City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  “Never seen nothin’ like it.” The old Italian cop still stands dazed and stuporous above the place, shaking his head incomprehensibly back and forth. “Thirty years on the force—never seen nothin’ like it.”

  “Okay.” Konig snaps his note pad closed and takes a final glance at the long, neat row of carefully tagged parcels. “Soon as you finish here, wrap it all up and get it to me.” He turns and starts to limp toward his waiting car.

  “Hey, Chief,” Flynn cries out behind him. Konig turns to see the detective waving at him the plastic bag containing the hand with the purple-lacquered fingernails. “Say bye-bye to the little lady.”

  “Never mind the hands, Flynn. Get me the goddamned heads.” Konig scowls and ducks into the car.

  »11«

  “Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

  7:50 P.M. AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT ON MINETTA LANE.

  Konig sits in a steamy little trattoria—white trelliswork about the doors, artificial flowers woven into the lattice-work, and on the walls cheap views of Pompeii and the Bay of Naples.

  There is an open garden in the back with a splashing fountain and an arbor hung with paper lanterns, where young couples full of earnest talk lean heads toward one another and dine in the mild spring evening.

  Konig sits by himself at a corner table, ruminative, and sequestered from the noise outside. A plate of cooling, untouched food sits before him while, elbows on table, he muses over a glass of white wine.

  “Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

  Twilight on a long strip of deserted beach. The lone figure of a fisherman in shorts and skivvy, hip-high in boiling spume, leans forward into a gusty breeze casting a surf pole with lead lures far out over the breaker line. Behind him sits a pensively pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteen, watching intently the high, arching trajectory of plug and line paying out over the onrushing waves, then reeled in slowly, then repeated. Suddenly the line shudders and goes taut.

  “Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

  “Hurry, Lolly. Fast. I’ve got him.”

  The girl scrambles to her feet. Stumbles forward.

  “Tension. More tension, damnit.”

  “Daddy, I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Tension—more tension, for God’s sake. You’re losing him. You’re—”

  “Wanna buy a postcard?”

  Konig glances upward over the rim of his wineglass. “Beg pardon?”

  “Wanna buy a postcard or a picture?”

  “A picture?”

  “Pictures—views of Greenwich Village. New York City.”

  Konig stares idiotically into the face of a young girl.

  “Got some real pretty views. Washington Square. The Arch. The Mews.”

  “No,” Konig mumbles and turns back to the solace of his wineglass.

  “Empire State Building. George Washington Bridge. Grant’s Tomb.”

  “No—no thank you.”

  “How about some pencils?”

  “No. I think not.” He turns away, a curt dismissive movement, but still she stands there hovering above him. “Food’s gettin’ cold.”

  “Beg pardon.”

  “I said your food’s gettin’ cold.”

  “Oh.” Konig grumbles, stubs out his cigar, takes up his fork and makes ready to eat. But then, the next moment, slightly flustered, he puts the fork down. “I’m not quite ready to eat.”

  “Mind if I sit?”

  Stunned, Konig glances up to see the girl smiling rather impudently down upon him. “You mean here? Sit here?”

  “Isn’t that a veal cutlet?” the girl murmurs, slipping into the seat opposite him.

  “Hey, wait a min—”

  “Gonna be ice-cold if you don’t eat it soon. And that salad—”

  “Would you please mind hauling yourself right back up and—”

  “Lettuce startin’ to wilt right there in the bowl. It’s a shame.”

  “Look here, you weren’t invited to—”

  “Just lemme freshen that salad up with some of this oil and vinegar.”

  Konig stares around helplessly for the head waiter. Though the room is full of laughing, chattering people, no one seems to notice his predicament.

  “Hey—wait a minute.” Konig snatches a flask of vinegar from the girl but she has already irrigated his salad with a thick oily dressing. “Now what the hell did you do that for? You’ve flooded the goddamned thing.”

  “Sorry. Just tryin’ to perk it up a bit.”

