by Archer Mayor
“You want a cup of coffee?” he asked, ushering her in.
“No. I’m okay.”
He took her jacket and hung it on a nearby hook and invited her into the small living room around the corner, whose back door, standing ajar, led directly into the wood shop. He gestured to her to take a seat and, placing the plane on the coffee table between them, settled into an old armchair, scattering a few wood shavings onto the rug.
“You heard from Willy yet?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“Which is why you’re here,” he suggested gently.
She looked at him ruefully. “Yeah. I’m sorry to be a pain. I’m just worried.”
“So am I,” he admitted, which surprised and comforted her. “I even called Detective Ogden again to see if he knew anything. Which he didn’t,” he added in response to her hopeful expression.
“So, what’re we supposed to do?” she asked.
Gunther shrugged. “There are options. Technically, he’s AWOL, so we could act on that. For the moment, I’ve just put him on bereavement leave, which is stretching things a bit for an ex-spouse. But we’re not too busy right now, and the rest of us can handle his caseload, so I don’t see the harm, and I sure don’t see blowing the whistle on him.”
“And in the meantime, we wait?” she asked, her voice rich with impatience and frustration.
He nodded. “Yup. He’s got to work this out.”
Sammie slapped her leg with her hand. “Work what out? I understand he feels guilty about messing up their marriage, but that was years ago. From what he told me, she wasn’t the most stable person in the world to start with, and he wasn’t the one who put her on drugs. I mean, Christ knows he’s no saint, but it takes two to tango. What’s he doing down there?”
Gunther smiled softly. “Seeking absolution, I would guess. He’s a man driven by devils. By guilt now, anger when he went to Vietnam, self-loathing when he hit the bottle. Right now, I figure he’s hoping he can get himself off the hook somehow, even if he’s convinced he’ll never succeed. If we’re lucky, he’ll come home when he runs out of gas.”
Sammie stared at him in silence. He laughed and held up a hand. “All right. That’s a little too easy, but don’t you forget how you felt about him in the old days. I’m really happy you two are together, but our Willy is a handful. You should remember that and protect yourself a little.”
Sammie didn’t answer, choosing to fix her eyes on the dark fireplace across from her.
“Right?” he repeated.
She glanced at him, slightly irritated. But she knew him well, having worked under him for more than ten years, first at the Brattleboro PD with Willy and then for this new outfit, and she knew he didn’t say such things without reason. She swallowed her defensive first reaction and considered what he’d said. It was true that when she and Willy were first on Joe’s detective squad, they’d fought like dogs, protecting their turf and taking swipes at each other at the slightest provocation. They laughed a little edgily about that now, when they were feeling sure of each other, but it was hard sometimes not to believe that their current affection was merely the same old passion with a twist. Willy was sometimes hard to love.
That thought process finally made her nod in response to Joe’s question. “I guess so. You’ve known him a long time. Did he ever tell you about Vietnam?”
Gunther thought awhile. “Sort of. I was able to fill in some of the blanks from my own time in combat. He did a lot of long-range recon work, deep into the enemy’s back pocket. It got pretty ugly sometimes—guys making up their own rules as they went and not saying much when they got back. I know his nickname was the Sniper, if that tells you anything. I guess it described his attitude as much as any specialty he had. And he wasn’t alone there. The war had fallen apart, the American public was sick of it, the rest of the world thought we were the pits. The Kennedys and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been assassinated one by one. Urban riots were the norm. You’re young enough that it all looks kind of quaint and antiseptic now. But there were serious doubts we’d survive as a nation. When Willy went off to fight, returning vets were already being met at the airports by protesters spitting on them and calling them baby killers. Those were very tough years.”
“Why did he go, then?” she asked.
“I always thought it was because he was ready to kill somebody—he just had sense enough to want to do it legally.”
Sammie stared at him wide-eyed. “He told you that?”
Gunther shook his head. “No. He had a tough time growing up. I don’t know all the details, but by his late teens, I guess he was a basket case. He tried the cops first. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. The military suited his needs better anyway. It was a post-World War Two army, transfixed by the Great Red Menace—basically the same bunch who’d trained me earlier. They weren’t the sensitive guys who let you enlist to ‘Be all that You Can Be.’ Back then, it was kill the gook. Simple.
“Willy allowed himself to be turned into the equivalent of a human knife blade, probably hoping for some sort of cathartic release. Except that it only complicated things and added to the baggage he was already carrying.”
“He is pretty certifiable sometimes,” Sammie said.
But Joe shook his head. “My back pocket psychology is that we’re all giving him the support today he craved growing up, but since he’s literally been to the wars and back, he doesn’t know how to accept it. He needs it, wants it, and hangs around to receive it, but he’ll flip you the finger when you pony it up because he sees all dependence as a sign of weakness.”
Sammie pondered that for a while, a frown growing across her face. “Sounds like I got stuck with another Froot Loop.” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand in mock penitence. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Gunther laughed, but his eyes were serious. “You really believe that?”
