“What?”
“ ‘Sudden Sam Guttermouth is …’ Wait,” he said, rubbing his chin, “I vanna get this right. ‘Sudden Sam Guttermouth is perhaps the only man alive—if you call what he does living—who could make Belle Barth sound like Oscar Wilde.’ You know Belle Barth?”
“My folks had her records,” I said. “I used to listen to them when I stayed home sick from school. My favorite joke of hers was about the famous Yiddish actor Boris Tomashevsky.”
“If you want bread, go bang a baker,” he recited the punch line without missing a beat.
“That’s the one.”
He glowed. “We’re gonna get along, you and me. You’re a good audience.” Sam turned behind him to the maze of little mailboxes, recited eenie-meenie-minie-moe, and picked a key. “This is where you would expect me to say that I’m giving you our best room. But since we don’t have even a good room, this one will have to do.” He handed me the key.
“Two twenty-one,” I said, reading the number off the tag.
“I could lie to you and say I gave you that room so you wouldn’t have trouble carrying your bag upstairs. You can guess already the elevator hasn’t worked since the last time I got laid. And you wouldn’t want to insult an old man by guessing how long ago that was.”
“I didn’t know they had elevators during the Civil War.”
“Don’t be such a wiseass.” He wagged his finger again. “You’re supposed to be the straight man. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Like I was saying, it’s not about how far you gotta carry your bag. It’s about how far you’d fall when the fucking building collapses.”
I feigned dismay. “Maybe I’d like a room on the upper floors. This way I’d fall on top of the rubble instead of it falling on me.”
“It’s your funeral, bubeleh, but the heat don’t work up there.”
I shook Sam’s hand good night and asked if I could have breakfast with him. In spite of his protestations, he accepted my invitation. When I reached for my bag, the former Blue Boy of the Borscht Belt ordered me to stop.
“I gotta ring the bell for the hop,” he explained. “It’s tradition.”
“Let me guess, you haven’t had a bellhop since the last time you got laid.”
“Since the first time I got laid.” Sam laughed. “George Washington was in the next bed.”
The room was actually clean and quite a bit more pleasant than the rest of the Swan Song. The furnishings were old, but neat. They dated back to the late fifties or early sixties, all very retro, very Jetsons. There were lots of big square cushions covered in thick orange wool. The lamps sort of looked like B-movie rocket ships. The Bakelite phone on the bedside table was a real relic. You didn’t quite need a crane to lift up the receiver. I buzzed Sam and asked for an outside line.
“Would you believe me if I told you all the outside lines were busy?” he wondered.
“No.”
“Good. I’ll patch you through.”
I dialed the Maloneys’ number. Katy answered. The sound of her voice made my heart sink. I was suddenly very lonely. My cells, I think, were remembering just how empty my life had been before I met her. She asked me how things were going. I told her about Sam. She thought he sounded like fun. Katy held the phone up to Sarah, who talked at me some. Katy said Sarah smiled when she heard my voice. I promised to call the next day, said I loved them both probably one too many times, and hung up.
When I turned the TV on, I decided to downgrade my assessment of the room. There was more snow on the screen than on the collapsing roof.
Chapter Six
November 28th
The phone was ringing louder than I’d heard a phone ring in quite some time. Given what Sam had said about the average age of his clientele, loud was probably good. Still groggy, I reached for the receiver and promptly dropped it on my forehead. Believe me, with how much the thing weighed, dropping it on your head was either going to snap you completely awake or plunge you into a persistent vegetative state. I escaped with only a mild concussion.
It was dark when I trundled down to meet Sam in the kitchen. I wasn’t thrilled about the hour, but I had asked him to breakfast, and it seemed we were going to do it on his terms. I told myself that this was a good thing, that I’d get an early start. What I was getting an early start with had yet to be established. Hammerling wasn’t going to be back till Monday morning. I hoped Sam might have some insight. Maybe he could point a blind detective in the right direction.
I still had trouble thinking of myself as a detective. Not because I’d never officially worked a case since getting my license. It had more to do with my never getting a gold shield while I was on the job. I’d spent my whole ten years in the bag, in uniform. My buddies thought finding Marina Conseco would have earned me my shield. It got me a medal instead. I had almost convinced myself that I didn’t want to make detective because of dumb luck or on the back of a little girl’s suffering. Sometimes I still believe that.
