Redemption Street

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  But instead of getting frustrated, he just kept repeating those six nonsense syllables over and over and getting quite a kick out of them. I went out into the hallway, for, as usual, my father-in-law had squeezed all the breathable air out of the room.

  I got out to the hall just in time to see Katy coming my way. Corny as it was, she started running as soon as she spotted me. We kissed long and hard, but we hugged longer and harder. Being apart had been hell for both of us. When I gave her the rundown on her dad’s prognosis, she began crying with joy. I wanted to ask her about Sarah, about how her trip up had been, but first she needed to see her father.

  “You go in and visit. I’ve been in there with him already. I’ll be around when you need me. Go on. I might go down to the gift shop.”

  I strolled—hobbled was more like it—down to the newsstand in the gift shop. Not having read anything but the Catskill Tribune for the last several days, I was in dire need of a tabloid fix. The Post let me down. There were no catchy headlines, just the usual body counts, drug busts, and gloomy predictions of the impending Japanese conquest of the world economy. The Daily News wasn’t much better. The body counts weren’t as high, the street value of the drugs was a little less, and Japan would take a little longer to crush the sluggish Western economies under its mighty thumb.

  When I walked out of the gift shop, a familiar and unwelcome voice called after me: “Katy told me you’d probably be here.”

  “Hello, Rico.”

  Rico Tripoli was the third member of the 60th Precinct’s Three Stooges. He lived up here. His wife, Rose, was Katy’s cousin on her mom’s side. I hadn’t laid eyes on Rico since 1978 and was better for it. We’d once been close as brothers, closer in some ways. Now, as far as I was concerned, we were still as close as brothers: Cain and Abel. It was Rico who’d gotten me mixed up with the Maloneys in the first place. But he hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart. He’d tried to use me, to play me like a fool.

  “I’m here with Rose to see the old man,” he said.

  “So go see him.”

  “After three years, that’s all you got to say to me?”

  “All right, how about ‘fuck you’?”

  He wagged an angry finger in my face. “I did what I had to do for me and mine.”

  “Who you trying to convince? If it’s me, don’t waste your breath.”

  Rico’s once-lush black hair was turning decidedly gray, and even under the muted light of the hospital lobby I could see the young buds of gin blossoms creeping along the sides of his nose. He could always hold his liquor, but I wondered if it wasn’t beginning to hold him.

  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t’a met your wife.”

  “Look back at things however you want, Rico. You’re the one that’s got to live with what you did.”

  “I thought after all this time you could gimme a break.”

  “You want forgiveness, the chapel’s over that way.”

  “Fuck you, Moe.”

  “That’s better. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

  Walking away, I heard him call out to me. “Get your shield yet?” he taunted loudly enough for the entire lobby to hear. “That’s right, you got a cane instead. How’s the wine business and that asshole brother of yours?”

  I kept walking, but he wasn’t finished.

  “I made my big case. I got my name in the papers. I got my gold shield.”

  I turned around. “Good. Now when you get to hell you and Judas will have something to compare. I told you three years ago, Rico, table scraps are table scraps.”

  When I got back upstairs, Rico’s wife, Rose, was just coming out of Francis’ room. Even before the falling out between her husband and me, Rose hadn’t much use for me. I think she saw me as a threat. She was his second wife and viewed every aspect of Rico’s earlier life with suspicion.

  “Did he find you?” she asked without bothering to say hello.

  “He found me.”

  “I wish you two would kiss and make up already. He’s driving me crazy.”

  “Till death do you part, Rose.”

  “Yeah, and if he keeps drinkin’ the way he’s been drinkin’, that’ll be about a year from now. What he do to you that’s eatin’ at him?”

  “You’d have to ask him about that,” I said. “Besides, the way I remember things, you never much cared for me, anyway.”

  “That was then.”

  “It’s too late. If it means anything, I miss him, too, sometimes. But you can’t go backward. You can’t make yourself forget. And even if I could, he wouldn’t forget. He would know. Have a good life, Rose.”

