Redemption Street

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “It was perfect.” Karen seemed almost joyful. “I didn’t have to run anymore, and I could deal with what I’d done where I’d done it. The world thought I was dead. No one knew me up here, and I thought Sam had probably gone.”

  “But he hadn’t gone,” I reminded her.

  “No, he was still here. I got really sick one winter and I had to go see the doctor in town.”

  “Sam spotted you.”

  “Just my luck,” she said sadly. “But he didn’t confront me, not then. He came to a meeting like you did, and he handed me a note giving me a time and place to meet him.”

  “Knowing Sam,” I said, “he probably tried to blackmail you first.”

  “He was down on his luck.” She seemed to defend him out of habit. “He hadn’t worked in a long time. Anyway, I didn’t have any money to give him, and he was smart enough to know my parents’ pockets weren’t very deep. And what would turning me in to the cops do except make more trouble for himself in the end? He’d have to explain his part in all of it.”

  “But you had the diary.”

  “I had the diary. It didn’t take Sam long to figure what to do from there. Like I said, Sam’s a smart man—he’s been blackmailing Andrea’s brother for years—but I’m no fool either. I never actually gave the book to Sam. I kept it as a kind of insurance. I just give him a poem every now and then, when he needs money. Now,” she said, gesturing up at me, “you have the book. It would have ended soon enough anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you think I’m this lovely shade of yellow just to match the star on my blouse?” she snickered. “My oncologist tells me I’ve got a few weeks at most to get things in order. It’s my liver. It’s spread into my spine, and soon my brain. What shall you do with me, Moe?” she asked, seeming to enjoy my predicament. “It’s a dilemma, no?”

  There was no dilemma, not really. I just didn’t see any point in hauling her in to die in the midst of a media circus. And the media would have made her out to be the victim here. I couldn’t have stomached that. I couldn’t dishonor the dead. This wouldn’t be the first time innocent people had paid someone else’s guilty debt with their lives. It wouldn’t be the last. In any case, I got the sense that the closer she got to death the less serene Karen would be. Her bill was coming due.

  “You can stay here and die in peace. Your secrets and Andrea’s are safe with me.”

  She stood and made a move as if to hug me. “Thank you. You can’t imagine how relieved I am.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” I began, turning away from her approach, “when Arthur came looking for Andrea and joined your group, where did you—”

  She answered my question with a question. “Where do you think?”

  “The Swan Song.”

  “Yes, Sam was very accommodating to his cash cow.”

  “Arthur’s dead. He killed himself. I’d thought you’d want to know.”

  I might just have told her I’d run over a squirrel. “He was never at peace, so horribly depressed, even when we were kids. If he hadn’t latched on to me as a cause, he would have found something else.”

  I hadn’t known her well in high school, but I couldn’t imagine she had been so cruel, not the girl with the pajamas and Siamese cat. Murder changes you. I decided to leave before I let it change me.

  “Thank you again, but don’t go just yet.”

  I was terse: “What is it?”

  “Can’t you say you forgive me, just a little bit? Please? I get a lot of support around here, but forgiveness isn’t on the menu.”

  “I’ll keep your secret, but I’m not in the forgiveness business. As far as I can see, there are no vacancies for you on Redemption Street. Maybe you can find what you’re looking for in hell.”

  “We don’t believe in hell, Moe. You know that.”

  “It’s not really important if you believe in hell, if hell believes in you.”

  I quickly closed the door behind me and walked into the daylight. The air outside was cold and fresh, but the stink of her decay stayed with me. It wasn’t necessarily the smell of the cancer eating away at her flesh that I couldn’t escape. It was the rotting of her soul, I think.

  A cop buddy of mine, Ferguson May, was our precinct philosopher. Every precinct’s got one. With a few beers in him, Fergy fancied himself the black Aristotle. It was funny that I would think of Ferguson now. I hadn’t thought of him in years. His favorite bit of wisdom had to do with falling from high places. You don’t realize how fast you’re going, he’d say, until you get close to the ground. That’s when you realize it’s a little too late to start praying. Ferguson May got stabbed through the eye trying to break up a domestic dispute. I wondered how comforting his own philosophy had been in the seconds before they pronounced him dead at the scene. I wondered if Karen realized just how profoundly fast she was traveling in relationship to the ground.

