by Sposs, Mike
How had he missed that Sylvia was a prostitute? It all made sense as he thought about it. The filmy nightgowns she wore at times. The provocative wardrobe, the perfume, and the haunting line about not ending up like her; it all calculated. The math reference “it calculated” was taunting his inability to see what was blatantly obvious now that he looked at it in his rear view mirror, more than ten years later. He hated being taunted.
He thought about the street smarts angle. Maybe, Mr. Sharpe really knew more than he said. He was generally an open book, but you had to ask. Mr. Sharpe was not an idle gossip guy. In retrospect, Kevin revised his thinking and admitted that he needed to go back and review what he thought he knew. Including what he thought he knew about Pat. Being overconfident and assuming things. We all know what happens when you do that, Kevin thought.
One thing for sure he did know was the neighborhood around the Avenue better than anyone else. In the old days, if you gave him an address in about a two square mile area around the Avenue, he could tell you what the house looked like. Who lived there, what they did for a living. How much glass was in the alley behind the house? He could tell you what kind of car they drove, and if they had a dog or not. He knew if they had kids & approximately how old they were. Many of those details had changed in the last 10 years, but some hadn't. There was something nagging at him that he couldn't fit into place.
He hoped that Pat was still in the apartment; she had a great memory too. Kids always take in things adults miss and what kids miss, adults sometimes register, he thought. It was going to take the kid memory and adult reasoning to figure this one out. He took out the old picture taken at the grocery store and studied it. Clearly, Marcy did not remember Kevin today. He didn't want her to remember him; he hoped she remembered her mother, though. The young pretty, smiling one in the picture.
Kevin threw out his almost untouched bourbon. He didn't want to show up at his AA Chapter lounge reeking of alcohol. Ironically, the chapter was across the street from the VFW where plenty of veterans still drank hard, regularly. His dad had been a regular there for years.
Then he went on down to the AA chapter to meet Mr. Sharpe. He took the bus instead of driving. When he got there, Mr. Sharpe was sitting there drinking coffee and working on his second pack of unfiltered Pall Malls for the day. He greeted Kevin, poured him a cup of coffee, and took him to a private room.
"You looked upset when I told you about Marcy today. You must have more questions," he said.
"Yeah, I do have questions. You said that riots are good opportunities for people to settle scores. I don't doubt that they are. Is there something specific you know and can tell me about?" said Kevin.
Mr. Sharpe started out by saying he couldn't prove anything, but from his years in the neighborhood, he knew of three guys that probably settled some scores during the burning and looting. The three names were not unknown to Kevin. One was a thug that specialized in the drug trade. His name was Jesse Campbell, and he was a bad man. Everyone knew that he had his crew raid and torch the two pharmacies on the Avenue when it was burned. He ended up with a stash of prescription narcotics out of the deal. In those days, the merchants always kept them under lock and key in a separate area. A smash and grab of those would take someone who knew the layout about 30 seconds for 4-5 thousand dollars worth of drugs. A second raider could get the pain killers like Percodan and stuff like that in 30 seconds, too. Then a small fire could be left to start while the unruly mob cleared the shelves of merchandise.
Nobody could ever prove it, of course. Just about nothing was left after the fires consumed the buildings. In that neighborhood, people never talk to the police. Kevin always wondered if the fire marshal ever really did a good investigation after the riot. It would be labeled a rubber stamp arson case and that was it. The thought made him wonder about Sylvia; did anyone ever really go through the rubble looking for her body?
The second name Mr. Sharpe mentioned was Tyrone Jenkins, the owner of the black barber shop, Kevin used to deliver to. He ran a betting and numbers business out of the barber shop. It was news to Kevin who was too young back then to catch stuff like that. Again, it hit him what a dope he had been not to pick up on this. Just as with Sylvia's real profession, he missed it completely. The whole time, he thought the customers were guys that just liked to talk sports. Now, it turned out to be way more than that. Mr. Sharpe said that several of the black business owners were burnt out the second night of the riots because of failure to pay gambling debts. Then, it hit Kevin that maybe the funeral home was burnt for this reason.
