house brand bourbon out from under the kidney-shaped coffee table and took a warm-up swallow. When she was warmed up, she took another.
“You want to give me any details or am I going to have to stay in the morgue for twenty years just looking?” she queried with as much enthusiasm as a pig for a ham sandwich.
“Don’t get so excited. One thing is you won’t have to look that far forward. The envelope is twenty-five to twenty years ago. It’s the only time frame that fits. Secondly, I’m pretty sure the woman’s name was Azrael.” I wasn’t certain at all, but I was getting pretty comfortable with lying. “Might’ve been a nickname. I don’t know.”
“Azrael?”
I spelled it for her.
“Not much to go on,” she yawned and took another swig. The cheap stuff was tasting like Wild Turkey by now.
“It’s enough.” I tamped out her cigarette to underline by two words.
“Let’s fuck, Klein,” she changed gears and subjects and removed her sweatshirt.
“Christ,” I laughed uncomfortably, “I wish you’d just get to the point.” I don’t know what it is exactly. Maybe men are unnerved by women who not only think like they do, but who give voice to their thoughts. “Sorry,” I ran a fingernail along the tape ridges about my ribs. “Besides, you play too rough.”
“Just come with me, baby,” she helped me out of my seat, her left nipple brushing my cheek. “I’ll do all the work.”
And she did. Most of it, anyway.
Now we were just lying there, sleepless and lonely on her smoky sheets in the dark; the absence of love robbing the room of breathable air. Even before she could finish taking what I had to give, I could feel the emptiness creep in the window like poison gas. In the absence of love, consummation is the cruelest part of desire. Barely able to make out her shape in the blackness and gas, I wondered if she’d simply gotten used to it. I never have.
“Do you know what question couples forever wonder about but never ask until it’s too late?” Barnum spoke into the night.
“No,” I answered, somehow relieved that she felt the absence, too.
“Where did it go? That’s what they ask. Where did it go?”
And I did not respond. What was there to say, anyway? In any case, I was in no shape to look any harder at myself than I was already. She got up to find the bathroom and the bottle and a pack of cigarettes. I also think she went to take a look.
Magic Trick
My black eyes had just about finished their technicolor journey through the contusion spectrum. Their deep purple stage was definitely my favorite. I looked good in dark colors. As for my ribs. . . They were still sore, but it now took more than the brush of a careless hand to set me into convulsions. I decided to skip my follow-up visit with Doc Cohen until the painkillers ran out. MacClough and I were avoiding a rematch by avoiding each other. We both knew I couldn’t leave things alone, but hey, stuff happens. Right?
Kate Barnum was splitting her time between two newspapers. Her articles in the Whaler concerning subtle changes in the local zoning ordinance were right on, but about as compelling as a compost heap. Covering this kind of stuff would kill her way before the butts and the booze. I could almost understand her desperation. Barnum’s spare moments were spent digging at the Times; unofficially, of course, and without result.
I was sitting at the word processor watching the eleventh snowfall of the winter. Eleven stuck in my head because that was one more page than my short story about the Japanese contained. That’s how many pages it had two weeks ago. That’s how many pages it was going to have. I’d been making lots of lists lately of writers I’d never be. I caught myself praying for the phone to ring. Sometimes prayers get answered.
“This Klein?” the man’s vaguely familiar voice wanted to know.
“This Klein. You Jane.” I took a weak shot a humor.
“Huh?” My shot missed. “Funny man. Real funny.” Johnny’s ex-partner Terence O’Toole lashed out scornfully. “You remember me, funny man?”
“I remember you, O’Toole. I guess you’re callin’ about Johnny.”
“Yeah, I been thinking about him and that bitch.”
“What you been thinking about ‘em?” I tried moving things along.
“You remember where I live?” The ex-cop was in a nasty mood.
“I remember.”
“Get here. I got something to sell you.” he laughed uncomfortably.
“What about the snow?”
“Fuck the snow. And hey, Klein, I’m al
most dry. Bring me something for my throat. Maybe I’ll knock a few bucks off the price,” the old giant burped into my ear.
“One thing O’Toole,” I didn’t let him hang up.
“What?”
“The girl’s name. Was it Azrael?”
“You been doing your homework, Klein,” I could hear him smile. “Yeah, that was the Jew cunt’s name,” he stuck the verbal knife in and twisted it. “It’s good that you done your homework. It’ll make our business easier. Be here soon!”
I got there, but it wasn’t soon. Old Volkswagens don’t like the snow. I played my one cassette of British Invasion hits twice. It might’ve had time for a third go around, but I couldn’t stand to hear “Pictures of Matchstick Men” again. Like most things in my VW, the fast forward and rewind buttons hadn’t worked in a decade. I kept pulling the new fifth bottle of Murphy’s Irish out of the sack, but no combination of bad traffic, bad weather, bad ribs and bad music could make me take a sip.
O’Toole’s block was beehive busy with snow day kids hitting up their neighbors for snow shoveling money. In one form or another every driveway and every inch of sidewalk on the street had been dug out or cleared. No, not every driveway, not every inch. O’Toole’s driveway was still a field of beaten egg whites and his sidewalk was invisible under the white snow. I didn’t like it. I don’t know why. I just didn’t.
There were two sets of footprints leading up the steps to the old cop’s door. One set was small and irregular. Probably the result of a neighbor kid fighting the accumulation, looking for snow removal work. The other set was widely spaced and deep and made by an adult foot. I’d guess a man’s foot, but what the fuck did I know from footprints. The bigger prints had come first. I could tell that much. More snow had re-accumulated in their cavities than in the small prints. I thought about the print Azrael had left in the snow outside the Rusty Scupper and then rang O’Toole’s bell.
He didn’t answer and he never would. He woud never drink the Murphy’s or throw a shot glass at his dead son’s photo. He’d never again call anyone nigger or Jew cunt or spic or dot head. He’d just rot in a grave like everyone he hated.
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