by Peter Manus
"And you with your back problem," Harry throws in.
She brushes it off. “Have it your way. I’m a saint and a nun, rolled into one.”
Harry lets it go. "Hey, you know how you mentioned someone coming over from some law firm and giving you the bad news about Jakey? Some snot, I think you said?" He’s doing his head-scratching thing, like he’s puzzled and needs help.
She frowns, smoking, looking from one to the other of us. Harry’s hard to resist when he plays dumb. “Sure," she finally admits. "What about it?"
"You get the guy’s name?”
“Didn’t catch it. Frankly, I didn’t like his attitude. Actually put on a pair of plastic gloves when he went to climb the stairs. Imagine. Like, excuse me, buddy, but we all wipe with the same motion.”
“And he’s the one who informed you that Jake was dead?”
“I said that, didn’t I? Could be I don’t need to go over it a thousand times.”
“Okay, I hear you,” Harry soothes her. “So, if you didn’t catch his name, how about the law firm he’s at? I mean, we can find out by talking to the coroner, of course, but it would save us some steps if you knew. Get us off of this and onto something we should be doing, right?”
She nods to herself, smoking, apparently trying to think something through. Finally she expels smoke. “Not sure I got the name of the firm either,” she admits. “See, my lawyer was on his own, back during the trial, and only joined up with this firm after. I never had dealings with anyone but him directly. I mean, until this other guy showed up.”
I’ve about had it with the cat and mouse. ”Okay, then, the coroner it is. Thanks for your time,” I say, making to head out. Harry starts making noises about how to contact us if anything comes back to her.
“My lawyer’s name I know, of course,” she says. We stop.
“That would help,” Harry says.
“Becker. Elliot Becker.” She picks up her cigarette and taps it, then nods thoughtfully. “Or the late Elliot Becker, I suppose I ought to say, as of last week.”
Harry and I sit in his car for a minute, just running all of it around in our minds. Finally he starts the car. “So I guess it’s pretty much like Claire Morley said,” he mutters.
“Oh, yeah,” I finish for him. “We’re the original Keystone Cops. Although at least you sensed a connection between Becker and the Five, which is what dragged us down to take a whiff of Rocco’s final hurl and then over to get chewed out by Neva of the miraculously blond son. I, on the other hand, am just a bunch of sparked out synapses. I need a serious course in dot connecting.”
“Other hand, you’re the one who went over to Harrison Ave to view the tape. We’ve been dancing around the obvious all week without quite clenching it.”
I snort a laugh. “And then to get clued in by Mother of the Year in there.”
“Time for another talk with Big Jack.”
”Yeah,” I say, the tiniest bit trepidatious. “It’s Super Jack, by the way.”
He starts the car. “Around my house it’s Big Jack. Around yours it’s Super Jack.”
“But he’s not all that big, and he’s the Super.”
“True enough. But when he finishes chewing us out and hands this case to us, I’m seeing him as both big and super. So let’s think next steps. I mean, after we pay visits to Dorchester defendants four and five.”
“Law firm. We need to know the deal Becker cut for the Culligans.”
“Plus we want anything that was fit to print on the Dorchester Five, from then until now. I’m thinking Malloy in front of a microfiche.”
“I can picture that surprisingly well.”
“Yeah, but the best part’s yours, Pop.”
“What?” He’s doing the smirk. I actually laugh. “Holy shit—you mean I get to tell Dickie Farnham?”
He pulls out between container trucks. “Wow-wee, got it in one,” he shouts above the roar.
SIXTEEN
I am Nightingale—
He becomes conscious of me first in the church nave. It is a late weekday Mass, and so I am among mostly single parishioners, who pace their way through the Mass with their evening plans in the forefront of their minds. He sits just off the altar, his violin resting across his raily thigh, facing us, making it easy for him to observe me. It does not surprise him that I have captured his attention, as he has discovered that it is not uncommon for him to focus on a particular parishioner during any given Mass. He does not think about why he picks his targets—random faces and postures draw his eye irresistibly. It is not an air of religiousness or desperation that brings his attention to these people. And it is not lust.
