The Graving Dock

by Gabriel Cohen

  Jack had always sworn he would never end up like that.

  He glanced at the other people huddled around the bar and—as if his own suffering had lifted a veil—he noticed the pain and loneliness in their faces.

  Midway through his fourth beer, he started thinking about the night he had been shot. He pictured the other man who had lain dying on the basement floor with a bullet-torn mouth. This was the sort of thing he was supposed to come upon later, when he’d arrive with a group of fellow detectives and Crime Scene guys and everything was quiet and safe. Somebody would make a gruesome joke about the victim—“This guy must’ve drank like a fish”—and they’d all chuckle and be very calm and clinical about the whole thing. And he wouldn’t have to think about how much pain that man must have been in before he died.

  A woman took the stool next to him and leaned into the smoky yellow light. She was middle-aged. At first glance she seemed out of place in her businesswoman’s suit. Jack glanced again. She was pretty attractive, but a touch the worse for wear. Her silk blouse was unbuttoned enough to reveal the edge of a satiny black bra. And deep, freckled cleavage. She reminded him of some star of the seventies, Joan Collins maybe, or that one who got famous for the scene where she went swimming in a T-shirt…

  She ordered a gin-and-tonic. From her purse she removed a pack of cigarettes, tapped the end, and set it neatly along the bar’s scarred edge. There was a precision to the gesture that spoke of many nights in many bars.

  She turned to Jack. “Do you have a light?” Husky voice.

  One look in her eyes and he could see that she wasn’t so out of place after all. They said There’s something broken deep inside me, but I could fuck you all night long.

  He thought of Michelle again, and got angry at himself. Michelle was with someone else. Her choice. He didn’t have to take her goddamn feelings into account anymore. Besides, wasn’t it better not to depend on anyone?

  The woman was waiting for an answer. He supposed he should say something smooth, something witty, but he’d never had the knack. He reached down the bar and scooped up a book of matches. She touched his hand as he lit her cigarette and it occurred to him that he might not have to say much at all.

  “My name’s Natalie,” she said, her speech slightly slurred. Evidently Tony B’s had not been her first stop this evening.

  “Jack.”

  She held up her pack of smokes. “Would you like one?”

  He hesitated. He imagined the nicotine reaching out to him, swelling into his lungs. He shook his head.

  The woman took a deep drag of her cigarette. “So, Jack, what do you do?”

  “I’m a detective. NYPD.”

  She sipped her gin. Smoothed her lipstick with a long-nailed finger. “That sounds like fun.”

  Some women had a thing for cops.

  A Johnny Mathis song came on, “Chances Are.” It was that kind of juke. Barry White was probably next.

  They shot the breeze. She worked in a real estate office in the Heights—she gave him her business card, in case he was ever “looking.” (Looking for what, she didn’t say.) He bought her another drink. She drank it. Then she stood up and rested her hand on his for a pulse-quickening second. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.”

  He remembered a sign over the bathroom door: ONLY ONE PERSON AT A TIME. Natalie made him think about why the sign was needed. He thought about unbuttoning that blouse all the way, watching sweat run down between those heavy freckled breasts…A guy next to him laughed loudly, turned, and spilled his drink—some of it splashed on Jack’s hand. He jumped up. All of a sudden, he wanted to punch somebody.

  The man raised his hands. “Sorry, buddy. No problem, okay?”

  “I’ll tell you if there’s a problem,” Jack muttered. But he sat down, breathing heavily. He could feel the adrenaline cycling through his system like a red, live thing. How many times had he seen the aftermath of a moment like this? Too much booze, an unintended slight, a concealed weapon no longer concealed. A star-flash; a body splayed on a grubby floor. He gulped down the last half of his beer.

  His father would have thrown the punch. He thought of the Old Man’s rages, the way he’d come trudging back from the bars, seemingly calm, only to flare up like a gas-soaked rag at the slightest provocation. A piece of undercooked chicken on the dinner table. A giggle from Jack or his brother Petey. The anger had always seemed incomprehensible, but Jack understood it better tonight. It wasn’t one little match that caused the fire—it was the heat of many matches, building…

  Natalie came back from the ladies room. He could have sworn that she had undone another button on her blouse.

