Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (Akashic Noir)

by Tim McLoughlin

  Harry and McCormick were at the rail in time for the first race. Harry glanced at the program. He was familiar with several of the horses running. He played a straight two dollar trifecta with an 18-1 shot over a 10-1 with the favorite to show. Miraculously, with just a sixteenth of a mile to go, the three horses in Harry’s trifecta were running in the order he’d bet them. Harry felt the whole world opening up for him. The sky was wide and beautiful. Two strides shy of the wire, the second place horse stuck her nose in front of the 18-1 shot, ruining Harry’s trifecta. Harry felt sick and headed home, leaving McCormick behind to chat up a floozy brunette with a skin condition.

  On the train ride home, two kids got on with a boom box blaring an old Grandmaster Flash song. Harry had seen these kids before. They had a good act. People liked to give them money. The taller of the kids sat the boombox down in the middle of the floor as the shorter one started dancing like Michael Jackson. The kid could dance. Everyone on the train could see it. Then the bigger kid got in on it. He moved well too. He did a few somersaults and a standing back flip. He picked up the smaller kid, twirled him above his head, and miscalculated. There was a horrible sound as the smaller kid’s head smashed against the ceiling of the train. At first the tall kid tried to pretend everything was okay. But the smaller kid was just lying there on the floor. There was a nurse on the train car. She examined the small kid. Told him not to move. Harry knew a bad day was getting worse. Even when the kid eventually sat up and seemed okay. It was a day full of bad things.

  So it was with some surprise that at 11:53 that night Harry Sparrow realized his luck had turned. At 10:15 he had walked down 17th Street. He was wearing dark clothing and noiseless rubber-soled shoes. He carried a black briefcase. He passed by the house he’d been eyeing and noted that the front stoop light was on but the rest of the brownstone was in darkness as it had been for many nights. He’d been careful in staking this place out. Had gotten an inside scoop from the maid who had once dated a friend of Harry’s uncle. The Millers were upstate at their summer place for two weeks and they did not have an alarm. Harry approached from the backyard. The windows were locked. He put tape on the window then discretely cracked it. He reached his arm in, undid the window lock, and climbed in.

  He didn’t know much about the layout of the place. Only that the master bedroom was on the second floor, the safe behind an oil painting of a landscape. Jewelry and savings bonds in the safe. The Millers did not trust banks. They were the children of Holocaust survivors. Or so the maid had told the friend of Harry’s uncle. Maybe it was wrong to rob the children of Holocaust survivors, but Harry’s uncle had mentioned the Millers were unkind to their pet cat. Harry liked animals.

  Harry had trained himself to see in the dark. He had a tiny beautiful flashlight in his briefcase, but so far he hadn’t run into the kind of darkness he couldn’t see through. Harry now made his way to the central staircase and went upstairs.

  Harry had a big surprise waiting for him when he set foot in the master bedroom. It was a lavish bedroom. There was velvet and brocade. The ceilings soared and wore their 19th-century moldings intact. At the center of the room was an immense antique sleigh bed. On the bed sat a small woman with a gun. Just sitting in the dark like that with a gun. She was pointing the gun at Harry. Harry didn’t like guns but he knew a little about them. He thought this one looked like a Raven .25.

  “Hello, you must be the burglar,” the girl said.

  “Harry Sparrow, nice to meet you,” Harry said. What else was he going to say? She was wildly attractive and she had a gun.

  “We’re in a quandary, aren’t we?” the girl asked. She smiled. She had cute teeth. She also had very long brown hair and a face like a fox. She was petite but looked like she had some strength in her. Maybe she’d taken gymnastics as a child. Maybe even gone semi-pro with the gymnastics but wasn’t quite good enough for the big leagues. Had enrolled in college studying some subject her heart wasn’t really in. Her heart had been in the gymnastics. So there was a little bitterness there for one so young. But she could have been thirty. It was hard to tell. After college, she drifted a little. Now she was the house sitter for the Millers. Maybe the nanny? But the kids weren’t here. Maybe she was pet sitting for the abused cat.

  “A quandary. Yup,” Harry said. Harry couldn’t quite figure it. What made her wildly attractive. She was dressed in a pair of baggy navy gym shorts and a white tank top. She was close to flatchested and her legs were short, albeit shapely. Mostly it had to do with her face and what was in her eyes. Mischief was in her eyes.

