Buried on Avenue B

by Peter de Jonge

  “There were four people in that unit that morning,” says O’Hara, “the old fighter, two perps, and the kid. Now that they’re all dead. There’s no one left to say what happened.”

  “At least you put him out of business,” says Krekorian, “backed him into such a corner, he had no choice but to pull the plug.”

  “Although for a second there I thought you were going bring him back à la Frankenstein. If you had zapped him with that Taser, he might have turned off the water and reached for the towel.”

  “I guess I owe you for that one, Darlene.” He clinks O’Hara’s cocktail with his pint. “Tasering a dead Gypsy is probably not good luck.”

  “It was the least I could do,” says O’Hara. “I miss you, K.”

  “Miss you too, Dar. God knows why.”

  “By the way, Holly used to be Richard.”

  “No shit.”

  “Which I guess proves your point about people needing to change. Some more than others.”

  Krekorian quaffs the last of his Guinness. “That’s it. We had our drink. I need some sleep.”

  “One last shot?”

  “No. And you’re coming with me. I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Let me just go to the bathroom.”

  O’Hara has avoided Milano’s bathroom till now, but this morning she has no choice. As she steps through the door, she sees she’s gotten a text from Axl, and her spirits spike.

  Hi, Darlene. Glad you liked the show. Gotten a lot of positive feedback. Unfortunately things aren’t looking good for the band. The new drummer turned out to be a dick. We got into a fistfight at our last rehearsal, and the bass player is talking about following his girlfriend to Vermont. I’m afraid the Flat Screens are fading to black.

  CHAPTER 63

  THE GRAY-HAIRED WOMAN shuffles from the counter, clutching a Coke and a paper bag. She wears a thin cotton dress that reaches the top of her flip-flops, and her neck and wrists are a welter of beads. Despite her choice of a rendezvous, she is bone thin, the kind of woman lucky enough to have shed her weight over the decades and streamlined for old age.

  O’Hara has been waiting for an hour. She sits at a table in front that looks out at the pedestrians wilting in the heat on Third. The old woman takes the seat across from her and reaches into her bag for the cardboard jewel box and two plastic containers. The box, which bears the claim AN EXCELLENT SOURCE OF HAPPINESS, contains four McNuggets. The plastic tubs hold her sauces—barbecue and sweet ’n’ sour.

  “You expected a man?” Through Miss Marla, O’Hara requested a meeting with the Big Rom, or whoever has jurisdiction over that part of the East Village that includes the community garden.

  “Yes.”

  “Most people do.” With cultivated precision, she lifts a tawny globule, dunks it in both sauces, and drops it into her mouth.

  “I want to know what happened in Florida,” says O’Hara.

  “Detective,” says the Big Roma, “I wasn’t there. Fortunately, the person most responsible has done us all a big favor. Now the book is closed.”

  “I still need to know.”

  “Since when do you care about Gypsies?” The woman repeats her drill and licks the greasy crumbs from her fingers. Through parts not covered with grime or plastered with promotions, light slants through the window and bounces off the orange and maroon puddles.

  “If the kid was a Gypsy, then I care about Gypsies.”

  “Because he was blond?”

  “Because he was nine years old and locked in the back of a van for over a day as he bled to death. Because he had no family and no choice but to help a bunch of lowlifes prey on old people. You’re right, I don’t give a fuck about anyone but the boy. For the way he was treated, I hope bad kasa haunts all of you for the rest of your days.”

  The part of the room where O’Hara and the old woman sit looks more like a shelter than America’s favorite restaurant. Nearby, a woman stares into space, and a bearded man nods out in his panhandling prop of a wheelchair. Those who are more alert are preoccupied with their own fresh catastrophes, but the threat of bad kasa gets the old lady’s attention.

  “What makes you think he didn’t have a family?”

  “If he did, he would have been better off without them. They didn’t take care of him. They didn’t protect him. They didn’t educate him. They didn’t even set his broken leg. The only thing anyone ever did for him was bury him. Tell me what happened, or I’ll lock up every Gypsy below Fourteenth Street until someone does.”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.”

  “Then find out. Ask around.”

  “I’m too old for that. Besides, nothing would be gained.”

  “A few months ago, the boy’s body was moved from wherever it had been to the community garden. That was a very difficult, unpleasant job. Did you order someone to do that?”

  “No,” says the old lady. “But I can tell you that whoever did, thought it was the right thing to do. They thought it was important for the boy to have a decent burial.”

  “What was decent about it? And why take the risk to move him there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You had a theory about why he’d been moved, take a wild guess.”

  “I’ve guessed enough for one day.”

  The old lady returns to her McNuggets, and O’Hara thinks about all the people who used the boy. To Fudgesicle and Popsicle, he was the master key who could unlock any door. For Pizza and Crisco, he was the little piece of business that took the stink off their scams, and to the photographer he was essentially the same thing. No doubt this bony old bitch found a way to profit from him too. Thank God, thinks O’Hara, for his skater pals. All they wanted was his company.

  “By the way, whoever handled the funeral got most of it wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The kid didn’t like Batman. He liked Superman. He didn’t give a fuck about the Yankees, and he thought Coldplay sucks.”

