Once Upon A Poet

by H S Peer

  At the end of the pavement was an empty lot. We started across the grass. The car was parked three lots over.

  As we cut across the second backyard, a dog started to bark. On the way over there was no barking dog. There are two things you can do when a dog barks; stand still or run like hell. I couldn’t see the beast but if its bark was any to judge by it was a fair size. Under his breath, I could hear Bill say, “Shit.”

  “Keep going,” I said. We shifted into a trot. The canine continued to bark, louder and louder. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see lights come on in the house. Not yet, maybe it was a just a noisy dog the owners ignored.

  I could see the car up ahead and keep my pace steady. The barking had tapered off. Bill seemed coiled up like a spring. I couldn’t imagine the next several hours in the car with him. He could do with a couple of stiff drinks. Not me, it takes more than a barking dog to ruffle my feathers.

  The car I had stolen in New Jersey was a Chevy Malibu. I started the engine and started to drive back towards the Interstate at a leisurely 55. I didn’t see any cops. Either did Bill, his eyes were so open I was afraid I would fall in. I settled in for the drive.

  Easy money.

  Chapter 3

  I’d been back in the city about a week following my usual routine. I sleep until two or three o’clock, shower, shave and get dressed. I’d eat breakfast after running out for The Times and The Post.

  I live in the Village in a three-story walk-up. Once upon a time, I rented out some of the units, but that was too much hassle. Now I have it all to myself. On the upper floor, I had a contractor friend of my knock out all the walls, so I have one huge loft area. I live simply, my only creature comforts being a big screen television and a pool table. The rest of the amenities are austere.

  I usually head to my office around eight p.m. I use the term office loosely. I own a bar near my home. The Liar’s Breath has a long bar along the wall to the right as you walk in, complete with a brass rail. The bar top is marble. When I revamped the place, I didn’t skimp. Lined on shelves behind the bar, reaching all the way to the 18-foot ceiling, are bottles of nearly every available hooch in the world. A ladder I scavenged from a mansion library completes the scene.

  Neighborhood people come in for a drink after work. After ten p.m. a different clientele filters in. I don’t want to say it’s a bar for low-lifes because that’s not the truth. The clients are mostly criminals. Not street thugs, sort the middle-class of heistmen, burglars and con men. Journeymen, veterans of the underworld, if you will.

  I bought the bar for a couple of reasons. One: it gives me something to claim to the IRS. It makes me look like a legitimate businessman - even if I always run in the red. Two: I need someplace to meet colleagues. I wouldn’t tell anyone my home address - I know what they do for a living.

  I was sitting at the bar on Sunday night. It was just after 11:00. The place was nearly full, there was music playing from my old jukebox, the chatter of conversation and laughter. I knocked on the bar and Biscuit, the bartender, refilled my glass. It was from my private stock, a single malt scotch from a small Scottish distillery that never exports to the Americas.

  I sipped the scotch and smoked. I knew most the people in the room. My fence Marty Jerome sat with a blonde with breasts so large they probably had gravitational fields. A couple of low-level soldiers from the Romandi crime family sat in a booth. Beside me at the bar was a pair of armed robbers currently sought by the NYPD.

  “What you been up to Poet?” asked Jack.

  “Same old, same old,” I replied.

  He nodded and left me alone. I sipped so more scotch. After midnight the door opened again. I watch everyone who enters in case I need to nip some violence in the bud. The man was under 25 and was wearing an oversized black leather motorcycle jacket on his five-foot-seven frame. His black hair was slicked away from a long brow. His face was punctuated with a pointed nose. On his feet were black, steel-toed work boots. A would-be thug.

  He walked to the bartender and talked to him over the bar. Biscuit nodded his head at me and went back to pulling drafts. I took a drink of scotch and lit another cigarette. I felt a tap on my shoulder. How impolite.

  There was a pained expression on my face as a turned on the bar stool and faced the little thug. I looked at my shoulder and wondered if the had stained the cashmere.

  “You Poet?” he asked.

  I looked at him. He didn’t turn away from my gaze.

  “What you looking at?”

  I took a drag from my cigarette and thought for a moment. “A half-pint little thug,” I said.

  Two spots of color appeared high on his cheeks. He unzipped his jacket.

  Amateur. If you’re a shooter, don’t zipper your coat.

  “If you’re thinking of going for the gun under your arm, forget it,” I said.

  His hand dropped to his side.

  “This isn’t the sort of place a gun would help you very much,” I told him, “What do you want?”

  “You have somewhere we can speak, in private like,” he said.

  “Maybe, what is it you want.”

  “I have a message from Bill Jenkins.”

  I nodded and jerked my head toward the door at the back of the room. My office consisted of a battered desk, a leather club chair for a visitors and an office chair for me. After we were seated, I asked, “What does Bill have to say that he can’t say for himself?”

  “Bill can’t speak for himself right now,” said the thug.

  “Who are you?”

  “His cousin Howard.”

  “What’s his deal?’

  “Bill’s in Rikers.”

  “What did he do?”

  “They say he killed his wife.”

