Empty Ever After

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  It was an anomaly, not a trend. Once we both hit the grass and open ground of the golf course, I fell back. My deck shoes were no match for his track shoes. Although darker out here away from the street and porch lights, there was enough natural light to keep him from being completely swallowed up by the night. He kept looking over his shoulder to see how far he’d extended his lead over me or if I’d given up. If he thought I was going to quit, he really didn’t know me. I’d have to cough out my lungs and liver before my legs would stop moving.

  Bulldog or not, the reality was that my persistence would only count for so much. Eventually, he would get far enough ahead to duck out of sight, while I chased my own dick around out there in the dark. I didn’t have long to wait. Since we’d hit the grass—which couldn’t have been more than a minute earlier, but felt like an eternity—the ghost had been heading due south toward the ocean holes, but now he decided to cut sharply east toward where the sun would be coming up in only a very few hours.

  Shit! I lost sight of him for a second behind a raised green, but caught a glimpse when I made it around the other side. He was gaining confidence as he went, getting a better sense of my physical limitations.

  Hugging the first cut of rough as he went, he would dart in and out of the small outcroppings of trees that dotted this part of the course. Then, he darted in, but didn’t come out. I was about to go in after him when something four-legged and low to the ground shot out of the woods and skittered directly across my path. Two luminescent eyes stared back at me while I got my heart out of my throat. Free of the tree shadows and in the middle of the fairway, I could see it was a red fox. I hadn’t run across many red foxes in Coney Island. Stray dogs, water rats, and horseshoe crabs, yes. Red foxes, no.

  Before I could reorient myself, the woods coughed up the ghost fifty yards ahead of me and, like the fox before him, he ran directly across the fairway into a much larger stand of trees on the opposite side. Running as hard as I could, I took a diagonal line right to where he entered the far trees. I kept my eyes focused on that point, trying desperately to ignore my aching knee and the stitch in my side that felt more like a gash. As I approached the woods, an uneasy feeling came over me. I didn’t sense danger necessarily. It was a feeling that there were more than foxes, owls, and fireflies in here. But whatever my concerns, it was too late to start worrying about them now.

  In the woods, I knelt down behind a clump of thin-trunked trees. I could hear the ghost’s footfalls—ghosts didn’t have footfalls, did they?—on the dried undergrowth and fallen leaves that had accumulated over the years. Then I spotted him, but the irregular spacing of the trees made it difficult for me to follow his course. His silhouette flashed in and out of view. There it was again, that weird feeling. I tried to ignore it, to keep my eyes on the next clearing between the trees where I thought he would come back into view.

  There he is! I’d gotten lucky. By keeping my place, I had confused him and he was now heading back my way. In a few seconds he would be passing about as close to me as he had been when he was caught in my headlamps. I eased myself up from the kneeling position and braced my back against the trees. Then I thought I was hearing things. The ghost’s footsteps were now lost in an avalanche of crunching leaves. The woods were suddenly alive with a low thumping that had nothing to do with my heart. It didn’t matter. I was committed.

  I sprang. My timing was perfect. The sudden activity confused him too and it took him a second to realize I was almost on him. I was ten yards away, five, two, one…I was just stretching out my arms when something brushed my leg, knocking me off balance, but not down, Then, at the last second before I grabbed the ghost, I saw a blur hurtling at me. Bang! The wind went out of me even before my kidneys connected with the big tree behind me. When I got to my hands and knees, I got kicked in the head, hard. Unconsciousness took a while to take hold. In the meantime, I let the thumping rock me to sleep.

  It wasn’t quite light out when I opened my eyes, but there was light enough to see Patrick’s ghost was gone. The thumping was now exclusively in my head. I felt the knot above my left temple. It was tender and the hair over it was stiff from dried blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. I stood up slowly, in pieces, making sure I didn’t revisit any of my most recent meals. I had a pretty good headache, but was walking okay. I knew what day it was, where I was, and had a notion of what time it was. I took a leisurely pace as I headed back to Carmella’s car.