“What’s not to believe?” she asked him. “You’re describing a guy who needs help but who kicks whoever’s helping him in the teeth so he can maintain his selfimage. That sound like a pick of the litter to you?”
“It wouldn’t be if it weren’t a work in progress. He is improving.”
She wanted to argue the point, but she couldn’t. It was true. Willy had learned to control his alcoholism through sheer willpower. His more flagrantly self-destructive behavior was largely a thing of the past. When they were alone together, he’d exhibited tenderness and warmth she’d never thought him capable of in the old days. And, as naive as it sounded even to her, there was the art—the pencil sketches he did, often while on stakeout, quickly and efficiently with that powerful, dexterous right hand, turning out images of subtle beauty.
Still, it pissed her off. “Why can’t I fall for a normal guy?”
Joe Gunther gazed at her affectionately. “Because you’re not a normal woman.”
“Perfect. I really wanted to hear that. What was Mary like?” she asked after a pause.
He thought a moment before answering, “There’s a danger right now of just seeing her as a junkie loser. But when I met her, she was naive and shy and damaged and a real sweetheart. And she worshiped Willy, probably for all the wrong reasons. The way that marriage ended burned both of them terribly—her because of the betrayal she’d suffered, and him because it was the latest and biggest example of his failure as a human being. I don’t know what Mary was up to in New York, but it was more than just being a victim. ’Cause she was smart, too, and, after Willy, good and angry. Whatever she was planning by going down there, you can bet that getting even was part of it.”
Sammie shook her head. “I just hope he’s not the target, even from the grave.”
At around the same moment, back in New York’s Lower East Side, Willy Kunkle stood quietly in the shadows of an empty warehouse, hidden behind a concrete buttress, watching a small piece of urban theater play out at the end of the block. There, along a darker stretch of East Broadway, a young man paced the sidewalk,
a quirky combination of self-confidence and nervousness. Dressed in the quasi-uniform of baggy pants, sneakers, watch cap, and loose logo jacket, he bounced back and forth like an eager dog prowling a dock, awaiting the return of its owner’s boat. But the boats, in this case passing cars, went back and forth in a blur, seemingly ignoring him.
Until one slowed, veered slightly to get out of traffic, and then stopped. The young man’s body language instantly changed. Now diffident, almost surly, he reluctantly approached the car as if it had a bad odor, and condescended to bend ever so slightly at the waist to address the driver through the passenger-side window. There was a short conversation, after which the young man—a drug dealer’s so-called steerer—straightened dismissively and gestured to the driver to pull over to the entrance of an alleyway directly across from Willy’s observation post. His role fulfilled, the steerer returned to keeping a lookout for both customers and cops.
Willy continued watching as a small boy suddenly appeared on a bike, despite the late hour and poor visibility, and rode up and down the street without apparent purpose—the mobile perimeter sentry, activated by the driver emerging from his car. This man, white, conservatively dressed, clearly on edge, looked up and down the sidewalk before crossing to the alleyway and pausing at its opening. Willy extracted a small, inexpensive telescope he kept in his coat pocket for such occasions, and focused on the dimly lit scene.
Barely visible, the outline of a man appeared from the gloom beyond the buyer. The two conferred briefly, the dealer taking something from the buyer, after which he reached above his head to one of the upper support brackets of the roll-down metal curtain protecting a shop window next to him, and retrieved a small package—all in a gesture as smooth and fast as a hummingbird sipping from a flower.
The buyer took the drugs, quickly broke away, returned to his car, and joined his brethren in the flow of traffic. The whole thing took about two minutes.
As a final sign of returning normalcy, the underage bicyclist rolled to a stop opposite his perch barely within sight of the steerer, and waited for the next heads up.
Willy smiled and pocketed the telescope, having found what he was after. He separated himself from his hiding spot, walked down the side street, crossed East Broadway, and approached the steerer at an angle that put the young man between him and the opening to the alleyway.
Like any midrange occupant of the urban food chain, the steerer noticed Willy early and warily, stopped his restless weaving, and turned to face the threat, while balancing on the balls of his sneakered feet, ready for flight. One hand drifted toward the right-hand pocket of his jacket.
Willy shook his head from a distance. “Don’t do that.”
The steerer hesitated. Close up, he couldn’t have been older than sixteen, all the hardness he could muster twitching around his mouth and nostrils, but only fleeting in his eyes. He could clearly see that the strange-looking, asymmetrical man coming toward him was no one to bluff.
“You the man?” he asked.
Willy smiled slightly. “You want to find out?”
“I didn’t do nuthin’.”
“Then we’re just having a conversation.” Willy extracted a photograph from his pocket and showed it to the steerer. “Tell me about this.”
It was the evidence picture of the package of drugs found next to Mary’s body, labeled with the caricature of the red devil.
“I don’t know about that shit.”
“Maybe your main man does in the alleyway.”
