Onion Street

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Salaam was trying to get them to the upstairs apartment to wait out the storm or to get help from Bergman. But Salaam couldn’t make it, not with his injuries and not carrying Mindy. He dropped her on the street to lighten his load. Salaam finally made it here, but the shop was closed because of the weather. He got upstairs, crawled into bed, and probably died of his injuries. That’s how I found him. That’s how Bobby found him. That’s how he was when Susan Kasten lit the place on fire. You happy now, Detective Casey? Pretty ironic how I got involved in all this shit so I could find out who put my girlfriend in a coma. Well, okay, I found out. Joke’s on me, I guess. Go ahead, laugh. It’s okay. I deserve it.”

  “I’m not happy and I’m not laughing, Moe. I needed you to say it because, let’s face it, if I told you that story, you probably woulda thought I was full a shit. That I was another lying cop trying to set you up.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t’ve believed you.”

  “Now here’s the thing,” he said. “If I wanted to, I could get your girlfriend sent away for the next hundred years. By the time she got out, she’d be dead or she’d wanna be. You know and I know she was deep in this whole bomb plot thing and I could get her on attempted murder too — ”

  “But — ”

  “But I’m not looking to hurt her, and I need a favor from you.”

  I was more than a little skeptical. “A favor from me?”

  “Yeah. Stories are gonna come out in the papers and on the news tomorrow that won’t exactly fit the facts of what happened. Your name and Bobby’s will be completely kept out of it, but I need you to keep your mouth shut. I need you to promise me that.”

  “This is the part on TV where you say, or else.”

  “There’s no or else. This isn’t TV and we’re not all like that asshole, Nance. I think you’re a man of your word, Moe, and I’m asking for your word.”

  “Where’s Susan Kasten?”

  “Wish I knew. A year’s worth of work setting this up, and now she’s gone,” he said. “She was the candy inside the piñata, the big prize. We’ll never find her now. She’ll disappear into the underground and wind up in Cuba or Syria. We figured if we caught her red-handed, looking at life in prison, she’d cut a deal. She’d’ve given us a way into all the other groups that think bombs are a good way to make a point.”

  “You mean like LBJ, McNamara, and Westmoreland?”

  He wasn’t having any. “It’s different.”

  “It’s killing.”

  “People like Susan Kasten kill innocent people.”

  “You watch the news lately, Detective? You think all the people under those bombs are guilty? A lot of them are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Besides, Susan Kasten would’ve chewed her own fucking arm off before making a deal with you. She’s a true believer.”

  “And you’re not? A true believer, I mean?”

  I laughed. “Me? Are you crazy? I’m not into isms. Since my bar mitzvah I don’t even do much with Judaism. Sometimes I think that’s why Bobby and Mindy like me, because all I believe in is a better world.” I turned in my seat to face him. “When I was in that basement, old man Bergman said the bomb that killed Samantha and Marty wasn’t his work.”

  “Don’t look at me, Moe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that bomb in December nearly blew our operation. It made the Committee suspicious. It’s what made Kasten start looking for a rat inside her group. Then there’s a very practical reason why it couldn’t have been me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come with me a second.”

  We got out of the car and walked around to the rear of the Ford. Even though the fire was put out days ago, the air still stank of burned plastic and rubber. Casey keyed open the trunk. And sitting there like a box of groceries was a box identical to the ones I had seen Susan and her two flunkies putting in the back of the old bakery truck. He reached down and pried off the lid with a small crowbar. He picked up a light tan-colored brick wrapped in clear plastic, ripped open the plastic, and handed the brick to me.

  “Feels like Silly Putty,” I said.

  “Essentially, that’s what it is. You can mold and shape it any way you want. Stick some blasting caps in it and you’re set to go. Of course, there’s also supposed to be stuff mixed in there that would blow the both of us into small pieces.”

  “What do you mean ‘supposed to be’?”

