The James Deans

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by Reed Farrel Coleman


  He didn’t look scared until I pulled back the hammer.

  “All right, Prager, what is it you want?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You’ve already given me what I wanted.”

  “What?”

  I pulled the trigger. Click. The front of Brightman’s running shorts got dark with moisture and a stream of urine ran down his bare leg.

  “You fuck. It was empty.”

  “Old cop rule: Never give a murderer a loaded weapon.”

  He twisted up his face into a mass of red distortion. “You’re not getting a fucking penny from me now, you asshole.”

  “How’s it feel, thinking you’re gonna die? I bet you Moira and Carl didn’t piss themselves.”

  “Carl shit himself, the little screaming bastard. What a fucking baby. All he cared about was what his father would say if he didn’t fight for that stupid fucking bicycle.”

  “He was a little boy, for chrissakes!”

  “Not a penny, you hear me?”

  “Like I said, you’ve already given me what I want.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  I didn’t answer, but walked up the brownstone steps and rapped on the front door. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  It took a few seconds, but the door swung back. Brightman’s wife, Katerina, was first out. Her eyes were rimmed in red, silent tears staining her perfect face. Her presence wasn’t strictly necessary, but I had wanted so much to punish Brightman. His career would be over. Geary would see to that. Somehow, that wasn’t enough. I wanted him to hurt, to suffer, to lose someone he loved the way the Stipes and Heatons had.

  Thomas Geary was next through the door, his rugged good looks intact. He shed no tears over Brightman. There were always other horses, other races to run. If not exactly responsible for Moira’s death, he was not guiltless, either. His money had helped finance Moira’s execution. Though no pauper, Brightman could never have afforded to pay off Spivack, Barto, Alfonseca, Morenos, and the like without raising an eyebrow. Geary didn’t ask where the money was going, because he didn’t want to know. He had admitted as much to me in my noisy hotel room across the way from La Guardia.

  “Looking back,” he confessed, “there were a thousand questions I should have asked. It was the same about hiring you. Though we both trusted the man who recommended you, I was quite skeptical. You had no track record to speak of, and frankly, Constance thought you were a bit of a pushover as a boss. Your brother sounded more qualified. Now, in all honesty, I wish I had hired him.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Brightman’s face, red with fury, went starkly white and blank. He was naked before the world for the first time since his birth. He stared at the open windows on the first floor of the brownstone, realizing Katerina and Geary had heard every word. Still, none of it would holdup in a court of law. But there are other courts in which to try a man, and places in the cosmos where the statute of limitations never ever applies.

  Epilogue

  My Shield

  IF THE LAST fifteen years had taught me anything, it was that there was no justice in this world. There’s nothing particularly original or profound in coming to that conclusion. All grown-ups come to it in the end. Coming to it, however, has set me free. It lets me sleep at night while men like Steven Brightman walk unfettered among us. Actually, I’m not sure where he’s walking these days. I lost track of him when he disappeared from the headlines.

  Within a week of our bit of street theater, Brightman made big news when he resigned his office and withdrew from politics altogether. He and Katerina flew to the Caribbean shortly thereafter and got a divorce. Hurting her that way is the only regret I have about how I handled that day. Sometimes I think it would have been enough to have had only Geary there to hear. In formulating my plan, I had convinced myself that I was protecting Katerina, that I could not let her continue to sleep in the same bed with a man who had, in the course of his life, murdered a nine-year-old boy and a twenty-three-year-old woman. Now I find myself wondering if I hadn’t just wanted to punish Brightman. Had I punished Katerina instead?

  Thomas Geary was good to his word. As long as I didn’t go public with what I knew, he would make sure none of us suffered from the truth. Larry Mac and Rob Gloria kept their promotions. Though we have never discussed it, I suspect Larry McDonald has figured out what actually happened, or a version of it. Like I said, Larry was a good cop, a very good cop. But in his way he was as ambitious as Steven Brightman had been, and could not be bothered with the details of how he got to where he wanted to go. Rob Gloria wasn’t a gift-horse-looking kind of guy and probably never gave a second thought to Brightman’s resignation. We don’t talk much, Gloria and I.

