Last Dark Place

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Comedy had called the woman a nigger. Blue had slapped him so hard that Comedy had gone to his knees spitting blood.

  “I told you none of that racist crap,” Blue had said in the alley after they had raped the woman and were heading toward the street, the crying kid behind them kneeling on both knees next to his mother.

  “Sorry,” Comedy said, getting up.

  “He’s sorry,” Easy Dan had said. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  “Everybody’s the same,” Blue had said. “No spies, no chinks, no dagos, no nothing. People are goddamn people. Women are all the same. They get no passes for being white or red or fucking fudge ripple.”

  When they got in the car, Blue had sat behind the wheel, fingers gripping tightly, not saying what he felt and thought, that if his own whore of a mother who had run out on him when he was five ever showed up again, he’d do to her what he did to them all, young, old, anything.

  He knew it was an obsession, an addiction he had come across, welcomed, been surprised. Came from nowhere. Burst out. A girl. Young. Easy Dan and Comedy were with him. They were heading for who knows where. Cruising, listening to the beat-beat-beat of a heavy metal band.

  He didn’t tell them what he was going to do. He had just grabbed her, pulled her into the car, his head pounding with anger, his palm over her mouth.

  That was the first. What? A month ago? Two months? It wouldn’t last forever or maybe it would. They would catch him, the cops, or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe he should throw some things in the car, drive anywhere with or without Dan and Comedy, start it all again. But he knew he wouldn’t do it.

  Screw it.

  Comedy came out of the kitchen with a bottle of Dr Pepper in his hand, a grin on his face, his usual swagger-bounce. Blue heard the front door of the house open. He couldn’t see who it was. Probably his father or his grandmother wondering where he was when they needed him. Blue had ignored the ringing phone.

  Whoever it was stepped around the corner of the little entry hall and stood facing the Blue Glee Club.

  8

  WAYNE WENT HOME. HE wasn’t disappointed. It was a nice day and the weatherman on WGN, Tom Skilling, had said it would be just as nice tomorrow.

  Wayne tucked the gun into a drawer and went to his worktable. It was big, flat, smooth white wood with paint stains from years of work. He put a Lee Cole Carter CD in the player his cousin Anton had given him last Christmas.

  The sign Wayne worked on was for the St. Stephen’s rummage sale. Each year he made a bigger sign, more colorful, always with a cross, always with a basket of clothes, toys, and books flowing out of it. Date, time, and place in the corner in bright red. He had charged them nothing for the sign but took a gift certificate for five dollars in rummage-sale goods.

  When Wayne’s father had been alive, the two of them had planned the signs, discussed them, came up with new ideas that would attract buyers. They had tried religious appeal. It hadn’t worked. They had tried the hope of salvation for good deeds. That hadn’t worked. They had tried a simple bright shout of bargain and that had been reasonably successful. Between the two of them, they had made eight signs to put around the neighborhood, including the window of the Clean Cut barbershop. Now Wayne made only five signs, but that seemed to be enough.

  “Whiskey don’t dull the pain,” he sang along with the man he planned to kill the next day.

  Wayne laid down a splash of blue and stood back to admire it, singing “but it sure does make a stain that covers my poor heart like a layer of tin.”

  He sighed, satisfied. When he finished the sign, he would make another, one for himself. The walls of the small house were covered with posterlike signs, signs and posters his father would never have allowed, not that his father was a hard man, not that he would forbid, but his disapproval would be there and he would just take them down without a word to his son if it had to come to that.

  There were six posters on the wall of the bright, sunny room with four tall, uncovered windows.

  One poster was of a man with a guitar standing on the moon at night, cowboy hat on his tilted-back head. Wayne was good at drawing people. This one looked a little like Willie Nelson. The yellow words against the night sky were It’s all got to end.

  That was the earliest of the posters. Wayne had advanced from such pessimism as his mission slowly emerged.

  Poster two was of a couple dancing on top of a car at the Lake Michigan shore down by Fiftieth Street. It was night again. The couple was wearing formal clothes like the ones they wore to the Sullivan High School prom, which Wayne had not attended though he had done the posters. The words, in blue outlined in white, were Never Stop Dancing.