  “It’s inert, Moe. An atomic bomb couldn’t set this shit off. We couldn’t risk handing over live explosives to these nuts. In the beginning, I gave Bobby a few bricks of the real stuff, so he could prove he could get what the Committee needed. He tested it for them and they bought it hook, line, and sinker. We went through that whole elaborate charade at the airport many times just in case someone from the Committee was watching, but the stuff itself is harmless. You see what I’m saying, right? Whoever it was who blew up Bobby’s girl and the Lavitz kid, it wasn’t me.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t them …”

  “It was somebody else.”

  “But there isn’t any somebody else.”

  “Let’s get back in the car. It’s cold, and it stinks out here,” he said, slamming the trunk shut. Before we drove away, he held his right hand out to me. “Do I have your word that you won’t say anything to the press?”

  I shook his hand.

  From Daily News

  Radical Bomb Plot Blown Up

  Gary Phillips

  Late last evening the New York City Police Department prevented a potential disaster. The department’s bomb squad defused a large explosive device that was intended to destroy the 61st Precinct house on Avenue U and East 15th Street in Brooklyn. The device, which, according to unconfirmed reports, contained in excess of 40 pounds of plastic explosive, was located in the precinct’s basement and was timed to explode at or around midnight. Upon its discovery, the device was quickly rendered inoperable by the bomb squad. The detonation mechanism has been taken to the lab for study. The explosives were removed to an undisclosed site and detonated by the bomb squad.

  “The bomb was meant to cause maximum loss of life because it would have detonated during a shift change,” explained department spokesman Richard Pioreck. “And not only would the precinct house have been destroyed, with that excessive quantity of explosives, the buildings surrounding the precinct house would have sustained serious damage as well. It may well have taken out the entire block.”

  Although police won’t confirm it, sources have linked the group responsible for the planning and carrying out of this attack with this past December’s explosion of a smaller device in the Coney Island section of the borough. Two Brooklyn College students, Samantha Hope and Martin Lavitz, lost their lives in that explosion. Hope and Lavitz are alleged to have been members of a heretofore unknown radical group. It is thought that the explosive device they were transporting detonated prematurely, resulting in their deaths.

  Asked how the investigation was progressing, Pioreck said that the department had not made any arrests directly related to either the December explosion or the plot to bomb the 61st Precinct house. “We have some strong leads, but no suspects at this time. We will continue to investigate both incidents. In any case, we believe our efforts have dealt a serious blow to the group or groups who believe such dangerous activities are the way to pursue a political agenda.”

  From Daily News

  Murders in Manhattan Beach

  Scott Montgomery

  Responding to reports of shots fired, the police discovered the bodies of three men in the basement of a private house in the Manhattan Beach section of Brooklyn. The owner of the residence, Hyman Bergman, was among the deceased. The other men have not yet been identified. Neighbors feared that Bergman’s granddaughter, Susan Kasten, also known to reside at the home, might have been harme
d as well. However, she does not seem to have been at home at the time of the incident.

  “All three of the deceased appear to have died as a result of gunshot wounds,” said a police spokesman. “We’re working on the theory that it was a botched robbery.”

  Neighbors said that Bergman, a concentration camp survivor, kept to himself. “He was a troubled man,” said neighbor Dr. Raoul Mishkin. Bergman is known to have large real estate holdings, and was recently the victim of arson. Last week, one of Bergman’s properties was intentionally burned to the ground. Police refused to speculate whether the two incidents might be connected.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Bobby’s parents visited only once during his stay in Coney Island Hospital, and then it was only to fill out the requisite paperwork. There was no tearful hand-holding or get-better-soon bouquets, nothing that even remotely resembled what had transpired between Mindy and her parents. There was only the superior disdain that Bobby’s parents exuded. I had known these people nearly all my life without really knowing them at all. They were disappointed in Bobby. Believe me, they did nothing to camouflage it. But I had created a fantasy that beneath their icy, Warsaw Pact exteriors, they loved their son beyond description. That they secretly held dear all those bourgeois rituals and milestones — Bobby’s first day of school, losing his first tooth, his high school graduation — that other parents so proudly celebrated. Now I came to see that my stubborn belief was naive and self-serving. The equation was simple: If Bobby’s parents really loved him, mine loved me. It’s not that my folks were stoic and unexpressive. They told me they loved me. It was just that they were such damaged goods, always so hungry for love and approval themselves, that I never trusted theirs for me. I couldn’t speak for Aaron and Miriam.

