Hurt Machine

by Reed Farrel Coleman

“Can I look at his job application, do you think?”

  Chef Liu screwed up his face. “Why are the police so interested in Robert? The man died of an aneurism.”

  “We’re just making sure we didn’t miss anything before.”

  He liked that answer about as much as Esme had liked my answers. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m just following my orders, Chef Liu. Gimme a break, okay?”

  “Okay, but there is no job application. It’s all word of mouth here. Somebody knows someone else. Like that.”

  “Who brought Robert Tillman to your attention?”

  “Tino.”

  “Tino?”

  “Tino Escobar. He’s no longer here. And no, I don’t know where he went. Now, if you don’t mind, I have—”

  “One last question, then I’m outta here. Do you remember the restaurant Robert worked at before he came here. I mean, you didn’t just hire him on Tino’s word, right?”

  “Kid Charlemagne’s on 2nd Avenue and 7th.”

  Chef Liu gestured that we were leaving and he shut off the office lights in case I was thinking of another question.

  Back on the street, I punched in Maya Watson’s number. Voicemail again. I was apparently at the top of her shit list. This time, I didn’t bother leaving a message.

  The phone vibrated in my hand. Assuming it was Maya Watson calling me right back, I didn’t check the number and picked up.

  “Hey, Moe.” It wasn’t Maya Watson, but Nick Roussis. “How’d that intel I got you on Delgado work out?”

  “Yeah, Nicky, I meant to thank you for that. First real lead in the case.”

  “Not a problem. So did he do it? Did Delgado kill that EMT?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means maybe. Some evidence points his way and some doesn’t. Besides, I’m looking into other possibilities too.”

  He sounded disappointed. “Whatever you say, but let me know how it works out, okay?”

  “You got it, Nicky. And thanks again. I won’t forget your going out of your way for me.”

  Frankly, I was with Nick. I was disappointed too, but nothing is ever easy or uncomplicated. Nothing, at least where I’m concerned.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Man, Robert Tillman had really gotten under Esme’s skin. The problem was that it wasn’t particularly obvious why or how he’d done it. Chef Liu hadn’t shed much light on the subject and given that I’d already cost him his day bartender, I somehow didn’t think the time was right to start questioning any of his other employees. My initial inclination was to rush right over to Kid Charlemagne’s, but I decided that would be a mistake. I wanted to find out a little bit more about Tillman before I went stumbling around the way I was prone to do.

  As I got to my car, it hit me for the first time that no one had mentioned Robert Tillman’s family filing a lawsuit. That seemed very peculiar in a city where litigation was everyone’s second favorite sport and where there were as many lawyers as cockroaches. Don’t get me wrong, those same lawyers and their evil big brothers, the insurance companies, kept Prager & Melendez Investigations, Inc. in the black until the day we closed our doors. The thing was, the case was such a total slam dunk; I could have tried it and won or gotten a huge settlement. With a guaranteed multimillion dollar judgment just sitting out there for the taking, I couldn’t understand how some enterprising lawyer hadn’t hooked up with a greedy member of the Tillman clan. I aimed my car toward the Brooklyn Bridge because there was someone I knew on the other side of the bridge who might be able to clarify things for me.

  I walked through the lobby of 40 Court Street for the first time in many years. This building had been the longtime home of Prager & Melendez Investigations, Inc. It was also home to most of the major criminal law and personal injury firms in Brooklyn. Given that Brooklyn Borough Hall and the courts were across the street, Brooklyn Law School was a few blocks away, and the Brooklyn House of Detention was a short walk away on Atlantic Avenue, it was all very convenient or, if you were more cynically minded, very incestuous. To my way of thinking, it was both.

  The firm of Pettibone, Kinder, Hart, and Wang were Brooklyn’s kings of torts and they had been Prager & Melendez’s most lucrative account. They worked big money cases: major product liability, aircraft disasters, class actions. Cheesy TV ads weren’t their style. They didn’t beg for clients. Clients begged for them. They were the type of hired guns that insurance companies either loved or loathed depending upon which table they were paid to sit at. If anyone could explain to me how a case as ripe as Tillman’s was still unpicked on the vine, Harper Pettibone Jr. could do it.