  “Are you the house sitter?”

  “Something like that,” she said. Smiled a little, showing off the cute teeth.

  “You’re not what I expected,” she added.

  “You were expecting me?”

  “I heard the window cracking downstairs. My pa’s house got broke into once when I was ten. Same thing. The burglar cracked the glass. Pretty quiet about it, but I have overdeveloped auditory and visual senses. Always been that way. Some folks say it’s a gift, but like all gifts it’s a curse. I hear too much and I can’t bear bright light.”

  She looked so tired when she said it. She was tired of hearing too much. Tired of the light hurting her eyes.

  “Lucky I have my friend,” she said, indicating the gun with her chin.

  “I wish you’d stop pointing that at me, I don’t like guns.”

  “An outlaw who doesn’t like guns. You’re a man of many faces, Harry Sparrow.”

  He liked the way she used his name.

  “I don’t believe in violence,” Harry said.

  “Ah yes, but the twenty-thousand-dollar question is, do you believe in love, Harry Sparrow?”

  “You haven’t told me your name,” Harry said.

  “Rebecca Church,” the girl said.

  Keeping an eye on the Raven .25, Harry sat down at the edge of the bed. He began asking the girl questions about herself. He asked did she like gymnastics.

  “I hate sports,” she said.

  Harry said that sports were often detestable.

  Rebecca was sitting cross-legged now. Her gym shorts were loose and Harry found himself staring at the place where gym short separated from inner thigh. Rebecca was not wearing underwear. Harry knew it couldn’t be wise to stare at an armed girl’s privates, but the more he struggled not to, the more he stared.

  “You’re staring,” Rebecca said. Though she’d been resting the gun on her knee, she now picked it up and pointed it at Harry again. She made no effort to close her legs.

  The gun was too close to Harry. It made him see double. It made his heart bump against his ribs. He reached over and touched Rebecca’s cheek. Her eyes became smaller. He then ran one finger from her left knee up to her inner thigh. He let his finger rest there just where the gym shorts ended. The gun was inches from Harry’s head. He put his mouth where his finger was resting. He repeatedly kissed that spot of thigh. He closed his eyes.

  Harry Sparrow had always had a keen sense of self-preservation. That was all gone now. He started biting into Rebecca’s upper thigh. He wanted to transplant himself inside of her.

  Harry finally stopped biting the thigh, reached his fingers under the elastic waist of the gym shorts, and pulled them down to her knees. Rebecca kept holding the gun even as Harry yanked the tank top over her head. Harry let out a moan as he looked at her small body. The pubic hair a little unruly. It made Harry love her slightly, right then and there.

  Rebecca rested the gun on her belly and moaned. Eventually, Harry reached for the gun. He got hold of it before Rebecca realized what was what. He didn’t point it at her. Just held it.

  “Get up,” Harry said. All he wanted was to swallow her. Instead, he dressed her. She let him, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Harry retrieved her hairbrush from the bathroom and brushed her hair. She pouted. She put one hand down the front of her gym shorts and sucked the thumb of her other hand. Harry gave her the gun back.


  Later on that night, Harry Sparrow learned that Rebecca Church was indeed the house sitter for the Millers. The Millers were friends of her second cousin Jim. Rebecca had been drifting from sublet to sublet since hitting town six months earlier. She’d been glad for a nice place to stay, but then found she didn’t like the Millers. They’d seemed fine when she’d briefly met them the day they left on their trip, but once Rebecca had been in their house twenty-four hours, she disliked the Millers intensely. She disliked their magazines and their clothes that she saw hanging in their closets. The children’s rooms were all wrong, decorated in banal pastels, as if all kids were supposed to like pastel. No kids Rebecca knew liked pastel.

  By the time Harry Sparrow came to burglarize the place, Rebecca actively hated the Millers. Harry she liked. She didn’t have second thoughts about helping Harry clean the place out.

  “What about your cousin? Isn’t this going to reflect badly on him?”

  “I barely know him,” Rebecca said, leaving it at that.

  When Harry had a little trouble with the safe, Rebecca came and put her ear to it. She could hear things Harry could never hear. She could hear strangers’ heartbeats on the subway. She could hear the small sounds insects made. She helped Harry get the safe open.