The third name was actually two brothers, Sam and Donny McCann. They were in the sex trade. Donny was the classic pimp of the Avenue. He had the gold, the wardrobe, the enormous Coupe de Ville with sixties style fins that Kevin always admired. He was a bad, mean man. His brother was the enforcer in the partnership, and probably the brains.
Sam did not dress like a pimp. He lived as a matter of fact in an apartment above the funeral home. He was a giant. He was so tall that he had to duck to get under most doorways. He was a full six feet eight. The guy was 300 lbs of solid muscle. Donny kept the girls in line, no problem. Sam kept the Johns in line, and anyone else infringing in his business. He supposedly owned the Funeral Home. He lived above it and would go out in the middle of the night with a skinny actual undertaker and pick up any bodies the home had calls to get.
Christ knows, he was big enough to handle the biggest cadaver you could ever find on any level of any house, thought Kevin. One night, he had scared the shit out of Kevin when Kevin knocked on the upstairs apartment of the funeral home to collect for his route. Sam threw open the door and lunged underneath the doorway with his enormous head. In his hand, which was about the size of a small ham, he held a knife. Kevin was so scared, he practically wet himself. He almost tumbled down the stairs like he had when meeting Sylvia Greenberg for the first time. He did get a nice tip from Sam that night though.
From then on, Kevin always took great pains to make lots of noise before he came up the stairs to collect from Sam, and to announce himself as he clumped up the stairs. After the fires, Sam and Donny did not go out of business. They just concentrated more on prostitution. They always had two enormous houses side by side on English Avenue that they had converted into whore houses. They were less than a block from the funeral home, if you cut through the parking lot. Sam could get over there to fuck someone up that needed it in under sixty seconds, Kevin thought.
11. German North Dakota
As Kevin thought about it, he couldn't help but imagine a scene with some guy who thought he was a tough, turning around in the cramped quarters of the whore house to see Sam McCann, giant son of a bitch standing there. There wouldn't be any getting away unless you wanted to jump out a second or third story window. Talk about your worst nightmare; Sam McCann would have been it.
Mr. Sharpe snapped Kevin out of his reverie by saying, "I think the logical culprits in this were the McCanns. They would not have liked a freelancer right in their own back yard, so to speak. If you really want to know more, start by going to a library and reading the old clippings. Then go see Tom Casey; he is a detective downtown. I know he could point you to the detective that has the case now. They never closed it you know."
"Thanks Mr. Sharpe. You know a little bit about everything in this neighborhood," Kevin said.
"Well, you knew the three names, and except for Tyrone, you knew what they did for a living. On a different subject, my wife is going to scold me if I don't ask you about your romantic life. Any girls in your life, or are you just out there still sowing your wild oats?" he asked with a grin.
"It’s funny you should ask that. Do you remember Pat Washington?" Kevin said.
"I remember her quite well. She was one of the best students I ever had. I grew up in a small town in North Dakota two towns over from where her mother was from. So, I knew her mother from a long time ago, too," he said.
Kevin knew Mr. Sharpe was from North Dakot
a. He didn't know Hannah Washington was also from there. "This was the same part of the world that Lawrence Welk was from. A lot of that country was settled by German speaking people that were forced out of the Russian Steppes back in the Czarist days. North Dakota was about as close to the Steppes as you could get as far as climate was concerned. It was isolated barren country," said Mr. Sharpe.
"You had to be tough to survive. There were no forests in this part of the world. They burned coal to keep themselves alive in the brutal winters. The cemeteries didn't have wooden crosses in them or granite headstones; they were made of iron out there," Mr. Sharpe said.