  Stepping out of the woods with the first rays of sun over my back, I tripped over something in the deep rough. It was the half-eaten carcass of a fawn: no doubt the handiwork of the red fox. Across the fairway, in the smaller woods, a herd of about twenty deer tried to look inconspicuous, standing perfectly still, trying to blend in with the trees. One of them probably had my blood on its hoof. I wasn’t interested in finding out which one.

  As I walked through the golf course’s front gate, an older gentleman out walking his chocolate lab stopped me.

  “You don’t look so good, son. What happened?”

  “I got mugged,” I said.

  “Mugged! By who?”

  “Bambi.”

  That ended the conversation right there.

  Carmella’s car was where I left it, about two feet away from the curb, parked facing the wrong way, and the driver’s side door ajar. At least I hadn’t left it running. I seriously considered finding another cozy spot and keeping up the stakeout. That notion lasted until I spied myself in the mirror. I was never going to look in a car mirror again. I looked like shit, smelled like shit, and felt like shit. I was nothing if not consistent.

  I closed the car door, started her up, and limped back to Brooklyn. It was the smart thing to do. The way I saw it, I had no idea if Martello had returned home. If he was home, he was probably sleeping and I could get someone from the office out here by the time he headed in for his shift. If he was still out, not knowing where wasn’t as big a deal as it would seem. I had time to get coverage on him either here or at his precinct. Either way, there was little doubt that his young accomplice or stooge or whatever Patrick’s ghost was to him, had already told Martello about our running with the deer.

  Although I was far worse for wear and had failed to get my hands on the kid, my concerns about Ray Martello were confirmed: the asshole was behind it. You’d have to be from Pluto to think the kid’s appearance at Martello’s house was a coincidence. Now I had some choices to make. I could go to Vandervoort or the local cops with what I had, but, truthfully, I had bupkis. I had suspicions, a series of unlikely coincidences, and Ray Martello’s palpable hatred for me. Unfortunately, none of it would stand up in court. That’s why my screwing up with the kid really hurt. If I just had him, he could make the case for me. On the other hand, I didn’t have to go the legal route. Judge and jury Moe had all the evidence they needed. There were ways to get back at people without taking them to court. If anyone could understand that concept, it would be Ray Martello Jr.

  Driving back up Great River Road to Montauk Highway, I passed by a roadkill mother possum and two babies. I squeezed my eyes shut as I went, but all I could see in my head were the skittering red fox and the wrecked body of the dead fawn. I had had quite enough of the suburbs, thank you very much. It was time to get back to a place where I better understood the relationship between predator and prey.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE RINGING IN my head woke me up.

  First, I felt for the lump on my head, then I reached for the phone. The swelling had receded a bit and the blood-stiff hair was gone. Hot showers are mostly forgettable events, but there are times when they’re just a notch or two below desperation sex. This morning’s shower was the stuff of top ten lists. My long nap had reduced my headache from crashing cymbals to the tinkle of a lone triangle and I no longer smelled like Sunday at Augusta.

  “Yeah, what?” My voice was thick with sleep.

  Silence.

  “Okay,” I said, “I don’t have time for this b
ullsh—”

  “How is your head?”

  The voice was unfamiliar and it took a few seconds for the question to register. I guess there were parts of me other than my voice still thick with sleep. Who knew about my head? No one. I hadn’t wanted to bother explaining about my getting KO’ed by Bambi, so I’d left that part out of my call in to Carmella and she was the only person I’d spoken … Holy shit!

  “The head’s better. What should I call you?” I asked.

  “Patrick.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, kid.”

  “No, really, that’s my name. It’s weird, right?”

  “After all this, why are you calling me now? We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble and me a headache if you’d have just talked to me this morning.”

  “I’m scared of Ray.”

  “Ray Martello?”

  “Yeah. When I spoke to him he was crazy mad at me for letting you get that close.”