  He threw some cash on the bar, stood up, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t we go somewhere?”

  CHAPTER thirty-nine

  MICHELLE WILBER TURNED THE TV down so as not to wake Steve McCleod, who had retired to his bedroom early. (He liked to get up at five A.M. so he could visit the gym before work. She liked the results on his lean body, but didn’t enjoy waking in an empty bed.) She sat there on his expensive leather couch, and dug down into the bowl she held on her lap, seeking the last few little clouds of popcorn buried amidst the hard, unpopped kernels.

  She licked her fingertips, savoring the last taste of butter and salt. Steve’s living room was dark, except for the big flat-screen TV over by the wet bar. (A true bachelor pad.) The airwaves tonight seemed dominated by so-called reality shows: people forcing themselves to eat disgusting things; people racing through airports and across foreign landscapes; housefuls of fake-titted bimbos and male models and second-string celebrities loudly failing to get along. Michelle’s attention wandered.

  She looked around the room, noticing piles of things in the dim blue light: clothes, junk mail, rental videotapes, CDs. Steve was certainly not a neat freak like one Jack Leightner. She winced at the thought, and then glanced toward the hallway that led toward Steve’s room. In a little while she’d head back there, slip into his bed. “Six-hundred-thread-count,” he’d told her proudly about his bed sheets, an observation that was a little too metrosexual for her taste. There was nothing wimpy about him in bed, though. Maybe, when she came in now, he would wake up bearing the hardness he seemed perpetually graced with. Younger men. Maybe it was just the first flush of romance, though; maybe—if this kept going—things would slow down and get that usual relationshippy over-familiarity in the bedroom, like she’d started to feel with Jack.

  There he was, intruding into her thoughts again. He’d been no sexual gymnast most of the time, but she had felt more comfortable with him, never self-conscious about her thighs or her un-plastic-surgeried breasts…She frowned; just the other night she’d gone out for dinner with Eileen Leonard, a friend from work, and Eileen had warned her about getting moony about the past. Eileen had walked out on her own mate the year before, and now all she talked about was how great it was to have her freedom, to be away from that unsupportive, boring lump. They were sitting in a Thai restaurant—unlike someone else, Eileen knew her way around the menu—and she had caught Michelle glancing at her cell phone. “No,” she’d said, as if reading Michelle’s thoughts. “Don’t even think about it. What’s the point? If you call him, he’ll just be angry and mean, or he’ll make you feel guilty, and the next thing you know you’ll go running back. Listen—you made the break; you did what you had to do. Don’t engage with him. Just let it go. He was never going to have a kid with you. Trust me. Cops. My sister was married to one and I know all about it.” She rolled her eyes. “All they want is to go out drinking after work and be all secretive about their little cowboy-and-Indian games.” Eileen’s face gleamed in the restaurant’s candlelight, fervent as if she were preaching. The thing was, sometimes it seemed as if she were really trying to convince herself. For all her vaunted “freedom,” she hadn’t actually seemed all that blissful the past year. Maybe there was something faulty with the notion that you could just leave all your unhappiness behind…

  Mich
elle clicked off the TV and sat in the dark. As the night grew colder, Steve’s radiators began to hiss; the apartment was dry and stuffy, pulling the moisture from her lips. Eileen had been right: She had escaped a trap. Jack would never have agreed to have kids. And now she didn’t have to worry about growing old with an older man, someone so set in his ways, who never wanted to go out dancing, or do anything spontaneous. But he had been kind. And—when Jack wasn’t totally absorbed by some difficult case—he had been more aware of her somehow than Steve McCleod, he of the six-pack abs and youthful libido…

  She wondered if Jack and his colleagues might figure that she had really bailed out due to simple cowardice—to fears about becoming a cop’s wife. (Especially, the wife of a cop who seemed prone to getting shot, dunked, etc.) She wished she could explain: That wasn’t it at all. The fact was, it would have been all too easy for her to slip into that familiar role, the supportive wife. And it wasn’t about Steve McCleod; not really. No, the reason she couldn’t talk to Jack was that she simply didn’t know what to say. There was no single obvious reason why she had done what she’d done. Things just hadn’t felt right. Life was messy sometimes; you couldn’t always put everything into words.

