Last Words

by Rich Zahradnik

  “We need to get somewhere you can rest that leg. Maybe get it wrapped.”

  “I know.”

  Taylor led them to Central Park West and back down to the 81st Street subway station.

  “Why the hell are we coming back here?” Voichek stopped and looked around.

  “I need to check something.” Taylor hurried over to the spot next to the subway stairs. He kicked over the coffee cup. Sludge and swollen cigarette butts spilled on the ground, flakes of tobacco swirling on the surface of the liquid. The cardboard sign remained. He bent down and picked up two dimes and three pennies. Why would a beggar leave any money behind? Where’s your friend Pennyman?”

  “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

  “Is this his usual spot?”

  “Yeah. He likes the folks who live in the apartment buildings on the park. He’s been working them a long while.”

  “Would he quit this early?”

  “Doubt it. Still lots of daylight.”

  “Those men didn’t follow us to the coffee shop. They weren’t inside Port Authority. They weren’t on the subway. I was too careful. So how the hell did they find us? From the time we escaped the funeral parlor, Pennyman was the only person I heard ID you. They must have homeless people on the lookout for you. A bounty maybe. There’s no other way they could have known where we went. That’s how they’ve stayed on you all week.”

  Instead of going into the subway, Taylor warily walked down to 72nd and west to Amsterdam. They passed the Gray’s Papaya at the corner, took the stairs to the Broadway Local, and rode three stops north.

  At 3:45, Taylor used a pay phone on the platform to leave a message for Harry Jansen. They got back on and rode under Manhattan, switching trains in a random tour of the subway lines that crisscrossed under the island. Moving was the safest way to hide until Jansen responded. Voichek dozed off on one long stretch from Harlem to Wall Street. Taylor might have wished for sleep, but the throbbing in his right leg kept a painful drumbeat. That made it easy to stay awake and watch for anyone who recognized Voichek. He wouldn’t let his guard down again.

  Chapter 20

  Taylor hung up the phone and stepped over to where Voichek leaned against a pillar on the N platform in Union Square station. The man looked ready to bolt. Here was a guy who set his own rules and routes. He wasn’t going to put up with Taylor for long. This news wasn’t going to help either.

  “The guys chasing you are offering money to street people. Twenty dollar bounty to report your location. Fifty on top if you’re caught. Pennyman must have taken their money.”

  “Bums and drunks.” Voichek spit out the words.

  “Jansen got a couple of people to admit it’s been going on for a week. They were afraid to tell him.”

  “Because they want to collect.”

  “That’s our biggest problem now. We don’t know who will head for a pay phone as soon as they see you.”

  “It’s my problem. I’ll solve it by staying away from every bum, tramp, and lowdown drunk in this town. I’ll leave. I haven’t forgotten how to make it on the road.”

  “You can’t just run away. You’re the only person who can tie those men to your clothes. Those clothes tie them to the murder of a teenage boy. That’s why they’re trying to kill you.”

  “Seems the only thing I can do.” Voichek still leaned against the pillar, looking pensive. An N train to Coney Island pulled in. “Let’s go.”

  Taylor knew it was now or never. The story wasn’t adding up. Why buy Voichek’s clothes and only later try to kill him? He was holding something back, and Taylor had to find out what it was. They sat opposite each other in the nearly empty car. “Tell me what happened with your clothes.”

  “The leader—the one with the scar on his face—did all the talking. The other two just stood there. The fatheaded one smoked a cigar. The leader didn’t say much. Just how much he’d pay. I didn’t ask anything. When someone offers silly money, the less said the better. I didn’t know they were going to dress the kid in them. Or whatever they did. I didn’t know they were going to make my life miserable.”

  “Killing you is a bit more than misery.”

  “The Germans tried harder.”

  “They paid you fifty?”

  “Yes. That’s a lot of money for me. A real lot.”

  “I have no doubt, but you’re not telling me the whole story.”

  “You’re calling me a liar again?” Voichek turned angry in an instant, like a switch had flipped. He moved to the door. “You don’t know me for more than a few hours and you call me a liar twice. Where do you get off?”