  CHAPTER 64

  FROM HER DESK O’Hara can see the board. Whenever she makes the mistake of glancing in its direction, she sees “John Doe, 9, remains, 6th Street, Avenue B” and the blue line running through it. With his fetish for closure, Kelso wasn’t going to waste any time crossing the homicide off the board. By the time O’Hara got back to the squad that morning, he had pulled a chair over to the wall and done it himself. But more disturbing than the false finality of the blue line is that the victim still doesn’t have a name, and never will.

  “You stop at the wheel?” asks Jandorek.

  “No. I miss something?”

  “A bunch of punks pushed a skell down the stairs to the R train at Union Square, fractured his skull in two places. He’s not expected to make it. The vic has the same name as the old fart who thought the Terminator was our commander-in-chief.”

  “Got to be another Gus Henderson. My Gus wasn’t homeless.”

  “Sixty-seven,” says Jandorek, reading from the sheet. “Lifelong junkie . . . record as long as the tracks on his arm.”

  “What hospital?”

  “St. Vincent’s. My favorite.”

  “I’ll take a look,” says O’Hara, already out of her chair. “I’ll call if there’s anything.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check with the MTA. See if they caught it on film.”

  Unfortunately the head nurse on duty is the imperious Evelyn Priestly. Before O’Hara can open her mouth, Priestly cuts her off. “No. You can’t. Disturbing him now could kill him. That’s why he’s in intensive care.”

  “I don’t want to disturb him,” says O’Hara. “I came to see how he’s doing.”

  “You should have called, then. Saved yourself a trip.”

  “Believe it or not, Gus is a friend. I met him working a case.”

  “Well, y
our friend is in pretty bad shape. He’s got a compound fracture in his skull, and he wasn’t exactly a model of health to begin with.”

  There’s nothing worse than the ICU at night. What’s intensive is certainly not the care. As O’Hara walks by the open doors, she sees wispy old people alone on their backs, their eyes enlarged and scared. In the endless corridors, there’s no help in sight, only the somnambulant shuffle of the occasional nurse’s aide or a janitor walking behind his polisher. What is intense is the quiet and sense of incipient death and the smell of the disinfectant used to scrub it out.

  O’Hara sits on a bench across from the nurses’ station, finds Paulette’s number, and sends her a text. “Paulette, I just heard Gus got mugged in the subway. How did that happen?” Out of the corner of her eye, O’Hara watches Priestly at her desk. When the nurse leaves her station and steps into the elevator, O’Hara finds Henderson’s room and slips inside. From a chair in the corner, she stares at Gus’s bandaged head, his fragile hold on life reflected in the rising and falling numbers on the monitor above his bed.

  O’Hara looks at her phone again. Still no response from Paulette. She should be here, thinks O’Hara, and is surprised that she isn’t, particularly when she recalls how gingerly she removed Gus’s hand from her ass that afternoon in the garden. How the hell could she have let Gus slip out of sight? The guy can barely move. How was that even possible?

  Gus’s personal effects are in a plastic bag on the table. O’Hara doesn’t recognize any of them, and there’s no sign of his glasses. She gets out of her chair and walks to the head of the bed. Without glasses, Gus barely looks like himself. In fact he isn’t Gus, not the Gus Henderson she knows.

  O’Hara bends closer to the battered face and realizes she got the math of junkiedom wrong. A sixty-seven-year-old who has been an addict for forty-six years doesn’t necessarily look eighty-five. He just looks like crap. But that’s not the real issue. If this guy is the real Gus Henderson, who is the demented old fart she’s been dealing with?

  Her Gus Henderson wanted to get something off his chest. He knows about a body buried in the garden that he has no good reason to know about. He has a picture of a willow in his cigar box. He said he killed a big black guy, and one of the perps is dark and very big. And then he changed his mind and decided that maybe he was white. One fucked-up detail and coincidence after another. But if Gus Henderson isn’t really Gus Henderson and is someone else with an actual connection to the perps, all these details become a lot less fucked up and a lot less coincidental.

  The implications put O’Hara’s brain on tilt. As she sorts them out, the pale stranger on the bed opens his eyes as if from a nap. “How you feeling, pal?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Seriously?”

  “How do you think I feel? I feel like shit.”

  “Gus, there’s a guy going around saying he’s you.”

  “Why would anyone do that? I don’t even want to be me.”

  “I’m wondering the same thing. He’s about ten years older than you at least. Thick black glasses. Jet-black hair.”

  “He have a pretty black girlfriend?”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Tall woman, from the islands, way too young and cute for that bowlegged old fart?”

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “His name is Emmanuel Robin. Everyone calls him Manny.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “I don’t even remember anymore. It’s been so long. He’s got a repair shop in Alphabet City. Does a little bit of everything—luggage and jewelry repair, haircuts and shaves. You got a high pain threshold, you could probably get a root canal. You’re a cop, right? A detective?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You give even the slightest shit about the motherfuckers who tried to kill me, or you just come here to ask me about an old Gypsy?”

  “I do care about you, Gus. Really.”

