by Peter Manus
Oddly—or perhaps not, in light of the suddenness of the event—Wilkie feels no emotional response during that long moment of standing there, staring across the lanes of traffic at the tatty yellow suit, at the Bible’s pages riffling in an air current. He sees the car’s driver blinking back at him, equally surprised, equally unemotional. It is not the dealer Wilkie had envisioned after all—it’s a kid, beardless and shirtless in the heat, some foolish piece of macho bling round his neck, some ineptly executed tattoo scoring his shoulder. Wilkie feels nothing, looking across at that kid, until he hears the car start up, sees him throw it into gear, watches the front tires twist as the car backs away from the scene.
Wilkie moves forward just as the guy starts swinging into his U-turn. Having realized what was coming, Wilkie stands squarely in the bug’s path. The kid looks him in the eye as he powers up the windows, locks the doors. Wilkie sees him scrambling for something—a gun? A phone? Whatever it is, it is far too late. Rocco Petrianni, a neighborhood hothead, rams his way in front of Wilkie and slams his fists down against the car’s hood, bellowing, and it shudders to a halt.
There is no doubt about it. The kid hesitated—he paused and stalled—because Rocco is white. He would have taken his chances with Wilkie, maybe let himself think that Wilkie would surely step aside. But Wilkie, like Oleander, is expendable. Like a dog, in this kid’s eyes. Wilkie will recover his senses, his equilibrium, quickly. But for a moment, he sees blood. For a moment, that kid’s life is as meaningless to him as his life was to the kid.
We lie side by side, etherized by memory. Finally I speak. “Are you ever glad it happened?” I ask.
Wilkie lies there for a long while, then turns his head to stare at the side of my face, his gaze searching, intelligent. “What?” he says incredulously.
“Are you ever glad,” I repeat at the ceiling. “About Dorchester.”
He looks at me more closely. “I think I just fucked away whatever common sense you possessed when you came up here tonight,” he says.
I laugh and feel for my little beaded bag, which happens to lie on the carpet next to the bed, within reaching distance. Extracting a cigarette, I glance at him. “Not glad about Oleander’s death or the injuries to Jake Culligan. But for the ordeal that followed, what you went through. I am talking about being linked with those other men—in the press and in the court case as well—being associated in the public’s eye with four truly bad men, when you are not and never were one of them. Do you recognize it, on any level, as a life lesson that has stood you well, now that you dwell in the public eye more permanently?”
I watch the suspicion recede in his eyes. “You’re an interesting woman,” he says.
“If you find my question offensive, do not answer.” I flick my lighter.
“Not offensive,” he says, raising a large palm. “That’s not the word.” He waits, then says, “Look, I feel like we can be open with one another, that you’ll understand.”
I glance at him as I reach for a second cigarette. “We have just had a damn good fuck. It is worth a try.” I light the second cigarette against the first and offer it over to him.
“Truth be told,” he says, taking a drag, “while it was happening that day, I felt proud to be part of the mob, to be right up against the car,” he says. “As someone close to Oleander, this was where I belonged. And I felt no pity for the boy inside.”
“Did you see Jakey’s face, in there?”
“I did.”
I close my eyes. “What was it like?”
He thinks about it. “He looked more excited than frightened. I don’t think a kid like that can envision injuries like he sustained. I think he imagined he was going to walk away.”
“I wonder,” I whisper.
Wilkie smokes some more, then gestures in the air above the bed, as if dispelling an image he’s seen there many times.
I sit up partway and pull the sheets up over my breasts. “You tried to pull him out.”
“I attempted to correct what I’d done,” he says in a simple tone. “Sometimes you do something terrible, you get a second chance. Not that day, though.”
“No. There were no angels looking down on Dorchester that day,” I murmur.
“Mmm,” he agrees, “although there was one among us.” Then he interrupts himself. “Holy mother, baby, you mind telling me what we are smoking here?”
