Silence. Kind of enjoyed watching four grown men paw at the wet earth with their expensive shoes.
Now there was no mistaking it. There was full-blown admiration in Carmella Melendez’s eyes and fuck me if my heart didn’t race at the sight of it. I had done magic before her. But like all magic, it was an illusion. I had heard the tape. I had spoken to Larry. I knew probably more than any one of them about Larry’s past sins.
“Do you mind if I go over and pay my respects?” I asked.
“It ain’t pretty, son,” Deputy Mayor Brown spoke up.
“Nothing ever is, beneath the surface,” I said.
“Just stay out of the way. It’s still considered a crime scene, remember that,” Cleary warned.
“How about if Detective Melendez comes with me to make sure I keep my nose clean?”
Cleary nodded. Melendez wasn’t stupid. She didn’t jump at the chance. She sneered as if Cleary had told her to carry me over to Larry’s Chevy on her back.
“You were good back there,” she said.
“Thanks. And you were right about what you said in the car on the way over. Maybe we could sort of start over.”
She hesitated. “Where should we start over from, Mr. Prager? From your stunt driving this morning or your unexplained presence at the precinct yesterday? I’m thinking it’s kinda odd that you turned up over there outta the blue and then the chief kills himself, no? The suits and the brass back there might buy your line a shit, but I’m not a big believer in coincidences.”
“That makes two of us.”
“So where does that leave us? You gonna tell me why you were at the Six-O?”
We had reached the car. The driver’s side door was open. Larry’s head rested on the steering wheel; his lifeless eyes looked past me into an unfathomable distance. Even in death, he didn’t look quite peaceful. His ambition had left a residue on his corpse as real as gunpowder. As the chopper moved further away, I caught the stink of his death. In spite of being surrounded by several million tons of decay, the ripeness of it was unmistakable. It was like hearing one particularly sour note from a tone-deaf orchestra.
“How’d he do it?” I asked.
“Look at the tailpipe,” one of the busy bees said. Sure enough, a flexible black hose ran from the mouth of the tailpipe, beneath the car, around the passenger side, up into a slit in the rear window. Neat strips of duct tape covered the opening in the window left to accommodate the exhaust tube. “My guess is he swallowed some sleeping pills, washed ’em down with some bourbon, and went to sleep. There’s a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor.”
“Any note?”
“We haven’t found one yet.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I felt Melendez’s eyes on me, studying me.
“You don’t like it,” she said, “do you?”
“He was my friend. Nobody likes it when a friend kills himself.”
“Don’t be that way. You know what I mean. You have doubts.”
“There’s shit you never want to accept at first. I was never at a shooting scene where the dead guy’s mom thought he was a bad kid. No one wants to believe bad stuff about the people they lo-about their friends. I think they think it reflects badly on them somehow, like it’s their fault when bad things happen, like they failed. You know what I mean?”
I turned to look at her. Her expression went blank, her eyes nearly as distant as Larry’s. “I don’t think anyone knows better than me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Melendez ignored the question. “Come on, we’ll take you back to your car.”
“Gimme a minute.”
“I’ll wait over there.”
I kept staring at Larry. It wasn’t denial, but I was having trouble with his being dead. When a parent dies, you pretty much know how you’re supposed to feel. Even if the feelings are mixed and confused, you’ve decided; or at least your heart has. With Larry, it was different. I realized that for the twenty-plus years I’d known him, I had never quite decided how to feel about him. I’d always waited for some sign, some gesture on his part that would let me know it was really okay to love him, to hold him close. I took a long last look into his vacant, unfocused eyes, hoping that in death he could give me the thing he seemed incapable of giving in life. Of course, like most wishes, it went unfulfilled. As far as my heart was concerned, I thought, the jury would always be out-the verdict never in.
D.A. Fishbein was the only one of the princes still standing inside the yellow tape when I was done with Larry. Melendez stood a few feet to his left, paying very little attention to either one of us. Fishbein shooed her away.
“Can you excuse us for a second, Detective?”
“I’ll be by the car,” she said.
The Groucho Marx smile vanished from the D.A.’s face when Melendez had strolled far enough away. “Did it end here?”
“What?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, Mr. Prager. You came to me, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Then answer the question. Is the chief’s suicide the end or the beginning?”
“Don’t look now, Mr. D.A., but your hard-on is showing.”
Fishbein actually looked down. “Asshole!”
“The truth is, I don’t know whether this is the end or the beginning. I’m not thinking too clearly right now. That’s my friend lying dead in that car over there, not the ass end of a cow.”
“You can sit shiva later, totaleh. I’ve got no time for your tears right now. I need to know if this case has some legs. Besides, I don’t for a second believe a man like Larry McDonald would have killed himself. You knew him better than anyone.”
“That’s not saying much.”
“Stop fencing with me, Prager. Your Puerto Rican girlfriend’s not around to be impressed.”
Because of his clownish looks and buffoonish overstepping, Robert Hiram Fishbein was an easy man to underestimate. But what he had just said reminded me that he was neither a clown nor a buffoon. He was sharp and cunning and hungry. Very little escaped his notice, not even the subtleties of early attraction.
