Praise for Reed Farrel Coleman
& Redemption Street
“Reed Farrel Coleman makes claim to a unique corner of the private detective genre with Redemption Street. With great poignancy and passion he constructs a tale that fittingly underlines how we are all captives of the past.”
—Michael Connelly,New York Times best-selling author of The Overlook
“Moe Prager is a family man who can find the humanity in almost everyone he meets; he is a far from perfect hero, but an utterly appealing one. Let’s hope that his soft heart and lively mind continue to lure him out of his wine shop for many, many more cases.”
—Laura Lippman, New York Times best-selling author of Another Thing to Fall
“What a pleasure to have the second Moe Prager novel finally in paperback. In a field crowded with blowhards and phony tough guys, Reed Farrel Coleman’s hero stands out for his plainspoken honesty, his straight-no-chaser humor and his essential humanity. Without a doubt, he has a right to occupy the barstool Matt Scudder left behind years ago. In fact, in his quiet unassuming way, Moe is one of the most engaging private eyes around.”
—Peter Blauner, Edgar Award-winning author of Slipping into Darkness and Slow Motion Riot
“Coleman is a born writer. His books are among the best the detective genre has to offer at the moment; no, wait. Now that I think about it they’re in the top rank of any kind of fiction currently published. Pick up this book, damn it.”
—Scott Phillips, award-winning author of The Ice Harvest and Cottonwood
“Moe Prager is the thinking person’s P.I. And what he thinks about—love, loyalty, faith, betrayal—are complex and vital issues, and beautifully handled.”
—S. J. Rozan, Edgar Award-winning author of In This Rain
“Reed Farrel Coleman goes right to the darkest corners of the human heart—to the obsessions, the tragedies, the buried secrets from the past. Through it all he maintains such a pure humanity in Moe Prager—the character is as alive to me as an old friend. I flat out loved the first Prager book, but somehow he’s made this one even better.”
—Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of Night Work
“One of the most daring writers around…. He freely admits his love of poetry and it resonates in his novels like the best song you’ll ever hear. Plus, he has a thread of compassion that breaks your heart to smithereens … He writes the books we all aspire to.”
—Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of Cross and Ammunition
“Coleman may be one of the mystery genre’s best-kept secrets.”
—Sun-Sentinel
“Coleman writes in a way that seems absolutely right. Interesting, honest and worth reading.”
—The Mystery Review
“The author makes us care about his characters and what happens to them, conveying a real sense of human absurdity and tragedy … a first-rate mystery. Moe is a fine sleuth. Coleman is an excellent writer.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Among the undying conventions of detective fiction is the one that requires every retired cop to have a case that still haunts him. Reed Farrel Coleman blows the dust off that cliché.”
—New York Times Book Review
REDEMPTION
STREET
by
Reed Farrel Coleman
FOREWORD
By Peter Spiegelman
I’ve been reading detective fiction for close to forty years, and more if you count Batman comics. While I’m catholic in my tastes (I draw the line at crime-busting vampires and talking cats), I’ve long been partial to the hardboiled private eye novel. I’ve had many conversations with writers and readers about the pleasures of these novels, and while I’m not sure I subscribe to all the theories I’ve heard about their appeal—the reassurance of seeing order brought from chaos, the vicarious experience of courage, brilliance, and moral surefootedness, the darker thrills of violence or vengeance by proxy, etc.—I do know that the best of the breed delivers what the best fiction of any sort does: a distinctive narrative voice, a palpable sense of place, and a compelling and fully realized protagonist. Which brings me to Reed Farrel Coleman and Moe Prager.
It was plain from my first introduction to ex-cop, wine merchant, and sometimes PI Prager, in Walking the Perfect Square, that his creator, Reed Coleman, was steeped in the hardboiled tradition. And it was just as plain that he had his sights set on something more than merely rehashing it all. The Moe Prager novels, of which Redemption Street is the second, are affectionate and knowledgeable reappraisals of the genre, and Moe is a very different sort of PI.