Something smelled delicious but completely out of place in the Swan Song’s allegedly kosher kitchen: frying bacon, God’s quintessential torment. With bacon you were fucked either way. Even if you were an observant Jew and disdained pork products, there was no prohibition against breathing. And one sniff, one breath that contained that sweetly smoky aroma, could torture the most devout rabbi. If, on the other hand, you were, like myself, a bad Jew, or someone unconstrained by five-thousand-year-old dietary laws, you were still screwed. Bacon was cholesterol’s perfect delivery system. Bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches had killed more cops than all the cheap handguns ever made.
“Tsk, tsk, Sam.” I shook my head in mock disapproval. “This is gonna cost you a dozen mitzvahs. If there was a hell …”
“What’d’ya mean, if? This is hell! Sit down, Mr. Wise Guy, and eat. The bacon’s from my own private stock. Once the natives stir, we’re all of a sudden kosher again.”
“Can’t they smell it?” I asked.
“Most of my guests are beyond breathing, let alone smelling.” Sam waved, shoving a mouthful of eggs, potato, and bacon into his trap. “And if they do smell it, they forget before they complain.”
I did as the man said and sat across from Sam at a two-top table set up in the back of the kitchen. We could make out the first rays of daylight through a big window that gave new meaning to the term “stained glass.” The windows were so thick with accumulated grease that the world appeared in sepia tones. You could see the hole in the ground that used to be the pool, and many of the other buildings from our vantage point. Sam didn’t waste his time looking. Eventually, I stopped playing the wide-eyed newcomer and got down to eating. The food was good, but the coffee tasted like the brown water at the bottom of what used to be the pool. Sam noticed the look on my face.
“Stinks, doesn’t it? It’s this freeze-dried crap we mix with hot water. Then we put it in the urns to give the impression that it’s brewed. I’m always afraid to look at the percentage of real coffee in the packages,” he admitted.
“Smart thing,” I said, trying to wash the taste out of my mouth with something that was supposed to be orange juice. “They probably measure the percentage of real coffee in parts per million.”
“Probably,” Sam agreed. “Listen, if you don’t mind me asking, what the fuck are you doing here? It’s not that I’m not flattered you chose my establishment, but your being on the premises brings the average age around here down from ninety-eight to ninety-seven and eleven months and twenty-nine days.”
“Research,” I snapped back without hesitation. “I’m doing research on the demise of the Cat—”
“Bullshit! Pardon my French, Mr. Moe, but you can’t bullshit an old bullshitter like me. You might be able to feed the Molly Treats of the world that line of crap, but not old Sam. So …”
“Were you around when the workers’ quarters at the Fir Grove burned down?”
Sam changed. I can’t say how, exactly. His expression remained con
stant. The corners of his mouth didn’t suddenly turn down, nor did he furrow his brow. He did not avert his sparkly blue eyes. He did not cough or hem and haw. Yet something was different, as if the gases in his exhalation had turned sour.
“I was around. I was around the fucking corner. I was the entertainment director of the Fir Grove back then. I did two shows a night, emceed, ran the dance contest, bussed the tables, and cleaned the toilets if I had to. It was a real top-notch job, just below child molester and just above cancer-study participant. Why you wanna know, boychik?”
“That’s what I’m here researching.” And for the very first time since I received it, I showed someone my license. That I kept it in the same case as my old cop badge was completely calculated. Like I’d told Dr. Prince, badges help cut through the crap.
“Sixteen years after the fact.” The old comedian beamed. “Now, that’s what I call a late start.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“What’s to tell? Some putz was smoking in bed, and—poof!—teenagers well done. You working for Hammerling, that publicity-seeking missile?”
“No.”
“For who, then? Who would be interested so long after it happened?”
“Sorry, Sam, I can’t tell you that. But I bet you knew that?”
“Sure, Sudden Sam knows all, sees all, says nothing.” He rolled his hands and fingers at me like Svengali putting his victim into a trance. “You hypnotized yet? My fingers are gettin’ stiff already.”