  I sat in the lot outside Town Hall trying to compose myself. I had been hard on Karen—too hard, I thought. All those years ago, she was a kid, a sad, lonely kid who got in so far over her head that the heat of a match felt like the sun. What if it had been Katy or, worse still, Sarah? What was I like at seventeen? I was an irresponsible jerk who thought he knew everything about everything, but knew nothing about anything. Still, she hadn’t batted an eye when I told her about her brother’s suicide. I guess I hadn’t had enough time to distinguish between what Karen was then and what she was now.

  I was angry. I was angry that I’d gotten it wrong and disappointed that Andrea wasn’t alive. I looked at her diary on the seat next to me and wondered if I would have been more charitable if it had been her waiting to die in Bungalow 8. Teenage crushes, I realized, can survive almost anything, arson and murder notwithstanding. God, how petty and stupid. I was tired enough of the lies and secrets surrounding Patrick’s disappearance. There were times, especially around Katy’s family, they weighed me down so that I felt myself being crushed. My legs weren’t strong enough to carry the weight of sixteen innocent bodies. I could already feel them pressing down on me.

  Good old dependable Molly, sitting at her table, looked like salvation to me just then. I kissed her hello on the cheek and she blushed. It was a small thing, her blushing like that, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget it. Did people blush anymore?

  “Is he in?” I asked, nodding my head toward Hammerling’s office.

  “Sure,” she said, brushing her hair with her fingertips. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Soon, but not yet. There’s still some unfinished business to take care of. Maybe you can help. How would you like to play Mata Hari for a night?” Molly was all ears, eagerly leaning forward. “After I talk to Hammerling, I’ll fill you in.”

  Dick Hammerling was seated behind his mission-style aircraft carrier, head buried in a book, when I walked into his office. His face said he was happy, but wary to see me. I imagine anything having to do with the fire produced extraordinarily mixed feelings in him. If things played out the way I hoped they would, those mixed feelings would become even more jumbled.

  “Mr. Prager.” He turned on the politician’s charm as he stood. “Good to see you. Have a seat.”

  “Call me Moe,” I said, closing the door behind me. “I’ll sit in a minute. First, I’ve got something to ask you.”

  “Ask.”

  “I’m sorry to have to bring this up, but I know about what happened to your father.”

  Hammerling’s face soured. “That’s not a question.”

  “I’m getting to it,” I promised. “And I think I understand how much solving the Fir Grove fire means to you, but I’ve gotta be sure. If I were to explain what happened that night, how it happened, and why, could you leave it alone? Would that be enough for you?”

  He didn’t answer right away. I liked that. He sat down quietly in his chair and spun it slowly about so that he faced the window. The sun was high and strong today, and he tilted his face upward to stare directly at it.

>   His back still to me, he wondered: “How can I be sure you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Because I’ll give you my word, just like you’ll give me yours that what I say in this office goes no farther.”

  “Further.” He laughed sadly. “Goes no further. ‘Further’ is more correct.”

  He turned the chair back around, stood up, and held out his big right hand to me. In the end he realized this was about his dad and not about him. Only the truth mattered.

  I took his hand. “I give you my word that what I’m going to tell you is the truth.”

  “I know,” he said somberly. “Nothing you say to me in this room will ever be repeated.”

  I told him the story—the essentials, at least, but for obvious reasons there were details I was forced to omit or fudge over. I admitted as much. The only thing I actually lied about was the status of Karen Rosen’s health. The way I explained it, the girl who set the fire was already dead. And, I rationalized, that would soon enough be true.

  “So you see,” I said, “your dad was right. It wasn’t some idiot smoking in bed. The fire was intentionally set, and an accelerant was used. Not a lot was used, but that bunkhouse was just such a shithole it went up like kindling.”

  “This girl, the one who set the fire, is dead?” he asked.

  I skillfully avoided answering. “Whatever price there is to pay, Councilman, she’s paid it in full.”