  “Well, who asked you to? If I’d wanted it perked up, I would’ve perked it up myself. And I don’t want any pencils or postcards. Now will you please—”

  “Wouldn’t you like”—once again the impudent, rather provocative little smile—“a twist of lemon on that veal and—”

  “Would you leave here?” Konig’s voice grows louder. He searches about desperately for the head waiter.

  “If you don’t want that veal—”

  He spies the maître d’, starts to stand and gesture toward him.

  “—I’d be glad to eat it for you.”

  For the first time, Konig turns and peers squarely into the girl’s face. It is a small gaminelike “face, haggardly pretty. She can be no more than fifteen or sixteen but there is already something blatantly sexual in her mocking glance, in the tightness of her faded jeans and sweater. It is all a kind of bold, unabashed self-proclaiming. Still, beyond the playful impudence in the eyes, the little flashes of defiance, the frank sexuality, there is also a note of fright and quite possibly desperation. The desperation becomes more discernible as the peppery little Neapolitan maître d’ comes, puffing and sputtering, quickly toward them.

  Konig sees a small note of pleading in the girl’s eyes and in the next moment he observes in those same eyes a set of blue-gray pupils that are unmistakably constricted.

  As the maître d’ marches up to them, her voice rises. She laughs and chatters with a kind of desperate cheer. “So I told this silly little—”

  “All right, get out,” the little Neapolitan with the large mustaches fumes down at her. “Go on. Get the hell out.”

  The girl peers dismally down at the plate of cold cutlets.

  “I’m awful sorry, sir.” He snatches the girl’s arm. “How many times I tell you I don’t want you here? This ain’t that kind of place. Now I’m gonna call a cop.” He starts to tug the girl to her feet. “Awful sorry, sir.”

  There’s great confusion while the tugging goes on. Plates and silver clatter. The wineglass nearly topples. Konig makes a desperate lunge and catches it. “That’s all right.” He is painfully aware that everyone in the room has stopped eating and is watching them. “Perfectly all right. Let her stay.”

  “Stay?” The Italian gapes at him. “You want her to stay?”

  “Yes—it’s okay.” Mortified by the scene they’ve created, Konig hears his voice coming at him from great distances. The Italian’s expression bristles with disapproval. “It’s all right,” Konig goes on a little frantically. “She’s with me. I’ll have another glass of wine, please.” He makes a gesture, dismissing the man.

  Baffled and muttering, the Italian moves off, and suddenly Konig and the girl are all alone. Sighing and flustered, he watches her cut and fork pieces of the cutlet into her mouth.

  “Nothin’ wrong with this cutlet,” she says.

  “Good. I hope you enjoy it.”

  “Thanks,” the girl replies, staring dismally down at her plate.

  “Forget it. Just finish up and go.”

  There’s something famished, almost savage, about the way the girl screws her eyes downward to the plate and chews, her fork darting quickly between cutlet and salad. She chews quickly, too, swallowing large, unmasticated chunks of food, hunched over her plate protectively, like a hungry dog, fearing that she must get it all down fast before someone whisks it away.

  Returning with Konig’s fresh glass of wine, the waiter scowls down at the girl. Unable t
o forgive her for cadging food, he mutters and goes off.

  When she’s finished the cutlet and salad, she starts with the bread and butter.

  “Want something to drink?” Konig growls. “Milk? Soda?”

  “Nope.” The girl hiccoughs, wipes her butter-smeared mouth with a napkin, then pulls a half-smoked cigarette from the cuff of her jeans. She leans forward to the table candle, lighting the cigarette, her face glowing suddenly in the guttering flame.

  “Sorry I don’t have one for you.” She inhales the smoke deeply.

  “That’s all right. I don’t use them.”

  She sits back now in her seat. Content. Hugely satisfied, she gazes around the room now at the young, effusively chatty couples, all involved in themselves. Then suddenly she’s looking at him again, first sideways, then directly, head-on, the eyes once more impudent and suggestive. No longer a trace there of that momentary desperation and pleading. She gazes boldly at him, but it is all rather bogus. Postures and attitudes learned from cheap television serials and trashy films.

  “Aren’t you gonna eat?”

