Little Easter

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  I opened the storm door and put some light pressure on the front door. It fell back at my touch. The hallway was dark. Not the black dark of night, but the beige-brown shadows of frayed canvas shades and deep green wallpapers that only the blind would not find depressing. I slid along the hallway expecting to find death in the kitchen. I was not disappointed.

  The giant lay on his belly, head away from me, legs twisted, disheveled and still. He looked like a magic trick that someone had forgotten to finish. I flipped on the chandelier, but somehow the room didn’t brighten much. There’d be no profit in checking for signs of life, so I didn’t. Funny thing was, I couldn’t immediately make out what killed him. On my hands and knees now, I looked for clues in his glassy, opened eyes that reminded me of those on the freshly dead fishes in Sheepshead Bay.

  There was blood; a hint, a trickle where his lumberjack shirt over lapped his cheap belt. When I lifted him up a bit, the hint became a flood. I stepped out of its path. He’d been belly-shot at close range. I couldn’t say how many times. A shirt full of scarlet goo sort of obscures things. I patted him down, checking for whatever it was he was trying to sell me. Unless it was an empty pocket, he didn’t have it on him. For a flicker I considered the possibility that he was bluffing, but I pushed that thought away. O’Toole wasn’t the type.

  There would be cops. I couldn’t sidestep them, but I made another call first. The phone rang a few times before someone picked up. The voice at the other end was one I hadn’t heard for awhile.

  “MacClough’s Rusty Scupper.”

  “Johnny?” I asked out of nerves more than anything.

  “How’s the ribs?” he wondered matter-of-factly.

  “I’ll live,” I answered, unconsciously running my hand along the tape beneath my shirt. “You know where your old partner O’Toole’s house is?”

  “Why?” McClough’s tone cooled considerably with one syllable.

  “I’m there right now. I think you should join me.”

  “Put that old donkey on the line,” the bar owner demanded.

  “Let’s just say he’s indisposed, Johnny,” I offered sardonically, looking down at the dead man. “I’ll wait for you.” I hung up.

  I sat down in the chair I’d parked in during my last trip here. I didn’t like the fact that Johnny didn’t need directions to the house. O’Toole and Johnny didn’t strike me as two guys who would’ve kept in touch. I asked the lifeless giant about that. He didn’t answer. I asked him what it was he was trying to pawn off on me and where it might be hiding? He was as mum as the fishes in Sheeps-head Bay or the ones on the Scupper’s walls. I got tired of not getting answers, so I stopped asking questions.

  I wanted to do a cursory search of the dead cop’s joint, but couldn’t risk how that might look to the detectives when they showed. And they would show. Besides, I didn’t know what I was hunting for. I just looked around from my seat and saw what there was to see in the diffuse brown light. That took a quick fifteen seconds, give or take ten.

  I caught myself staring at the ornately framed portrait of O’Toole’s elephant-eared kid in military dress. Something about it bothered me. I thought it might be the pain in the dead kid’s expression, but no. That had been there the first time I’d seen the photo, the first time O’Toole had hurled his shot glass at it. I kept staring.

  Bang! It hit me, but with a little less force than Mac-Clough’s right fist or left shoe. There was something askew, but not with the photo itself No. The glass that’d covered it previously was out of the frame, missing. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe O’Toole’s shot glass aim had improved and he’d hit his target once before passing from this earth. Or maybe it meant the glass had been purposely removed to clear some space for storage behind the dead boy’s photo.

  Before dissecting the frame, I ran my fingertips over the glass-free photo. I could feel there was more behind that dead Marine’s expression than just pain. The contents poured out of the frame easily enough. Sandwiched in between the blackened cardboard backing and the snap of O’Toole’s dead son were some curious odds and sods. There was a brittle yellow newspaper clipping, a list of phone numbers (some in pencil, faded and smudged; Some in pen, bright and recent) and a couple of other photographs.