  “Did he do it?”

  ‘What is this? Twenty questions?”

  “You’re in my place, you answer my questions.” I could feel a good ole-fashion ear-boxing coming on. Someone needed their manners corrected.

  Howard sat quietly.

  “What’s Bill want?” I asked.

  “He wants to see you."

  “In Rikers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “He says it’s business,” he said.

  I shook my head. It served me right to have become involved with a lightweight like Bill.

  “I’ll go to Rikers tomorrow,’ I said.

  “Good.” He stood up. Without anything to say he looked lost.

  “You can go now,” I said.

  He left my office and leaned back in my chair. It creaked as I put my feet up on the desk. Bill. Bill. Bill. Whatever will I do with you? I could mean only one thing; Bill was going to sell me out for our trip to West Virginia.

  But if that was the fact why didn’t he just rat me out and be done with it. Why did he want to see me? It didn’t make any sense. I decided not to worry about it for the moment. I returned to my place at the bar and drank scotch until I felt tired enough to go home - the high life of a master criminal.

  Seven o’clock Monday morning came early. The day was a typical New York November, sunny with no heat and a cold wind that would cut through any coat like a knife. I climbed out of bed, showered and shaved. I dressed in a charcoal grey Armani suit with a muted tie and Bally loafers. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me I looked good.

  In the basement of my place, I have a vault that would rival a bank. No one but me knows it’s down there. Inside I have cash waiting to be laundered, guns and several different wallets. I searched until I found a thin calfskin number. Inside were a driver’s license, credit and business cards, and a New York state bar association membership card, all in the name in of Robert Graves. I pocketed the wallet and put the engraved money clip in the other.

  The ID wasn’t cheap street stuff, it was the real deal. If you have the money, you can get whatever you want in this world. I’ve never been on the run but wanted to be prepared in case that ever happened.

  I grabbed an attach�
� case from the closet and put a yellow legal pad and pens inside. I was ready to go. My Saab was parked in a private garage five blocks away. I drove to Queens and crossed the bridge to Rikers Island. I’ve never seen the inside of a jail cell. I was taken in for questioning many times when I was still “apprenticing," but was never charged.

  I waited in lines and dealt with bureaucrats for a couple of hours, explaining I was William Jenkins attorney. The business cards helped that. After a couple of hours, I was lead to a small room with a table and chairs bolted to the floor. Outside the mesh door stood a guard. This was closer than I ever wanted to get to the penal system.

  Bill was dressed in prison denim and had the start of a beautiful shiner. He seemed paler and his whole being wary. He saw it was me and started to speak. I jumped to my feet, stuck out my hand and said, “Robert Graves, your attorney.”

  I thought he might be too simple to understand I was here under a fake name, but he didn’t screw it up. He shook my hand and sat down in one of the chairs.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Graves,” he said.

  “I’ve only just been handed your file, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” I asked.

  “They say I killed my wife,” he replied.

  “How?”

  “Shot her in the head.”

  “Really,” I said. A second guard appeared in the hall and started talking to the one guarding Bill and me.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I whispered.

  “I need your help, Poet,” Bill said.

  “You need a lawyer, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “I think there is.”

  “Care to explain that.”

  “I didn’t kill my wife.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You better care.”

  “Why?”

  “Our little adventure in West Virginia will become public knowledge if you don’t,” he said.

  So there it was: The threat. He could talk until he was blue in the face except there was no physical evidence connecting me with Ludlow. Bill could incriminate himself but not me. But, and the big but it was, it would draw attention to me. Attention I didn’t want.

  “You think you can blackmail me? Do you know how easily I could have you shanked in here?”

  Bill didn’t answer, he looked at the tabletop. I sighed.

  “How do I know you didn’t do it?” I asked.

  “The night she was killed was the night we were in West Virginia.”

  I nodded. “So you want me to find the murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  This was going nowhere. I wasn’t a detective. I could try to explain that to Bill, but he wouldn’t understand. In his mind I was on the outside, he had the goods on me; therefore I would help him out. I wondered how much it would cost me to have him killed. Probably no more than a couple of hundred bucks.

  “Don’t think of getting me shanked,” he said, he must have read my mind. “My real lawyer has a letter I wrote, to be opened in case I die. That tells the whole story.”

  “You’re lying,” I said.

  “Try me.” He was trying to sound tough, but it wasn’t working. If I believed him then he had me against the wall, I had no choice but to help him.

  “Shit,” I said.

  We were both quiet for a moment. Somewhere down the hall, I could hear someone sobbing. The two guards were still talking outside our room.

  “Tell me about her,” I said.

  “Who,” Bill asked.

  “Your wife.”

  “Ohh.”

  I shook my head.

  “We weren’t really together. We’d kind of split up,” said Bill.

  “Did you ever argue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the cops come to your apartment?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did you beat her?”

  He paused.

  “Answer the questions.”

  “Sure, I slapped her if she got out of line.”

  “All of this information made the cops think you would pop her.”

  “Yeah,” he said, resigned.

  “What was her name?” I asked

  “Cindy McMillen,” he said.

