by John Lawton
It was getting close to noon. Time to clock in with Nate Truegood.
§
I checked in at the front desk. Nate saw me at once. He had conceded to the summer, abandoned the vest in favor of a sleeveless, white cotton shirt, and installed a brand new fan on top of his desk.
‘Would you believe technology?’ he said. ‘I went out and bought it from a Chinee on Canal this morning. This sucker comes with five settings, Whisper, Breeze, Zephyr—now what the fuck is a zephyr?—Cooler and Powerblast. It’s like trying to use my wife’s blender—do I want to chop or frap or fuckin’ fricassee? I usually give up on account I can’t decide. Right now we’re on Cooler. Great, eh?’
Then he slapped a clear Ziploc bag in front of me—must have sat there holding it on his lap all the time he was, literally, shooting the breeze—ready to catch me off guard.
‘You recognize this?’
The ice pick was inside. Handle dusted for my prints, spike crusted in brown bloodstains. If he wanted a shock effect, he got one—but to no purpose. I guess it was worth a try, I’d already done cliché number one in the cop’s book of clichés by returning to the scene of the crime.
‘Of course. I thought we already agreed. My prints were all over it. Though now you come to ask, I kind of thought I’d lost it a few weeks back.’
‘What do you mean “lost”?’
‘Just in the office. About the time the hot days started up. I needed it . . . and one day I just couldn’t find it. There’s a dozen places I could have mislaid it. Gap between the icebox and the wall, slipped off the top of a filing cabinet—I don’t know.’
Nate put the ice pick back into a drawer.
‘Well, it was handy when Kissing came to be killed. Now, I got your keys here. You can go back into your office. We’re through with it for the time being.’
He threw the keys, I caught them.
‘That’s it?’
‘More or less—except to say, and Raines I mean this, don’t hold out on me. I know you, you’ll pick this up, and gumshoe your way through it, so far out of your depth your nose won’t be above the shitline—but it’s murder, it’s cop business so you tell me everything single damn thing you find out.’
‘Of course,’ I lied. ‘And what have you got?’
‘What have I got? What the fuck have I got?’
I thought for a second I might have pushed him too far. Nate could go nuke if you hit the right button.
‘Raines, I don’t have diddley. I don’t have even the shadow of a witness. Nobody saw a damn thing. That building of yours has no doorman, no signing in or out, and anyone can come and go even at ten o’clock of a Friday night.’
‘Midnight even,’ I said.
‘Yeah, right. Midnight.’
His frustration vented itself in silence. I decided to wait until he surfaced. Usually he’d snap pencils—he bought them by the gross just for that purpose, or crumple up paper coffee cups to throw at someone, usually Speke.
‘And forensic. What do the clowns in white coats give me? You. They give me you, the guy with the iron-clad alibi. You know, if you cleaned that office of yours once in a while there might be the possibility of fresh dirt. Right now the killer could have trailed in horse-shit and we’d be no wiser.’
I changed the subject.
‘Can I see Mel?’
‘You don’t have to do that. Guy from the Voice—name of Jephcott—ID’d him already.’
‘I still want to see.’
‘Not a pretty sight.’
‘Nate, let me see him, please.’
‘OK. You want to see—we’ll go downtown. But, you don’t have to do it. I just wanted you to know. I look at stiffs all the time. Wouldn’t do it, myself, unless I had to.’
Driving down to the morgue, Nate said, ‘When d’you last see a body?’
I’d never seen a body and told him so. Sam hadn’t wanted any of us kids to see our mother dead, and since then I could not recall that I’d known anyone who’d died—not friends, not kin. Good God, that now seems an age of innocence. How could I ever have been so young?
It was like film noir—in bleached-out color. A black man in a white outfit rolled the tray out of the wall, peeled back a plastic sheet and there was Mel pale and bloodless. I’d forgotten he’d shaved off his beard—I almost turned to Nate to say this wasn’t Mel Kissing before memory of that last night at the Village School clicked in. He was neater by far in death than I’d seen him in life.
