The James Deans
Page 25
“Maybe. Baum must be pretty old by now.”
“Old and dying. Lung cancer’s marking his days. Doctors said he should be dead going on two years now. Finally won that damn cat. Think the chase kept him above dirt. The thing had tasked him his whole career. Every award he’d ever won he dedicated to Anne, then placed it upon her grave. Now he can have his peace.”
I considered that kind of peace as I was close to experiencing it myself. How much peace was there, I wondered, in endless sleep if you never woke up to appreciate it? I wondered if these were just the kinds of ruminations that drove ancient humans to create the gods that created them. I wondered if heaven was just waking up again? Old men do a lot of wondering.
BAUM’S HOUSE WAS a big old Victorian in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, a block or two in from Beverly Road. Jack had assured me it would be fine to stop by the house to chat with the dying author.
“The jumble of medicines keep him up all hours. He’ll enjoy the visit.”
We were greeted at the door by an odd gray woman. What I mean to say is that she was both older and younger than her age. There was an underlying prettiness, almost girlishness beneath her sixty-ish years and silvery hair. And no amount of years could hide the burn of her green and gold-flecked eyes, but she carried herself and the weight of the world with her.
“Gilda Baum, meet Moe Prager.”
Jack had told me in the car that Gilda, Anne’s younger sister, had years ago appointed herself to the position of caretaker. Not only did she help manage her father’s writing career, but had done nursing courses in order to help manage his medical care as well.
Her handshake was steel.
“He’s upstairs waiting for you, Jack. He knew you’d come.”
“I’ll go have a word with him, Moe. Then you can come on up.”
Gilda showed me into the library. It was an impressive thing to behold: handcrafted walnut bookshelves from the parquet floors to the twelve foot high cornice molding that rimmed the mural painted on the plaster ceiling. The mural was done in the pre-Raphaelite style. In it, a lovely woman with an imperfect nose, long white neck and cascades of red tresses floated on a raft of reeds downriver. Her arms were folded across her ample white bosom, the hint of a nipple peeking through her long delicate fingers.
“That’s Annie,” Gilda said matter-of-factly. “Dad had it done the year she was killed.”
“Beautiful.”
“That she was. Let me show you dad’s other pride.”
Gilda looped her arm through my crooked elbow and guided me to the other end of the library. There on display was a collection of old leather bound books and manuscripts in Lucite cases. I could make out some of the titles.
“It’s a world class collection of Poe, O’Henry, Henry James …” she said proudly. “Annie loved O’Henry in particular. Any story with an ironic twist was meat for her. She was easily pleased.”
There was an air of resentment in Gilda’s voice, an understandable one. Tragic death makes giants of the mortal. I’m sure Baum had loved Anne before the accident, but because the love had turned unavoidably one-sided, he had made her into a kind of goddess. That couldn’t have been easy for his other daughter. It must have been particularly difficult now with her father’s impending death.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been rude. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Scotch on the rocks.”
Her face lit up. She walked me into a room just off the library. It was an office of some sort and there was a lovely liquor cabinet against one wall.
“Dewar’s okay?” she asked.
“Perfect.”
“This is my office,” she said as ice clinked into the glasses.
“You write too.”
“Yes, but not detective stories like Dad. I do more scholarly work.”
She handed me the hand blown tumbler. We toasted with a shrug and sipped.
“So, what do you make of the missing cat?”
“What do you mean ‘What do I make of it?'” Gilda was almost defensive.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no, I should apologize, Mr. Prager. It’s been a rough several years with Dad and all. Frankly, there’s never been an easy day for him since Annie was killed.”
“I can only imagine.”
“Let me go and check on Dad and Jack.”
She scurried out of the room. I looked around, snuck a look at the ultra thin screen of Gilda’s Micro Apple 90. I also picked up the book she had left open on her daybed. I put the book back where I found it and headed back to where I had been standing when Gilda had left the room.
“They’ll be only a few more minutes. Dad loves Jack. They met in Galway years and years ago, in the ‘03 or ‘04. Jack had just lost a little girl of his own, I think. They were both feeding the swans down by the quay and seemed to hit it off.”
“Gilda, do you mind if I tell you a story about my family?”
“No, go right ahead.” The smile on her face belied the uneasiness in her voice.
“My dad was a failure in business and he equated that with being a failure as a father. I had an older brother, Aaron. Aaron was the best brother and such a devoted son, but his devotion to my dad was—”
“I’m sure this is all very interesting, Mr. Prager, but—”
“Moe.”