“Anything left of the old place”—I was curious—”the Fir Grove, I mean?”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe some stuff. They bulldozed a lot of it. This I know for sure. I don’t get over there much. Only the hayseeds—”
“—and the Hasids. Yeah, I know. Molly told me.”
“Yeah, well, I like to think of ‘em as the rebels and the rabbis myself. See for yourself. Take a ride over, but leave your chai in your room,” he suggested, placing his hand on my forearm.
“Why?”
He patted my arm. “You’ll see when you get there.”
Before I could ask him about his odd warning, a chubby Hispanic man in chefs pants and hat approached Sam. He bowed to me slightly. “Jefe,” he addressed Sam, “the old people, they comeeng.”
Sam got up without a word of goodbye and marched into the dining room right past the cook. The cook smirked, shrugged his shoulders in puzzlement, and headed back to his kitchen station. I waited a moment or two before heading through the dining room. I was curious to see if my fellow guests were really as close to meeting their Maker as Sam made them out to be.
It was still early, but there were several fully seated tables. Most of the breakfast diners were old ladies. Most were closer to Sam’s age than Methusehah’s. I spotted a cane here and there, two walkers, and one wheelchair. It wasn’t quite the hospice Sudden Sam had made it out to be. As I walked through the dining room, I felt a tug on my arm. An elderly gent, rather elegantly dressed for this hour of the morning, had latched on to me.
“Friend of Gutterman’s?” he asked.
“A guest just like yourself,” I said, smiling down at the man, who vaguely reminded me of my dad.
“A guest, maybe, but not like me.” He let go of me and threw his arms in the air. “You must be a special guest for Sam to share his bacon with you.”
“Nothing special about me. Sam says no one knows about the bacon.”
“Sam says a lot of things. Sam’s a—”
“Sam’s gonna burn your cane for firewood, Mr. Roth.” The old comedian appeared out of thin air. He introduced me formally to Mr. Roth. Mr. Roth didn’t seem much in the mood to chat anymore and went back to the task of forcing down his breakfast.
“Here,” Sam said, handing me a piece of paper as he ushered me out of the dining room. “These are directions from here to where the old Fir Grove was. Listen, I wasn’t kidding before about leaving your jewelry behind. You still carry?”
“My off-duty piece, yeah.”
“Good. There’s some real meshuggenehs around there. Serious people. Watch yourself. I can’t afford to lose a full-price customer.” He winked.
The sky was cloudy, but not threatening. Some of the snow had melted, and the roads, though winding, were less of a challenge than they’d been the previous day. As I approached the vicinity of what had once been the Fir Grove, I saw one half of the cast for the favorite local joke. Crowds of bearded men in long black robes or coats, fur and black felt hats trudged along the roadside, followed by groups of younger boys in yarmulkes, with curls extending down their cheeks along their ears. Behind the men and boys were a few women and girls. Their skirts, revealed beneath their coats when the wind came up, were uniformly long. It was Saturday, Shabbas, the Jewish Sabbath. Unfamiliar with the area, I couldn’t know whether they were coming from or going to temple. I could see the look of condescension and disdain on the men’s faces as I slowed to pass. “Bad Jew!” their eyes accused. The women did not look at all.
On the streets of Crown Heights, Williamsburg, or Borough Park, I would have barely noticed the Hasidim. I was used to them in their Brooklyn enclaves, their self-imposed ghettos. It was just that they seemed so out of place here in the snow, among the tall pines and country roads. But, no, that’s a lie. I always noticed and was never comfortable with them. The sight of them evoked two powerful and wildly opposite responses in me. I both envied their faith and was horribly embarrassed by them. Their faith allowed them a kind of freedom I could never have. So sure were they in their knowledge of God that they could ignore the real world. They could even thumb their noses at the rest of us by wearing their curls and beards and black coats. “Look. Look at us!” they seemed to say. “We know the truth.”