They’d cut him some. A butcher line right down the middle.
‘Did they have to?’
‘We always have to. I once had a victim who’d been shot, stabbed and then they backed a truck over him. Had to know which it was killed him.’
The wound in Mel’s forehead was high up almost in the hairline. Bone and flesh had caved in around the blade with the force of the blow.
‘What did you learn?’
‘One blow, pierced the skull and buried the blade almost to the hilt in his brain. That took some strength.’
‘So he died instantly?’
Nate didn’t answer. I had to tear my eyes off Mel and look at him before he’d speak.
‘No . . . no he didn’t. Frontal lobe isn’t vital to the motor functions. It’s not like breaking a guy’s neck when everything goes at once. It’s got more to do with sensation.’
I waited for what he was not telling me.
‘He appears to have got up, spike still in his brain, made an effort to get to the door, maybe with his assailant still in the room, who knows? Then we figure he lost consciousness, hit the floor and bled to death. That’s why we got such a wide span for the time of death. Blow could have been struck several hours before he actually died. Now—you seen enough?’
I’d seen enough to last me, to stay with me, to run rampant through my waking dreams for the rest of my life. I took a last look at Mel, so un-Mel-like without the beard and glasses, wishing I could think of a parting gesture, wanting to do right what I could not even begin to imagine. I did nothing, let the attendant pull the sheet back over him. Impotent in the cage of my own emotions.
‘We couldn’t find a next of kin.’
We were out on the sidewalk. Nate dragging me back to the here and the now.
‘His parents are long gone. He’s got a brother—burned out on scag years ago. I’ve never met him or even heard mention of where he lives.’
‘We can release the body, but who to?’
‘As long as I’m not under suspicion anymore it had better be me.’
‘You know how to set up a Jewish funeral? I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Me neither.’
§
It occurred to me to go and check out Mel’s apartment. He lived in two and a half rooms on East 3rd, a little way off the Bowery. A dozen impulses told me to go, three good reasons warned me not to. First, anything Mel thought mattered would be in the envelope he mailed to me. Twos, if whoever had killed Mel was watching I could end up dead. And threes, if Speke was watching then he’d fink to Nate and Nate would know for sure I was holding out on him. Instead I went to my office.
The office was a mess. Speke’s doing I was sure. My books knocked off the shelf, splayed out on the floor, spines bent back, pages falling out, lying where Speke had shaken and dropped them. Every drawer in my desk emptied out and stuffed back. Fingerprint powder on every surface and every handle. My typewriter looked like a chunk of wedding cake dusted with icing sugar. It meant nothing. I’d been turned over before. I spent the afternoon creating order and walking around the dry patch of Mel’s blood on the floor halfway between my desk and the door. I am not a squeamish man—a coward maybe—but the shitty stuff of life has never made me cringe. Eventually I had to touch the stain, to feel the dust of Mel’s life
between my fingertips. What did I expect? Epiphany? The soul of the slaughtered crying out for justice? A voice from the afterlife answering all my questions—who would do this, who would do this to a loudmouth, smart-ass, irritating Jewish runt of a man who never hurt anybody in his entire life? Dust I saw, dust I touched and dust was what I got. I’d’ve left it there—what else did I have of the man?—but I had clients to think about. Even if the news didn’t spread and kill off my business I’d hate to have to explain it away every time someone asked the obvious question. I’d get on my knees and scrub Mel away. A brush, a bucket and tip him down the sink. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.
§
It was one of Rose’s sober nights. I was glad. I didn’t know how much to tell her, but there was something I needed. A stinking night, somewhere in the high nineties. She threw open all the windows and served up a salad, with black olives and spring water. We sat on the fire escape gulping in air, spitting pits into the street. She pulled off her top, sat there in her bra and skirt and tipped a glass of water over her chest.
