Topless

by D Keith Mano

  job went sour, the incision got infected—she says), replace her

  with Tanya. Tanya and her mailing list. I ’ll have to pay extra,

  but it’ll pick Monday night up.

  One funny incident. Bert got stuck in a men’s room stall. He

  came out sideways because of his turtle’s carapace—and the chest

  part jammed against the door’s lock mechanism. So he was

  wedged in the stall. I had to climb over from the sink and push,

  while two customers yanked on his arm.

  I ’m sorry Bubbles is dead. I ’m sorry I couldn’t save her life.

  I ’m sorry.

  M O N D-

  TUESDAY, JULY 19

  A day gone by. I ’m no longer hysterical. I can hold a pencil in

  my hand.

  I ’m making my last entry in this journal. Tonight I ’ll go to

  Ethel’s place and hide it somewhere in the garage.

  I ’m not sure whether what I ’ve written here is incriminating.

  But that’s not strange: I have trouble thinking clearly about most

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  things now. I expect Colavecchia and Daniels to search my

  apartment before very long.

  If you find my journal—Daniels, you cocksucker, and Colavecchia, you asshole—if you find my journal and are intelligent enough to read it-T H IS IS WHAT HAPPENED, THIS IS ALL

  I KNOW.

  We were outside for at least twenty minutes, Joe and I, playing chess on the fender of a Yellow Cab. It was 4:20 a.m. (TT) and 4:10 real time when I closed the bar. I thought no one but

  Tanya was inside when I left to finish the game. I checked the

  m en’s room, as I have been taught to do. I checked behind the

  bar. I opened the kitchen door and had a look. Then I went

  outside—because you could go stark mad waiting for Tanya to

  get ready. .

  But it’s not impossible—Joe will tell you this—it’s not impossible that someone came out after I left. We were intent on the game. The cab fender was about two-and-one-half car lengths

  up (east on Northern Boulevard). Right under the street lamp.

  We play there so we have light to see by.

  Someone could’ve come out. Someone m ust’ve come out—

  if, as it seems, the rear door was locked from inside.

  Because I didn’t do it.

  And then I beat Joe and we gossiped for five or six minutes.

  He said, “ Well, /d o n ’t haveta wait here all night. That porcelain

  doll doesn’t have me wrapped around her little finger. W hat’s

  she do at night, put her body in Saran Wrap and refrigerate it?”

  He said that.

  And I said, “ W omen,” and I walked to the door and pulled

  on the handle because I was gonna shout inside to Tanya. But

  the door was locked.

  I knew right away things were off-kilter. Why would Tanya

  lock the door? I yelled to Joe, who had already reached the

  com er, “ It’s locked. I didn’t lock it and it’s locked.”

  “ So unlock it, dum bo,” he said. But he started walking back

  toward me.

  I unlocked the door—my keys were buried under a bag of

  salted peanuts in my pocket. I know I hadn’t touched them for

  hours. I didn’t lock the door.

  And I went in.

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  * * *

  Jesus, didn’t you look at me afterward? Didn’t you see I ’d

  been crying? I was HORRIFIED by what I saw. I will carry that

  horror to my grave.

  Tanya lay naked on die stage. Hips twisted, arms above her

  head. And her long neck was broken. Broken. Broken so absolutely that the back of her head had gone flat against her spine—

  and her Adam’s apple pushed out as if a baby’s fist were poking

  through her throat. All her fake fingernails were tom backward.

  Tanya had struggled. And her G-string was jammed in her

  mouth. And her teeth were long—long—like Rita’s.

  I turned away then.

  I know nothing more than that.

  They say Tanya had been dead for twenty minutes or so. That

  may be true. I know, if it weren’t for Joe Solomon, I ’d be under

  arrest now. On my way to life imprisonment.

  I didn’t kill Tanya. I didn’t.

  PART TWO

  Rereading my journal now, almost two months after Tanya Sus-

  lov’s murder, I am overwhelmed, poleaxed by the dread of it

  all—again. Though hellish events have transpired since then,

  Tanya’s death cauterized my heart. God knows, I will never be

  the same. I stepped from young manhood and its hope, its resilience, its pleasant uncertainty, to a kind of frantic, quick middle age. I knew my own mortality. The bones had stopped growing, the reflexes would lose some bounce each day. And I

  was on the way to becoming a bitter cynic.

  I have been at deathbeds: I am not squeamish. Highway 83

  ran just north of the Lekachman church. Six or seven times a

  month troopers would call me out to an accident (Schantz blessed

  no one after 8 p.m .). Once, a man’s entire right arm came off

  in my hand, as we tried to extricate his body from a burning

  car. I vomited. But I didn’t nurse on it. If anything, I relished

  the macabre. It didn’t take the gleam off my boy’s soul.

  But Tanya had been so exquisite. She represented something,

  I guess. Maybe I thought that she—of anyone in our generation—should have been exempt. Not from death—but from mutilation. Tanya without her beauty was nothing at all. To see her head tom back—looking like one of the terrified animals that

  shriek as they stare upward in Picasso’s Guernica—to see that

  was to see her pathetic, small inner workings. The nakedness

  under her bare skin (that skin turning gray before my eyes). The

  flimsiness of this contraption we live in—and the flimsiness of

  the things we live in it for.