  She shook her head in disdain. “You’re a cold-hearted son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Maybe.”

  I put a halt to further discussion by stepping into Francis’ room. Katy was holding his hand, recounting how much she loved their trips to Coney Island when she was a kid. He was transfixed by her. He did love her so. When he caught sight of me, he screwed up his face into that waxy half-smile. I imagine if Katy wasn’t there he would have started with the syllables again. I signaled for Katy to come talk with me outside.

  “Did Rico find you?”

  “No,” I lied. “I must’ve missed him.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I saw Rose, though, and gave her my best. Listen, I’m gonna go back to the house and get your mom. When we get back here, you and I can talk. Okay?”

  “Okay, but first you’ve gotta pay the price.”

  We kissed, and the rest of the world fell away, if only for a few seconds.

  Chapter Ten

  December 3rd

  I had one more week to go tilting at windmills. That was it, Katy I and agreed. My wife was an intelligent, sometimes annoyingly perceptive woman. She noticed the damage to my car almost immediately and could see I was itching to get back to whatever it was I was playing at up in Old Rotterdam. She saved her questions, because she trusted me and, given her dad’s stroke, probably didn’t want to hear the answers.

  Her dad was already improving, having regained most of his strength and some of his speech. He’d be coming home in a day or two, and she said I’d just get in the way. I didn’t argue the point. Though she never broached the subject, Katy knew Francis and I weren’t ever going to be fishing buddies.

  She had already left for Brooklyn to fetch Sarah when I got out of the shower. I could have left last night, but I wasn’t that anxious to get up to Old Rotterdam. Sam and Mr. Roth were entertaining enough, but my wife had it all over them. Besides, there was a stop I wanted to make on the way to the Catskills that wouldn’t have been possible the previous evening. Too many people milling about.

  “Hello, you son of a bitch,” I whispered to my father-in-law as I walked into his room.

  He was silent.

  “What’s the matter? Nothing to say? You were pretty talkative the other morning.”

  He gave me that cruel smile, though fuller, less waxy, now that he’d regained his strength. He pointed to his mouth and shrugged.

  “Don’t gimme that bullshit. I was here yesterday. I heard you talking to Ma and Katy. So what was it you wanted to say to me the other day?”

  He shrugged his shoulders again. “I ‘orget.”

  I just walked out. I thought I heard him laughing, but that might have been my imagination.

  Sam fairly did a jig when I loped through the lobby of the Swan Song Hotel and Resort. Oddly, I nearly danced one myself. I actually hugged the old bastard when he came around the counter.

  “Thank God! My best full-price guest returns.”

  “Your only full-price guest, you mean. I’m happy to see you, too, Sam.”

  “Don’t mince words. So—how’s your father-in—”

  “Still breathing, unfortunately.”

  “A real romance between you two, huh?” As was his habit, Sam wagged his finger at me. “Be careful, boychik, you should watch out what you wish for. You might
get—”

  I grabbed the old comic’s shoulders. “What did you just say?”

  “What?”

  “What you just said.”

  “What?”

  “Oy, Sam. No, what’s on second. Who’s on first.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Third base!” we exclaimed simultaneously.

  “Good,” I said, still laughing, “now that we got Abbott and Costello out of the way, what did you say about watching—”

  “Watch out what you wish for—”

  “—you might get it,” I finished. “That’s what he was saying. ‘Watch out what you wish for.’ But why would he say that to me?” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Forget it, Sam, we’ve already been down that road. You got a room for me?”

  He did, my same room. And, to make me feel right at home, he hadn’t touched it since I left. My bet was he paid his cleaning staff per room.

  “Is Mr. Roth—”

  “That’s their airport bus pulling up outside.” Sam pointed over my shoulder. “He’ll be down in a minute.”

  I didn’t wait. Mr. Roth never seemed quite comfortable in front of Sam and me, so I headed up to his room. Unlike Sam, Mr. Roth wasn’t dancing. He was rather melancholy.

  “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” I said.

  “Oh, I am, believe me. But I’ll miss you. A son like you, I could have been proud of.”

