Nick Bones Underground

by Phil M. Cohen

  “Nicholas, you know I don’t need to shut down, do I? Do I need rest?” Answering her own question, the machine added, “No, of course, I don’t need rest. You might, however, persuade me to take a little trip. Lately, I’ve been enjoying the company of a cute number from Paris. We meet in Tokyo and drink green tea. The Japanese digitize things wonderfully. I can use the antioxidants. They help avoid viruses. I’ll see if he can come out and play. See you in, say, an hour?”

  I nodded.

  “Ta-ta,” Maggie said.

  With the Maggie distraction now gone, I wanted to find out why Abe came. Still, I avoided pursuing the reason he’d sought me out—hoping to further cement his trust. I walked him around the rest of the apartment. Touring 800 square feet of a dark four-room Brooklyn brownstone flat was not much of a proposition. I showed him the two books I’d written. He took each and paged through them, commenting on the photos on the dust jackets and the endorsement on the back by learned colleagues. I showed him what little memorabilia I remembered my parents by. I made us each a cup of peppermint tea, put on Mahler’s First.

  Tea in hand, we sat in my living room, Abe on one of the leather chairs, I on the couch. Abe’s body told me the time had arrived for business. I shut up. He took a sip and set his teacup on the table beside him.

  “I came to you because I need a favor. A big favor, if you want to know. I am more than happy to pay you for this favor . . . I have some money.” He paused. “I have heard how you’ve investigated cases recently. I have heard you’ve become a good investigator. You’re so tough I’ve heard they call you Nick Bones.”

  Oy, I thought. So, he knows about Nick Bones.

  CHAPTER 7

  SKELETON IN THE CLOSET

  YEAH, THEY CALLED ME Nick Bones, the toughest private dick in all of nowhere.

  I’d been doing some missing-persons work. In what remained of my middle age, I thought perhaps the circles of my colleagues, friends, and former students in and around New York might provide me with helpful contacts, and some fun. Who knew? I might actually help someone and even make a buck.

  My contacts and raw intelligence failed to transform me into a modern Sherlock Holmes. Despite some targeted marketing on social media, people weren’t lining up for my services. Yet, I wasn’t surprised that Abe knew I was in the business, for I’d had my fifteen minutes of fame after cracking a bizarre little case.

  I was late into my fifties, recently divorced, weary of lecturing about Kantian ethics and world religions to uncomprehending undergraduates who had never read the material and who barely knew what a book was.

  I needed a change, something to put me in control of my life. My body had crossed a certain no-man’s land. It was cranky and unlubricated. My hair had grayed and was moving toward white with a growing bald patch. My body had become a catalog of woe. The heart attack damaged the heart muscle. My prostate was the size of an orange. My colon hatched polyps on a biannual basis. My eyes and ears had dulled. My back would go out from time to time. My right knee ached. All of this exacerbated by my then recent divorce from Linda. And then there was my daughter.

  I was bedeviled by a feeling of failure over not having accomplished what I should have in my life. I wasn’t winning book awards; I wasn’t even writing books. I felt like an uprooted tree, still alive and producing leaves year after year, but rootless and decaying.

  A former student who’d entered the halls of New York’s Finest told me one day over tea at a campus coffeehouse that the crime rate had climbed so high that police lacked time to attend to missing persons. The men and women in blue were neck-deep in a crime wave that included 4,000 homicides a year plus countless other acts of brutality, theft, or stupidity.

  As for those reported missing, unless they showed up dead with a mark around a quarter inch in diameter burned into the forehead, cheap laser pistols lately being the death instrument of choice, they were presumed to be living, and cops only had time to investigate the dead or injured.

  It was into that breach I would step.

  I placed an advertisement in an online list that focused on New York City and environs. To my astonishment, not three days later Ms. Leslie Metillo left me a message. “Someone requests your services,” my computer announced when I returned from the university.