  “No. I’m not hungry.”

  “Sorry about all that fuss.” She glances at the waiter, still smoldering at her from a corner of the room. “He’s such a bastard anyway. Pardon the language.”

  “That’s all right. Forget it.”

  “Wanna buy some postcards?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  She pushes a stack of cards toward him. “Look at ’em.”

  “No, I said I—”

  “Go on—just look at ’em.”

  “Oh, God.” He sighs and snatches up the cards, flicking idly through them. Views of the George Washington Bridge. Statue of Liberty. Empire State Building. Shea Stadium. Fulton Fish Market. Then suddenly a glossy, postcard-sized photograph of a girl naked on a bed, legs up and parted. Then another, same girl, on her stomach, buttocks up, thrust assertively outward.

  Konig glances at the girl now smiling wickedly opposite him, two columns of smoke wafting from her nostrils. “If you like those you can have them for twenty dollars.”

  “Oh?” Konig feels her leg brush his under the table. “I’m afraid not.” He flicks to views of the meat market and Times Square by night.

  “If that’s too much I could maybe let you have it a little cheaper—like eighteen?”

  “No, I really don’t think so.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “It’s not the price.” Konig laughs, feeling a little foolish. “I’m a little past that.”

  “Oh, come on now, Daddy,” she taunts him softly. “You’ll do just fine. Leave it to me. Make you happy. Make you feel real good.”

  In spite of efforts to be stern, Konig grows giddy. The thought of his weary old bones in bed with that child, feigning passion, struggling to be amorous, is laughable. “Betchya good.” The girl laughs. “Betchya real good.” Konig smiles in spite of himself. “You must be all of fifteen.”

  “I’m nineteen.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I am. I’m nineteen.”

  “You’re nineteen like I’m twenty-two. Where you from anyway? Texas? I’ll bet Texas, with that drawl.”

  “Not Texas,” the girl sulks. “Close though.”

  “Oklahoma,” Konig says, seeing something register in her eyes. “It is Oklahoma, isn’t it?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “I recognize that accent. Spent enough time in the Army down there. What’s the big secret anyway?”

  “No big secret. I just don’t care to say.” The girl scowls, cross-armed and adamant. “Come on, Daddy. Let you have those cards for fifteen. Special to you. Three ways. Straight, French, and Greek.”

  “That’s all I need,” Konig groans. “I’d probably expire.”

  “Don’t talk that way. You’re not as old as all that.”

  “I’m older. I could be your grandfather.”

  “Bet you’re hell in bed. I can tell just by lookin’ at you. I like older men anyway. Used to know an old buck back in Tulsa—” Her voice breaks off abruptly as she sees triumph glow in Konig’s eye. “Aren’t you smart though. Stop lookin’ so smug. Ain’t been in Tulsa for years.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Heather.”

  “Heather?”

  “Heather Harwell.”

  Konig gives her a long, dubious gaze.

  “Now what’s wrong with that?” the girl protests. Suddenly a huge belly laugh from Konig. Several people turn and stare at them. The peppery little Neapolitan glowers in their direction.

  “Heather Harwell.” He chuckles more quietly. “Boy, you really can pick ’em.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Sounds like the name of a comic strip. The Adventures of Heather Harwell. Girl Postcard Hawker, Infant Hooker.”

  “Shhh.” The girl stares anxiously around.

  “What’s your real name?”

  The girl sits stony and tight-lipped.

  “Your family in Tulsa?”

  “Boy, you ask a lot of questions.”

  “Heather Harwell’s not your name. No one from Tulsa is named Heather Harwell. They all have names like Minnie Turl.”

  “It’s my professional name.”

  “Your professional name?” Konig hoots. “You mean the name you hustle under?”

  “Shhh.” She tries to silence him again. “For pity sake, will you quit screaming that out? It’s the name I model under. I’m a model.”

  “For dirty postcards?” Konig laughs cruelly.

  Defiance blazes in her eyes. “For fashion magazines. I’ve been in Vogue and Harper’s—”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Well, I have. And maybe someday I’ll be in television commercials. I’ve got a friend says he knows people who can help me.”