  Though tempted, I didn’t ask him to explain. “That’s a generous thing to say, Izzy. Thank you. I’ll miss you, too.”

  My calling him Izzy made him smile. He handed me a sheet of paper with his address and phone number. I gave him a business card from the store and wrote my home number and address on the back.

  “A pleasure,” he said, extending his hand.

  “A pleasure.”

  “Here.” He reached for something on the bed. “I bought this for you to enjoy and remember our making friends. We’re friends, right?”

  “Friends.”

  The gift he gave me was clearly a gift-wrapped bottle of liquor of some sort. Shrewd, huh? Three years in the wine business and I could spot a bottle of liquor a mile away. The gift wrapping was the standard patterned foil, but the wrapping job itself was rather shoddy. I began to unwrap the bottle.

  “Please, Mr. Moe, save it for when I’m gone,” Mr. Roth implored, grabbing my wrist. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day, you’ll open it up and think of our nice talks.”

  “For you, Mr. Roth, anything. Have a safe flight home.”

  “You’ll call sometime?”

  “I promise.”

  He finally let go of my wrist. “The best of luck to you with what you’re working on. I’ll be interested to know how it turns out.”

  I helped him on with his coat, handed him his cane, and carried his bags down to the bus. He carried my bottle. I didn’t stay and wave as the bus pulled away. I hated long goodbyes.

  The Swan Song was eerily quiet now that the Boca Raton contingent was gone. There were a few other guests besides myself, but we were easily outnumbered by Sam and the staff. I’d have to ask Sam how he managed to keep the place up and running with such a dearth of cash flow. I would have asked him right then and there if I could have found him, but he had gone, too, probably to the bank.

  I went back up to my room. Sam was as good as his word: it was untouched. I slid Mr. Roth’s gift under my bed, pulled the pictures of Arthur Rosen out of my bag, and considered when to begin trying out my new strategy. There was no time like the present, of course, but I was more than a little worn out by the last forty-eight hours and by the prospect of not seeing Sarah for several more days. I closed my eyes, remembering the feel of Katy’s naked back against me. The warmth of the recollection was dampened, however, by the sound of Francis Maloney Sr.’s aphasic gibberish rattling around in my skull.

  “‘atch hout ‘ut ‘ou ‘sh ‘or. ‘atch hout ‘ut ‘ou ‘sh ‘or. ‘atch hout ‘ut ‘ou ‘sh ‘or….”

  Why should I watch out what I wish for? That man could get under my skin like no one else. Now he had a new mantra to go along with his warnings about ghosts. Gee, I couldn’t wait for what he had planned next. I grabbed the pictures of Arthur Rosen and got out of that room. There was no time like the present.

  By the time I hit the lobby on my way out, Sam Gutterman had returned from parts unknown. I didn’t waste any time before showing him the pictures.

  “Sure, I’ve seen him before,” Sam said, chortling. “In the dictionary, next to the word ‘psycho.’ A friend of yours?”

  “An acquaintance, Arthur Rosen.”

  The name seemed to have about as much impact on him as the death of a blade of grass. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time explaining myself. If Sam didn’t know him, he didn’t know him. C’est la guerre! But Sam was curious.

  “Who is he, really?”

  “Was,” I corrected, producing one of the autopsy photos.

  “I’ll take a five-by-seven and two wallet-sized.”

  “You’re a sick man, Sam.”

  “If you don t joke, you cry. So who was he?”

  “The older brother of Karen Rosen, one of the girls who died in the fire.”

  There was a limit to Sam’s curiosity and we’d reached it. Now it was my turn. I asked him about how he could afford to keep the Swan Song up and running.

  “I can’t. We’re closing for the season next week. Everybody out! Even you, toteleh. And just between you, me, and the duct tape, I don’t think I’m reopening.”

  “Why?”

  “You mean besides the fact that when I have guests offseason they make the Ancient Mariner feel like a teenager? You mean besides the fact that every building on the estate is the perfect setting to reenact ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’?”