‘If this goes on I’m going to take my hols and go home for a couple of weeks. It’s Wimbledon fortnight—you can always bank on it absolutely pissing it down for Wimbledon.’
‘I thought it was Manchester was famous for its rain?’
You will note—small talk is not my forte.
‘England—darling—all of it—is famous for its rain. Why do you think A.A. Milne always depicted Christopher Robin in wellies and Pooh in a sou’wester? Why do you think a gentleman always carries an umbrella even in summer?’
‘To hail a cab?’
‘Quite right. Touché, darling. Daddy carries his everywhere and never uses it. First sign of rain and his arm shoots up for a taxi.’
‘Do you miss . . . all that?’
‘Not for a fucking moment. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind? You’ve been itching about something since I got home.’
I retrieved the two sheets of shorthand notes from my room.
‘Ah . . . I see. Mel. I’d know that scrawl anywhere.’
‘I don’t know what it means.’
She gazed at it for few seconds, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I rather think he had his own methods. His shorthand had sort of evolved. I can read about half of this. He’s been ringing round old friends—or something like that—old school chums who went into the army or government. Mostly he’s drawn blanks but . . . see, near the bottom of page two he’s written down the name “Barclay Fulton” . . . one of those names that you’d only find on a British bank or an upper class American.’
‘We were in Law School with him.’
‘Well—he’s done rather well for himself. He’s at the Pentagon now. According to Mel a member of Tricky Dicky’s defense team.’
That made sense. Barclay had been born to that. I could never figure out what Mel and he had in common—Barclay, a New Hampshire Ivy League Republican with ‘Live Free or Die’ for a bumper sticker, and Mel, bred in New York’s immigrant, street-corner Socialist tradition—except that they both lived for politics, albeit from opposing ranks.
‘Mel called him Friday morning. Looks as though he called Mel back round about—gosh, it’s a mess—looks like seven in the evening. Then there’s a word looks like “West” something. I can’t read the rest.’
‘West Rogers Park?’
‘Could be. Like I said Mel’s shorthand had evolved and that’s putting it politely. Are you going to tell me what this is about?’
Not if I could help it.
Rose grabbed me by the shirtfront.
‘Turner, do not go after this! Read my lips! Leave this one to the fuzz—it’s what the bastards are paid for.’
Nose to nose I whispered, ‘Rosie, they haven’t got a clue.’
‘Not one?’
‘Not one. Nobody saw a damn thing.’
‘Then turn this over to them.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Because it’s Mel?’
‘Exactly.’
She let me go, sucked on another olive, spat, pinged the pit off a trash can and said, ‘Well, that clinches it. I’m definitely going to England. I’m not sitting around in this armpit of a city waiting for you to get killed too.’
There was no connection between the two, but it was a waste of time asking Rose to be that logical. Two days later I drove her out to Kennedy to catch the early evening Pan Am flight to London. I felt better on my own, felt, for no good reason, as though I could get somewhere, do something. Besides I had a funeral to arrange and what was a funeral to Rose? Just another excuse to get shit-faced.
§
Of course Mel had lied to me. He did what we all did, all us Mailer kids, his ‘White Negroes’, we disowned our families and rewrote our histories to satiate the nagging images of ourselves that existed only in our minds. The hot pursuit of the cool. Of course Mel had family. How had I ever been able to kid myself he hadn’t?
I found two maiden aunts out at Brighton Beach. The Misses Lippmann—Gloria and Barbara—living in one of those box houses on a lot not three feet wider than the house. House after house, row after row, all neat behind little chain-link fences, on street after street stretching out at right angles to the sea. I understood at first sight. If this was where Mel had grown up, no wonder he represented himself as pure Manhattan, the original Bowery Boy, and uttered nothing but contempt for the burbs and the boroughs.
And yes—his parents were dead, but not as he told me when he was eighteen but less than two years ago, when they had both passed away within six months of each other of pneumonia.