“They are the Gitanes,” I say. “Too much for you, I think?”
“Way too much.” He draws again. “These soldiers kill without pretense.”
I nod. “This is true. What did you mean, there was an angel among you that day?”
He goes to rise, seems to want to roll to his side and prop himself on his elbow, but after a small effort he sinks back and rests on his back. He lies silent for a long moment, the cigarette held between a thumb and finger.
I sit up a little straighter. “Wilkie?”
“Love,” he says groggily.
“Love?” I almost smile. “The angel of love?”
“Not…” he says, shaking his head, “not being abstract here. Guy named Love.”
“Ah, Simon Love,” I clarify. “But he was one of the Five. He helped turn the car.”
Wilkie smiles in the dark. The forgotten cigarette glows between his fingers. “Love was a flawed man. But he didn’t turn over no car.”
“He did not?”
“Did not.” Wilkie floats now. I reach over and take the glowing butt from his fingers.
“What did Simon Love want, then?”
Another long pause. “Wanted peace.”
“So Simon Love did not deserve to be in the Dorchester Five? Is this what you tell me?”
Wilkie chuckles in a dreamy way. “Darling,” he slurs softly, “the Dorchester Five is a media myth. There weren’t no five. There was, like, fifteen. Thirty. Fifty. You think the cops nabbed the five guilty guys?”
“Why did not this Simon Love fight it, if he was just trying to save Jakey’s life?” I argue. “Why did Simon Love’s lawyer not defend him when the time was right?”
“Way I recall it…lawyer opted…for the out.”
“And he allowed that? An innocent man who could prove his innocence would allow such a thing?”
Wilkie shrugs and works his thick tongue before answering. “Never talked about it…weren’t allowed…separate defendants, different defenses.” He pauses and then, after a long moment, breathes deeply, once. “The deal meant it ended.”
I continue to argue. “How are you so sure about what was motivating this Simon Love on the street on that day? How do you know he was not just like you, angered about the elderly woman cut down by a hit-and-run driver?”
Again Wilkie takes a long time before answering. I can hear from his breathing that it is close, now. But eventually he speaks. “I know…because he got through to me. I tried to reverse what I done…because of Love.”
I lay there awhile, thinking, then stand up, leaving Wilkie the sheet. “May I shower?”
He tries to nod through his stupor, then, to be polite, adds, “May I join you…?”
“Yes of course. But please give me ten minutes to myself.”
It is while I am showering that he comes to realize that it must be the cigarette that has done this to him. He is more than high. He is paralyzed. He imagines me in the shower, crying, my face under the stream of water so that I may hide the fact of my tears even from myself.
When I come out, he remains lying on his back. I can see him in silhouette as the night sky penetrates the dark some small amount. I dress silently and only then approach him. It is safe, now, to be detected, and so I reach over quite openly to fourrage in his mind.
He watches me as I stand there. I am dressed once again, but I look different. My hair is short, my face younger without makeup. I stand brushing at the teased wig, preparing to put it back on. He is not afraid, although he knows that I have inflicted this paralysis upon him. He wants to meet me eye to eye, but I will not look hi
m full in the face. He feels no pain, and in fact experiences very little in the way of panic as I fit a large clear plastic bag over his head and seal it around his neck with duct tape. He watches, and notes through the haze that I seem to be standing there to watch him die. He thanks me for that.
“Think nothing of it,” I shoot him telepathically. “It is the least I can do.” This is not a way I would choose to kill this one, but of course he must suffocate. It is Moreau’s pattern.
I disappear for a while. I have gone to find the card on which I wrote my phone number for him. When I come back, he cannot see anything but a ghosted outline of me. It may be that I misperceive him as already dead, he thinks, for I come forward and remove the tape, then pull the bag off his head. I check his eyes and hold a makeup mirror to his mouth and appear to perceive no sign of life. He can feel nothing when I touch him. He has no fear anymore.