He sees that I am a tallish woman of indefinite age. Today I wear the long wool sweater-coat over a cream-toned shift, rather unclean. He notices my hair, black, chopped in a coarse horizontal just below my ears. He knows that I am wearing a wig today because he has noticed me during prior Masses, and sometimes I have had auburn, kinky hair that brushes my shoulders, and other times I have had thick brown hair that I wear in a braid pinned into a bun. He does not wonder why I choose to wear these various wigs. He does not wonder what my real hair may look like. He is familiar with the fact that I do not receive Communion, but he notices that I murmur the responses and participate in the rite of peace as if on autopilot. So I am, in fact, a Catholic, he conjectures. Or I was, at some point.
I observe him as well, although not with his own brand of placidity. Tonight, as always, he wears a thin suit of a washed-out blue color and no tie, although his poorly ironed shirt is buttoned to the collar. His black-framed glasses do not hide the aqua-toned brightness of his eyes. His lips are thin and colorless, but at the same time somehow feminine. He has allowed a bit of blond scruff to grow round his chin and also has allowed his sideburns to reach his jaw line, although it appears that he shaves the rest of his facial hair—or it may be that he shaves only weekly, and in between his beard just happens to grow in this spotty manner. His shoes are black and look to have been picked up at a thrift shop. When it is the time, he rises and plays the chorale Dostojno Jest’ No. 3. His playing is competent and gentle, the effect unassuming. The deacon nods in thanks afterwards, but he does not notice. When he turns his back for a moment while reseating himself, the light reflects off the bald crown of his skull—otherwise he might be quite young, perhaps even in his twenties. Later he will play again while a small choir sings Preterp’ivyj. It is Slavonic and means “having suffered.”
After the service, he stays in the church to collect his payment and discuss the next week’s musical offerings with a motherly contralto who often attempts to draw him out. She makes her usual reference to some unmarried friend, much younger of course than she—naturally there would be no expectation that he follow up—women understand how men rely on visceral responses when making connections of this nature. He remains noncommittal as always, which prolongs the conversation more than if he had been more definite in declining her efforts. Still, he is not particularly surprised when, forty minutes later, he notices me in the subway station. I have stuffed the wig into my satchel and so he sees my hair for the first time, baby short and freshly dyed a platinum blonde with streaks of black here and there around my ears and the nape of my neck, but it does not throw him even for a moment, because it is my posture he recognizes, a curious manner I have of wavering ever so slightly from the heels to the balls of my feet when otherwise standing still, almost as if preparing myself for a leap off the edge of some imaginary precipice. He has seen me stand this way during service, and he notices it now as I stand near the edge of the platform, waiting for the same train as he. Because he is behind me, he allows himself to observe me quite minutely, the long sweater hanging with its wool belt undone, one end of it drooping nearly to the station floor. My hands, he notices, are rather long, the fingernails untouched. I clench and unclench the hand gripping the shoulder strap of my satchel. I appear to be listening to the still-vague thunder of the approaching train, although I d
o not turn my head to gauge its distance. It is chilly out. Night is falling fast. Some young people are insulting one another and giggling, well down the platform. “Cheer up, sad drunk guy!” a girl sings out gaily. “It’ll all be over quick!”
He watches as I step forward, anticipating the train. I stand with my toes at the very edge, my feet pressed together. He moves in, not so near to me that I will feel crowded by him, but close enough for him to see my face. He leans out a little, sees the train approaching from some ways down the track, past my profile. My eyes are closed. He sees the sallowness of my cheeks, the greyish hollows around my eyes, the melancholy droop of my lips. My shoulders have ceased wavering, he notices. Without thinking, he walks over and takes me by the arm, his hand closing around my sweater sleeve, gently but firmly, just above my elbow. I open my eyes, but do not otherwise react to his touch. He tugs at me without speaking, moving me backwards and away from the edge, one step, then several more. I do not resist, although I could have easily broken free. The train rushes into the station and settles. A door opens, directly in front of us. I turn my head and blink at him, my face expressionless.