That Moe is a singular animal is initially apparent in his voice. The Prager books are written in first-person, and their narrative voice—Moe’s voice—is a surprisingly intimate one. It’s self-deprecating and conversational in tone, pitched for a talk between two friends in a bar, or on a long car ride—and it makes Moe a remarkably accessible character. It reveals him as—in the best hardboiled tradition—smart, smart-alecky, dogged, cynical, philosophical, and brave, but also as anxious, guilt-ridden, and brooding. Moe is a thinking man who over-thinks; a brave man who is keenly aware of his own fears and limitations; an honest man, who suspects that he too has a price; a devoted family man, who remains isolated in fundamental ways; a man who keeps secrets, even as those secrets threaten all he holds dear. Reed’s is a warts-and-all depiction, and we embrace Moe not in spite of his flaws but in part because of them.
One of the things we quickly recognize about Moe is that he must have an affinity for Faulkner, and Faulkner’s oft-quoted observation that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” could well serve as Moe’s epitaph (though his fans hope his need for one is a long way off). The past—obsession with it, regret over it, denial of it—figures greatly in Redemption Street and in all the Prager books, as do the increasingly corrosive effects of secrets kept and truths denied. The setting of the novels, New York City in the closing decades of the 20th century, serves to illuminate these themes, as well as the more mournful aspects of Moe’s character—even as Moe, our narrator, illuminates the city. This passage from Redemption Street, in which Moe ponders the decline of the Borscht Belt resorts, is a case in point.
Sometimes I think it was my fate to catch things gone to seed. Coney Island, the world’s playground during my parents’ generation, was a wretched ghost town by the time my friends and I were old enough to go there on our own. The Dodgers moved to L.A. the year my dad promised to take me to a World Series game. Brooklyn itself had taken a sour turn during my watch. By 1957, the Dodgers weren’t the only ones fleeing the County of Kings. Why should the Catskills have been any different?
This is classic Moe: philosophical, melancholy, mourning the demise of a New York that he himself has never known—obsessed with the past and certain that ruin is inevitable. Like other fictional detectives, Moe carries a load of grief, but his is based not so much on a tragic past—the unsolved case, the accidental shooting—as on a dread of the future. Despite his warmth and sense of humor, Moe is a deeply pessimistic man. He knows that there’s a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, and that the center will not hold. He knows that, there’s a bill coming due one day—and that knowledge, the sureness of it, alienates him from his present, and robs him of its joys.
It’s a very human burden for a very human hero, and in Redemption Street Moe is struggling under its weight. Like the toughest of hardboiled PIs, he soldiers on.
Peter Spiegelman
Ridgefield, CT
October 2007
Peter Spiegelman is the Shamus Award-winning author of three John March private eye novels—Black Maps, Death’s Little Helpers, and Red Cat—and the editor of the crime fiction
anthology Wall Street Noir.
For Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Lenny
and in memory of my late friends
Barry Feldman and John Murphy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank David and McKenna for being such dedicated fans of my work. It was their determination to see Redemption Street back in print that led to this becoming a reality. I’d like to thank Peter Spiegelman for his contribution to this new edition. Of course none of this would have been possible or worth it without Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan.
Two elderly Jewish women are having lunch at a Catskills hotel. One says to the other, “My God, this food is terrible.” The other woman looks at her plate, shaking her head in agreement. “Yes,” she says, “and the portions are so small.”
—Old Borscht Belt joke
Nobody forgets anything in this world. Because even if the mind forgets, the blood remembers.
—Domenic Stansberry, The Last Days of Il Duce
Chapter One
November 23rd, 1980
I wasn’t thinking much about anything, certainly not my past, as I dusted off several overpriced bottles of French Cabernet.
“Hey, boss.” Klaus interrupted my dusting.
“What?”