  Pete Parson’s kid has flourished on the job and has already traded in his sergeant stripes—the NYPD equivalent to the rank of captain in corrections—for lieutenant bars. Pete made a killing on the sale of his share in Pooty’s. Though he hasn’t yet moved south, he and his wife have taken several exploratory trips to the Outer Banks, Hilton Head Island, and Myrtle Beach. I think he enjoys thinking about and planning the move more than he will the moving. When he finally gets around to leaving he’ll do what all good New Yorkers do when they relocate. He’ll pine away for good pizza, kosher deli, and the type of energy that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth.

  Wit never wrote that follow-up piece on Brightman. He said that working with me on the case changed him forever, though I think it has precious little to do with me. While he hasn’t stopped drinking altogether, he has cut back severely. Whether it’s enough to save his liver, it’s too soon to say. But the biggest change has come in his writing. He has given up doing those celebrity exposes and now devotes his time to writing about people the world usually ignores or has forgotten.

  His first book after the dust settled was entitled A Lonely Death: The Times of Susan Leigh Posner. It was Susan’s remains in the marsh across from Lake Ronkonkoma that the Suffolk County cops had thought might be those of Moira Heaton. Wit hired me to help do the background investigation into what had driven Susan to suicide. My name’s first on the acknowledgments page. I’m very proud of that. I would have been equally as proud had the book not won the Pulitzer. It’s dedicated to Carl, Moira, and Little Man. Little Man is what Wit used to call his grandson.

  Wit took Katy and me to the Yale Club for dinner as promised. It was very cute how impressed Katy was by the place and by a sober Wit’s charm. I remembered my first time there and Wit’s slide into nastiness greased by three double bourbons. We both had come a long way in a very very short time. Homicide changes everything for the killer and the victim, but like an earthquake its effects can be felt by everyone for miles around.

  After Brightman had faded into obscurity, Wit and I took a drive into Hallworth. We parked across the street from the big Tudor on Reservoir Road. We watched Carl Stipe’s mother raking late-autumn leaves into plastic bags. Though she was only in her late fifties, she seemed much much older. She moved with a robotic deliberateness that was painful to watch. There were tears in my eyes and Wit’s, too.

  I started to get out.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  “No.”

  I got out of the car. The noise of the closing door got Mrs. Stipe’s attention. She stopped raking and turned to face me.

  “Can I help?”

  I froze for a second, looking for a sign in her face that would tell me she wanted to hear what I had to say. When I didn’t answer her immediately, she just sort of shook her head.

  “Sorry, ma’am, wrong house.”

  She didn’t say a word and went back to the task at hand. In that second of hesitation, I thought of Katerina Brightman and how my not thinking things all the way through had made an unintended victim of her. What would the truth, I wondered, really do for Mrs. Stipe? I certainly wasn’t smart enough to do the permutations.

  Judith Resnick sent a lovely thank-
you card to me, though she said she was having trouble coming to terms with her dad’s death. We have spoken on the phone a few times since. She hasn’t asked me about HNJ1956. I don’t know what I’d tell her if she did.

  AARON HAS STARTED searching for a location for our next store. He says I’m to blame for our rapid expansion.

  “With all your meshugas, we made new managers and hired new people. We have to have someplace to put them all.”

  Of course, the fact that we were doing amazingly well didn’t have a thing to do with it.

  In early November I received the most unexpected call at the Brooklyn store I think I’ve ever gotten. It was my father-in-law, Francis Maloney Sr., the old political hack, inviting me to lunch. He knew that in spite of my antipathy against him I would never turn him down. On the ride over I realized I was more frightened than I’d been in the Black Flamingo. The worst Ralph Barto could have done was kill me. My father-in-law had the ammunition to do much worse. He could ruin my marriage with a few words whispered in Katy’s ear. It was just like him to do it this way, to tell me first so he could enjoy watching me squirm.