  She pushed herself back into the sofa cushions and hugged herself, picturing Jack’s stunned face in the restaurant, the last she’d seen of him. Her own face contorted, thinking of it now.

  No. She had done the right thing, the only thing she could do. She was sure of it. Ninety-nine percent sure.

  Ninety percent…

  CHAPTER forty

  JACK DROVE. A FEW blocks from the bar, he stopped for a red light on Henry Street, dense trees obscuring the streetlights above, nobody else around except a late-night dog walker disappearing down a block of elegant Cobble Hill brownstones. Casually, Natalie rested her hand on his thigh. There was nothing coy about it: They knew where they were going and what would happen when they got there. Jack glanced up: The light was still red. He glanced over: Natalie’s half-open shirt gave him a view of her firm breasts.

  A memory: his second date with Michelle. They were sitting on a picnic bench in his backyard, after lots of food and wine, and she leaned back against him. He inhaled her soft scent, slid his hands over her blouse…

  Natalie shifted in the car seat, opening her legs; she wore dark, silky stockings. Her nipples pressed against her blouse like ripe berries. Jack was flooded with brilliant desire—it pushed everything else out of his mind, all his memories, all his worries. This was what he wanted: to be right here, right now, drowning in something sweet. To hell with Michelle; maybe she didn’t want him, but this woman did. The light on the dashboard shifted and he looked up: green. Natalie kicked off her shoes, leaned back, legs open wide, one of her hands busy down below. He had to work hard to keep his eyes on the road.

  Two minutes later, the woman directed him into the parking lot of what looked like an old factory. Judging by the careful renovation job and the expensive cars in the lot, he guessed that it had gone coop. Natalie stepped out of the car in her stocking feet, carrying her high-heeled shoes with two fingers. Before he got out, Jack took off his pager and threw it, along with his cell phone, into the glove compartment. To hell with it: He was off duty and tonight he didn’t want to be bothered.

  There was a bright chrome elevator inside. Even before the door closed, Natalie pressed up against him and stuck her tongue in his mouth. She tasted gritty of cigarettes and booze, but he was too worked up to care. He reached down, lifted her skirt, grabbed her silky ass, pulled her close.

  “How about a little nightcap?” she said as soon as they got inside her apartment.

  Jack nodded. He needed the drink. She probably didn’t, but that was her business. He watched her zigzag over to a glass sideboard covered with bottles.

  He sat down on a big expensive-looking sofa in the middle of her big loft living room, but then he got up and walked over to the picture window that dominated the back wall. Three stories down, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway channeled through south Brooklyn, separating this fancy brownstone neighborhood from working-class Red Hook; the highway was a river of streaming lights. The Seven-six house was just a few blocks away, with all of those detectives scrambling around their desks. Even closer was the hospital, where Maureen Duffy was probably in the middle of a shift. Farther west, over the dark rooftops, he could see New York Harbor, with the tiny lights of Jersey shimmering on the far shore. The apartment probably cost a fortune, but then he remembered that this woman was in real estate: She must have held on to a sweet deal. It was twice the size of his own apartment but it reminded him of the way his place had looked before Michelle came into his life: neat and sparse. The brick walls were almost bare and there was little furniture, as if the woman had just ordered the basics from a catalog and then called it a day. It was a workaholic’s crash pad, not a home. A framed photo stood on a side table next to the couch; he bent down for a look. A smiling young man in a black graduation gown. Did Natalie have a son, too?

  “Here we go,” she said, coming at him across the white shag carpet. She leaned down to square a coaster against the edge of the glass coffee table. As she set down his drink, her freckled breasts almost spilled out of her top.

  Another memory: how gentle Michelle had been with him that first time when he had just gotten out of the hospital…

  Natalie planted her hands on his knees, leaned in closer and gave him a big sloppy kiss. She stood, unsteady on her feet, and went over to a stereo in the corner. Put on an old Motown record. The Supremes: “Where Did Our Love Go?”