“Some guy’s up front looking for you,” he said, rolling his eyes in disapproval. “He’s a real loser, kinda seedy, and I suspect he took the shuttle bus up from Bellevue.”
“You’re dressed in a Dead Kennedys tee shirt, ripped jeans, and unmatched sneakers and you’re callin’ this guy seedy!”
“On me, boss, it’s fashion. On him it’s seedy.”
“Whatever,” I surrendered, handing him my duster. “Lead on, Macduff.”
When I spotted the man worrying a rut in the floorboards around the cash register, I had to tip my cap to Klaus. His assessment was right on. “Loser” was the word that came immediately to mind. As a cop, I’d seen a million of them and escorted more than a few to the loony bin. That’s official police jargon. You can look it up.
This guy was a classic: raggedy, all fidgets and tics, smoking the life out of a cigarette. Sometimes they were deathly still, catatonic, but mostly they were like this clown. Their clothes always ill-fitting, too loose or too tight. Their hair always messy—not dirty necessarily, just all over the place.
“How may I help you?” I asked politely. I had had to learn that line. It wasn’t one that came easily to the lips of an ex-cop. “What the fuck’s going on here?” was what I was more comfortable with.
When he pulled the poor defenseless cigarette away from his mouth and faced me, I got a funny feeling in the pit of my belly. Mr. Fidgets seemed vaguely familiar. Not like my long-lost Siamese twin or nothing. More like a face I’d seen on the subway every now and then, but years ago.
Fidgets laughed, showing me a perfect mouth of stained teeth. “You don’t remember me.”
“Should I?”
“I guess I didn’t suppose you would remember,” he said in a sturdy voice that was an odd contrast to his fragile appearance.
“Actually, there is something familiar about you. I’m not sure what it is exactly.”
He wrinkled up his brow. “What’s the line? We went to different high schools together. We both went to Lincoln, but I was a senior when you were a sophomore. You were in my little sister’s grade.” He waved the filter of his spent cigarette at me, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.
“Here,” I said, offering my cupped hand as an ashtray. He dropped it in without a second’s hesitation. I opened up the front door and, like any good New Yorker, flicked the butt at a passing yellow cab. Maybe, if the wine business didn’t work out, I could get a gig at the Coney Island freak show: Mighty Moe, the Human Ashtray.
“Okay, now that we’ve shared that Kodak moment,” I sneered, brushing my hands together impatiently, “what can I do for you?”
“I want to hire you.”
“No offense, buddy, but let’s get real here. Not to judge a book by its cover or anything, but my guess is you’re not the president of a major liquor-store chain, and I already know the sales rep from Moët and Chandon.”
Even he thought that was pretty funny. For a brief second, the tics stopped and the sun seemed to rise on his face. It quickly set. “No, no, you misunderstand. I want to hire you to find my sister.”
I could feel my heart beat hard at the walls of my chest. “I think you’ve got me confused with somebody else. This is a wine shop, not the Bat Cave.”
Without a word, he reached into the pocket of his shabby coat and produced a few sheets of badly folded glossy paper. They shook in his hand as he thrust them out at me. There was no need for me to look at them. I knew what they were, where they came from. To the uninitiated, they appeared to be pages from an old edition of Gotham Magazine. I knew better. They were, in fact, reminders of a ghost that would likely haunt me for the rest of my natural life. I dared not reach for the pages in Mr. Fidgets’ fingers for fear my hand would tremble more than his.
LITTLE BOY LOST was what the bold black typeface read at the top of page 17. Just beneath the author’s byline were two pictures. Both photos, though very different from each other, were of the same young man. His name was Patrick Michael Maloney, a handsome college student who’d come to Manhattan for a party on the night of December 7, 1977, and had vanished, never to be heard from or seen again. Well, that wasn’t true. I’d found Patrick, alive if not exactly well, but let him slip through my fingers. Only four people on the planet knew I’d located Patrick. The author of the article, Conrad Beaman, wasn’t one of them, so he couldn’t be held responsible for omitting that fact from his otherwise scrupulously accurate piece.