Mr. Sharpe then shared with him that you could walk through those cemeteries and see where half the kids in a family had died within days of each other the same winter from influenza outbreaks and stuff like that. The people had to be like the crosses they had to bear. Tough as iron, Kevin thought.
"I knew Hannah Steiner; that was her maiden name, from back then. Life was especially tough for young women in that part of the world. They weren't going to inherit the farm because they couldn't work in it if they did. Because of the isolation, it was a little inbred out there too. If you found a man you liked he was probably related to you. The girls were forced to come to the big city once they got to a certain age and weren't married. A lot of those girls ended up here working in factories during the war," he said.
"It was better here in some ways. There was work, which those girls were not afraid of. They could do anything mechanical having been farm girls," he continued on.
"Hannah ended up at a factory that sewed uniforms for soldiers during the war. If Pat is anything like her mother, she is a tough minded lady and she would easily keep the likes of you in line," he said with a smile.
Kevin laughed. "She is one very tough cookie; that much I know. I have never heard her say anything about her dad either. Did you know him by any chance?"
"I did not know him. I never met the man. I do know that he worked in the same factory with Hannah and maintained the machines. He was so good at it that he did not get drafted during the war. They gave deferments to people in defense related industries. A factory full of women working on military uniforms being shut down because a skilled worker wasn't around to fix the equipment would have been a serious problem," he said.
Mr. Sharpe started to say more, but then stopped himself quickly. "My time is up, the Mrs. expects me home about now," he said.
Kevin wanted to ask more questions, but they were out of time. He told Mr Sharpe that he would take a look at the old clippings, and maybe even talk to the detectives. Then he headed home too.
As he rode the bus home, Kevin thought about Lawrence Welk. He did always talk with an accent of sorts. No wonder Mr. Sharpe always watched Lawrence Welk every Saturday evening! Then he thought about Hannah Washington. If you grew up in a climate and environment like she did, how would that affect your children, he wondered. It slowly dawned on Kevin as he thought about it just what a hard life she and now her daughter had. When he first met Pat way back then, her clothes were always hand sewn. Makes sense now that you think about it. Hannah was probably an expert seamstress. Kevin supposed that once she got to junior high school, she must have implored her mother to get her store-bought clothes, like the other kids. He was pretty sure the store bought stuff came from thrift stores, now that he thought about it. Kevin used to like to tell people he had to join the Navy to get his first pair of new shoes; in Pat's case, he wondered if she ever really had a pair of new shoes.
Her mother was always strict with Pat. She did not fit in easily with other girls and boys her own age because of her smarts, or maybe because she was so tall too. Then there was the stigma of the AFDC and living in the projects. A lot of parents probably didn't want their child befriending a girl like Pat. It's no wonder that she retreated into her music, her studies, and her room, as she grew up. It was no wonder she had a chip on her shoulder too. She really had been cheated out of a normal childhood, though she would never acknowledge it out of loyalty to her mother.
Going to the university must have been a good experience for Pat, Kevin thought. She was at least around a crowd she could talk to. She had no boyfriends in high school to speak of, just other semi-outsiders like Kevin. They sort of had an implicit agreement not to write to each other about their relations with the opposite sex during their pen pal years. The real truth is that neither one probably had the stomach to listen to the other talk about sex and relationships with someone else. It just would have been bad French to do so.
One of the things Kevin decided he would do was read the clippings, and maybe even talk to the detectives. He still wanted to know how they handled the monumental task of looking into crimes committed during the riots.
12. Matt Tunnel Rat
Another week went by, and Pat showed up again. This time, it was early one evening about 6:00 pm. She looked a little nervous and a little worn out. "Hi Pat," Kevin said, wondering if she was checking up on him again.
"Hi Kevin," she said. "I just finished my last practice session, and I thought I'd drop in on you before I go home."
"Come on in. Have you eaten anything since lunch?" Kevin asked.
"No, to tell the truth, I'm famished," she said.