  There was one old Polaroid shot of Azrael and a young, uniformed John Francis MacClough taken at some garish and probably long since bankrupted restaurant. They held hands across a Peter Max printed tablecloth. Johnny was mugging for the camera. The girl’s soul and smile were fixed on the man holding her hand. There was a head shot of just the girl. The lifeless gray hair I’d seen tucked under the ratty mink was once chestnut brown with auburn highlights in the sun. It was thick. God, it was thick; the kind of hair a man could lose a hand in, the kind of hair that came from God and not from any bottle. The dead eyes I’d seen searching the cloudy Christmas Eve sky were yellow-green crystals two decades ago. Her lips were just this side of thick and her lashes were sleek, dark feathers. Hanging against the tanned, freckled skin of her chest was a familiar heart-shaped diamond pendant. The heavy orange make-up of middle age was absent. Maybe she had less to hide back then. She was, as its said in Brooklyn, a woman to die for. Some probably had.

  Behind the snap of Azrael came another photo almost identical to the one of Johnny and the girl; same restaurant, maybe even the same table. Only in this one, the chestnut-haired girl held hands with a very different man. The stud in Johnny’s shoes was modelishly handsome with curled brooding lips, sable hair, cold black eyes and a chiseled chin with a cleft that could hold a pearl. He did not mug for the camera. He would not have to. The camera loved him. Two things about Azarel were markedly different in this Polaroid; the orphaned heart was missing as was the love and admiration in her eyes.

  The last photo was recent. It was oversized, satin-finished and lacked the white border of both older pictures. Unfortunately, the photographer and his subject had botched the job. The picture was blurry, overexposed, done with the wrong speed film and taken from too far away. Other than that it was perfect. This masterpiece was a side shot of a woman between the ages of twenty and thirty getting into a car. What car? What woman? I couldn’t tell you. But if this was the best shot on the roll, I’d hate to see the rest.

  The yellow newspaper clipping had been cut out sans date but the print said that it came from the Times. The words told me mostly what I had expected. Mostly. The article recapped the events surrounding the trial of a certain mob figure. It seems that the government had failed to prove its case in spite of the compelling testimony of its star witness—Azrael Esther Wise, born Esther Wiseman in Brooklyn, N.Y. on V-E Day 1945—the paramour of the defendant’s oldest son. Nothing terribly enlightening here. I’d guessed at the greater part of this anyhow. The one surprise came in the letters that spelled the defendant’s last name: Gandolfo.

  That’s right, Gandolfo. Gandolfo, as in Dante “Don Juan” Gandolfo. Gandolfo, as in Larry Feld’s biggest client. The trial had been that of Dante’s father, Roberto “The Boot” Gandolfo, and the star witness had been Dante’s girl. Sometimes the world is too small a place to suit me, much too small a place.

  I flipped back to the photo of Azrael and the brooding male model holding her hand. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and recalled the blowup in Larry Feld’s office of himself, Mike Wallace and Dante Gandolfo. Add a few years, a few pounds, a little gravity, some salt to the black pepper of his hair and there’d be a match. O’Toole had told me that Johnny’s girl had been a wiseguy’s toy. Christ, MacClough could really pick them. But even here, with a bloody stiff at my feet, I couldn’t blame Johnny. In twenty-year-old pictures, she could make you want her. Believe me. She could. I wondered what kind of world it was that turned her into the orange-faced loser I found eating canary on Christmas Eve.

  Before burying my new-found booty in my pocket, I spread the old news clipping out on the dead man’s table. It looked strange unfolded like that. What I mean to say is that most of the article had been nea
tly scissored or razored out, but one of the edges was rough, torn, uneven. The tear seemed fresh. Fresher, at least, than the cut edges. Someone had recently removed a piece of the puzzle and I didn’t have time to look for it. I heard steps crunching up the snow on the front steps.

  “Dead?” Johnny asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Quite dead.”

  MacClough put his knee in the pool of drying blood and lifted the body just as I had. He shook his head and let the corpse back down: “Belly shot with a twenty-two. Three, maybe four times. He let the killer get awfully close to him. Asshole.”

  I didn’t disagree.

  “Call the cops?” MacClough wanted to know.

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I figured we had a lot to talk about first,” I prodded.

  “Is that what you figured?” Johnny was just full of questions.

  “Uh huh,” I could be so articulate.