  Once Harry had taken the jewelry and bonds and put them into the bag he’d had folded in his briefcase, Rebecca went to find Sally, the cat. She hadn’t heard about the Millers’s alleged cruelty to animals the way Harry had, but the food they had left for Sally contained by-products. Rebecca strongly disapproved of by-products so she decided to take the cat. As they left the house by the front door, Rebecca not even bothering to lock it behind her, Harry glanced at his watch. It was 11:53 p.m. on May 2 and Harry Sparrow’s luck had turned.

  Rebecca came with Harry to his furnished room in the attic of the Desuj’s house on Friel Place. It was a stubby street just a few blocks from Prospect Park, but worlds away from some of the more upscale neighborhoods that hugged the park’s perimeter. Humble frame houses were jammed together like teeth. The houses’ inhabitants were working-class people from India, the Dominican Republic, and Guyana. Harry himself was from New Jersey. But no one minded.

  “It’s small,” Rebecca said, after entering Harry’s dismal attic room. She immediately turned off the lights and closed the lone window in spite of the thick heat.

  “I’ve had a run of bad luck,” Harry shrugged. He watched Rebecca make Sally the cat comfortable by offering her some of the nutritionally correct food they’d purchased in Park Slope. Once the cat started eating, Rebecca looked at Harry. She smiled a little and took off her tank top. Harry stared. She put her finger between her legs and stood there looking at Harry. Harry wondered if Mrs. Desuj was going to mind about the cat. He knew Indian people didn’t think highly of cats. Cows were another story of course.

  “How come you have a gun?” Harry asked Rebecca.

  “I like to shoot things,” Rebecca said.

  This worried Harry a little but they could discuss it later. Rebecca came closer and put her hand down the front of Harry’s trousers. Then she made a purring sound and kissed him. Harry looked at her lovely mischievous face and decided that not only had his luck changed, but he was now the luckiest man alive.

  Harry had to do a lot of explaining and even break out the book of penal codes given him by a jailhouse lawyer, but he did finally convince Rebecca to leave the gun at home when they went out on jobs. Rebecca was attached to her gun even though she swore she’d only ever shot cans with it.

  Harry and Rebecca worked well together. Rebecca could see in the dark even better than Harry and she was aces at the listening part of safe-cracking. Also, Harry knew that Rebecca was his luck.

  It was a very lucrative month for Harry Sparrow and Rebecca Church. By September, they’d rented a nice two-bedroom down the block on the other side of Friel Place. The apartment had a tiny patch of backyard where Rebecca hung wind chimes and Sally the cat sunned herself.

  By October, Rebecca got a little crazy. Oftentimes she didn’t want to have sex with Harry because it was noisy. Harry bought her earplugs but she could still hear internal noise. Her sensitivity to light became acute and she wore Ray Charles–style glasses morning, noon, and even night. The world was too bright for her.

  Harry Sparrow started feeling low.

  December came. Friel Place was festive with holiday lights and plastic Santas. Even the Indian families had gotten fancy with lawn and window ornaments.

  Harry and Rebecca started planning holiday-season burglaries. Harry felt it would bring them close again, maybe even temper Rebecca’s hypersensitivities.

  Harry and Rebecca staked out a slew of houses in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace. Christmas would be their big day. They had their sights on a lovely brownstone in Windsor Terrace. The occupants were obviously away. Newspapers and mail spilled from the box, and when early snow came, the walk went unshoveled. There was one light showing from the second floor but it was always on. The people were definitely away. Harry knew the place would be alarmed so he went for a brush-up course with Mac the Alarm Guy.

  Harry and Rebecca set out in broad daylight on Christmas morning. It was a cold, overcast day and the streets were sleepy. Harry quickly picked the back door open. The alarm whined, threatening to start its full song unless someone disabled it pronto. The sound made Rebecca crouch to the floor and cup her hands over her ears. Harry left her crouching like that as he let his nose lead him to the alarm. He deactivated it in just a few seconds, mentally thanked Mac the Alarm Guy, and went back to find Rebecca. She wasn’t there though. And somewhere upstairs there was music playing. Very soft piano music. Maybe it was French. There hadn’t been music playing a few moments earlier. Had Rebecca gone upstairs and started playing records? She usually didn’t want any music. It was all too brash for her ears. Even some of the soft country ballads and Chopin Nocturnes that Harry liked. But maybe she’d lost it so completely she was playing records on the job.