I left my discomfort in the rearview mirror. A few miles up the road I noticed two carved-granite pine trees standing silent vigil at the entrance to what had been the driveway up to the Fir Grove Hotel. They weren’t quite in the same class as Cleopatra’s Needles, but they were impressive nonetheless. Astride the stone trees were three-foot-by-three-foot rough-hewn hunks of rock to which, I imagined, were once affixed brass plaques reading “FIR GROVE HOTEL.” You could still make out the holes where the bolts had fitted, holding the plaques in place. These days, however, in lieu of brass were two plywood placards held to the rock with duct tape. Their message was simple: “KEEP OUT.”
I did not.
Just like the driveway at the Swan Song, the pavement was chewed up and neglected. The approach was a steep uphill climb, and the entire driveway was an impressive semicircle around what would have been the great lawn. I stopped my car at the stone-and-concrete footing where the main house of the old Fir Grove had once stood. I tried imagining it in its mid-century splendor, but since I’d never actually seen the old place, all I could picture in my mind’s eye was the dilapidated main house of the Swan Song. I wondered where the workers’ quarters had been and realized I was probably going about this all wrong. I should have gone to the library first and done a little research. But should-haves are like ifs, they’re both tremendous wastes of time.
I drove a little farther on down the driveway, until I spotted a left turnoff. Ahead of me, the snow marked out a huge, slightly sunken rectangle. The guest parking lot, I suspected. I continued to the very back edge of the lot, which was marked by wildly overgrown hedges. Now out of my car, I stepped through the tangle of hedges, its branches slapping my cheeks as I went. On the other side of the thicket, I finally got my first glimpse of what had become of the old place.
I was atop a hill. Several feet ahead of me were concrete steps leading down to where the pool had been. A moot fiberglass slide and a set of rusty metal bars that had once held the diving board helped delineate opposite ends of the pool. To the right of the pool, rising out of the snow, stood two ten-foot-high poles. A half-moon backboard dangled off the top of one of the poles, swinging in the wind like the blade of the executioner’s ax. These days, my surgical knee ached at even
the thought of playing hoops. No one had played ball here in a very long time. Looking out at the impotent equipment, I found myself thinking of Coney Island. Once the world’s playground, it, too, had been abandoned, the frames of its disused rides rising out of the earth like metal and wooden bones of vanquished dinosaurs. But it was neither the pool area nor Coney Island that currently captured my attention.
I managed to descend the steps without breaking my neck. No small feat, given the state of the wrought-iron guardrail. About half a football field beyond the pool area I saw smoke rising above yet another hedgerow. As I approached I could smell it. It smelled of pine resin and bacon. And, perhaps for the first time in sixteen years, I imagined the horror of the night the workers’ quarters burned to the ground, the panic and terror. I’d seen the ugly things fire did to people. But it was the smells of fire that stayed with you, particularly the smell of burnt human hair. I thought of the flames licking at Andrea and shuddered.
Stepping through the second hedge, I was still preoccupied with the image of Andrea’s charred body. So I was unprepared for the thud of heavy paws against my chest that sent me sprawling in the snow. Scrambling to stand and reaching for my .38, I slipped back down. As I continued to fumble for my gun, I caught sight of the thick-chested Rottweiler that had put me down in the first place. He came at me again, a string of white saliva dripping from his blunted snout. As I raised my pistol into the best shooting position I could manage there on my ass in the snow, two things convinced me to lower my weapon. One was the rattle of the heavy chain which I noticed would prevent the dog from actually getting to me. The other, and by far more convincing, reason was the unmistakable chicking of a round being chambered into a pump-action shotgun. In fact, I did more than just lower my weapon. I tossed it into the snow and raised my hands way, way up.
“On your feet, asshole!” the man with the shotgun ordered. “This is private property. What are you doin’ here?”
He was a tall man in his thirties. He sported a stocking cap and long underwear. In fact, he would have looked quite ridiculous if it weren’t for the shotgun aimed at my chest. He was standing on the wooden steps of a double-wide trailer, which itself was set on cinder blocks. Two flags flew behind him, on either side of the front door: the good old Confederate flag over his right shoulder and a Nazi flag over his left. The red-and-black Nazi flag wasn’t the typical swastika flag but, rather, one that bore a black cross. It was the Maltese Cross, a favorite with motorcycle gangs.
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