  For the first few days, the hospital was crawling with cops and it was impossible for me to get anywhere near Bobby. I stopped trying. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to see him other than to tell him to go fuck himself. Below the surface, I think I felt almost as betrayed by him as Susan Kasten had. It was one thing for Detective Casey to have done what he did. It was his job. He believed he was doing right. It was different with Bobby. I still couldn’t get a handle on the angle he’d been playing. Look, I knew Bobby believed the war was wrong and that America was a profoundly inequitable place. On some level he might even have truly believed in revolution, but he wasn’t a bomb thrower. Nor was he Dudley Do-Right. At first I just assumed Casey had coerced Bobby into it, that he had something to hold over Bobby’s head to get him to act as an informant. I don’t know. Maybe he’d caught Bobby moving some real explosives, or transporting a fugitive. Something like that. Something where Bobby had no choice but to cooperate, or go away to prison for twenty years.

  “He volunteered,” Casey’d told me the night it all came down.

  “Get the fuck outta here!”

  I could only imagine my ancestors spinning in their graves at the disrespect I was showing to a cop. Such a display flew in the face of the Diaspora’s mantra: Keep your head down and keep your mouth shut.

  Casey laughed at me. “It’s true, Moe, whether you believe it or not. He came to me.”

  “How did he find you?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  I wanted to believe the detective was lying to me, but in my gut I knew he wasn’t. That really sent me spinning off my axis. It might have been the Age of Aquarius, but not in my dark corner of the universe. Not only did I feel used and betrayed by Bobby, there was Mindy too. Forget that she was willing to kill Bobby, that she had tried. I could almost understand the rationale behind that. For a few days I pretended that what I couldn’t get over was her willingness to kill innocent people, whether they wore uniforms or not. But that was only part of it. It was more that I felt so completely stupid. It was one thing to be Polonius, to be unaware that you’re the fool. It’s another thing to be the fool and know it. Here were my best friend and a woman I thought I loved, and I didn’t know either of them, not really, not deeply. It made me start to question everything I thought I knew.

  I was no longer even feigning interest in school. Oddly, my parents didn’t pester me about it. My parents were uneducated people, not dumb people. And when my dad read those articles in the papers about the failed bomb plot and the murders in Manhattan Beach, he seemed to sense that the missing thread in the fabric of those stories had a connection to his youngest son. Only Aaron bothered asking me about it at all, and when I refused to say anything, he let it go. Aaron never let anything go. Not anything. Not ever. On Saturday morning, when an unexpected visitor showed up at our apartment door, no one needed to guess or speculate in silence any longer.

  When my mom came into the room I was still in bed. I was half-watching a rerun of Sky King. People said my mom kind of looked like a cross between the young Joan Crawford and the aging Shelley Winters. Her weight was definitely more on the Shelley Winters side of that equation. But the expression on her face was purely and distinctly her own. It was an odd mix of panic and smug satisfaction, like the look on Chicken Little’s face when the sky actually fell. See, I told ya. It was as if the worst coming to pass was worth it because it confirmed her darkest fears.

  “Someone’s at the door for you.”

  “Yeah, I heard the bell.”

  “He’s a detective.”

  That got my attention more than Sky King’s plane Songbird, or his niece Penny. I sat up. “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s a big — ”

  I didn’t hear what she said after that because I was already out of the bedroom.

  Casey stood just inside the door. He curled his lips into a small smile and then quickly undid it.

  “Throw on some clothes,” he said. It wasn’t a request.