  And, of course, my priesthood was forfeited. If not at once,

  then soon, inevitably. That much I knew even as I turned away

  from her corpse and into Joe’s embrace. I suppose by now ev-

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  eryone in the English-speaking world is aware of what happened

  at The Car. NUDE TOPLESS BAR MURDER the New York

  Post front page crooned. There are certain stories that lend

  themselves readily to elaboration—every aspect of the topless

  business was examined: on Donahue and Oprah and ten different in-depth special TV reports. And I was at the cross hair of everyone’s high-powered aim. An “ enigmatic figure,” Jimmy

  Breslin wrote. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  I will be going away next week. But, while I am still in New

  York, I hope to complete my journal—writing, this time, with

  knowledge of what came next, day after merciless day. I kept a

  few notes, and, Lord knows, there are newspaper clippings

  enough to remind me. But it will be hard to recapture the immediacy and the astonishment—and harder yet to tell what I found out about my brother.

  But I will try.

  TUESDAY, JULY 19, and WEDNESDAY, JULY 20

  The police closed us down for two days—The Car was a crime

  scene, of course. I could understand that. But, it soon got pretty

  obvious, the police also had a grudge against Mike Wilson.

  Daniels and Colavecchia were professionally embarrassed—

  naturally they had to reopen thei
r investigation of Bubbles’s

  death—and this they held against me for some reason. (I told

  them Bubbles had been murdered. I knew she hadn’t committed

  suicide. What more did they want from me?) Daniels and Co-

  laveechia now had a supervisor—that must’ve galled them—a

  black named Cribbs. They also had to deal with the narc people,

  with an IRS man, with health and building inspectors—and,

  endlessly, the media. Everyone wanted a piece of me. I schooled

  myself to think three full beats before I answered any question.

  Before asking if I could go to the john.

  So they searched and searched The Car. One reefer stub

  would’ve finished us, one bottle of Nyquil—I knew that. But by

  some miracle they found nothing. I sat alone at the bar making

  myself “ available.” They checked the basement, they rummaged through every case of liquor and every carton of potato chips. They removed every bottle from the bar. They drained

  the sinks and opened each toilet tank. And as I sat there, every

  once in a while, despite myself, I ’d glance at the chalk silhouette

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  of Tanya’s body on the stage. Tanya’s head just overlapped the

  place where Bubbles had shook her last spasm out. I told Ethel

  that: she said, “ I think we’ll need a new carpet, I ’ll get right

  on it.”

  Despite her callous approach, I was grateful to Ethel. Ethel

  was the one person who didn’t think I had killed Tanya. (Everyone else presumed it’d just be a matter of time before I gave myself up.) Ethel, as I did, suspected Leonard—or Linese and

  Leonard, or the Gaucho, Linese a id Leonard. (Leonard, in feet,

  seemed to have an alibi.) Ethel retained Morton Weintraub, who

  had been associated with Roy Cohn, to defend The Car and get

  it reopened. I refused representation, fool that I am—I thought

  it would be taken as a sign of guilt. Part of me, I know, was

  entertaining a death wish. Because, you see, I had bad dreams

  and was no longer sure of my own innocence.

  They questioned me for hours at a time. Much of this was

  purely informational: who were my regular customers, what was

  my routine for closing The Car at night, which girls knew Rita

  and Tanya and Bubbles? And, every now and then, almost jocularly, Daniels or Colavecchia would ask, “ Is that when you did it? Were you angry because she wouldn’t feck you? D’you hate

  women that much?” And I would count my three fell beats and

  say, ‘‘Now that you’ve had your fen, let’s move on.”

  I know now—I suspected then—that Joe was the hole in their

  circumstantial case. After all, he was an ex-cop, an experienced

  witness, and not someone any prosecutor would want to go one-

  on-one against. Yet Joe, too, had not ruled me out. Yes, he

  thought, someone could’ve exited from The Car after I did. But

  it wasn’t that—it was my chess game, of all things, which confused him. Could someone like this—someone who had just committed a heinous murder—could such a person come out

  and play a concentrated, winning game of chess? As I had done.

  It didn’t seem possible to Joe. (I had been playing chess for my

  life, I realize that in retrospect.)

  At my invitation (before they could get a warrant, that is)

  Daniels and Colavecchia and Cribbs searched my apartment.

  Berry—she was sporting about it—verified that all the clothing

  and makeup articles belonged to her. Despite the embarrassment this caused, I was glad—having a lover made me seem, oh, more normal. And Berry was both loyal and hard to faze.

  When Daniels asked her,

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  “ How can you be sure Mike wasn’t two-timing you with

  Cherry and Tanya?” she said,

  “ Because Tanya was a lesbian and Cherry was a foolish

  child.”