  The basement apartment, thinks O’Hara. The stew burning on the stove twenty-four hours a day. The simple fucking boyash.

  “Did you say Manny’s a Gypsy?”

  “So you don’t give a fuck about the people who rolled me down the stairs? You couldn’t care less.”

  “That’s not true, Gus. Tell me what you remember about last night.” O’Hara reaches into her bag and takes out a notebook. “Did you get a good look at any of them?”

  “I get it—now you’re going to act like you care. Very convincing. Nurse!”

  “Gus, you got to calm down. You need to rest.”

  “Fuck you! Nurse! Nurse!” Gus pushes himself up so violently, he disconnects several tubes from his arm. That sets off an alarm in the nurses’ station. When Priestly rushes into the room, she finds O’Hara beside the bed, notebook in hand.

  “How do you live with yourself?” asks Priestly, euphoric with disdain. “Gus, I’m very sorry that you were disturbed. Detective O’Hara assured me you two are old friends. Is that true?”

  “I’ve never seen this cunt in my life.”

  CHAPTER 65

  MANNY’S FIX-IT IS in a First Street basement that smells hospitably of leather, stain, and heated glue. When O’Hara steps through the door, the stooped repairman is conferring with a would-be It Girl in culottes and heels, and if he notices the arrival of a homicide detective, he keeps it to himself. He focuses instead on the vintage bag the girl has dropped onto his counter, and shakes his head in dismay at the many areas in need of repair. Now that he’s playing himself, instead of a doddering old codger, Manny seems a decade younger.

  Having assessed the damage inside and out, Manny looks up apprehensively and breaks the bad news. “One hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

  “Manny, that’s more than I paid for it.”

  “I would hope so.” With a look of resignation, he reaches for the bag again, and O’Hara notices the black-and-white pin: OBAMA. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN. Apparently, he is now up-to-date on presidential politics.

  While Manny reappraises, O’Hara takes in the cluttered space. Completed repairs are stuffed between shelves. Repairs-in-progress crowd his workbench, along with umbrella ribs, trunk locks, and other replacement parts. In the back corner is an old barber’s chair, and above it a hand-drawn sign advertises haircuts for $14, hot shaves for $7. Between Manny and his customer is a display case featuring items for sale—vintage jewelry, flatware, several watches, and a couple cameras, including a Polaroid Swinger. They could be flea-market finds, but more likely they’re the purloined harvest of junkie thieves like the real Gus in ICU.

  O’Hara leans toward the photographs on the side wall. In one, Manny stands beside Paulette, his too-young, too-pretty girlfriend. In another, his arm is draped around a slight young man O’Hara recognizes as Popsicle. Side by side, their resemblance is striking.

  “It’s a big job,” Manny tells the girl. “The whole back has to be cut out . . . a new lining sewn in . . . the lock replaced. . . .”

  “Can’t you just patch the back and fix the lock?”

  “I could try.”

  “Manny. You’re such a doll!” Before she leaves, O’Hara has to watch her dip across the counter and kiss him on the cheek.

  “HI, MANNY.”

  “Hi, Darlene.”

  “That picture on the wall, that your grandson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s interesting, because not long ago I saw a fortune-teller named Miss Marla. Perhaps you know her. I’ve been seeing a lot of fortune-tellers lately. She mentioned an old Gypsy who sought reparations for the murder of his grandson. According to Miss Marla, a kris was convened, but in the end they told the old man to take a hike.”

  “Darlene, you believe what you hear from fortune-tellers, I got a good deal for you on a bridge that connects Manhattan t
o Brooklyn.”

  “Manny, you already sold me that fucking bridge three times over, and a river full of bullshit to go under it. I were you, I wouldn’t push my luck.”

  “How can I help you, Darlene?”

  “Let’s start in Florida, the old man’s condo, right after Fudgesicle and your grandson go in posing as employees of the Sarasota Water Authority.”

  “Sounds like you already got it figured out.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “According to my grandson, it was the usual drill. They tell the old man they’re checking for contamination and have him bang on his water heater. Two minutes later the guy comes back into the bedroom, banging whatever it is they gave him on the barrel of a rifle.”

  O’Hara had grown attached to her version, the one in which Bunny brings back the spoon so he can shove it up Fudgesicle’s ass, but this makes more sense. By knocking the spoon on the gun, Bunny could make it sound like he was still hitting the water heater and take them by surprise.

  “Then what?”

  “The old man points the gun at Fudgesicle, tells him to get on his knees, or he’s going to kill him. I wish he had. Instead, Fudgesicle bends down and grabs the boy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fudgesicle picks up the boy.”

  “To run?”

  “The kid doesn’t need help to run. Limp or not, he can run faster than Fudgesicle. Even I can.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He picks up the kid to hold him up in front of him—as a shield . . . so the old guy won’t shoot.”

  O’Hara had played out the scene a hundred different ways, but not like this. She feels like she’s been kicked in the stomach.

  “Holding the boy, Fudgesicle rushes past the old man toward the door. He hits the gun, the gun goes off.”

  “I don’t understand,” says O’Hara, although it’s more anger than an inability to comprehend. “What made Fudgesicle think he could treat the boy like that?”