  Harper was about my age, but still had an athletic build. He had been a club champion squash player and had obviously kept at it. Squash. No one in Coney Island played fucking squash. Then again, no one in Coney Island had a name like Harper Pettibone Jr. I used to bust his chops about his upbringing all the time. I think maybe that’s why we got along. I wasn’t big on kneeling to kiss anybody’s ring and he liked that about me. He also liked that we did good work for him without padding our invoices.

  “Moses Prager!” He put his arm around my shoulder when he stepped out of his office. “God, you look awful,” he said with a laugh in his voice, but his soft blue eyes weren’t smiling. “How are you, my friend?” Harper didn’t wait for an answer. “Come in. Come in.” He looked at his watch and turned to his secretary. “No calls for fifteen minutes, please.”

  Fifteen minutes. I’d hate to see how much time he gave people he didn’t like.

  We moved into his office. It was much the same as it had been the last time I saw it. Very classic. Very old school. One wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, walnut paneling, a brown leather sofa, two green leather wing chairs, a big-assed desk, and a properly stuffy portrait of his late father and his partners.

  “You’re a blended scotch man, if I remember correctly,” he said as he fiddled at the little dry bar in a cabinet to the right of his desk. “Sit.”

  I settled into a chair across from his desk. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  Harper twisted his lips in disappointment. “Well, I never did enjoy drinking alone.” He closed the cabinet and sat behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Moe?”

  I began to remind him about the circumstances of Robert Tillman’s death, but I didn’t get very far. Harper was well familiar with the case and with Alta Conseco’s subsequent homicide.

  “But what’s all this to do with you?” he asked.

  “Alta Conseco, the EMT who was murdered, she was Carmella’s older sister.”

  Harper shook his head. “How awful.”

  “The cops haven’t gotten very far with finding her killer and Carm asked me to try my luck with it.”

  “But you two are—”

  “—divorced. Yeah, I know. There was too much history there for me to say no.”

  “I understand that. I do indeed. But how can I help?”

  “Harper, if I told you that no one in Robert Tillman’s family has filed suit, what would you say?”

  “I would say his relatives are either very foolish or very dead because the case is a walk in the park, basically unlosable. My secretary could try the case. And we’re talking about a multimillion dollar judgment, but the city would never let it go to trial. They would settle this one as quietly and as quickly as possible and be done with it. But you are a shrewd enough man to have known that before you walked through my door and if all you wanted was confirmation, you would have called. So, what is it I can do for you, really?”

  “Can you find out if any of your brethren have tried reaching out to the family?”

  I could see he was thinking about giving me his lecture on ethics, but decided against it. He knew better than to waste the time. Even the biggest firms did some form of ambulance chasing, only they tended to think of it as working through referrals. Carmella and I had made a nice chunk of change referring cases the
ir way. Of course, we never felt like we were steering people in the wrong direction. It was in our best interests to think that, I suppose. Like most rationalizations, it helps you sleep at night.

  Harper stood, holding out his hand. My time was up. “For you, I will have some people ask around.”

  We shook and I gave him my card. “Thanks, Harper.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” He walked me to the door of his office. “Are you sure you are feeling quite well, Moe?”

  “Fine. Just a little stressed. Sarah’s getting married up in Vermont soon and you know how it is.”

  “I do. My congratulations to them and to you. I will be in touch.”

  With that I was out of his office, nodding goodbye to his secretary, and back out in the hallway. I was tempted to go look at our old offices, to see who had taken them over, but I rode the elevator down to the lobby. Too much of my life was anchored in the past. I guess that’s true of anyone over fifty. I felt it was especially true for me. I couldn’t afford to waste any of the time I had left looking back.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I woke up late the next day, close to noon, with no brilliant insights or fresh ideas. I’d spent a frustrating evening with my computer and the ghost of Robert Tillman. Several more computer searches had netted zilch. I couldn’t even manage to find a picture of the guy, which, in this day and age, was really saying something. In fact, it was saying something, and rather loudly too. I just couldn’t decipher what was being said or what it meant, not yet.