  “I’ll bet he does. But just for now it’s dirty pictures.”

  “That’s not my regular line,” the girl snaps. “And besides, they’re not dirty. Dirtiness is—”

  “—in the eye of the beholder,” Konig taunts her cruelly. “I see.”

  “Come on, Poppy. Let’s not fuss. Come home with Heather.”

  “Your folks know anything about what you do up here?” Konig sees something like fear register in the girl’s eyes. “I bet they don’t even know where you are.”

  “Come on, Daddy-o. Heather’s pad is right around the corner. Twelve fifty—special to you.”

  “Answer me.” Konig suddenly bears down hard. “Your family doesn’t know you’re here.”

  She starts to get up, but he pushes her roughly back down in her seat. “You’re a runaway, aren’t you?”

  “How come you ask so many questions?”

  “How long have you been on the lam?”

  “You some kind of cop?”

  “I’m no cop.” Konig feels something like rage mounting in him. “When’s the last time you spoke with your parents?”-“

  The girl flushes violently. “Leave me alone.”

  Just then the maître d’, scowling and indignant, steams up to them and flings the check on the table.

  “I didn’t ask for that yet,” Konig snaps, and the little Neapolitan retreats before the Chief’s glowering visage. Konig turns back to the girl. “Answer me.”.

  “Answer you what?” All at once she is coy and provocative, fingering the fabric of his sleeve. “I’ve never heard such a silly lot of questions. First of all, I’m nineteen years of age. What the law calls a consenting adult. I’m not a runaway. In order to be a runaway, you gotta have something to run away from. Either a home or a family. I most distinctly have neither, having lost all of my family in an air crash.”

  “I’m sorry,” Konig mumbles, momentarily buffaloed by the sweet, almost childish candor of the girl. Then his trained, somewhat jaded eye suddenly detects the treacherous little actress-liar at work there behind the furrowed brow, the long, lugubrious face of mock tragedy.

  “That’s all right.” The girl suffers on w
ith histrionic bravery. “You were sincerely concerned. And I’m touched. Now come on home with Heather, honey. Ten dollars. A sawbuck. Rock-bottom. Special to you ’cause I like you. But don’t let the word get around. Come on.” She tugs at his sleeve. “Let Heather make you happy. Show you heaven.”

  Konig gazes at her for a long moment, sighs wearily and laughs. “Okay, let’s go.”

  For a while she gazes at him dumbly, not quite believing. Then comprehension comes upon her. Her face lights; her eyes dazzle. “You really mean it?”

  “Absolutely. Why not? Do me good.”

  “Wait here.” She bounces up.

  “Where you going?”

  “Little girls’ room—for a tinkle.” She scurries off, then scurries back. “You won’t run off?”

  “Course not. I’ll be right here.” Konig removes several bills from a billfold. “Hurry up.”

  She turns, starts off, then turns again, smiling. “You won’t regret it.”

  “I know—I know,” he growls. “Hurry up.”

  Konig counts off a number of bills, leaves them atop the check, all the while eying the small white vinyl wallet the girl has left there trustingly with her cards and pencils. In a moment he has the wallet and is riffling through it, flicking past a wad of old photos stuck behind dirty yellow plastic windows—pictures of a raddled old frame house with a windmill in the front yard, a fat dozy mongrel dog with sweet eyes, one of Heather in a bathing suit, then one behind the wheel of an old Plymouth convertible with a ruined top, then several shots of Heather with an assortment of young men, all of them of the greasy-frisette, tattooed-bicep variety. Then suddenly he finds what he’s looking for—a driver’s license issued in the name of Molly Sully, Box 382, RFD, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Date of birth: 3/5/58.

  He tucks the license carefully back into the plastic sleeve and returns the wallet to its place.

  Then suddenly Heather Harwell, nee Molly Sully, is there again, smiling, face scrubbed, mouth red with a fresh coating of lipstick somewhat untidily applied. “Okay, Poppy—let’s fly.”