We go to a bar, a depraved old cesspool. Men are clustered around a pool table in the dark, smoking. The low ceiling is painted blood red. I am the only woman aside from an ancient drunk sitting by herself at the end of the bar, who is quite fat, with feet that waver in the air—she may in fact be a midget. He goes to the bar, where he orders a whiskey and asks if the man will make some hot tea. The bartender eyes me as I unwrap a pack of cigarettes at the table, my eyelashes against my cheeks, the violin case in the chair across from me. He says he will bring it over to us when the water boils.
“Simon Love,” he says, seating himself. I nod but do not otherwise reply. When his teeth show I notice that they are almost translucent, like his eyes, in his otherwise jaundiced face.
I smoke. The tea arrives in a dented pot with a slice of desiccated lemon balanced on the rim. I drop the tea bag in. Simon nudges his whiskey in my direction. I sip, raising my eyes to meet his as I swallow. I nod and have another swallow before passing the glass over to him.
He nods at me encouragingly. “I remember you,” he says, “from the trial.”
I play with my cigarette, rolling the tip on the rim of the ashtray, watching the embers drop. “They said you became a priest,” I say.
“People seem to like the idea,” he apologizes.
“You went into seminary.”
“I was a seminary student at the time, out on pastoral work. I left, though.”
“When?”
He thinks, then shakes his head. “Didn’t happen all at once. Pastoral work is part of the obligation, but I haven’t been back for religious education since. The rector prefers to leave it open, in case I decide to return.”
“But you will not return?”
“No.”
“Lost your calling?”
“You need to be compelled,” he says simply.
“I see.” I watch my cigarette for a while. “So now what for you?”
He ignores the question, instead half-turning with his glass upraised. When he turns back, he says, “How is he? Do you know?”
I look up at him. “Yes I know.”
He is not surprised. I blow across my tea while the bartender brings a second whiskey, and Simon digs in his pants for a couple of bills.
“He is dead,” I tell him when we are alone again.
He pauses, studying the table. I fourrage. In his head he is saying: We are dust. Our days are like those of grass… The wind sweeps over him and he is gone, and his place knows him no more. Aloud, he says, “When?”
“Three months.”
“That is why we are together?”
“Yes.”
He thinks about it. “Some of this?” he says, tilting his glass. I decline.
We sit in silence. I sip at the tea. In time, he finishes his whiskey. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“May I take you home?”
I gather my sweater around me as he retrieves his instrument.
He lives in a brick row tenement where the tenants do not complain about vermin and broken lights. The street is wide and would be busy, but is empty now, when the nearby transfer station is not receiving trucks. The grind of machinery from that direction must continue through the night. When we enter his building, the door to the apartment on the first floor cracks, and someone watches us go up. Simon lives on the third floor in one room overlooking the street, large enough for both the double bed and a table with some mismatched chairs, plus there is a kitchen in the back, where he has rigged up a hose and a curtain ring round the tub, for showering. The toilet is enclosed in a closet beyond this. The bed has an iron headboard and footboard, but no sheets on the mattress.
“I sleep between the blankets,” he apologizes, noticing me looking at this.
“It is not of concern,” I say.
He stows his violin in a small wooden armoire that is built into the corner—the room has no closets—and then he begins to undress, carefully hanging his suit and shirt on hangers that he takes from the back of the armoire door. In his underwear he looks healthier than when dressed. He is thin but not without some girth across the shoulders and some muscles running up and down his upper arms and thighs. He lifts out some old corduroy pants and pulls them on over his boxers, then strips off his t-shirt and shoulders his way into a denim shirt, which he does not button. I see the gold cross lying in his sparse blond chest hair, and glimpse a tattoo of Jesus on the inside of his arm.
“Do you want to shower?” he says. “Or to eat something? I have a robe you can wear.” He takes it out and holds it to his nose, then drapes it across the footboard for me. It is a plaid flannel. “I have to practice. I’m sorry,” he says.
Slowly, I rise from the bed. I take up the robe. “A shower, then,” I say. I go through to the kitchen and shut the door, although it slowly swings open on its own behind me.