The aunts wept when I told them Mel was dead. They wailed like Trojan women when I told them his death was not of natural causes. Who would ever want to kill young Melchior? The light of his family, the brightest kid on the block, the scholarship boy?
I had to ask. There was the matter of the funeral arrangements. Did they know how to bury someone? A purpose in life with death seemed to shake them back together.
‘Sure, we’ll call Jack. He’s the Rabbi in a shul over in Sunset Park. He’ll want to do it in person.’
They said they’d call me and I should come over and meet Rabbi Jack. They did, so I went. The prospect made me nervous. In my entire life I do not think I had ever had a business conversation with a priest. There were priests aplenty in the civil rights movement—Methodists and Episcopalians—and I’d discussed God and death and Jesus with not one of them.
In contrast to two tiny women in their late sixties, Rabbi Jack was a black bear of man of about forty or so, all beard and belly. He heard me out in silence, just nodding occasionally.
‘Must have been hard on you,’ he said at last.
I was feeling sentimentally honest. The remark, shall I say, touched me.
‘He was like a brother to me,’ I heard myself say.
‘He was my brother,’ Jack intoned, with an all-men-are-brothers solemnity.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘No,’ Jack came back. ‘I mean he really was my brother. I’m Jack Kissing. Mel was my kid brother.’
A phrase of Rose’s came quickly to mind—‘the two-faced, lying bastard.’
By now I had Nate Truegood ringing me every day.
‘When are you gonna bury this guy? It’s a hundred and five in Central Park. The morgue is overflowing. Ice cubes cost more than diamonds! Will you organize this fuckin’ funeral or do I have to come down and do it for you?’
By the time we got it together—oh the aptness of that hippie phrase—Mel had been on ice for three weeks, quite, I was told, against the tradition. I drove out to the New Montefiore cemetery in Farmingdale. Rabbi Jack read Kaddish over him. I went along feeling about as out of place as a redwood in the desert. As the first clods of earth got shovele
d onto Mel I threw in the Complete Poems of Wallace Stevens. Rabbi Jack looked at me, kind of quizzically, so I told him.
‘Years ago, when we were in school together, he made me promise I’d put a copy of Wallace Stevens in the grave with him—if he went first.’
‘A reciprocal arrangement?’
‘Of course,’ I lied. I didn’t tell him Mel and I had been smoking dope for the first time in our lives, and that dope made him emotional and me stupid. I hadn’t been able to think of anything I wanted in the grave with me. Not a damn thing. I’d told him I wanted to float to Valhalla on a burning boat like a Viking. Like I said, dope makes me stupid. Good job he went first, it was a damn sight easier finding a copy of Wallace Stevens than it would have been to find a longship.
Afterwards, among the baked meats and the second cousins, Jack came up to me in the house at Brighton Beach and said, ‘I saw very little of Mel after he got out of college. We none of us did. Distressed my parents, but as the kids say nowadays he had his own thing to do. But, I’m glad to know he had friends like you.’
Oh fuck, I thought, do I really have to live up to that?
§
No doubt about it. I did not need to be anointed by Rabbi Jack Kissing—but, yes, I had to live up to every word of it. I got a haircut from a Polish barber on East Broadway (no point in looking any more like a hippie than I had to—just made asking awkward questions and getting straight answers that bit the harder), closed up the office, weighed up the significance of Nate’s ‘Don’t leave town without telling me’ and concluded it had had its day, got the girl next door to feed Rose’s cat (there being still no sign of Rose—how long does a tennis match last?) and got myself on a plane to Chicago. It was all I had by way of a lead. Already a month had gone by.
I’d called Barclay Fulton. It went sort of . . .
‘Barclay. It’s Turner Raines. Remember me?’
‘Raines. Yes. Of course. How have you been?’
‘I’m fine. It’s Mel Kissing who’s not so good.’