  I started noticing things about the kid’s voice. His accent was mostly flat with a bit of a nasally twang. Half the kids that Sarah went to the University of Michigan with had that same accent. I thought about what approach to take with Patrick, if that was his name. Should I play the understanding, avuncular stranger or the outraged victim? Should I play softball or hardball? I went with hardball.

  “Ray’s a scary guy,” I said. “What do you want from me and why the fuck should I care? Don’t forget, kid, you’ve spent the last few weeks terrorizing my family and committing felonies.”

  “I didn’t know. I swear to God I didn’t know.” His voice cracked.

  “What did you think you were doing?”

  “Making a movie.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, kid. I’m from Brooklyn and you’re not.” I threw a high hard fastball under his chin. “You need cameras to shoot a movie. Seen any of those around lately? Maybe when you got the job you believed that movie crap, but not anymore.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’m really sorry about what I did to your wife and all, but I was in too deep to …”

  I had him and it was time to start pressing my advantage.

  “How did Martello get a recording of Patrick’s—?”

  “If I come in, can you protect me?” His voice took on a real urgency.

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t sound so sure,” he said.

  “You blame me for not trusting you? Why should I believe a fucking word you say?”

  “I swear to God, Mr. Prager, I’ll come in. I just want to get away from this guy. He’s got a crazy temper. I thought he was going to kill me this morning.”

  “That’s twice you’ve invoked God in this conversation, kid. Stop swearing to God and start giving me some proof I should trust you. Where did Martello get a tape of Patrick Maloney’s voice?”

  “I don’t know. I swear to—Okay, forget that, but I really don’t know. He hasn’t let me in on any stuff that doesn’t directly involve me. I don’t even know why he hates you so much.”

  “That one I have the answer to. Who’s the guy with the eye patch?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s an old cop friend of Martello’s dad. He drives me around some of the time. That’s all I know about him. We don’t talk much.”

  “All right, kid, come on in.”

  “No, you have to come get me.” It was his turn to play hardball.

  I thought about calling his bluff, but couldn’t afford to let him get away again. Besides, if what he was saying about Martello’s temper was accurate—I had every reason to believe it was—and he sensed the kid was ready to bolt, he would cut his losses and get rid of the hired help. Bottom line was, I needed the kid alive. Without him there was no case.

  “You win. I’ll come to you.”

  Silence. He was having second thoughts. He might be scared but he was also likely sacrificing the most money he’d ever made. I helped his thought process along.

  “Listen, Patrick, I’ll pay you to come in and I’ll do my best to shield you from the cops.”

  “Twenty grand.”

  “That means he’s paying you ten, some of which you’ve already received. Five,” I said, “and I’ll have it with me when I pick you up. If you help me put this cocksucker away, I’ll take care of you.”

  “Okay. Two hours.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m pretty close to you.”

  “That doesn’t help me, kid.” I wasn’t going to call him Patrick again if I could avoid it.

  “Manhattan Court, number sixty-nine, downstairs. It’s a garden apartment that he rented for me.”

  “Manhattan Court over by Coney Island Hospital?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You are close. Two hours?”

  “Bring the money,” he said, all the big bad fear gone out of his voice.

  I thought about calling Katy and Sarah, but I remembered what her shrink had said. I could serve this kid and Martello up on a silver tray and Katy would still resent me. She had to deal with her issues and I had to deal with mine. That worked for me, for the time being.

  SQUEEZED IN BETWEEN Avenues Y and Z and perpendicular to Ocean Parkway, Manhattan Court was a small, forgettable block of post-Korean War garden apartments with a row of low-slung garages behind. The “gardens” out front were actually lawns of weeds cut low to give the illusion of grass. Each unit had a brick and concrete stoop just large enough to hold a few beach chairs and a portable charcoal grill. I suppose Manhattan Court and the surrounding blocks of garden apartments must once have seemed like a little bit of heaven in the concrete and asphalt world of Brooklyn. Now it seemed in need of repair or bulldozing.