“No, Larry never struck me as the kinda man to kill himself.”
“That’s better. Then let’s see if we can’t find out what really happened here and if this case’s got any legs.”
“What case is that? I don’t know that there is a case. And,” I felt compelled to remind him, “if there is one, it takes place deep in the heart of Brooklyn.”
“You let me worry about that. In the meantime, you’re working for me.”
“Officially?”
“Unofficially officially.”
“Yeah, what’s that pay?”
“What it’s worth.”
“Now who’s fencing, Mr. D.A.?”
“En garde! ”
“Sorry, my only interest in this was Larry. Whether he committed suicide or not, he’s dead. My interest ends there.”
“How about if I could give you some incentive to come work for me?”
“Incentive. Incentive like what, a gold shield? Money? The shield doesn’t interest me anymore. That ship sailed years ago. Money? Between my pension, my wife’s income, and my business, I already make more money than I need.”
“Money, yes, Mr. Prager, but maybe something else, something you might not have more of than you need.”
“That would be?”
“Information.”
“Information. What kind of information?”
“The kind you want, but don’t have.”
“You’re fencing with me again, Mr. D.A.”
He whispered, making me draw near. “How about your brother-in-law?”
“Patrick!”
“What if I could tell you what’s become of him? Would that be worth-”
“You know where he is?”
“Did I say that, Mr. Prager? I asked would your involvement be worth it if I could tell you what’s become of him. Well, would it?”
/>
Fishbein had pushed the right button. I was dizzy. The thought of Patrick reappearing out of the blue was one of the things that kept me up nights. Yeah, sure, he had been gone for a dozen years now. Did I think he’d ever come back? Probably not, but there was always a chance. And if he did return and he told Katy about what had really gone on, about how I had found him and let him go, about the things I knew about Francis. . That would be it, the end of our marriage, and the end for Katy and her dad. With our marriage at low ebb, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. But what about Sarah? She was eleven years old. She would never understand. Christ, I still didn’t understand why I hadn’t just brought Patrick in when I found him.
“Okay, Fishbein, you’ve got my attention.”
“Good.” He patted my shoulder like we were old buddies. “Go home. Get some rest. Go to the wake. We’ll talk.”
The ride back to my car was decidedly quieter than the ride to the dump and, given that my wrists were uncuffed, decidedly more comfortable. Murphy was less than his chatty self. Detective Melendez seemed completely distracted, lost in a world of her own thoughts, a world with no visas, visitors, or border crossings. I was pretty lost myself.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
CHAPTER NINE
For some inexplicable reason, I’d slept well. Neither Larry’s question nor his ghost kept me from sleep. I was vaguely aware of Katy tossing and turning. Her relationship with Larry Mac was less complicated than mine. Because my wife offered Larry no usable career commodity, they were free to enjoy each other’s company without holding bits of themselves back for purposes of negotiation. And for this reason, Katy felt Larry’s loss in a way I was incapable of. I envied her that.
The morning was not quite so peaceful for me. Larry McDonald’s name and face were splashed all over the TV, news radio, and papers like green on St. Patrick’s Day. A regular cop’s suicide is big news, never mind a chief’s. When a chief does himself in, it’s a cross between the first day of hunting season and a shark feeding frenzy. Every aspect of his life becomes fodder for speculation. And the fact that the police had yet to turn up a suicide note only added to the smell of raw meat in the air.
I had called Margaret as soon as I got into the house yesterday afternoon to tell her the bad news, to warn her before the pit bulls could latch on and pull. I was too late. Police Commissioner Cleary had laid the word upon her. Between her tears, all Margaret could do was ask me the same simple question over and over again. Why? Questions are often simple, I thought. Answers seldom are. It was just so weird, but a line from a Beatles’ tune rang in my head: And though I thought I knew the answer, I knew what I could not say. Funny, in that same song they sing about leaving the police department to find a steady job. Moe Prager, my life in imitation of song.
Then there was the earlier exchange between Melendez and me as we both searched along the curb for the car keys she had earlier tossed out her window.
“You still haven’t told me why you were at the Six-O yesterday.”
“I didn’t, did I?”
“Don’t be smug, Mr. Prager.”
“This isn’t smug, it’s silence.”
“Yeah, well, before this thing is through, we’re gonna need each other.”
Detective Melendez didn’t seem interested in explaining herself any further. I found my keys. We left it at that.
I did what any self-respecting detective would have done when investigating the suicide of his friend-I ignored it. With the press so busy crawling over Larry’s corpse, I figured there was little to gain and a lot to lose by my nosing around. The press tended to use cleavers when scalpels were called for, but they could be pretty effective. The problem was that they, too, often left huge scars on the lives of people they mowed down as they struck out blindly in pursuit of the story. Time was a luxury not afforded the press, so they sacrificed innocence for expediency. Other people’s innocence, their expediency.
I was also worried about being noticed. It was one thing for me to show up at Larry Mac’s wake, at the cemetery at the memorial, if there was to be one. But if some stringer or crime beat reporter caught wind of me nosing around in Larry McDonald’s past, the red flags would fly and it would only serve to confirm any suspicions about dirty dealings in my dead friend’s closet. Instead, I called in a favor.