  After some coffee and yogurt, I tried Maya Watson’s number one more time. Nothing doing. If I wanted to talk to her again, it was going to mean a trip back out to Queens. I wasn’t up for that. Before I confronted her, I needed more than amorphous suspicions. Besides, I was weary of her playing the role of the wronged party. Robert Tillman—slippery and anonymous as he was proving to be—was the wronged party here, not Maya, not Alta. I had to remember that. I couldn’t let my sympathy for Maya’s plight or my understanding Carm’s estrangement blind me. I thought about calling Carmella, but decided I was still pissed off at her on several counts, not the least of which was her hiding Alta’s personal effects from me. And though I had tried to bury the old pain, seeing Israel brought it all back. No, she was going to have to come to me and not halfway, either.

  The house phone rang.

  “I’m done with my case.” It was Pam. “Come on up here for a few days.”

  I almost said no. I didn’t. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no. I took a long breath and remembered being at 40 Court Street and how I didn’t go look at the old offices. I thought about why I hadn’t looked. I thought about being mad at Carmella and about how she was my living past and not the happiest part of it. I thought about the case and how it was often better not to work things to death, that cases, like good red wine, sometimes needed to breathe. That there were things in the world that couldn’t be willed or forced to happen. I thought about the tumor in my stomach. I thought about how good Pam had been for me, how good we’d been for each other. Okay, I thought, so there was no drama between us the way there would always be drama with Carm. So what?

  “I’ll be up there late tonight, okay? There’s some stuff I need to handle down here first.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “Did I give the wrong answer?”

  “It’s just that—are you done with what you were working on?”

  “No,” I said. “Whatever I leave behind for two days, will be here when I get back. Anyway, I’ll be able to check on the wedding arrangements and see Sarah when I’m up there.”

  “I know it’s crazy, but when I saw you holding Carmella in your arms, I thought I was losing you.”

  You probably are, but not to Carmella. “Don’t be silly. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Bye.”

  “Pam,” I stopped her from hanging up, “don’t wear too much to bed.”

  I felt the smile on my face before I realized I was happy at the idea of being with her. It might not have been mad love between us, but whatever it was, was good and I didn’t want to piss it away the way I had so many other good things before it.

  As soon as I put the phone down, it rang again.

  “Good afternoon, Moses. Harper Pettibone here.”

  “Hey, Harper. This is unexpectedly quick.”

  “Well, you seemed anxious to learn whatever you could and it so happened I played squash this morning with Deputy Mayor Rosenberg.”

  “Who won?” I asked, but not to be polite. Harper didn’t like to lose, so he made sure not to.

  “Still busting my chops. You haven’t changed, Moe, have you?”

  “More than you could know.”

  “He gave me a few good games, did the deputy mayor, but in the end …”

  “I’m hoping you didn’t call to talk squash.”

  “I managed to work the circumstances of Robert Tillman’s unfortunate demise into our locker room chat.”

  “I bet that gave him agita.”

  “On the contrary, Moe, Max Rosenberg looked like the cat who’d eaten the proverbial canary, cage and all. When I pressed him on it, he said, and I quote, ‘It’s futile fishing for that particular payday, old man. Not only is it unbecoming of you, but that’s one wrongful death suit this city will never have to worry about.’”

  “That’s crazy, Harper. How can he be so sure?”

  “That he wasn’t willing to discuss, but he wasn’t whistling through the graveyard. I can assure you of that. I play cards with the deputy mayor as well and he isn’t much of a poker player. He couldn’t bluff his way out of a paper sack.”

  “Would you care to speculate?”

  “I never care to speculate, but I will. Either someone’s already gotten to the relatives and paid them off to go quietly into that good night or the city is holding a trump card. My guess is it’s the latter.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “You can never be sure you’ve gotten to all the relatives who might have a claim. It’s like that whack-a-mole game. Just when you pay one relative off and get a signed waiver, another one pops up. No, the city’s holding some ammunition in abeyance and for the deputy mayor to speak with such bravado, it must be pretty potent stuff.”