"Let's go get something to eat, my treat," said Kevin. So they went down the elevator, and across the street to get something to eat.
"They have great burgers here if you are interested," Kevin said.
"Yum, a big juicy burger with all the fixings sounds great to me,” she said.
They ordered, and she even talked herself into a beer while they were waiting.
"By the way, do you remember Sylvia Greenberg? She lived on the Avenue right above the little grocery store between Jerome and Kansas. Maybe you don't know the name, but she was the pretty blond teenager with the about four-year-old daughter that you used to see swinging down the street. She always stood out like a sore thumb because of her looks, and blondness. Here is a picture of us in front of the grocery store," Kevin said as he picked the picture he recently had looked at out of his pocket and handed it to her.
"I do remember her, now that I see the picture. Oh my god, is that you? I always wondered about her. She had no business with that little girl down there. What brings her to mind?" Pat asked.
"You asked me the other day if I saw any old faces at the school," Kevin said. "It turns out that I saw an old face, but it actually belonged to Marcy Greenberg, the little girl. She joined Mr. Sharpe's math club, and she looks exactly like her mother did those days."
Then Kevin told Pat about Sylvia, though she already knew the story, and the circumstances under which he last saw her. Pat was amused about the big-time crush Kevin had on Sylvia. She was delighted about him falling down the stairs ass over tea kettle.
“Not surprising that Willie wanted a blond white girl. He always had a thing for them. Falling down the stairs serves you right for ogling that poor girl. Too bad you didn't learn. You continued to ogle the ladies. It's hard to believe that little girl is in ninth grade now,” she said.
"Well, ogling is really not too surprising to me. You’ve never been a horny ninth grade boy. I've seen my share of black chicks that I thought were gorgeous. Cute little blonds aren't off my radar, or tall, blue eyed brunettes for that matter," Kevin said as he looked at her for a reaction.
"Yeah, and you weren’t against trying to flirt with any of them either, as I recall. That's what I always liked about you, equal opportunity all the way. In this picture, you were just a skinny boy, but I sure liked you even then. You were a cute boy with nice curly hair. Marcy looks almost as cocky as you do. You know Sylvia was a freelance prostitute, right?" Pat asked.
"No, I didn't know that until Mr. Sharpe told me that part of it just a week ago. You are telling me the same thing now. I guess I was the last one to know what was common knowledge back then. Do you know the rest of the story?" Kevin asked.
Then Kevin proceeded to tell Pat abo
ut Sylvia’s disappearance and suspected foul play.
"You know, there are six or seven libraries on campus. You could easily go back to the old clippings from that time and see if there was anything in them about her disappearance. I also have to say that I am the slow one. It just dawned on me how blind you are to simple observation when you befriend someone," Pat said.
The burgers arrived, and they both ate like they were famished. Kevin wondered what she meant by that last remark. There wasn't anything that got past her.
"Speaking of old faces, do you remember Matt T?" she asked.
"Matt, the tunnel rat? I remember him," Kevin said.
Matt had been a wiry little gymnast from the neighborhood, about five years ahead of Pat and Kevin in age. Kevin would bet there weren’t six kids Matt’s age in the entire country that could do what he could do on a high bar back in his school days. He had more heart than sense. After high school Matt, got drafted into the Army. They capitalized on his size and heart all right. They made him a tunnel rat in Vietnam. He was fearless. Of course, when he came back, he was never the same.
He would panhandle on the Avenue until it was burned down. Every night, he would drug and/or drink himself into oblivion. Generally, he slept around or under the railroad trestles by the river. Kevin suspected those old veteran GI shop keepers kept him fed every night with food that was getting close to expiration dates, or spoiling. He always seemed to turn up on the Avenue right at shop closing time. Kevin could bet that Matt put tears in some of those guys’ eyes when they saw him every night. The thought of seeing him put tears in Kevin's eyes. It reminded him of how damaged his own father was by his war experiences, and it made him rage a little.