“You knew him,” he tries to say. His lips do not move. He speaks to me telepathically, his brain to mine. A man has never done this with me before. “You were…?”
“Yes, I was,” I say aloud, not unkindly. “How did you know?”
“Jakey,” he says. “You called him Jakey.”
I eye him with curiosity. “Yes. I am Nightingale.” I light the lighter and stand with the fire flickering next to me. He watches it reflecting off my eyes.
“They’re onto you. I got a call.”
“It is of no matter,” I cut him off. “They will catch up with me in time.”
“You call yourself Nightingale. I understand why—it’s after the Stravinsky opera. You are the near-invisible bird who waits nearby and whose song, sung in the night, forces tears from all who hear it. Am I right, Julie Nightingale?”
“No. It is not Stravinsky who inspires me. Now I must go.”
I use the lighter to light one of the French cigarettes. Then I step back, take a drag, and toss the lit cigarette onto the bed. It sputters for a moment, then begins to smolder. The smoke, even in the first moments, is thick and moves heavily, as if clinging to the bed. Wilkie sees only the vaguest flicker, somewhere on the edge of his vision. He does not smell the smoke that will asphyxiate him. It seems more dignified, to me, than the plastic bag.
I quote scripture: Let burning coals fall upon them; Let them be cast into the fire…Let evil hunt the man to overthrow him.
Downstairs, I turn off the flame under his bouillabaisse, then find my wrap. I leave quickly, running across no other people in his building. It would matter little if I had.
Très sincèrement,
Nightingale
THIRTEEN
Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal
Closing in on a week since Becker took his dive—pressure kind of building. That in mind, I start the day kind of random. Got this massive urge to take in the Dorchester Five vid, so I head to Harrison Ave first thing. Phone rings just as I’m arriving, and for close on a minute I do a shoulder-chin hold while wrestling the steering wheel through a tricky parallel park. From what I can hear, which involves a girl’s wavering voice stumbling through some nonsense-talk, I’m on the receiving end of a junior high drunk dial. Fortunately I catch on just before hanging up. It’s Donna Witzkowitz, aka Donnalinda Tonite, and she’s trying to pronounce my last name. I stop trying to park and give her my attention.
“Hey, Donna, how’s it going, girl?” I throw her, just in case her life experience has made her skittish about chatting up cops.
“I’m good,” she says. “Is this a okay time to talk?”
“Absolutely. So what’s up?”
“You said to call if I had any thoughts about Mr. Petrianni.”
“I did say that,” I assure her. Someone taps his horn, trying to clue me in that my front end is sticking out into the traffic. I resume trying to wriggle the car into its spot. “You had a thought?” I prompt her.
“Yeah, I did,” Donna tells me proudly.
“Excellent,” I say patiently, inching the car backwards. “So what is it, Donna?”
“Okay. So you know how you guys were all over that lady in the club, like she was the one who killed Mr. Petrianni?”
I stop working on parking. This seems like the time to remove the phone from between my chin and shoulder. “Yes, we were fixating on her, weren’t we,” I agree. “What about it?”
“So this thing was bugging me about that, but I couldn’t figure out what. Then, last night, I got what was bugging me. Oh, I’m working again.”
“Congrats!” I say. Another driver is trying to squeeze by and gives me a pissy horn toot. I wave him on. “You, uh, remembered this thing about Mr. Petrianni’s death while at work?”
“Yeah. See, now I’m an escort. You know what that is, right?”
I feel a pang, knowing I’m about to blow by the opportunity to help her consider her life choices in the interest of getting what I can on Rocco’s death. “I do know about escorts,” I say.
“It’s legal in Rhode Island,” she says.
“Still, not the safest line of work.”
“I know,” she says, contrite. “Oh, but that reminds me of what I want to tell you. So I’m meeting this client last night, and I’m walking to his car where he’s waiting, and I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to meet him. And I happen to notice that the way he’s smoking is just like the guy in the parking lot that night. You know, when I was leaving after Mr. Petrianni tells me to go get proof of my age. He flicked his thumb a lot, like to drop ash, the way they used to in the movies. I mean, that’s not why I didn’t want to meet him. It was just a thing he did.”