The steerer’s eyes widened slightly. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“You pull ’em in, you and the kid on the bike keep an eye out, and the third guy does the deal. Why’re we talkin’ about this? Eyeball the picture and tell me about the red devil. Then I’m gone and you’re back in business.”
The steerer pressed his lips together in thought. “That’s it?”
Willy pretended to be losing patience. “I’m being polite here, showing you respect. I coulda gone straight to your man in the alley, shined a light in his face, grabbed his goods from above the security gate, and showed him you can’t do your job, but I didn’t do that, did I? You wanna screw that up?”
The youngster showed his age by clenching his fists and stamping one foot. “Shit, man. You fuckin’ with me?”
Willy held out the picture again. “Tell me about the red devil. That’s it.”
The steerer finally made up his mind with a quick glance over his shoulder. “We don’t do that shit.”
“We talkin’ in circles here?” Willy asked menacingly.
“No, man. I mean it ain’t ours. That comes from uptown. Diablo.”
“That’s what they call it? Where uptown?”
“A hundred and fifty-fifth. The Old Polo Grounds.” That caught Willy by surprise. The Polo Grounds were only twenty blocks south of where he’d met Bob earlier that day. The old neighborhood.
“Who sells it?”
The young man took a step backward, shaking his head vigorously. “No way, man. You asked what I know. That’s it. I ain’t tellin’ you more.”
Willy didn’t care. If the kid had given him a name, it might well have been wrong or a street alias of little value. The key was to know where Diablo called home. From there, Willy could track it back to its maker.
And he knew just the man to consult.
He slipped the photograph back into his pocket. “You’ve been a scholar and a gentleman. I will go to the oracle.”
The kid stared at him suspiciously. “What is that?”
Willy paused and smiled as he turned away. “Good question. I hope it’s the other shoe dropping.”
Chapter 9
Nathan Lee had lived in Washington Heights all his life, and had done almost everything within reach to make a living. He wasn’t a major player, just one of thousands on the hustle, a discreet man with a professionally short memory, who never forgot anything or anyone, knew how and where to get things done, and whose comfort level with things legal and illegal had finally reached an even keel. Just as he would never hold a nine-to-five job, he would also never touch anything that might cost him more than a night’s detention.
That hadn’t always been true, and his coming to terms with moderation owed a lot to Willy Kunkle.
All those years ago, before Willy left for Vietnam and while still a rookie on the NYPD, he stopped Nate Lee on a drug possession charge. The circumstances weren’t egregious. It was a routine piece of business, but the laws were such, and Nate’s record long enough, that had Willy actually arrested him, Nate, no spring chicken even back then, would have spent the rest of his life in prison.
That hadn’t happened. For reasons neither man was likely to be able to explain, an odd connection was made that night between the troubled patrol officer who, unbeknownst to himself, was already in freefall, and the penny-ante street hustler one step away from a life sentence. Like one failing relay racer tossing the baton to the next man up, Willy spontaneously granted Nate absolution, with no strings attached. He merely poured the drugs into a storm drain, told Nate to nurture the gift he’d just been granted, and walked away.
The two never met again.
To Willy, the experience was like a passing inspiration, unsought at the time, inexplicable later, and finally all but forgotten. To Nate, however, it had more significance. He pondered the chances of being as lucky as he’d been with Willy, and found them slim enough to warrant his paying attention. Not that he then joined the church or found redemption. But he started thinking before he acted, considering his own survival, and never again put himself in such peril. After a couple of years practicing this new habit, he then thought a show of thanks might be in order, so he wrote a letter to Patrol Officer Kunkle, care of the NYPD, reminding him of that night without going into detail, expressing his gratitude, and hoping that everything in Kunkle’s life was equally on the upswing.
He never heard back, never expected he would, but was content to have made the ges
ture.
Kunkle actually got that letter, a long time after it was sent. The police department forwarded it to Vietnam, where Willy opened it in an alcoholic stupor one night, and injected into its mundane wording an intangible significance. Some act of grace that he’d practiced without thought a seeming lifetime ago had been brought back to his attention in the middle of a hell on earth like some elusive sign. Willy kept the letter almost as a talisman, rereading it occasionally until it finally became lost in the wake of his turbulent travels.
When the young steerer mentioned Washington Heights, however, forcing Willy to think back not just to his childhood, but to when he’d walked the beat in exactly that neighborhood, the memory of Nate’s letter came back to mind with abrupt and total clarity. That’s why he’d referred to the second shoe dropping.
In fact, such a historic connection was by now becoming the norm. Since crossing the Harlem River, he’d been traveling backward in time like a man walking into freezing cold water. Mary’s death, the fact that he’d been the one called to identify her, its happening in New York, seeing Bob and Andy, and finally his sudden recall of Nathan Lee’s innocuous letter in relation to Washington Heights, were all part of a progressive pattern.
As Willy rode the subway north into Harlem late that night, he couldn’t help but wonder whether—even hope that—the journey he was on might clarify more than just the questions surrounding Mary’s death.
Because he was feeling the need for a whole lot of answers.