  Suddenly, Harry had to take a leak. This was unusual. Harry had trained himself never to need to evacuate on a job. Some burglars liked that kind of thing. Taking people’s stuff and pissing in their toilets too. Harry found this distasteful but he had to go pretty badly. He found a bathroom. He tried to pee. It wasn’t coming though. He stood there with his johnson dangling. He thought about Rebecca. He thought about her fox face and her gymnast body and how for the first thirty-five days they had had sex at least three times a day and thereafter almost never. Because her ears got so bad. Harry was feeling a mix of frustrations. And he still couldn’t pee. He wanted to call out to Rebecca to explain what the hold up was, but that would mean raising his voice, and Rebecca wouldn’t like that.

  Must have been twenty minutes that Harry stood there before giving up on peeing. He was in pain as he went upstairs to look for Rebecca. He had pain from not peeing and pain from Rebecca. But Rebecca Church was his luck and he went to find her.

  What Harry saw up there in the high-ceilinged room at the top of the stairs was bewildering. There was trash everywhere. Spent containers of takeout food littered every surface. The furniture beneath the litter was expensive-looking but neglected. There were stains, dust bunnies, and even a pool of vomit. There was one hall light on and it dimly lit the scene. A man was sitting hunched in front of a big black piano, playing very softly. Rebecca was lying under the piano. Harry closed his eyes to put the hallucination away. When he looked again, it was all still there.

  Harry wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring. Rebecca eventually noticed him. She yawned and smiled. When the man stopped playing, she introduced him to Harry. His name, it seemed, was Bernard. His dark hair hung over his eyes. Harry couldn’t see what kind of look Bernard was giving him.

  “I’m going to stay, Harry,” Rebecca said, after making introductions.

  “What do you mean, stay?”

  “Stay here, with Bernard.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?�
�� Harry heard his voice go up a notch. He sounded hysterical.

  Rebecca said that Bernard played music so softly she could listen to it. And that’s all she’d ever wanted. Harry had no idea that’s what she’d wanted or he’d have tried to give it to her. But now it looked like it was too late. In the time it had taken Harry to try to pee in Bernard’s toilet, Rebecca had evidently forged some sort of intimate relationship with the man. She clearly meant it. She was going to stay. Harry didn’t know how long she’d stay or what Bernard thought about any of it, but Rebecca, Harry knew, always got her way. Bernard didn’t look the type to protest anything, especially not Rebecca.

  Rebecca was smiling as she told Harry how Bernard had a disease that gave him pain in his fingers. He’d been a concert pianist until the disease came when he turned forty. Now he stayed in his house eating from takeout containers and playing softly.

  Bernard looked at Harry blankly as Rebecca reported all this. Harry wanted to bash his skull in.

  When Harry showed no sign of leaving, Rebecca produced a gun from an ankle holster hidden below her pants. That got Harry mad. She had sworn she wouldn’t bring the gun. She had broken a promise. Harry believed in keeping promises.

  Harry said nothing more to Rebecca. He turned, leaving her and her gun with the dirty piano-playing lunatic.

  Harry went home. He figured that was it. Back to the bad luck.

  Five days later, Harry ran into McCormick. McCormick had a tip on a horse in the fourth, did Harry want to come to the track? It was cold and the sky was angry and Harry knew he would lose. But he went. Harry wanted to sit out the first race. Maiden three-year-olds going five and a half furlongs. Might as well pick numbers out of a hat, it was that unpredictable.

  “Come on, Harry, what’s got into you?” McCormick was egging him on.

  Harry rolled his eyes, then looked from his program to the muscled and shining horses in the paddock. He picked out a trifecta. He went crazy. Put a 30-1 over a 6-1 over a 17-1. Miracu-lously, with less than a sixteenth of a mile to go, the three horses in Harry’s trifecta were running in the order he’d bet them. He knew something would go wrong, though, so he looked away. Just walked away from the rail, leaving the crowd to gasp at a dramatic finish.