I shower for a long time. The water spurts from the hose end in a tired tread, first hot, then icy, then practically not at all. Afterwards I stand in the tub surrounded by the water-stained plastic curtain for a long while, listening to him playing. It is Vivaldi, he tells me later, a concerto that some consider a difficult work, meant for two strings with accompaniment and, according to Simon, beyond his capability. He has been commissioned to play it in a concert in Cambridge that is scheduled to occur in some days. To my ear it sounds like a piece of painful beauty, still playing in my mind as I lie back on the bed, so I nod mutely at his explanation.
When he finishes practicing, he stows his violin. He strips once again to his underwear, folding the pants into the bottom of the armoire and hanging the shirt. Then he turns to me where I lay against his pillows.
“One of those and the top blanket, I think,” he says.
I do not follow him. I am reluctant to enter his head after hearing him play. His despondency, I believe, saps me. He comes over and gently eases the pillow from behind my shoulders. Then he grips the blanket and smiles at me, raising his eyebrows. I lift my hips so he may pull it from beneath me.
He turns out the light. It is one a.m. Later I wake to hear him struggling in his sleep. I leave the bed and make my way across the floorboards on my knees to where he sleeps and lean over him to see his face. He looks agitated, troubled; he moves his lips as if preparing for a kiss. Perhaps he dreams that he is in church, now. I reach over and grip gently at the blanket where I know I will find his erection. I hold it firmly, stroking it very little. He finds peace, as I knew he would. Eventually his erection subsides and he sleeps on in silence.
The next day I retrieve some money and also some of my clothing from Tati’s house. The rest of the money and my canister of laced ibuprofen I leave locked in my travel case. I leave some rent money on Tati’s mail table.
Simon is out while I stow my few things in his room. I take his suit and shirt and walk along the industrial boulevard u
ntil I find a dry cleaner. Then I buy a fifth of whiskey, a thin steak, a carton of salt, and some colorless Brussels sprouts. When he comes in, I sear the steak in salt and allow the Brussels sprouts to roll in the same pan. He eats it. He plays the Vivaldi and another piece, this one a Bach chorale. I lie smoking on his bed, listening. When he reaches for the pillow I grip it. He looks into my eyes with his strange glittering irises, and I tell him that he sleeps on the bed. He looks away, then nods.
I wake. He is next to me, facing away, twitching and grunting like a dog. I fourrage and find him dreaming about being beaten. He cowers as men kick him brutally. It appears we are in a dungeon—some sort of dark subsurface, but there are stars, far above us, or candles. It may be a cathedral, where Simon is beaten. Some of the men appear to push to get to the front; the number is growing until they come in waves. The men are wearing robes, I notice, thick and hooded. Occasionally Simon shrieks like an animal that has not been taught pride and therefore knows no shame in fear. There is no other noise. Next the floor below him begins to burn—it is metal, he discovers, and now his face is seared against it. He must rip his face free, losing half the skin from it. He forces his hand from the floor, stripping the skin from his palm, then his arm—he is being flayed alive. The pain is beyond screaming over—he weeps feebly, almost mutely. The men in the forefront grip him now. The robes are gone and his attackers are recognizable. I see Wilkie, sweat coating his face. I see a young man with empty eyes, a blond skullcap of hair, and a tattooed neck peering menacingly into Simon’s face. I see Terence D’Amante, screaming, his mouth distorted so that he almost appears to be laughing in a frenetic hysteria. Simon is deaf and baffled—he is like a woman accepting her fate, asserting a sort of negative power in willful acceptance. There is a girl, somewhere in the layered dream—black, pretty, naked with her legs spread wide. Somewhere also the difficult passage from the Vivaldi concerto repeats itself.
I have seen enough. I roll the sleeping Simon so that he faces me. Stealthily, I untangle the blanket from his two-fisted clutch. His face is smeared with warm saliva, like that of a child. I grip his sweating skull, clutch it, press his mouth and nose against my breasts until his breathing calms. Later, I lower his undershorts and open my robe, then ease myself against him. Gently, I reach around and push at his buttocks with my hands so as to get him inside me. I move against him, cradling his head against my neck. Soon, without warning, he finishes.