  Thin Tim McGuinn’s was an old cop hangout in the shadows of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges that served a lunch buffet of boiled meats and bleached vegetables. I forgot sometimes that Francis had been a cop. I didn’t like to think of him that way. What he had done on the job tarnished the badge I carried in my pocket.

  Though my father-in-law was short and thick, he was easy to spot in a crowded room. And there he was, seated in the third booth from the door with a glass of Bushmills on the rocks on the table before him. He actually stood up and smiled when he spotted me. I was nauseated with fear and he must have seen it in my expression.

  “You’ll get yours someday, but not today. Relax, son-in-law.” He said it like a curse. “Sit down and have a drink. You look as if you need one.”

  “Dewar’s rocks.”

  “Jimmy,” Francis called to the bar, “Dewar’s rocks for the lad.”

  He waited to bring my drink over from the bar before talking. When I lifted the glass, he warned me not to.

  “I’d offer you food, but you don’t look as if you could keep it down, boyo. Haven’t you figured out why you’re here?”

  “No, Francis, I haven’t. If it’s not to tell me you’re going to ruin my life, then—”

  “So the tough Jew hasn’t gotten it all figured out. I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  He didn’t like that. “There’s no call for that, especially as I’m here to toast you for a job well done. To you, Moses Prager, and a job well done.”

  “A job well—” Then it hit me. “You son of a bitch. You’re the one. You’re the one who recommended me to Geary and Brightman.”

  He smiled. “Ah, the joy of it. It was Joe Donohue and Thomas Geary who five years ago pushed to have me squeezed out of the party. Geary didn’t think I knew, but I did. That bastard Donohue died before I could pay him back. I couldn’t believe my luck when Geary and Brightman came sniffing around about you. I knew they wanted a patsy. I may hate that I have to breathe in the air you breathe out, but I know you’re no patsy. Fucking Jews are all troublemakers to begin with, never happy to leave well enough alone. And with what you did to me and my family, I had every confidence you would ruin their plans. I don’t know what you did to force Brightman to resign and I don’t care, but here’s to you! There is justice in this world.”

  I didn’t explain why I was laughing when I walked out of Thin Tim McGuinn’s.

  Two weeks later, Israel Roth showed up in Sheepshead Bay. We had spoken several times after my return to New York, but I had been purposely vague about what had transpired during my time in Florida. He hadn’t gotten in any trouble with the Boca cops. They had scolded him like a child and suggested he take a gun-safety course offered by the local NRA. I apologized for what I’d put him through.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Moses, you’ll see. For being an ass when you’re young, the punishment is getting old.”

  One night, when Katy and Sarah had gone to bed, we sat up drinking scotch and vodka. I explained to him about how his offering me his automatic had saved my life. He looked very perturbed at me when I suggested that our meeting in the Catskills and our reconnecting in Florida must have been a part of some great plan.

  “I’ve seen too close the results of some of God’s great plans. It’s better you think of things as luck or misfortune,” he advised.

  “To luck and misfortune!”

  That cheered him up. He said that there had been nothing in the papers about either Morenos or Barto, but that he’d keep his eyes open. I wasn’t sure I much liked that, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  On the day he was to leave, I gave Mr. Roth back the boxes he’d given me. I told him it was only right that he give Katy and Sarah their stars. He almost started crying. Almost. Like he said, he had too closely seen some of God’s great plans. As he put their stars around their necks, I touched the one he’d given me back in Florida. I had gotten quite used to it by now. The strange thing is, I could have been reinstated and gotten my detective’s shield in spite of everything. I had turned it down. Somewhere along the way, I’d realized I had my shield, only not the one I’d expected.