  ‘ ‘Yet one was seen naked in his apartment. The other he made

  a special effort t ’drive home. Don’t you think those two facts

  might be related?” And Berry—she told me later—said,

  “ What about the guy who shot M ike’s tires out? How come

  you don’t think that's related?”

  Which effectively shut him up. The tire assassin was a strong,

  if enigmatic, advocate of my innocence. Daniels and Colavec-

  chia had dismissed the whole thing as an unconnected incident.

  But, by now, the media had learned about it, and there were

  questions at a press conference Wednesday morning. Cribbs,

  who spoke for die homicide department, was not well informed

  about the tire shooting and, so I was told, got pissed at Daniels

  and Colavecchia, who had left him hanging. Truth of the matter

  is—they were baffled. I was afraid they’d arrest me just to prove

  their competence. And competently send me away for 25-years-

  to-life.

  In fact, though, I preferred the homicide crew to what awaited

  me, cunning and impatient, whenever I left The Car. Photographers spent the night on my fire escape. They followed me when I drove. A TV newswoman pretended to be my waitress

  at the Greek’s until Spiro caught on and threw her out. A 20 foot

  square police line, box-shaped, was set up outside The Car. I

  wore a baseball cap, the bill jammed down, whenever I had to

  go out. I never said anything more than “ No comment.” Yet,

  by some miracle, neither the police nor the press had as yet

  discovered that I was a priest.

  By Wednesday, though, I had already decided to resign.

  By Wednesday, too, the New York Post had come out with a

  WHODUNIT headline. Diagrams of The Car appeared on page 5.

  Looking at it, even I was inclined to suppose myself guilty.

  The rear door had been locked from the inside. (Joe Solomon

  ascertained that much immediately after he checked Tanya’s

  pulse.) The basement is below-grade and windowless. Indeed,

  The Car has no windows at all—other than the train-like, tiny

  portals that face Northern Boulevard. My own testimony was

  damaging. If, indeed, the front door had been locked, then the

  unknown killer must have stepped out and turned his key while

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  we were playing chess. One would presume he possessed commando skills of the highest order. Not to mention a key.

  Yet there were, the police knew, many keys: Pearl, Ethel and

  Jako had copies. Bert had lost one set already (thank God—that

  was an element in my favor). Freddy and Leonard had left our

  employ without returning their sets. Keys enough were around.

  But, despite Joe’s appreciation of my skill at chess, I was still

  the morning line favorite.

  Daniels came up with the most imaginative angle. (I always

  thought Daniels was a bit unhinged. He resigned from the police

  force earlier this month for “ personal reasons’’: a breakdown,

  I ’d guess.) Once I asked him,

  “ How can I be implicated in these murders? You know I was

  in Nebraska when Rita died.’’

  “ Oh, yes,” said Daniels. “ That’s clever. Where’s your

  brother, Mike?”

  “ Tony? You think I know where Tony is?”

  “ Sure. It took two people t’kill Tanya. I think your brother

  did it, and you let him out the ba
ck door. Then you locked it

  behind him and went out, all neat, t’play chess with Joe.”

  “ That’s baroque,” I said, “ and what was our motive?”

  “ You don’t like women. And you—you—you’ve got a homosexual fixation on your brother. The mustache—the mustache is what gave it away. Ibny brought you up. You identify with

  him as an authority figure. When he started murdering women,

  you became his accomplice.”

  Like I said, they were baffled.

  Meanwhile we were at a stalemate. Cribbs and his men had

  gotten hopelessly embroiled in detail work. More than a hundred women were interrogated. Lars-Erik and Norm came forward. Pearl and Leonard and Jako and Freddy and even Linese gave evidence. (The Gaucho was in Columbia.) Bert confused

  everyone by saying HE had been the last to leave. (Not tr u e -

  just loyalty on Bert’s part.) And, because it would’ve blown my

  own cover, I didn’t tell the police about Augustus Manning.

  The forensic experts concluded that Tanya had been killed by

  someone of “ considerable strength.”

  Not a major insight. I had strength enough, everyone knew

  that.

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  THURSDAY, JULY 21

  Thursday was, to say the least, unforgettable. It began with hideous dreams. I was among a race of people whose necks had been broken—whose heads hung down their backs, inverted.

  Each like the hood of a parka. They spoke to me upside-down

  and said, “ We are the new ones. You have made u s.” And there

  was Jesus, nailed chest forward against the cross—His thomed

  head, too, thrown back. He said to me: “ Because of you, men

  and woman no longer look at each other when they make love. ’ ’

  And I said, “ Lord, I didn’t do it.”

  And He said, “ Answer me this. Should a man see a woman

  naked first—before he has known her soul?”

  I said, “ N o.” And then, “ No” again. And then “ No!”

  And Jesus said, “ Right this wrong. Lest forever you, too, see

  only behind you and have no hope of eternal life. ’ ’

  I woke at eight a.m . afraid to sleep again. And began writing

  my last sermon.

  The phone rang nine or ten times an hour—requests for interviews and exclusive stories. Crank messages. I didn’t answer.

  Then Costanza called—drunk, stoned or just inconsolable, some