  We met at a coffee shop I frequented in the Village. I drank white raspberry tea and she a Diet Coke. She was a skeletal woman, frail, with stringy graying hair that hadn’t visited a beauty parlor for some time, and teeth yellow as gold, but very intense, angry eyes. I was apprehensive. I suspected all I could do was bumble about the case, more like Nigel Bruce’s Dr. Watson than Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock.

  She looked at me and gushed, “I’m so happy to meet you, Dr. Friedman. I know all about your work.”

  Anyone claiming to know anything about my work was a natural friend. Beyond a rather narrow circle, fans of the stuff I wrote were rare.

  “Do you teach at a college?” I asked.

  “Oh no. I’m a legal secretary.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, can you tell me how you found out about my work?”

  “I read, you know,” she said huffily. Since she was a potential employer, I dropped my query and sipped my tea.

  “How may I help you?” I asked.

  “Find my husband,” she said. “He disappeared just over a year ago. I’ve been waiting every day for an email or a phone call, even a letter. But he’s gone.”

  “Did he leave a note?”

  “No. I returned from work one day and he didn’t. I ate dinner alone that night, and I’ve eaten dinner alone every night since.” Tears flowed down her cheeks.

  “You’ve had no indication he’s alive? I mean, for instance, did he withdraw money from your account or use a credit card?”

  “No. Nothing. It’s a mystery.” She waved her arm, possibly as a sign of the frustration. “I’d surely like him back. I’d take him back for sure. But if he’s dead, I want to know. I’d like to get on with things.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, is there a life insurance policy?”

  “Yes, there’s insurance. Quite a bit, actually. Fred—that’s his name—Fred always told me he wanted me well taken care of should he predecease me. I waited a year before beginning this investigation, but now I need to know if he’s alive. But if he’s dead, then I’m entitled to that policy and I’d like to have it. It’s a great deal of money.” She shook her hair back and added, “I have prospects, after all.”

  “Sounds right,” I said. I twisted my napkin as she looked at me with those serious eyes. I said, “I’m going to be honest with you, Ms. Metillo. You’re my first case.”

  “No matter, Dr. Friedman,” she said. “You’re the man for this. I know it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, too flattered to wonder why I was “The Man.” “I won’t ask you for any money until I produce a lead.”

  “As you wish. I have absolute confidence in your skills. You are a great scholar.”

  I asked for all the details she could provide—credit cards numbers, bank accounts, photos, friends’ names, his last employer. She reached into her handbag, pulled and handed me a business envelope.

  “This contains all the information you requested plus some,” she said. I put the envelope into the breast pocket of my blazer, and we shook hands. I returned to the streets of Greenwich Village, struck with the realization I had no plan. But pure dumb luck filled the void.

  Turns out this Ms. Metillo had offed the poor bastard herself when she discovered he’d been cheating on her with the super, a scrappy Brazilian fellow. She used a Zap Lazar Pistol, the leading brand available for a couple of dollars in any convenience store—without ID. She gutted him and disposed of his innards in two large plastic bags snuck out at night and thrown into a dumpster. She then d
ried out his skin and skeletal remains in their personal sauna, and hung the desiccated thing—skull, skin, and bones—on a wooden hanger and placed it in his closet on a rod situated behind his shirts. Under ordinary circumstances it would have remained hanging there until they carried Ms. Metillo out feet first.

  I learned the location of the late Mr. Metillo because my client was in therapy with one of my former students, who informed me of the skeleton in the closet.

  My former student had written a popular self-help book on depression called Been Down Long Enough; Get Up Already! which had sold well. A decade or so earlier, I taught a course called Religious Moods and Religious Therapies. I examined how religions recognize and deal with different psychological conditions, particularly depression. This student took my course, and we became friends. Over coffee one afternoon he shared with me his interest in becoming a therapist. I recommended a number of books and articles, and we occasionally met and talked. Years later, he dedicated his book to me.