  Poster three was a trio of grinning dwarfs dressed in zoot suits and lined up with guns in their hands facing whoever might be looking at them. The words, black against a white strip, were, We represent the Lollipop Kids.

  Poster four, three weeks old: The face of a man with his mouth opened wide, wider than humanly possible and inside the mouth were marbles, all different colors, all different sizes, hundreds of them and over the man’s head, white on purple, were the words, There’s always room for one more.

  Poster five, last week: All red with a single burst of white in the center that sprayed droplets in all directions. One word in black: Soon.

  Poster six, two days ago: All black, no words.

  “Can’t melt it with a blowtorch,” he sang softly. “Can’t chip away with the hammer of loss. Can’t melt that hard, thick layer with words that sound like love.”

  And then Lee Cole Carter sang, “Believe it.”

  And Wayne Czerbiak sang back with the backup group, “I believe it.”

  Lee Cole Carter sang louder, “Believe it.”

  Wayne Czerbiak sang back louder, “I believe it.”

  And one last time, Lee Cole Carter sang, “You better believe it.”

  And Wayne had belted out, “I better believe it” unaware that he was spraying red paint on the windows and walls from the brush in his right hand.

  The chapel was crowded at Rosenzwieg’s Funeral Parlor. Ida Katzman was laid out in a simple wooden coffin, on a blue-and-white-cloth-covered table. The coffin, as she had dictated to Kenneth Rosenzweig many years earlier, was closed. Rabbi Wass stood behind a wooden podium, tallis over his shoulder, and black yarmulke on his head. The tallis kept slipping and Rabbi Wass kept adjusting both it and his glasses. He had no notes before him as he watched the last few people enter the chapel.

  He waited while Morrie Greenblatt, long retired from the furniture business and almost eighty, showed people to open seats and gently urged them to settle down. Morrie was still taller than most of the people he ushered, but time had worn the space between his bones and he no longer towered.

  The last to arrive were Maish and Yetta Lieberman. Rabbi Wass tried not to meet Maish’s eyes. He silently prayed that the bitter deli owner would not use this occasion to launch a challenge to him and to God.

  The rabbi let his eyes wander toward Abe and Bess Lieberman and their daughter. They caught the message and made room for Maish and Yetta at their side where, God willing, they would rein in the heresy.

  After a prayer in Hebrew and an amen from the more than one hundred people gathered, Rabbi Wass said, “Ida Rebecca Katzman, beloved wife of Hyman Katzman, alevai shalom, dear friend of those of us gathered here, giver of her wise counsel to our congregation, the firm and devout foundation of the growth and well-being of Temple Mir Shavot, will be missed. She lived a full life, an often difficult life, but also an often rewarding life. She lived with dignity and went on in peace. She asked me specifically that when she died the service be short, the speeches minimal, and the burial quick. She asked for only one person to make a statement if he wished. Abraham Lieberman, do you wish to speak?”

  Abe rose, adjusted the black yarmulke, and moved past his wife and daughter to the aisle. The call was not unexpected. Rabbi Wass had warned him in advance when he greeted hi
m at the entrance to the chapel. Nothing had come to mind to say about Ida Katzman. He walked slowly to the small platform, touched the coffin on the way, and stood behind the podium as Rabbi Wass moved aside.

  The room was silent. Lieberman’s eyes scanned the familiar faces.

  “Ida Katzman had a lot of money,” he said. “Most people couldn’t see beyond that to the woman with eyes that were always at peace. I never saw her angry, never heard her say a negative thing about anyone even when they sorely cried for it. She looked as if she carried a secret. She talked as if she understood what you were really thinking, not what you said. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss the tapping of her cane when she entered a room. I’ll miss her calm voice.”