  I opened up my mouth to ask the first of ten questions that came to mind. When I did, he shook his head at me not to bother. I about-faced and headed into the bedroom to change. My mom was still there as if hiding out.

  “Ma, get outta here. I gotta get dressed.”

  “Why is that cop here? What did you do? Is it Mindy? Was it you who — Oy gevalt! It was you who did this to her. Was she cheating on you? I never liked her, you know. I knew she was no good.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Ma.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That the sky’s not falling. C’mon. I gotta get dressed. I have to go.”

  • • •

  I never experienced the same kind of buzz or rush my friends claimed to feel the few times I smoked pot, but, man, I felt it there in the front seat of Detective Casey’s chestnut Galaxie. Somehow I was a part of something in a way I’d never been before, something bigger than me. It was good to crawl out of the little hole of self-pity and bewilderment I’d dug for myself. It was good to feel important. Maybe this was what Aaron and Bobby felt like. Maybe this was what it was like to have purpose. Fifteen minutes into the trip, Casey still hadn’t explained to me where we were headed or why we were going there. Didn’t matter. He needed me.

  We pulled off the Belt Parkway at Pennsylvania Avenue. In D.C., the White House is on Pennsylvania Avenue. In Brooklyn, Pennsylvania Avenue leads to the Fountain Avenue dump. These days, there were plenty of people who had more respect for the latter than the former. I remembered back to the day Bobby and I stopped on the opposite shoulder to fix his flat tire, the day Bobby was almost arrested and then let free. At least now I understood why the cop let him go. Bobby must have given the cop a code word or a number to call that gave him a free pass. I asked Casey about it.

  “If Bobby got snagged by a cop when he was carrying the dummy explosives, did he call you?”

  “He had a number to use, yeah. It couldn’t be me directly because if I was out in the field I might be outta reach, but there was always someone there to clear his way if he got jammed up. Why you wanna know?”

  I ignored the question. “Why didn’t he use it the day he got arrested at the demonstration? I
had to go bail his ass out that day.”

  “Because getting Bobby arrested was the whole point,” Casey said, turning the car toward the dump instead of away from it. Although all the windows in the Ford were rolled up tight, the stench of rotting garbage seemed to seep through the glass and metal as if through tissue paper. “As the plot to bomb the Six-One was getting closer, I needed a way to reassure Susan Kasten and her crowd that Bobby hadn’t betrayed them, that he wasn’t the mole. I figured if Bobby got arrested and they saw that he didn’t have a magic get-outta-jail card, it would erase any doubts they mighta had about him.”

  “Didn’t work.”

  Casey shrugged his shoulders. “Guess not. He’d already been ratted out.”

  We pulled up to a little shack. A guy with bad knees in a green sanitation uniform limped out of the shack and motioned for Casey to roll down his window. When he did, it was all I could do not to puke my guts up onto the floor of the front seat. The detective turned a few shades of green himself as he waved his shield at the gate man. The guy waved us through and Casey set a world’s record getting his window rolled back up. We both took big gulps of air to no good end.

  “Listen, Moe,” he said as we snaked our way along the rough dirt road deeper into the huge mounds of garbage. “This isn’t gonna be pretty.”

  “Is it Susan Kasten?”

  “Nah. I wish.”

  And suddenly, even before he said another word, I knew why he’d brought me here. It was Lids. Had to be. It was the only thing that made sense. In all the commotion of the last few days, I’d almost forgotten about Lids. His parents had called a few times, but I’d been so freaked out by things that I never got back to them. Trust me, nearly getting killed screws with your head and tends to rearrange your priorities. The other night, when I’d recounted how I’d stumbled onto the bomb plot for Detective Casey, I’d fudged Lids’s part in helping me. I’d strategically neglected to mention Lids’s connection to the late Billy O’Day. I’d emphasized Lids’s nervous breakdown and his paranoia, and left out the part about him being a pusher. The way I’d told it, Lids was pure as a spring lamb, sort of an innocent bystander who got caught up in stuff he had no part in.