  “Then you need help with your figuring,” the wary ex-cop advised. “We don’t have anything much to discuss.”

  This sparring was giving me a bellyache and making me remember my sore ribs. I wasn’t much in the mood and I was getting pretty fucking tired of digging for every answer and then trying to decipher it like a hieroglyph. I laid it out for him much as I had the brittle newsprint.

  “Look Johnny,” I slammed my fist on the table, “let’s stop the cha-cha. Her name was Azrael Wise and she was Dante Gandolfo’s property. Problem was, she didn’t love him. She loved you. But ‘Don Juan’ wasn’t an easy guy to walk away from, especially after she’d seen things. She’d seen the kinda things that get some people a half-dozen consecutive lifetimes in stir. She’d seen the kinda things that get other people to swallow bullets. Anyway, she rolled over on Dante’s old man. I suspect with a big push from a chesty, rookie cop who was sure he knew what the right thing was,” I cleared my throat. “Stop me when I get cold,”

  He didn’t stop me.

  “So, with you pushing, she witnessed against Robby ‘The Boot.’ And that was that. Azrael was persona non grata everywhere on this planet murder could reach. She bid adieu to Johnny Blue, riding off into the sunset on the back of the Witness Protection Program. But the program wasn’t so sophisticated then like it is now. Now they use fake social security numbers and fabricated identities. When Azrael went underground, they used the identities of people who didn’t have much use for ‘em anymore. You know, people like a little dead girl who drowned while her big sister watched,” I was shouting now. “People with names like Carlene Carstead, for instance.”

  He still didn’t stop me.

  “You’re in this shit, MacClough, up to your guilty nipples and I’m tryin’ like hell to pull ya out. Don’t even tell me ya don’t want my help,” I waved off any potential objection. “You’re gettin’ it.

  “Now I know you didn’t whack Azrael and I don’t think you whacked Mr. Pinky Ring either. Ya might have, if you’d gotten the chance. I just don’t think ya got that chance. Him,” I shrugged at O’Toole’s nearly forgoten body, “maybe he was squeezin’ ya. Maybe ya had to quiet him. But even if ya didn’t, you’re gonna kill. I can smell it on ya like my father’s cheap aftershave on Sunday mornings. I don’t know that I could stop ya, but I figure to try.

  He shook his head from side to side: “You still need help with your figuring.”

  “You help me,” I pointed at him accusingly. “You help me make sense outta this. Why’d she come outta hiding after all these years? Christ, the old man wasn’t even convicted and he’s not head of the family anymore. The contract on her must’ve been colder than Candlestick Park in July. Why now, Johnny? Why now?”

  “We got nothin’ to talk about, Klein, except maybe the weather.”

  “Okay, MacClough, the cops are gettin’ called,” I moved for the phone.

  “Yeah and so what happens?” the ex-detective seemed less nervous about the cops’ arrival than the dead man at his feet.

  “I’ll talk a lot. I’ll let them stop ya, if ya won’t let me,” my voice cracked as if puberty was late in arriving. “I’ll tell ’em that you killed O’Toole. I’ll tell ’em anything I have to.”

  “They won’t listen,” he yawned. “Here,” he handed me the phone, “call.”

  “I can prove you withheld evidence,” I took up his challenge and the phone. “In fact I bet you’re carrying that evidence with you in the shape of a diamond heart. Try explaining that away.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched as a drop of sweat rolled off his upper lip. The granite cracked.

  “You won’t do that,” MacClough fingered off the sweat. “You’ll be hanging yourself. You were the one who lied to the cops. You were the one who held back the jewelry. All I have to say is I was holding the heart for you, that I didn’t know where it came from or who it was for.”

  “You’re wrong, Johnny. I’ll do it. Whatever it takes. I’ll do it.” Puberty struck again. “When all is said and done, the stink that gets raised will be enough to warn anybody off.”

  “Why don’t you just call my alleged victim and warn him straight out?” Johnny smirked sardonically.

  “Because that’ll make you a target. And that’s the only thing I won’t do. I don’t want any killing with you on either side of the gun barrel,” I shook my head no. “Why don’t you just give it to the cops and let them take care of it.”