  “This Army field jacket.” Taylor tugged at his collar. “My brother gave it to me before he left for Vietnam for the last time. I wouldn’t sell this jacket to anyone. How about yours? Jansen told me you wore it through World War II. Sewed the flags of the world on it because you believed—I guess everybody believed once—that war won a special peace. You never took it off. I don’t see you parting with that jacket. I find it hard to believe the guys chasing us—”

  “Me. They’re chasing me.”

  “Fine—the guys chasing you are the type who buy things from homeless people. And what? Only later decide to murder them? None of it makes sense.”

  “I’m a hobo, not homeless. I’ve got some honor left.” His voice was quiet and he looked down. The train braked into Utrecht Avenue, raising a banshee racket. People on the platform put their hands to their ears to block out the noise. The cars stopped with a sharp jolt. Voichek stood at the doorway. If the man were leaving, he’d do it now. He stayed where he was as the doors rattled open and closed and did it again. After a half-dozen bangs, the doors stayed shut and the conductor signaled with two buzzes for the driver to pull out. Voichek sighed, rubbed his ears as if they were cold but in a rough way that looked like it hurt. He sat. “It’s embarrassing. Is that what you reporters do? Figure out what’s really embarrassing for someone and tell the world?”

  “What I want to do is tell the world who murdered Declan McNally. Who made it look like he froze to death on the street. Who did that and why. When I do, whoever is involved will be a whole lot more than embarrassed.”

  “I’ve never been rolled. The Great Depression, thousands and thousands of miles on the tracks, hobo camps all over this land, a world war, and years in this city. Nobody has ever rolled me till those three hijackers. It was Monday evening, freezing cold and already getting dark. I’m walking down an alley off of West 46th. Out of nowhere, two of them are at one end and one at the other. I’m trapped. I tell them I don’t have anything worth their time. ‘Take off your clothes,’ says the one with the scar. He hits me hard in the gut. ‘Worthless fucking street scum. You’re not even worth what you’re wearing. I hate your kind.’ One of the others points a gun. They’d all been drinking. I could tell from their talk and their smell. I start undressing in that freezing wind. Everything’s off but my pants. I pull them down slowly. Just as they’re off my feet, I use the belt to whip the pants straight at the face of the one with the gun. I run the other way fast as I can. I put my shoulder into the gut of the yegg blocking the end of the alley. He yells, surprised-like. I guess he didn’t expect a good smack from some old geezer. I run to 45th, hear a shot. Think I did at least. That just makes me go faster. I’m running in my longjohns down the street. Embarrassing. Funny, like in a movie, if they weren’t trying to kill me for my clothes. I’m convinced they’re going to get me. Or the cops will. Or the cold will. I get to the corner at Ninth and see another guy from Jansen’s shelter, name of Wiley. I beg him to let me borrow his trench coat for ten minutes. He’s a bit of a tramp, but a good egg and lets me. He waits inside a deli with a cup of coffee and a sandwich I buy him.”

  Taylor glanced up from the notebook.

  “I keep my cash in my sock. I go into Ben Franklin’s, grab the first warm clothes I see and put them on in the dressing room. Wiley’s trench coat is back over top. I’m a buck short at the regist
er for the gear, so I’m running again. I’d never lifted before. Not ever. A hobo doesn’t thieve. That will get you buried deep in the coop.”

  “The coop? Jail?”

  “A long damn time in jail. You lose your freedom, you lose the most important thing you have. Now you know the truth. Those three would have killed me. I’m sure of it. They’re trying to kill me now.”

  “They were going to murder you for your clothes?”

  “People die every day for less. No one cares. A guy gets killed for a bottle of cheap wine or a loaded syringe. They’d kill me and dump me somewhere and nothing would happen. C’mon, it’s the same reason they wanted my clothes. They wanted to turn the dead kid invisible. We’re all invisible.” Voichek slumped on the bench, deflated. “Now every vagrant and bum is trying to sell me out. This can’t get any worse.”

  He was right on one count. Dozens of homeless people died every month. No one took notice. No one tried to figure out what happened at the end of each of those lives. Taylor had to work his ass off to get the killing of a single homeless man in the paper. He didn’t need to do a thing when the well-off bought it. The story wrote itself. Hell, it published itself.