  “You’re pretty well read.” I noted, ignoring his hyperbole.

  “What, just because I’m a nasty old prick you think I never picked a book up in my life? See Spot run. Run. Run. Run.”

  “Okay, sorry. So why are you thinking of closing up?”

  “Gelt. There’s a development company buying up every big piece of land they can get their hands on. For golf courses, I think. I know for a fact two of the other hotels are already under contract. Of course, the developer’s offering dreck mit dreck, but when the ugliest girl in town is also the only girl in town, she don’t look so bad.”

  “So this is the Swan Song’s swan song.”

  “I bet you waited your whole life to make such a joke.”

  “No,” I protested, “not my whole life.”

  “Some things, boychik, are better left unsaid.”

  Sam had to go. He had to oversee the mowing of the polo grounds and the polishing of the good silver.

  Much to my surprise, Molly Treat had abandoned her desk at Town Hall. I figured Molly was a lock to know something about Arthur Rosen’s movements in town over the last several years. I guess I could always wait for Saturday night and show up at Hanrahan’s, though I think if I heard “Piano Man” again I couldn’t be held accountable for my actions. Hammerling seemed to be missing in action as well. That was unfortunate, but not tragic—I wasn’t sure what he could have told me.

  So I was batting 0 for 3. My new approach, my brilliant idea to trace Arthur’s footsteps—which were bound to be fresher than those of his dead sister had gotten me to the same place as my old approach. Then it occurred to me that I might have a good idea but I was going about it in the wrong way. Instead of seeking out people I was acquainted with, people who knew bits and pieces of the story, I’d try my hand with strangers.

  After a few awkward attempts with passersby, I worked out a routine. I walked into all the shops along Main Street. In rapid succession, I’d flash my badge, then a mug shot of Arthur Rosen at the counterman and/or customers waiting in line. Several people were pretty certain they’d seen Arthur Rosen in town. A few knew his name.

  “That crazy fella,” the counterman at the hard
ware store said. “I remember him. All he wanted to talk about was the fire.”

  The more I showed his picture, the more I got that reaction. Some folks were less kindly than the guy at the hardware store. As Molly Treat, Hammerling, and the doctor had warned, the citizenry of Old Rotterdam was more than a little bit touchy about the fire.

  “What’d he do now?” a persnickety old biddy at the library wanted to know. “He kill somebody?”

  “He did,” I answered plainly. “Himself.”

  “No surprise there.” She walked away, quite satisfied with her powers of prognostication.

  I didn’t know whether to be simply discouraged or depressed. Clearly, Arthur Rosen had made a general nuisance of himself. No wonder Hammerling had emphasized the detrimental effect of being associated with Arthur. He was about as popular as a case of crabs. I decided to try Doc Pepper and his wife. Maybe they could tell me something of interest about Arthur Rosen sans running negative commentary.

  On my way over, I passed what used to be the local synagogue. The Hasidic sects would have their own, but this building had served the summer crowd; the Conservative and High Holy Day Jews up from the city. It wasn’t quite a storefront, nor was it the Wailing Wall. Temple Beth Shalom was a converted—no pun intended—two-family, wood-frame house painted a somber blue, sandwiched between a vacated bakery and an empty Laundromat. Its old-fashioned black-felt-and-glass billboard was still affixed to one wall. Where once white plastic lettering had announced births, deaths, dances, and services, the following was the only word left: CL SED. There is something particularly sad about the death of any congregation. It’s a symbol of atrophy, the death of community. And when I saw my reflection in the billboard glass, my nose where the O in CL SED should have been, I recognized my culpability and that of the other unobservant in the death of congregations everywhere.

  As I turned away from my reflection, I sensed another presence.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” The words I hadn’t uttered since I was a kid poured out of my mouth as if I’d said them only yesterday.

  Out of the shadows near the alleyway of the abandoned bakery stepped the man in the threadbare suit I’d seen float by the hardware store. As Molly had said, he wore the infamous yellow star sewn to the chest of his coat. He was more frail, less ghoulish up close, and younger than I had thought.