  “The cops!” MacClough’s hearty laugh was lined in sadness. “The cops wouldn’t be able to pin this on the Gan-dolfos with shoestring and bubblegum. I’m somewhat familiar with how both sides work. Anyway, even if they managed to make a case, the Gandolfos’ whore mouthpieces would shoot it down before it ever got to trial. No, Klein, this is old business. My business.”

  I couldn’t really dispute Johnny’s arguments. He knew the cops and I knew the lawyer. We were at an impasse and the body at our feet wasn’t going to keep forever. I called 911, gave my name and suggested the coroner be alerted. We waited.

  At the distant squawking of sirens, John Francis spoke up: “When the locals show, play along with me. Play along and you’ll get your answers.”

  “When?”

  “You’ll get your answers,” he repeated, ignoring my schedule request. “But I can’t let you stop me.”

  “Fair enough,” I extended my hand for a shake.

  He shook it and pulled my right ear close to his lips. “I loved her, Klein.”

  Lots of feet were crushing the snow on the stoop now. Fists knocked on the door and bells chimed like Big Ben with a sore throat. Discordant voices shouted, “Police. Open up.” MacClough pushed me away, took out his detective’s shield and started marching to the entrance. Halfway down the shadowed hall, he turned back to me.

  “Christ, I really loved her,” he shook his head. “Don’t forget. Play along.” He continued up the hallway.

  Sure I was going to play along. Didn’t Johnny know? I’d been playing along most of my life.

  Polyester Suits, Dacron Shirts,

  Nylon Socks and Vinyl Shoes

  I played along. I was still without answers, but I played along. God, it was scary to see the ease with which MacClough manipulated the uniforms. Uniformed cops, in spite of their resentment and envy, can act awfully like novice priests in the presence of the Pope when presented with the gold and enamel of a detective’s shield. They can’t help themselves. From their first day on the job they shoot for that shield. They shoot for the day they can dress in polyester suits, dacron shirts, nylon socks and vinyl shoes. They shoot for the day when someone can kiss their rings. It’s funny. It didn’t seem to matter that Johnny was retired and that he was supposed to have returned the shield and that he was two counties removed from his former jurisdiction. It didn’t seem to matter and he knew it.

  The Suffolk Homicide detectives were considerably less impressed, but MacClough was light on his feet. Now it was his turn to kiss some ass and kiss some ring and genuflect till his knees got sore. This song a
nd dance wasn’t as much fun as watching Johnny control the uniforms, but it worked just as well. These guys seemed pretty receptive to our cock and bull story.

  My words were just a variation on a theme. I was going to throw my buddy, John MacClough, a party celebrating five years of retirement. Unfortunately, I wasn’t well acquainted with his old sleuthing pals. So, I was making the rounds of his ex-partners and such, trying to enlist their help. O’Toole was just one name on this list I had. We’d spoken once before and had agreed to meet soon. He’d called me this morning to say it was a good day for him. When I showed up, the door was open and he was dead. I guess I panicked a little and called MacClough. He came straight away and that’s when I called the cops. Johnny stood firmly at my right shoulder throughout my telling, shaking his head in religious agreement.

  We both knew the story would hold up. The phone records would show the O’Toole call to me and mine to Johnny. The times of our separate arrivals would check out. And, if the Suffolk detectives bothered checking on my party yarn, they’d find a half-dozen New York City cops who’d testify that I had, in fact, approached them with that concept. Things were going just swimmingly considering I’d just found my second body in as many months. But such smooth sailing has never been in my stars.

  I recognized the belly even before its bearer was entirely through the front door. Detective Sergeant Mickelson shook a few hands, slapped a few backs and walked right up to me. He could see the consternation in my eyes. He liked that. I could see that in his.

  “Well, well, Mr. Klein,” he feigned surprise and shook my hand. “Palm’s a little sweaty for such a cold day.”

  “Finding bodies sort of unnerves me.”

  “Shit, Klein, I thought you’d be getting pretty used to it by now,” the fat detective needled. “If you were as good at finding crude oil as bodies, the fucking Arabs would go broke.”