  “Jansen said he can guarantee most of his people.”

  “Most?” A sad laugh. “Jansen’s all right. He puts a roof over all of them. So, what are they going to tell him? There are drunks there, dope fiends and criminals too stupid to figure out what to steal. A whole bunch that would turn me in for the money.”

  They sat in silence for three stops. Every time the train made the same earsplitting squeal before braking to a stop. The subway map across from Taylor gave him an idea. He followed the N line to its end. “There aren’t many homeless people out on Coney Island, are there?”

  “Not this time of year. No shelters. No one to beg off. It’s a long way out of town. And even colder.”

  “That may be just the place for us. For a while, at least.”

  Voichek didn’t react, instead stared out his window at Brooklyn passing below. The subway turned into an El six stops ago, rising out of the ground to ride on tracks above the streets and houses. The neighborhoods looked almost like the suburbs, with brick houses and tiny, snow-covered backyards lining quiet streets.

  “I’m going to help you because they killed the kid,” Voichek said after the noise of another stop. “Don’t take too long with what you need to do. I don’t want to end up dead too.”

  Taylor didn’t have a reassuring answer for that, so he kept quiet. He was tired of being banged around by subway trains. His ankle hurt and the rest of his body was sore. He wanted off, wanted to sit still and think about the story taking shape. The local took a long forty minutes to get all the way to the end of the line. He pulled himself up as soon as the train stopped at Stillwell Avenue, went through the door and kept walking. Even now, holding onto a guy like Voichek would be like trying to grab smoke. He’d follow or he wouldn’t. The cops had it so damn easy. Arrest, search, interrogate. Throw a guy in a cell. Soften him up. Question some more. They ought to be embarrassed every time he reported what they couldn’t get. Nobody ever had to stop and answer his questions.

  He clacked through the turnstile, Voichek right behind him. They both went down the stairs to the exit.

  Across Surf Avenue was Nathan’s Famous, with its truly famous block-long yellow sign. Neon promised seafood, buffet catering, French fries, cola and root beer, and of course, hot dogs.

  “Not often I get to the seaside,” Voichek said.

  “That surprises me, with all your traveling.”

  “The road always ends at the sea. I don’t like being at the end of the road. Told you, never go down a dead end.”

  Taylor pulled open the door. The restaurant was more crowded than he expected for a winter day. Then again, some people wouldn’t eat a hot dog unless they got it from this old place. “Hungry?”

  “Seems a long while since we were in that coffee shop.”

  “We’ve been riding for hours. Get whatever you want.”

  “Not charity, right? Because I’m helping you out.”

  “This is how journalism works.”

  Voichek smiled for the first time in almost four hours and ordered two hot dogs, one plain, one with fried onions, plus a dozen clams on the half shell and a coffee. Taylor added one with kraut and a glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon for his leg. They sat at one of three empty tables. The customers in the restaurant seemed no threat. One guy in the corner might be a vagrant or just working poor. He hadn’t taken any notice of Voichek, who attacked the clams, slurping them with white horseradish.

  “Cold and raw in the winter?”

  “I eat them when I can get them. I’m not likely to get them again anytime soon.”

  Taylor took a bite of his dog, had a long draft of the beer, and decided it was pretty close to the best he’d ever tasted. He finished it quickly and got up to order another. Emergencies meant abandoning his rules.

  “Would you mind getting me some fries?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Taylor smiled at the old man’s capacity to put it away. The hobo knew to eat for the days when he saw no food. He sat back down and sipped the second beer.

  Voichek speared a French fry with one of those little wooden forks you only got at Nathan’s. “I knew a hobo who worked for Nathan Handwerker.”

  “Who?”

  “Who? You’re the guy who’s supposed to know everything about the city. The Nathan Handwerker who started this place. Before the war, Handwerker was having a hard time convincing people to stop here because of nicer sit-down joints all along the avenue. So he hires some hobos. He has them dress up like doctors and stand around in front of the place with signs on. ‘If doctors eat our hot dogs, you know they’re good!’ ”

  “Guess it worked. Nathan’s is famous. The other places are gone.”