There was noise on the other end of the phone, but not human speech.
“Wit? Wit, for chrissakes, is that you?”
“God’s day may launch come dawn, but mine does not get into swing till well after morn.” You had to admire an angry man who woke with poetry on his lips. “This had better be of consequence.”
Yancy Whittle Fenn, Wit to his friends, was like Truman Capote pulled back from the abyss. Well, that’s an inexact description if you knew the man, but it served those unacquainted with him. When I met Y.W. Fenn in 1983, he was just as famous for his brand of celebrity pseudo-journalism as his taste for Wild Turkey. That’s the kind you
Never quite as beautiful or wealthy as the company he kept, Wit had invested unwisely, married badly, and began drinking. He became a hanger-on instead of one of the crowd, but as I was once told by a crony of his, “He used to be fun back in the day, a life of the party sort-funny, biting, and bitchy.” Then his grandson had been kidnapped and brutally murdered. Wit had always done crime reportage, but dealt with his grief by becoming vindictive and focusing on the rich and infamous. He’d write exposes for the big magazines whenever crime-murder in particular-money, and celebrity aligned.
He had been assigned to the Moira Heaton investigation. By Esquire, as I recall. Of course, neither Wit nor his editor gave a flying fuck about Moira. It was the wealthy and handsome State Senator Steven Brightman who had their eye. Until Moira Heaton went missing, Brightman had been the up-and-comer, the next Jack Kennedy. Talk about a curse. Somehow they all begin as the next Jack and end up as the next Teddy. But during the investigation, Wit found something to grab onto, something to stop his slide into an early grave and snickering obits. I think maybe he remembered his grief and forgot about his rage.
“Not only is it of consequence,” I said, “there might even be a book in it for you.”
“Enlightened self-interest is what makes the world go ’round, my friend. Maybe you should begin speaking now.”
“Anyone ever tell you you were more fun when you drank?” I teased.
“I tell it to myself every day when I gaze into the mirror. Then I’m reminded that I would not be here at all had I continued my lifelong quest for the perfect gallon of bourbon. Or maybe, sir, you are looking for me to thank you once again for saving my life.”
“You know better than that, Wit.”
“Yes, I do. How are the lovely Sarah and Katy? Well, I hope.”
I didn’t answer. “Go get your morning paper. I’ll wait.”
He put the phone down. I listened to the retreating slaps of Wit’s slippers against his hardwood floor. A minute later, the sound of his slippers returned.
“Oh, I am so sorry, Moe. I rather liked Larry, though I wouldn’t have trusted him as far as I could drop-kick a polo pony.”
“I know a lot of people who might say the same thing about you.”
“And they’d be right. But you and I needn’t worry about that. I owe you more than I can say.”
“Save it for my eulogy.”
“Let us not discuss such things,” he chided. “Is this call about the late Chief McDonald?”
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he’s part of it. No, in that he’s not nearly all of it.”
“We’re being rather cryptic, are we not?”
I could only laugh.
“Do I have a career in stand-up, do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe, but it’s just that I said the same thing about being cryptic to Larry the last two times I saw him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence on the line. Then, “You know, Moe, I don’t think I can recall the last thing I said to my gra
nd-son.”
“Probably, I love you.”
“Yes, probably.”
“I think I told Larry to go fuck himself.”
“Well, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but he seems to have taken your advice quite literally.”
I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but I wasn’t exactly consumed with guilt.
“I think that’s what I’m getting at, Wit. I’m not sure he did the fucking himself, if you get my point. And there’s too many of your mishpocha around for me to-”
“Say no more. I’ll handle it. Give me a day or two.”
“Thanks.”
“None required, my friend. I’ll get back to you.”
He was off the line.
As soon as I placed the phone down, it rang. It rang until I left the house. First, it was Aaron calling, then Klaus, then Robert Gloria, the detective who originally caught the Moira Heaton case, then Pete Parson, then. . They were all calling to say they were sorry and all wanted to know what had happened. Popular question, that. I took
No one on Surf Avenue had hung black bunting out their windows or off the railings of their terraces for the late chief of detectives. I made sure not to crane my neck as I passed West Eighth Street to see if the old precinct had so honored him. My soul, at least, was at half staff. Grief is a harder hurdle when it’s for someone you’re unsure of. How much of it was I supposed to feel? How much would he have felt for me? For how long? Why? There were those easy questions again, the ones with the complex answers.
The block was once right in the heart of what we used to call the Soul Patch, but the drugs of choice back then-pot, ludes, black beauties, acid, mesc, a little heroin and even less coke-seem almost innocent by today’s standard. Crack-coke’s ugly little brother-and junkies sharing needles in the time of AIDS had ravaged much of the area. The row houses all looked on the verge of collapse. But all was not lost. On some of the surrounding streets, signs of rebirth were taking root and, if the sea breeze blew just right, you could detect the chemical scents of vinyl siding and construction adhesive.
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