  Lieberman paused, looked down at his hands gripping the edges of the podium, noticed the brown spots of age and sun and said, “That’s the eulogy part. What I’ll remember about Ida is the off-color joke she told me once over coffee and a hamantaschen at Purim. She laughed. Never heard her laugh like that before. She laughed and slapped my back and I laughed with her, not because the joke was so damn funny, but because I saw an Ida Katzman I didn’t know, an Ida Katzman who felt comfortable enough with me to let herself show through. A small confidence, sure, but a confidence. I want to remember that laugh and feel that slap on the back when I think of her. That’s it.”

  Lieberman left the platform, touched the coffin again, and went back to his place beside Bess, who whispered, “Except for the ‘damn,’ you were all right, Lieberman.”

  Ida Katzman had no living relatives. Her sister, brother, and parents had died in the Holocaust. She and Hyman had not been able to have children. So, Bess, as president of the congregation, and Rabbi Wass, as spiritual leader, shook hands with the mourners as they departed.

  Off to the side with Lisa, Lieberman nodded as people congratulated him on his eulogy. Irving Hammel, attorney, the youngest member of the congregation’s board, the man who would be president, shook Abe’s hand and said, “Can you and Bess be in Rabbi Wass’s study tomorrow morning at nine?”

  “I’ve got—,” Lieberman began.

  “It’s important, Abe.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  And Hammel was gone with the crowd.

  There were sixteen cars behind the hearse that went to the cemetery in Northfield. They drove down a narrow stone drive, past tastefully placed simple tablets set in softly rolling hills. The trees were small, green; a slight breeze was blowing.

  They passed the section called Mamre where Abe’s father and mother were buried and drove to a newer section where a few people had already gathered next to a neatly dug hole. A dozen plastic folding chairs were set a few feet beyond the hole and older women were being led to them.

  Slowly the pallbearers, including Abe, removed the casket from the hearse. It was light. There had not been much left of Ida Katzman but her spirit and she had insisted that the box in which she was buried be of simple pine.

  They placed the casket on a platform near the grave and stepped back.

  Prayers, some soft weeping, handfuls of dirt dropped on the casket after it was lowered, and everyone stepped back.

  Across the small chasm of the grave, behind the old women in the folding chairs, amid the mourners standing solemnly, Lieberman sensed someone looking at him. He looked up and met the eyes of a tall heavyset man in a dark suit. The man had thick black hair and wore rimless spectacles.

  The man held up his right hand and half turned it so that Lieberman could see the distinctive brown and gnarled thumbnail.

  Rabbi Wass softly said his final prayer and everyone, including the man with the gnarled thumb, said, “Amen.”

  Berg was behind the counter when Hanrahan and O’Neil went in. He didn’t look happy to see them.

  “You have a son,” said O’Neil.

  It wasn’t a question.

  An old couple was sitting on stools by the window looking out at traffic. The old man, cheek full of cheeseburger, Pepsi in hand in a plastic cup with a straw, glanced at the three men over his shoulder.

  “I have a son,” Bert Berg, said wiping his hands on his apron.

  “He works here,” Hanrahan said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “His name is Paul,” said Hanrahan.

  Berg nodded.

  “He has a record,” said O’Neil.

  Berg didn’t argue.

  “Where is he now?” asked Hanrahan.

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “Home maybe. He’s due here to relieve me at three.”

  “The woman who was here yesterday?” asked O’Neil.

  “My mother. Pauly’s grandmother.”

  “You know why we’re here, don’t you, Mr. Berg?”

  “Not the woman last night,” he pleaded.

  “I think we’d better talk to your son,” said O’Neil.

  “It’s not real,” said Berg, looking at the policeman. “He works hard, never forgets my mother’s birthday or Mother’s Day.”

  He looked at the two policemen, dropped his shoulders and added, “But that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

  The policemen didn’t answer.

  “You’re not listed in the telephone directory,” said Hanrahan. “No record of a house in your name. We need your address.”

  “House is my mother’s.”

  He gave them the address.

  “To do that to someone,” Berg said. “He’s … Where does it come from?”

  The policemen had no answer.

  “Don’t call your house, Mr. Berg,” O’Neil said.

  “I’ll close up. Come with you.”