  Taylor checked his ankle. The swelling hadn’t gone down much.

  “You’ll probably live. If it were really bad, you wouldn’t be walking.”

  “I’m prescribing Dr. Pabst’s healing elixir.” Taylor toasted with the beer glass. “Let me hear some more of that hobo language of yours.”

  Voichek sipped the steaming black coffee and smiled a second time. “You want me to talk west? That’s what we call the lingo. Talking west.”

  “You named some of the trains.” Taylor opened his notebook.

  “They’re called roads, not trains. Roads. The Big G is the Great Northern. The Bitter Biscuit Line, the Piedmont Division of the Southern. Only rode that once. Canned Meat & Stale Punk, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. Damn Rotten Grub, the Denver and Rio Grande.”

  Taylor wrote them down. He couldn’t wait to tell Laura about the language. Once the story ran, it would go into Mrs. Wiggins’ manila envelopes, in the bound volumes at the end of the year and even on microfilm at the Library of Congress. The great archiving machine couldn’t help itself. Voichek’s talking west would be saved forever. At least Taylor’s version of forever.

  “Accommodation is a local freight. A side-door Pullman, that’s your basic boxcar. ’Course even the words that make up the language don’t get used anymore. Do you know what a Pullman was, young man?”

  “Sure, a sleeping car.”

  “Oh the things that have gone to ruin.” Voichek shook his head. “A Pullman is far more than that. A Pullman sleeper on an express train was the most civilized form of travel there ever was on this earth. I rode one twice as a paying customer. Streaking across the country. With my private sitting room and pull-down bed. A Pullman porter waiting on me the whole time. Most of my life, a boxcar was my side-door Pullman.”

  “I thought hobos rode underneath freight trains.”

  “That’s sleeping the gunnels, which is done by a trapeze artist. You had to be brave and more than a little crazy for that. The possum belly under a passenger car was okay though. Food, now we had lots of words for food because we were chasing meals whenever we weren’t chasing rides.
A combo was a dinner that didn’t need cooking. The exhibition meal was grub you ate on the doorstep so the neighbors could appreciate the generosity of the lady of the house. Can you imagine that happening in this day and age? Anyone anywhere handing out food and wanting the neighbors to see a hobo eating on their front steps? We’ve gotten so civilized. No Pullmans. No exhibition meals.” Voichek finished off the fries. “Here’s one I haven’t used in a long while. Bridger. I won’t make you guess. It’s someone who’s ridden both steam trains and diesels. Someone who bridged the railroading eras. I’m a bridger, just. Can’t be many of us left. Dying, like the language.” He finished the coffee.

  Taylor wrote bridger in his notebook and underlined it twice. There was Laura’s lead. “Your language is going to be brand new to a lot of people. The only thing they know about hobos is Freddy the Freeloader on The Red Skelton Show.”

  “Don’t write it until the killers are caught. I’m known for talking west out on the street. We don’t need to give those yeggs any help. I’d like it if a story did some good. All’s I see anymore are blank looks when I use words everyone around me used to know. There’s no one to look out for you anymore. You could trust most people in a hobo jungle.”

  Taylor had the taste for a third beer but ruled it out because he had to keep his head clear. He ordered them both coffees and dumped sugar and half-and-half in his.

  “You making dessert?” Voichek chuckled over his.

  “How can you drink yours so hot?”

  “Only way, over a campfire. Get to like it that way. Rarely any creamer around.”

  The caffeine and sugar gave Taylor an up-all-night tingle over the top of his two-beer buzz. He was all jitters and no focus. Exhaustion seeped into his bones. Time to get some work done before he crashed completely. He stretched and limped to the phone booth. He called Laura’s apartment. Her roommate Sarah Jane said Laura wasn’t around and did a bad job of acting like she was taking a message. A male voice yelled for Sarah Jane to come back to bed. He left a second message for Laura with the paper’s weekend switchboard operator. He hung up and stood in front of the phone alone, and all of a sudden, lonely. He missed Laura. Albany might have been a week ago instead of last night. This day stretched out so long. He wanted her to be here so they could go over everything. He trusted her. She’d help think it through and that would ease his anxiety. He called Jansen’s pay phone.