  He spun his chair back around to the window and hung his head. “Thank you, Moe,” he whispered, choking back years’ worth of uncried tears.

  “I’ll wait in the outer office,” I said.

  Even through the closed door I could feel his anguish. I had a strange thought. I recalled that just recently an old Imperial Japanese soldier had been found on some isolated Philippine outpost. What, I wondered, would his life stand for now that his war was finally over? What would Dick Hammerling’s life stand for now that he had his answers? Maybe that fierce energy he’d used to fight the good fight in the name of his father could be put to better use. I hoped it would. I hoped some good might come of this. Then, as I sat there trying not to listen to Hammerling’s sobs, I thought of Arthur Rosen. Selfishly, I was relieved not to have to tell him. I don’t know that I would have been able to tell him if he were still alive. That was one less secret, thank God, I wasn’t forced to keep.

  When Hammerling opened the door to invite me back in, he looked more upright, less constricted. One of us had had a load lifted off his shoulders.

  He leaned over a liquor cabinet. “Drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “My dad loved vodka,” Hammerling said, waving a dusty old bottle at me. “But if that’s not—”

  “Vodka’s fine,” I said. “Let’s drink to your dad, and mine, too.”

  We had two shots apiece and got back down to business. I did most of the talking. He was slightly suspect of my motives and confused by what I asked of him, but I was unwilling to share any more information. Sam and his accomplices were my responsibility, mine alone.

  “So let me get this straight. All you want me to do is go down to the police station with you and stand outside the door while you have a conversation with Lieutenant Bailey.”

  “That’s right. That’s all you have to do.”

  “Okay, I owe you more than that, but if that’s all you want …”

  While Hammerling waited in my car, I had that little talk with Molly. She was also a bit reluctant, but couldn’t resist a shot of intrigue into her mundane life.

  “All I have to do is have a drink with him?” she asked warily.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to flirt with him a teeny-tiny bit, but that’s it!” I wagged my finger at her. “I just need some time to set up a little surprise for him.”

  She agreed.

  You’d have thought Lieutenant Bailey would shit his pants at the sight of me, fearing I was walking into his station house to swear out a complaint against him for false arrest and police brutality. I knew better. It was the same with cops and perps. When your hands have been dirty for so long that no one ever tells you to wash them, you start thinking you’re Superman. No one can touch you. You’re above it, beyond it, you’re invincible. There are plenty of corrupt old-timers on the job with that aura about them. But it’s that hubris that always brings them down. After the Knapp Commission, finger pointing and gun eating became popular pastimes among the old guard.

  Bailey almost relished the chance to rub what he’d done in my face, and was glad to have a little chat with me in his office.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Prager?” He smiled smugly. “I see you’ve hurt your wrist. How that happen?”

  “Sorta like how I hurt my kidneys.”

  “What’s that you say?” He cupped his ear. “I’m not getting you.”

  “You’re not? Okay. Maybe this’ll help your hearing.”

  I sunk my left foot so deeply into Bailey’s groin that you could see the imprint of my shoelaces on the skin of his ass. He went down like a sack of potatoes. Even as he struggled for air he called me a cocksucker.

  “No,” I corrected, pulling him up to his knees by the hair, “I’m a ball buster.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You won’t be fucking anything but yourself for quite some time. So listen carefully. You’re gonna put your papers in today, right now!”

  “Get the fuck outta here,” he said, a bit more strength returning to his voice. “No one’s going to buy your stories. I’m a respected man in this town.”

  “Oh yeah? How respected you gonna be after Sam rolls over on you, asshole?”

  He didn’t like that. If it were possible for him to get any paler than he already was, he got paler. I had little doubt Bailey was a Grade A schmuck to begin with, but I didn’t think he’d gotten in bed with Sam of his own accord. No, Sam had something on him.

  “Whatever he’s got on you, Bailey, he won’t hesitate to use it to save his own skin. Think about it—you know that old fuck better than me. He’ll roll over on you like that! They won’t have to ask him twice. I was a cop, Bailey. Cops don’t fare too well in prison, especially dipshit, small-town assholes like yourself. What’s he got on you?”

  I had him worried, but he tried stonewalling. “Eat shit!”