  AFTERWORD

  by Reed Farrel Coleman

  I had no reason to feel particularly positive about the prospects of the book that was to follow Redemption Street in the Moe Prager series. Redemption Street, the follow up to the critically acclaimed Walking The Perfect Square, had been, to put it politely as I can, a struggle from the start. Nothing about the process, not even finding the appropriate cover image, had gone smoothly. Ignored by the critics, it pretty much debuted in the remainder bin. These were not the conditions under which any sane writer—now there’s an oxymoron for the ages—would choose to author a make-or-break book. But I didn’t have a choice. I guess we’d all deal ourselves four aces if we could.

  Yet in spite of the less than conducive atmosphere, I felt positive about The James Deans from the first day I touched finger to keypad. As I don’t outline, I am useless at trying to predict how a book will turn out. I write one word at a time; each new word amplifying the last, justifying the next. I operate under the theory that if I’m interested enough by what’s coming, so too will the reader. Although I may sit down with a notion of where a book should start and how it might end, each new book is nearly as much an adventure for me as for the reader. Still, there are rare incidents when, in a flash, a plot appears to me in toto. They Don’t Play Stickball In Milwaukee—the third book in my earlier Dylan Klein series—happened that way and The James Deans happened that way as well. One moment it wasn’t there. The next moment it was. As in the earlier instance, once I had the book, the title came easily to me.

  Since I’m asked about the title all the time, I’ll get to that first. I knew the novel was going to include two murders: one recent, one old; the more recent crime inevitably the result of the more distant one. Knowing the time frame of the two homicides, I realized that the first murder would have to have taken place in the mid-50s and that it would be tied to a gang initiation. Who, I wondered, would the members of a white boy, suburban gang of that era admire? The natural choices might have been Marlon Brando or Lee Marvin of The Wild One. I might have chosen Vic Morrow of Blackboard Jungle or even Montgomery Clift, but I kept coming back to James Dean.

  Given the setting of the older crime—an affluent town in New Jersey—I thought the teenagers of that town, in that era would more closely identify with an intelligent, defiant, brooding, handsome, confused kid than a strutting black leather peacock on a motorcycle or a junior delinquent city kid or some strangely ethereal loner. I also realized that James Dean had a morbid advantage over my other choices. Whereas the others had become sad, bloated caricatures or had fallen out of favor or died morbid or lonely deaths in middle age, James Dean died young and pretty. In my mind, in the readers
’ minds, James Dean would be that eternal teenager from Rebel Without a Cause. Because the iconic image his name evokes is devoid of the warts of time, he was the natural choice. I have often joked that things might’ve turned out very differently had the book been called The Lee Marvins.

  I don’t believe in revealed knowledge, so I am well aware that the plot for what was to become The James Deans didn’t simply condensate out of motes in the void. Or maybe that’s exactly what happened. I am aware of where the plot came from, but only in retrospect. In a sad instance of art imitating life, the germ for the plot was born out of two crimes: one older, one more recent. Unlike in the book, these two crimes were disconnected, coming together only in my head.

  I moved to Long Island from Brooklyn—Don’t tell anyone, but Brooklyn is at the far western tip of Long Island. Brooklynites live in denial of this fact—in 1983. Back then Long Island was another world. In New York City—the boroughs of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island—there were 1833 homicides in 1982; so many that they all seemed to run together in a single amorphous blood-stained blur; one murder forgotten as soon as the next occurred. On Long Island, even with its proximity to New York City, murder is neither so frequent nor easily forgotten, and when it happens to a young boy or girl, it’s never forgotten. So people were still talking about the 1979 murder of John Pius when I moved to the sleepy hamlet of Sea Cliff on Long Island’s Gold Coast in ‘83.

  In April of 1979, 13-year-old John Pius took his bicycle out for a ride. He never returned home. His body was found the next day buried beneath logs and leaves behind a local elementary school. He had been suffocated, several marble-sized stones having been shoved down his throat. The most shocking aspect of the case was that he was murdered by four boys who were his neighbors and that their motive had to do with a dispute over an old mini-bike frame. To this day the case echoes across the Island. In 1989, my wife and I moved to Smithtown, where the murder occurred. Although we have since relocated, I still play basketball most spring and summer days in a Smithtown park near where the murder took place.

 

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