What Beaman did know was that, during my investigation of the disappearance, I’d fallen in love with Katy Maloney, Patrick’s older sister. Katy, now my wife, didn’t know I’d found her brother or lost him again. I didn’t have the balls to tell her after it happened. Now, over three years later, she could never know. I rationalized that it would have hurt her too much to lose Patrick twice, but it was just bullshit. My reasons were purely selfish. I was the one worried about losing a loved one. I couldn’t risk Katy finding out I’d been complicit, even if innocently so, in Patrick’s vanishing act.
“I can’t help you,” I said, waving away the crumpled sheets. With a pin stuck in his balloon, Fidgets’ entire body seemed to cave in dejection. “But”—he puffed back up, unfolding the article—” you found that little girl. It says so right here on page nineteen.” He held the page up to me and pointed.
He was right. There were two pictures on page 19 as well. One was of a little Puerto Rican girl. The other was of me in uniform. The text read:
On Easter Sunday 1972, Marina Conseco (above left) disappeared in the amusement park at Coney Island. The girl, the daughter of a New York City fireman, seemed to vanish without a trace. Even her brothers and sisters could not recall when they had seen her last. After four days of searching failed to produce any solid leads, a group of off-duty police and firefighters led by Moses Prager (above right) found the girl at the bottom of a rooftop water tank on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. Sexually assaulted and battered, she had been thrown in the disused tank by her attacker and left to die. Prager, credited by his fellow search-team members with the idea of checking rooftop tanks, refused comment. “He just sort of looked up and had a flash,” said John Rafferty, one of the off-duty firemen. “One more day up there and she’d’a been a goner. I don’t know what made Moe think to look up there. It was like God zapped him or something….”
So that was it. Nine years ago I’d gotten lucky and found Marina Conseco. Now Mr. Fidgets thought I had an in with the Almighty. I shouldn’t have been surprised. My luck in finding Marina was what led the Maloneys to me. It was only a matter of time before someone else stumbled onto the myth of my mojo: Moses Prager, Finder of Lost Souls. Give me a break!
“I can’t help you,” I repeated.
“But you’v
e got a license. I checked. And you used to be a cop.” I could dispute neither point. I’d been on the job for ten years before a sheet of carbon paper and a freshly waxed linoleum floor had conspired to twist my knee in such a manner that not even Gumby could replicate. I had, in fact, gotten my investigator’s license shortly after the whole Patrick business. But I’d gotten my marriage license at about the same time and hadn’t ever taken my investigator’s license out of my sock drawer. It was just a conceit, anyway, a lie I tried to tell myself, a hedge against the ifs in life. Unfortunately for Aqualung here, the wine business was working out, and there wasn’t much he could do or say to inspire me to take the Endust to my license.
“Sorry, friend,” I patronized. “Can’t do it. The holidays are our busy season. Maybe if you come back in January we can discuss it. Okay?”
He deflated once again. “It’ll be too late then.”
“Sorry.”
“But you haven’t even asked my name, my sister’s name. You went to school with her. Doesn’t that count for something? Don’t you even care?”
“I care about anybody who’s missing.” Impatience crept, not too subtly, into my voice. “If you read that goddamned article you keep wavin’ in my face, you’d know I care. Now, like I said, I’m sorry, but the answer for now is no. So, if you don’t mind—”
“Karen Rosen!” he hissed at me. “My sister’s name is Karen Rosen.”
Clearly, he meant her name to be a slap in the face, a jolt to snap me out of my stupor. But instead of hitting me like a bucket of ice water, her name rolled off my shoulder like a raindrop. I might’ve heard the name. Rosen is not exactly an uncommon name in Brooklyn. Maybe we did go to school together. Maybe not. There were eleven hundred kids in my graduating class. It wasn’t like I was on a first-name basis with all of them.
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