  Apparently Ms. Metillo’s daily life was consumed with guilt over her deed, but she lacked the gumption to turn herself in. She spilled the beans to her therapist, my old student, who over coffee with me one afternoon allowed the beans to spill my way.

  I convinced her to allow me to visit her home and had little difficulty inventing a ruse to reach into the back of the closet and discover Mr. Skin and Bones all stretched out and dangling like so much old dry cleaning. I didn’t collect a dime for my services, but I did endear myself to the NYPD and the media.

  And that’s how I became Herr Doctor Professor Nick Bones, PI. My friend, the journalist Mickey Bar On, invented the name in his story in The Times of Israel, and the moniker stuck.

  Abe Shimmer wished now to step in the pitifully short line to become Mr. Bones’s next client.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE RATIONALITY OF ALL THINGS

  I SIPPED MY TEA, removed my glasses and rested them on the coffee table. I looked at Abe sitting across from me, squinting.

  “You’ve come to see me about Shmulie, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Sorry, Abe. Not interested. I finished with Shmulie a long time ago,” I said. “Before the trial, I’d seen him maybe a couple of times. I knew all about him.”

  Every citizen of the City of New York knew about Shmulie selling that crap to anyone who’d fork over thirty bucks to get “high and low,” as was the saying. He’d call me from time to time and want to talk, but I never accommodated him.

  I leaned back and ran a couple of fingers over my bald patch.

  “I knew for a long time what he was up to and I . . . well, Abe, I got to tell you . . . I hate him for what he did. I can’t think of a happier day in my life than when he got busted. He turned on Esther Lacey and he got away. All right. That made him one lucky son of a bitch. But at least he got put out of circulation and Lerbs went away with him.”

  Abe’s face twisted into a knot. “Maybe to you he’s a closed book, but not to me. He’s my only child. Now that Marta’s gone I’m alone, and let me tell you, alone is everything they say it is. Anyway, something’s wrong.” He pulled at a thread sticking out of the top button of his vest. It unraveled.

  “Before Shmulie went away I visited him at Rikers. We talked. Not much. But we talked.”

  The image of 300 pounds of Shmulie Shimmer in an orange jumpsuit provided me some satisfaction.

  “We hadn’t talked like father and son for years. For decades, if the truth you want to know. But that day we talked like there was something between us. He was sorry he’d been an embarrassment to me and Marta. He said he wished things had been different. He wished he knew how to get all those people out of those comas. That’s why he agreed to cooperate—not just to save his own skin. I don’t think he was afraid of prison. He cooperated to stop the damage.”

  My skepticism faded as Abe’s tone became earnest.

  “You weren’t there, Nicky. You weren’t there. You didn’t hear the sadness in his voice and see it in his eyes. He was sorry for all the people he hurt. He was.” He pulled some more at the thread. He pulled off the dangling button and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “I know it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “He hurt people. And so many.”

  Abe pushed himself up from the chair, and, groaning, he stood, walked slowly to the lone window in my living room, and stared into the setting sun. The single ray of light that occasionally crept into my apartment in the late afternoon shone on him, affording him a jolt of life. When he backed away and turned toward me, he became once again an emaciated old man.

  He stood over me. “Shmulie promised he’d contact me when he got to wherever they were taking him,” he said. “We knew we’d never see each other again. I made him promise he’d contact me—just once—to tell me he was okay. I wanted only to know he was all right. Just once he promised he’d call, Nicky, and Shmulie never broke a promise. That was one thing. He never broke a promise.”

  He placed himself near the chair and, leaning onto the armrests, lowered himself onto the seat with a grunt.

  “It’s been a year and a half now. Nothing. I’ve heard nothing. No email, letter, no card, no phone call, no nothing.”

  He rubbed the spot on his coat where the button used to be, pulling at the remaining bit of loose thread. “I went to the FBI and talked to someone. He didn’t talk like a mensch, this guy. He was angry with me, and we never even met before. He was mean, short, like he was hiding something. I don’t know what he was hiding, but I got a bad feeling from him.”