  “What did she do for a living?”

  “She’s a stripper at the Double-Deuce,” he said.

  “Anything else? Did she turn tricks?”

  Bill was silent.

  “Don’t screw around,” I hissed, “You don’t have the time, and I don’t have the patience.”

  “She made some movies,” he said.

  “Movies? Adult movies?” I offered.

  He nodded.

  Great, another avenue to explore.

  “Any friends who might be able to help me out?”

  He closed his eyes and started to think. I thought I could hear the gears inside his head turning.

  “Amy Hills,” he said, “She’s a dancer too.”

  I managed to get an address out of Bill before the guard rapped on the door. He told me it was time to go. I put the legal pad back in my attaché case and stood up.

  “Poet?” asked Bill.

  I turned to him.

  “You have a week before I go to the DA.”

  For a second I thought about lunging at him, grabbing him by the head and twisting it until his neck broke. Bill’s dead body slumping to the floor would make me feel much safer. Alas, the guard was watching, and it would be my luck he was one of the few straight COs at Rikers.

  I headed back to the city, feeling infinitely worse than when I arrived.

  Chapter 5

  After I returned home and changed into something more comfortable, I called my detective friend Gael Feeney. She worked out of the detective squad at the 12th precinct around the corner from my home. I don’t like cops, as a rule. We all need law and order, I just wish the purveyors were not so lowbrow. I don’t say this snobbishly, I know of what I speak. After college, for three years, I was one of New York’s finest. That said, I do like Gael, she’s a no-nonsense woman who bends the rules on occasion.

  We’d met ten years ago. We were both in uniform. One night she pulled me over for a busted tail light. Even though I flashed my shield, she looked in the black leather doctor bag on the passenger seat, and I thought I was dead. It contained all my tools. I was just on my way out of town to do a job. She asked me if I intended to use the tools somewhere in the neighborhood. I say no, and she let me go.

  My many felonies aside, I was chased off the job by Internal Affairs. There were two burglaries in the diamond district that they believed I was responsible for, but there was no proof. There never is when I pull a job. They watched and waited. Nothing. After they tapped my phone, I decided it was time to get out. The department had taught me a lot of what I needed to know about investigative technique and forensic evidence. If thieves had resumes, the NYPD would be listed on mine after my seven years at Columbia.

  After my departure from the NYPD Gael called me. There had been a serial rapist stalking the village. Tensions were very high with most of the women afraid either on the street or in their apartments. They had a suspect, Gael explained, but couldn’t get a search warrant because they didn’t have enough evidence. She asked if I would be willing to enter the suspect’s apartment and poke around on behalf of the police. How could I say no?

  I found a scrapbook with all the rapist’s news clippings, his rape kit containing handcuffs, chloroform, condoms, and a large knife. I told the cops what I found and the increased their surveillance around him. He was apprehended three weeks later and is now doing 25 to life in Sing Sing.

  I explained to Gael what I was after and agreed to meet her for dinner.

  It was 3:00, too early to head to the Double-Deuce and talk to Cindy’s friends. It was going to be a long day. I set the alarm on my watch, lay on the couch and dozed.

  Chapter 6

  Mona’s Diner didn’t pretend to be anything other than it was, a greasy spoon. The prevailin
g smell, when you walked in through the water-spotted glass doors, was lard. The floor was dirty, and the counter had been scarred by hundreds of cigarettes. The booths were hard to sit in; the once plush seats were split and uncomfortable. I’d never gotten sick eating at Mona’s but was sure that time was coming.

  Gael had a face made for radio. Her hair was colored what the bottled described as Raven Black. She was squat and powerful and shaped like a slightly feminine fire hydrant. Looking at her you'd be hard-pressed to know she’d been decorated for valor three times. Her saving features were her flawless alabaster skin and deep brown eyes you could drown in. Gael had picked a booth and sat with a cup of coffee and a briefcase. I joined her and waved at the waitress. She brought me a mug as I sat down.

  “You been busy Poet?” asked Gael.

  I squeezed into the booth and said, “Not really.”

  “You a detective now?”

  “No.”

  “I wondered, with you wanting to see a homicide file and all.”

  “Just a hobby.”

  “You’re getting stranger and stranger. What’s really the deal, working my side of the street?”

  “Just a favor for a friend who wants me to look into it.”

  “The suspect?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer may incriminate me.”

  Gael shook her head. “Serves me right to ask a serious question.” She pulled a buff file folder out of a nylon briefcase and handed it across the table.

  I opened the file and was assaulted by a close-up photo of a gunshot wound to the head. I closed the folder and looked at Gael.

  She smiled. “I got you the file, tough guy.”

  “You could have warned me,” I said.

  “Could have. Should have. Didn’t,” she replied.

  “I had to call in a marker to get that for you,” she said.

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “I don’t know, this relationship seems to be decidedly one-sided.”

  I grunted and opened the file once again, turning past the photographs. The coroner’s report was on top. The victim, it stated, died from a gunshot wound to the head. Surprise, surprise. Next were the investigating officer’s reports documenting the investigation.