  He started to take off his apron.

  “Better if you just stayed here for now,” said Hanrahan.

  “Right,” Berg said, dazed.

  The policemen left quickly.

  “Too damned easy,” said O’Neil. “If we can find him this easy, Morton might be ahead of us.”

  “Might,” agreed Hanrahan.

  They got in their car. Hanrahan opened the window and put the flashing light on the roof. They had six blocks to go. It took them three minutes.

  The small redbrick two-story bungalow was on a side street with shaded trees and only a few parked cars. They pulled up in front of the house, turned off the light, and stepped out, guns in hand. Across the street a young mother was pushing a stroller. She saw the two men and turned quickly around.

  A blue car was parked at the curb. A small stuffed monkey dangled from the rearview mirror.

  Three stone steps up. The door wasn’t locked. O’Neil pushed it open. Hanrahan, weapon leveled, stepped in and shouted “Police.”

  He took a step to his right into the living room, O’Neil just behind him.

  In front of them stood an old woman, her hair disheveled, her mouth open, her arms held wide, palms bathed in blood. Her blue dress was splotched with dark patches of blood.

  Behind her were two figures, one in a chair, leg draped over an arm, eyes dead and staring, face covered with blood. On the floor a few feet away, facedown, lay another figure in an unbuttoned flannel shirt, a Rorschach of blood on his back.

  “He ran,” the woman cried, pointing to a door across the room behind a table in a dining area.

  “Back,” said Hanrahan running across the room, knowing O’Neil was going back through the front door.

  Hanrahan bumped into a chair, knocked over another, pushed open a door and found himself in a small kitchen. The back door was wide open. Hanrahan jumped out, knees feeling the pain. O’Neil was coming around the side of the building and pointing his gun at a fence.

  “I think I saw him go over,” he shouted. “Saw something.”

  The two policemen ran for the fence. O’Neil went over first. Hanrahan’s knees slowed him down but he made it over. They stood side by side looking around. They were in another yard, green with a single tree. From the tree a swing swayed gently.

  O’Neil dashed toward the front of the house before them. Hanrahan went back o
ver the fence and hobbled toward the open back door.

  He found the old woman standing not where he had left her but facing the bloody corpse in the chair. Her hands were on her face.

  “Mrs. Berg,” he said, putting his gun back in his holster.

  He put his arm around her and guided her into the small hallway and out the front door. She whimpered and took quick shallow breaths. When she moved her hands from her face, her cheeks were crimson with bloody prints.

  “My Pauly,” she said, looking at him.

  Hanrahan looked at the bodies. Neither had a goatee or shaven head.

  “Your grandson did this?” asked Hanrahan.

  O’Neil appeared from the side of the house shaking his head to let Hanrahan know that he hadn’t caught up with whoever had gone out the back door.

  “Mrs. Berg,” Hanrahan repeated. “Did your grandson do this?”

  “Was it a black man?” asked O’Neil.

  “Sean,” Hanrahan warned.

  “Was he …?” she asked, looking at O’Neil. “Yes, I think. I don’t know.”

  “But you’d know him again if you saw him?” O’Neil prompted.

  “Know him?” she said looking at the two men without recognition.

  “Call it in,” Hanrahan said. “We’ll get her to the hospital.”

  A few people were watching now from across the street including the young woman with the stroller. Mrs. Berg looked at them puzzled.

  “Pauly was supposed to work this afternoon,” she said as Hanrahan guided her to the car.

  “I know,” said the detective.

  “Someone should tell my Bert,” she said.

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  She stopped and looked up at him, her cheeks scarlet, finger-painted.

  “Do you know what Pauly did last night?”

  Hanrahan knew.

  “You know where your grandson is, Mrs. Berg?” Hanrahan asked.

  She looked toward the kitchen door and closed her eyes.

  9

  AT THREE MINUTES AFTER three in a hospital bed in Yuma, Billy Johnstone sat talking to the man who had shot him. Detective Martin Parsons asked him lots of questions. Billy answered most of them, but not the ones that counted.