  “Thanks, Harper. I really appreciate it.”

  “I’ll keep checking with my other sources. Rosenberg was so annoyingly smug, I’m tempted to go find one of Tillman’s relatives myself.”

  “If you hear anything else, I’ll be reachable by cell. I’m going up to Vermont for a few days.”

  “Enjoy yourself. You looked like you could use the rest.”

  He was right.

  This time, something else rang when I hung up the phone. It was the building intercom.

  “Hello.”

  “Yeah, boss, it’s me, Brian.”

  “Doyle! What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk and not over the phone.”

  “Come on up.” I buzzed him in.

  Brian Doyle didn’t look quite the same as he had when I’d seen him at O’Hearns—the difference being his blackened right eye and the nasty, finger-shaped bruises on his neck. And seeing him, I knew why he was here.

  “Have a run-in with the Jorge Delgado Fan Club? Took more than one fireman to do that to you,” I said. “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside a bar by Delgado’s old firehouse.”

  “How’d the three of them fare?”

  “Two of ’em are at the dentist today, the other one’s getting his nose reset.”

  “Glad to hear you haven’t lost your touch, Brian.”

  He smiled at that, but the smile quickly vanished. “I’m off the case, Boss. Emotions are running way too high on this one. Those guys were spoiling for the fight even before I walked in there. Someone’s been in those guys’ ears whipping ’em up. It was like they were waiting for me or anyone to walk in there and start asking questions.”<
br />
  “Sorry, Brian. I owe you for this.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Boss, I never tell you what to do, but leave this thing alone for now. I know you can usually handle yourself, but if you had walked into that bar … Listen, they’re burying the guy tomorrow. In a few weeks, who knows, maybe you can start asking some questions again. For now, it’s too dangerous. You should enjoy yourself. Enjoy Sarah’s wedding. You shouldn’t be doing this stuff.”

  I held out my hand to him. “Thanks, Brian.”

  He ignored my hand and hugged me instead. “Thanks for everything, Boss.”

  “I’m not dying yet, you asshole,” I said, playfully pushing him away.

  He winked with his good eye. “Just figured I’d get it out of the way now … just in case.”

  “Fuck you, Doyle.”

  “Yeah, I love you too. Take care of yourself.”

  With that, Brian was gone. As I walked around the house, packing for my trip, his words, though only half-serious, rang in my head. “… just in case.” We both knew in case of what.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I headed west along the Belt Parkway, toward Manhattan, and into the setting sun. I had made this drive so many times in my life that but for the other cars on the road, I could do it blindfolded. I knew every bump, rut, and pothole, every twist and turn. Sometimes I liked to think this was all so familiar to me that I could name the individual blades of grass at the roadside and knew which rivets were the rusty ones on the east-facing façade of the Verrazano Bridge. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? You never know anything or anyone as well as you think you do, least of all yourself. It is the great folly of humanity, the search for self-knowledge and significance. It’s why we’re all so fucking miserable. Oh, I thought, to be an ant or a cat or almost anything else that doesn’t lose sleep over dying. Does an ant ever ask itself where do I come from, where am I going, or what does it mean?

  I knew some stuff about myself. I knew I’d never been very good at just letting go, even for a little while. That’s why I decided to stop at Kid Charlemagne’s on my way up to Vermont. Although the East Village wasn’t necessarily on the way to Vermont, it wasn’t exactly not on the way either. Let’s just say there’s no direct route from Sheepshead Bay to Brattleboro, so it was going to take me five or six hours no matter how I chose to go. I’d thrown my duffel bag in the trunk, conveniently neglecting to pack the bottles of red wine I usually brought up to Pam’s with me. I’d have to tell her about my condition soon enough, but I wanted to do it on my terms. Pam was a damn good PI and I think she was already a little suspicious of my health. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to me the other night at Carmella’s.