  “You want me to track down Shmulie because he never called you?”

  “I’m worried. He said he’d call. He told me he would . . . Yes. Track Shmulie down for me and tell me he’s all right or he’s not all right. That’s all I want to know.”

  “It won’t be easy,” I said. “Once the FBI moves someone, he’s yesterday’s news. Shmulie’s got a new name, a new home, all new numbers, a new history. They sometimes do surgery on the famous ones, including new fingerprints. So Shmulie might even have a new look. Maybe they even sucked all the fat out of him.”

  I dwelt for a moment on the image of Shmulie Shimmer slimmed down, his fat pants held up by suspenders like a circus clown. “I have no idea how and where I’d begin the job. If I wanted the job. Which I do not.”

  What little color resided in Abe’s face drained away, and he became a ghost. He blinked and squeezed his lips, forming a tight, pallid circle.

  What did he expect from me? That I’d jump to his tune out of old neighborhood loyalty? Did Abe really expect that I’d look for his wretched son because he had found us a tutor when we were kids and sat up with us every night, fed us sugar cookies?

  In the face of my silence, Abe said, “Nicky, you can’t tell by looking at me maybe, but I’m dying. It’s cancer.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Where isn’t it? The doctors say I’ve got maybe three months. Five with luck, and I don’t feel so lucky, you know? Don’t let me go to my grave not knowing what happened to my boy.”

  “Trust me, Abe. You don’t want my services. I’m useless as a detective. You know how many cases I’ve had in my career as the new Philip Marlowe? Six. Six lousy cases in three years. You know how many I solved? Two. Two out of six. Thirty-three percent. I haven’t had a case in months. Who’d call me knowing they’d have a one in three chance?”

  He looked at me with cheerless eyes. “Nicky,” he said. “I want only you to do the job, to find Shmulie. I trust you. You tell me he’s alive, I know I have a son somewhere in this world. You tell me he’s dead, I sit shiva. You I know. You I trust. You’ll follow the job to the end. You always followed everything to the end.”

  I should have taken that as a warning of what was to come. “To the end.” To the end of what? The end of my life? This phrase was a bad omen.

  As the room darkened, I rea
ched for my glasses. “Don’t ask me to do this, Abe. Please.” To this frail man I would never divulge the real business between me and Shmulie. But the roiling in my gut and a mild pounding in my brain provided me ample reminder of what that business was.

  Abe’s fingers found another loose button to serve his nervous fingers. “Nicky,” he said. “I’m looking you in the eye and I’m asking. Don’t do it for Shmulie. I don’t blame you for hating him. Part of me hates him, too. My God! How could it be different? Do the job for me, then—not for him. You don’t hate me, do you?”

  No matter how much of a bastard Shmulie was, Shmulie was Abe’s bastard.

  I had not the slightest idea how I’d look for this man. Where would I find the truth about Shmulie Shimmer? I had no interest in getting myself involved in hunting for my old chavruta. Me, I had important essays to leave unfinished and classes to skip.

  I looked at this wizened old man sitting in my apartment in the dark, a shadow from my past. A shadow, I realized, I’d always loved. So, with a large measure of ambivalence, I took the goddamned case.

  We sipped our tea, chatted a bit. I called an Uber. In the elevator down we reminisced about the old days, when things were better, when Shmulie and I were the yeshiva’s Talmud stars. We stepped over Mingus, who, eyes closed, traveled in some more peaceful world. Then we stood by the curb awaiting his Uber.

  “You’ll find my boy then?” he asked, like a five-year-old talking to a policeman because his puppy had disappeared.

  “I’ll do what I can, Abe.”

  We shook hands, a gesture that turned into a clumsy but sincere hug.

  CHAPTER 9

  MAGGIE

  MAGGIE RETURNED FROM HER cyber rendezvous in Tokyo not five minutes after I saw Abe off.

  “I’m back,” she announced. “Your friend has left?”

  “Yes,” I answered.