“Moe then. But I really don’t see what this has to do with—”
“Yes you do, Gilda. You see that it has everything to do with the missing cat. I had a peek at your computer and your reading material. Humor an old man by letting me finish. So, as I was saying, Aaron’s devotion to my dad became a quest of sorts. He spent much of his own life trying to convince my dad he hadn’t been a failure at all. Even after my father had passed away, Aaron tried convincing him. The business Aaron and I owned, the one I now run with the kids and grandkids, is a manifestation of Aaron’s futile quest. Your father’s dying. Painting leaves on a vine or stealing a silver cat off your sister’s grave won’t save him. Let him go, Gilda. It’s his time. It’s your time. It’s almost mine.”
She broke down, resting her head on my shoulder. Half a century of tears, grief, and sorrow seemed to pour right out of her. Jack walked in on the scene. Said
“I’m going outside for a smoke.”
JACK HAD BEEN right about the weight of the damned cat statuette. The thing had quite a bit of heft to it. Gilda stayed downstairs as I brought the Silver Whisker up to show her dad. She had confessed the whole plot to me … well, most of it, anyway, when her crying had quieted down. She had stolen the cat in the hope of keeping her dad alive just a little longer.
She so desperately wanted him to see that she was everything that Anne had been, maybe more. She had done everything else she could think of, yet she could never compete with Anne’s memory. Gilda knew it was a crazy thing to do and doomed to fail as everything else had failed, but … What she had neglected to tell me was that she, not her father, had written the book that had won the Silver Whisker. I don’t know exactly how I knew that. I just did.
When I entered the bedroom, silver cat in hand, K. T. Baum was dead. Apparently, he knew it all, too. I placed the statuette near his right hand and left.
I couldn’t seem to find Gilda when I went back downstairs. I let myself out. I couldn’t blame Gilda for wanting time alone. She had too many years of emptiness and self-deception to deal with in one night.
But Jack was gone too. When I stepped out into the cool black air of the Brooklyn night, all that remained of Jack Taylor on the planks of the wrap-around porch was a crushed cigarette butt and wisps of pungent cigarette smoke. Whoosh! The genie had gone.
“GRANDPA MOE,” I heard a little boy’s voice coming out of the genie’s smoke. “Grandpa Moe.”
“Sssshhh, honey, Grandpa is very sick,” I heard my daughter Sarah say, her voice cracking slightly. “He needs to rest.”
“But—”
“No buts, Aaron. Go
d, you’re just like your Great Uncle Aaron, may he rest in peace.”
“I’ll take over, Sarah,” I heard my kid sister Miriam say.
“Where’s Jack?” I said, my throat dry, my voice thin as a hair. I had trouble focusing my eyes. I saw the world through heat waves coming off hot tar and it smelled like a hospital.
“Take it easy, Moe. Rest. You really need—”
“Miriam, for chrissakes! Where’s Jack?”
“Who’s Jack?”
“Jack! Jack Taylor. Where’s Jack Taylor?”
“I’ll be right back.”
The door opened and closed. That much I could make out. Then it opened and closed again.
“He’s asking for someone we don’t know, someone none of us know,” Miriam was near frantic.
“It might be the drugs,” a man’s voice explained. “It might be the cancer. At this point, it’s impossible to know. Just sit with him and call the family in.”
“Miriam,” I called to her in a whisper.”
“What is it Moe?”
“No silver cats for me, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, though only I understood.
Then I went to sleep.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Reed Farrel Coleman—Brooklyn born and raised—is the former Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. His third Moe Prager novel, The James Deans, won the Shamus, Barry and Anthony Awards for Best Paperback Original. The book was further nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, and Gumshoe Awards. The fourth Moe book, Soul Patch, won the 2008 Shamus Award, and was nominated for the Edgar, Barry, and Macavity Awards for Best Novel. He was the editor of the short story anthology Hardboiled Brooklyn and his short stories and essays appear in Wall Street Noir, Damn Near Dead and several other publications. Reed lives with his family on New York’s Long Island. Visit him online at www.reedcoleman.com.
Tyrus Books publishes crime and dark literary fiction, offering books from exciting new voices and established, well-loved authors. Centering on deeply provocative and universal human experiences, Tyrus Books is a leader in its genre and the centerpiece of the F+W Crime community.
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Text copyright © 2005 by Reed Farrel Coleman
Foreword copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly
Afterword copyright © 2008 by Reed Farrel Coleman
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eISBN 10: 1-4405-4102-7
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4102-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
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