“Okay,” I say, “So give me a little more about the parking lot guy.”
“Well, there isn’t anything more.”
“Just that there was a man in a car, handling his cigarette in a dated way?”
“Yeah.”
I try my coaxing skills. “I would think that every night there’d be some guy finishing a cigarette in his car in that lot. This one must have made an impression on you, Donna, more than just the way he flicked his ash.”
She thinks it over. “Not really.”
I try to coax better. “But you thought it was worth calling me about, right?”
She thinks some more. “Alls I’m saying is that I saw this guy in the parking lot, and I remember thinking, ‘that fuck’s gonna kill someone.’ Like a hit man, you know?”
I frown at my reflection in the rearview, ignoring the dope who’s decided to really lean on his horn at me. I talk slowly, not wanting to discourage her, but needing to squeeze out of her whatever she’s got to offer. “So you’re saying that when you were leaving the club, you noticed a guy in the parking lot and somehow got the feeling that he made a living killing people.”
“Yeah. Well, no.” She ponders. I hold my breath. “It’s more like this,” she finally says. “I’m leaving, and I notice this man in a car, staring at me, and I don’t think nothing much. Then, when I meet you, and you tell me Mr. Petrianni got murdered, first thing I think is, ‘so that guy was a hit man, like I thought.’ Then when you and your partner start talking like it was a woman, I think, ‘Oh, I was wrong about that guy.’ But last night I’m heading to meet this client in a car, and I decide I’m blowing him off. We’re allowed to stand up a guy if we get a funny vibe off him. And so that reminded me of the vibe from the other guy, and that’s when I thought maybe I should tell you.”
“Got it,” I say. “Hold on a sec, would you?”
I turn my head and yell, “You mind? I’m on an important call, here!” and give a twist to the steering wheel, finally rocking my car into the spot. I go to display my badge, just for kicks, but the guy’s already flipping me off as he roars on by. I catch a glimpse of him—older exec type, silver hair, clean car. Probably en route to his job running a multi-million dollar charitable foundation, and he gives the finger to a girl just the age to be his daughter—nice. I apologize to Donna, but she seems psyched that I referred to her call as important.
“So I got
the lay of the land, Donna, and it makes sense,” I say. “You must have had a powerful reaction to this parking lot guy to have held onto the memory in spite of all the distractions between then and now.”
“Yeah, like, that’s exactly it.”
“So give me whatever you can. Description, clothes, car make and model?”
“Car was the kind with the peace sign. Old. Dark color. Like maybe brown.”
Mercedes. I smile a little. “Okay, let’s go for the guy.”
Here Donna fails me. “Looked like a real dick,” she offers.
“Don’t most guys, to someone, Donna?” I point out. “What about race, age, features?”
“White,” she says. “Dark hair, or maybe just wet. And one of those chin beards. For age, oldish. For weight, don’t know. For height, he was sitting, so…”
“Oldish like me and Harry, Donna, or oldish like your dad?”
She seems to realize her blunder and tries to think her way out of it before admitting, “Maybe not all that old. More like your age. But mostly he seemed…”
I wait for it.
“He seemed, like, a guy chicks need to watch out for. You know what I mean?”
“I do, actually,” I say. I tell her I’m going to call Shanko and Alec and that they’ll arrange to have her sit down with a sketch artist, just to go over some brows, chins, and noses. Then I ring off before she can back down. The call to Shanko is as warmly received as I would have expected. He certainly gets that a skittish witness warrants fast action, so maybe that’s why he foregoes any feint at thanking me for the tip. I’m not delighted about siccing him on Donna, but I tell myself that she’s a girl who needs some unadorned contact with the law while she’s still teetering on the correct side of it.