  “You think I’m kidding, huh? You think maybe I’m bluffing. Councilman Hammerling,” I called out, “will you stick your head in here a second?”

  Dutifully, Hammerling complied. He was taken aback some by Bailey’s disheveled state, but said nothing.

  “Thank you, Councilman,” I said. “Can you give us a few more minutes?”

  “Does he have stuff on you?” I repeated when the door closed.

  “Yes,” Bailey admitted, “enough to put me away for a long fuckin’ time.”

  “Now, if you want to save your shitass pension and any self-respect, this is what you’re gonna do. You’re putting in your retirement papers today. You’re not gonna say word one to Sam. You’re gonna write down the names and addresses of the other two clowns who helped kick the shit out of me in the woods that night. If they’re cops, you make sure they put in their papers today, too, or you’ll all fry. And I want my guns back that you took from me that night, especially the .38. If not, Councilman Hammerling will introduce a bill to bring in the State Police Internal Affairs Division to investigate your department. The higher-ups will offer your ass up faster than Sam, and you know it.”

  “The .38’s in the bottom drawer over there,” he said, pointing at a medal desk. “The .22’s still out in the woods somewhere.”

  I checked out my old .38 while he wrote down the names of the men who’d helped him attack me in the woods that night. I folded up the paper and put it in my back pocket.

  “Remember,” I said, “put your papers in today, and not a word to Sam.”

  “What about the shit Sam’s got on me?” he asked.

  “You let me worry about that.”

  It was about 9:00 P.M. as I watched Sam�
��s Cadillac pull out of the Swan Song parking lot and onto the main road out in front of the hotel. Good thing he was prompt. It was freezing in the damned bushes. Given his apparent affection for women of Molly’s build, it was no wonder that he wanted to be on time for their tête-à-tête. He probably had the first erection he’d had since the Battle of Bull Run. Who knows, maybe he was letting it steer the car while he was lighting up one of those ridiculous cigars of his. I’d learned to take my time, and waited another fifteen minutes before heading inside. Once inside, I’d wait for Molly’s signal before beginning my search.

  At 9:27, the front-desk phone rang three times. Then it stopped. Then it rang twice again. It was Molly letting me know Sam had arrived at Hanrahan’s.

  Though Sam was a smarter man than Bailey, I was hoping Sam was as susceptible to the foibles of success as the corrupt cop. Success breeds complacency, and complacency leads to carelessness. I had little doubt that at one time Sam had made certain to stash his blackmail leverage safely away where only he could have access to it, but that sort of thing can get expensive. Access can be problematic if the goods are in your lawyer’s office or in a safe-deposit box in a bank that closes at 3:00 P.M. Eventually, your victims get so whipped, you barely need to threaten them if they don’t comply. Compliance can become as habitual as anything else.

  That was all well and good. Now the problem was finding the goods, if they were here to be found. The Swan Song wasn’t exactly the size of Windsor Castle, but it was a lot bigger than your standard suburban ranch. I came up empty at the front desk. Sam had even removed the big bell. My search of the office was equally unproductive. It’s a shame I wasn’t looking for ten years of hotel bill receipts. There were plenty of those. The kitchen was a waste of time, as were the dining rooms. I checked my watch; almost an hour had passed, and unless Molly succumbed to Sam’s charms, which was not altogether impossible, I didn’t have that much time left.

  Then something Karen Rosen had said earlier rushed through my head. I had to get to Sam’s room. I raced up to the sixth and top floor. Sam had a suite of rooms with a roof deck and views of the entire area. Once upon a time, this had probably been the bridal or presidential suite. The walls, not unlike those of Dick Hammerling’s office, were covered with autographed pictures of the once-, near-, and no-longer famous. Though pressed for time, I just had to look. Sam had known them all: Crosby and Hope, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Abbott & Costello, Sammy Davis Jr., Berle, Youngman, Myron Cohen, Jackie Gleason, Steve and Eydie, Redd Foxx, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Goulet, Dean Martin, Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce, Joey Bishop, Frank Sinatra. The list was endless. It was like the roll call for the old Ed Sullivan Show. I had to stop myself.