  “Come on,” she said, coming back and grabbing his hands. “Let’s dance.”

  He resisted, thinking of Michelle again. He scowled at himself. He could do any damned thing he pleased, and who was Michelle to say boo?

  “Come on,” Natalie said, pouting in a way that was supposed to be cute.

  He let her tug him to his feet and he halfheartedly pulled out some old ballroom moves. As soon as the song ended, he sat down and picked up his drink. Natalie scooted in next to him. Her skirt was half open. She hoisted her gin-and-tonic and drained half of it.

  She leaned over to kiss him again, and then she nuzzled his neck. Her hand slipped down between his legs.

  All he could think about was Michelle. What the hell was he doing? Did he believe that this woman could be a substitute for her, that any other body would do?

  “What’s the matter?” Natalie said. “Are you married or something?”

  “No. It’s just…I’m kind of tired.”

  She was clearly let down, but did her best to cover it up. She didn’t look so wild anymore, just tired and lonely, hoping for a little human contact at the end of the day.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said, and he meant it. He leaned back into the soft cushions and closed his eyes. He heard ice cubes clinking in her drink. He wanted to get up and head out, but didn’t know how to make a graceful exit. He kept his eyes shut, embarrassed to find himself playing possum.

  “Thanks a lot, tiger,” he heard Natalie mutter. Her breathing grew slow.

  Jack lay there in her apartment, still feeling the terrible weight of Michelle’s disappearance in his chest, strong as ever despite the alcohol, despite this stranger’s desire. For some reason, he thought of the little nun at the Tibetan center, of the way she had kept calm even after hearing of her friend’s sudden death. Was it just some callous malarkey, or did she actually know something about how to deal with pain?

  A minute later, Natalie began to snore.

  CHAPTER forty-one

  “DON’T TAKE YOUR COAT off,” was the first thing Gary Daskivitch said when Jack walked into the Seven-six squad room early the next morning.

  “Why not?” he asked, glancing toward the coffee maker in the far corner.

  Daskivitch frowned like a bear whose porridge had just been eaten. “It’s our G.I. head case—he struck again. I tried calling you last night, and I paged you twice.”

  J
ack felt a jolt of adrenaline, and then he winced as he thought of his pager buzzing away in the glove compartment of his car.

  UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE.

  He shook his head, then shook it some more. Half a block—that’s how close he had come to the hideout of Robert Dietrich Sperry, just the night before. Life was so weird sometimes. If he had known, he might have prevented the latest attack. He might have caught the G.I. killer.

  If.

  The narrow, lopsided old row house was just down the street from Tony B’s. The latest victim, one of the tenants, had the great good fortune to still be upright and breathing. Jack badged the uniforms who had cordoned off the front of the house, and then he and Daskivitch went inside to interview Jerome Konetz.

  The first thing Jack noticed was a red smudge on the old man’s forehead. Konetz had a belly the shape of a beach ball, with an ancient plaid wool shirt stretched over it. He also wore a pair of grubby khaki pants and some battered leather slippers. He squinted at the bright winter light like a nocturnal animal peeping out of its burrow. Jack sensed that he didn’t get visitors very often. He seemed cheerful, though, you had to give him that, despite the blood-stained compress bandaged to the side of his head.

  Jack rubbed his hands together as he stood in the tiny vestibule. He had been hoping for some heat inside, but was disappointed. He frowned at Konetz. “Are you sure you should be up and about?”

  The old man shrugged. “I took worse than this in WW Two. And I’m not stayin’ in no hospital. I could buy a car for what it costs for one day in there.”

  You could afford some heat, too, Jack thought, but he kept the observation to himself.

  Daskivitch stepped forward, his bulk taking up most of the entryway. “Would you feel up to showing us where the attack took place?”

  “It’s back this way.” Konetz led them down a poorly lit hallway, his slippers scuffing on the cracked linoleum floor. From a side table he picked up a black metal flashlight the size of his forearm. “Watch your step,” he said. “I don’t wanna get sued, especially by the goddamned City.”