  I knew Manhattan Court because Crazy Charlie had lived there. Charlie and I went to Cunningham and Lincoln together. We called him Crazy Charlie because he would do shit no person with half a brain would do. You tell him you’d give him twenty bucks to climb the Parachute Jump and he’d say, “Fuck, yeah,” and climb it. Most kids, me included, were afraid to climb the fence that surrounded the ride, but there was Crazy Charlie two hundred fifty feet in the air screaming for his twenty bucks.

  He also tended to be loose with his fists. For him, one a day wasn’t a vitamin, but a description of how many fights he averaged. Sometimes he took Sundays off. “I’m a good Catholic,” he’d say. Crazy Charlie didn’t care how big you were, who you were, or who you knew. If you pissed him off—and, trust me, it didn’t take much to piss Crazy Charlie off—he was going to smack you. Of course, throwing the first punch didn’t always equate to victory I’d seen Charlie get the shit kicked out of him on more than a few occasions. There’s no future for guys like Crazy Charlie. Last few times I saw him was in the mid-’70s when I was still on the job. I’m walking by the holding pen at the Six-O and I hear someone calling my name.

  “Moe fuckin’ Prager, that you?”

  “Crazy Charlie, what the fuck you doing in there?”

  “I ain’t Crazy Charlie no more, Moe. I mean, I’m still crazy, but it ain’t dignified for a man, that name, you know what I’m saying?”

  “What are you going by these days?”

  “Charlie Rolex.”

  “Selling fake watches, huh?”

  “Good fakes. But yeah, a man gotta make a livin’ right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you should come by one day and have a beer with me.”

  “You still on Manhattan Court?”

  “Yeah. My dad bit the big one, but Mom’s still kickin’.”

  “Okay, Charlie Rolex. I’ll do that.”

  And I did.

  When I went over to his house that last time, he was shirtless, wearing an army helmet, and drinking beer out of a mixing bowl. Oh, yeah, he also had a loaded police special on the table. He let me drink my beer out of the can and we talked about the nutty stuff he used to pull. After a few minutes of reminiscing, he leaned over to me conspiratorially and whispered, “You’re a Jew, right?”

  “You know I am, Charlie
.”

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening. “You don’t see any of your people in jail.”

  Well, actually I did, but Charlie wasn’t up for a debate.

  “No, Charlie, you don’t.”

  “See, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Frankly, I had no idea what he was saying and I got out of there a little while later with fake Rolexes for Aaron, Miriam, and me. They all broke the first time we put them on. A few years later I heard Charlie had taken to living on the streets. From there it was only a short drop off the edge of the earth into oblivion. Like I said, there’s never any future for guys like Charlie Rolex.

  I put Charlie right out of my head the minute I turned left onto Manhattan Court from East 6th Street. Carmella and Brian Doyle were probably already here. I told them to park blocks away and walk into their positions: Carmella across the way on the even side of the street and Brian Doyle atop the garages around back. There was good reason for the precautions. Martello hadn’t shown up for his shift that day—neglecting to call in sick—nor, apparently, had he returned to his house in Great River. Missing a shift without calling in meant he was getting sloppy, and sloppiness from a guy like Martello was a sure sign of desperation. To me it felt like he was preparing to cover his ass and that meant trouble for the kid.

  I scanned the cars parked on both sides of the street. I had already circled the surrounding blocks a few times checking for pewter Yukons. None in sight. It was a good sign, but didn’t mean Martello hadn’t taken the same precautions as Carmella and Doyle. He was, after all, a cop and knew what we knew. At this juncture, however, I was certain he would be more concerned with being expeditious than judicious. I parked my car directly in front of number sixty-nine, collected the kid’s five grand, and got out. Traffic was streaming in both directions along Ocean Parkway as I stepped up onto the stoop. I found comfort in the din of the traffic. I felt for the bulge at the small of my back and found comfort in that too.