The Forty-Two

by Ed Kurtz

  “What…what happened? Did you kill him?”

  “Kill him? No, I didn’t frigging kill him. Smashed his head pretty good, though. He’ll still be out when the fuzz get to him.”

  “Oh God, Charley,” Eve moaned. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be. That guy’s toast, I promise. My boss has got the cops on the way. In fact, they’re probably there already. I don’t who the hell the guy was, but I’ll put a call in to Walker later on and hopefully he’ll give me the skinny…”

  “That’s not it, though. I think I’m being followed.”

  “Followed? This same guy?”

  “I don’t know,” Eve said falteringly. “Maybe…”

  “Fat, greasy bastard with eyebrows like giant caterpillars?”

  “No, nothing like that. This is a weasely cat, thin as all hell with a long face and hair down to his shoulders. Ugly son of a bitch. I’ve caught him five or six times ducking into an alley or trying to mix with a crowd, but he’s watching me. I’m sure of it. Oh, Charley, do you think he’s going to hurt me? Is this all connected to…” She choked on a sob. “…to poor Lizzie?”

  “I can’t say for certain but I’d put a bet on it, darling.”

  Eve started to cry in earnest. He sighed with exasperation.

  “Okay, just stay where you are and don’t open your door for anybody but me. I’m coming to get you.”

  “All right, baby,” she moaned pitifully. “But where are we going to go?”

  “Tottenville.”

  Everyone around the kitchen table sat in front of a steaming cup of coffee. Andy offered to Irish them up a little, but neither Charley nor Eve were much in the mood for alcohol. That did not stop Andy from cutting his Taster’s Choice with Yellow Label, however, and when he had drained his cup halfway he just filled it back up with rye.

  Eve looked shaken, but the coffee seemed to do her good. Charley watched her with evident concern in his eyes. The woman across the table from him was somebody he wanted to protect, someone he wanted to take care of. He was doing his damnedest not to smile at the thought of it. Not when there were armed gunmen taking shots at least one of them.

  He said, “I guess I’ve got a confession to make.”

  Andy made an O with his mouth and silently absconded with just the bottle. Eve kept her eyes on Charley and her eyebrows raised. He exhaled noisily.

  “I know about the films your sister made. I took one out of your closet and I watched it, here at Andy’s.”

  Eve’s face sank into a waxen mask of humiliation.

  “Oh Christ,” she whispered.

  “I…I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, I swear to God I wasn’t. I just happened across it and it said ‘Liz’ on it and, well anyway, I think it’s got to have something to do with what happened to her. And what’s happening to us.”

  “You have no right!” Eve screamed suddenly. Charley turned white.

  “I know that, Eve…”

  “No right, goddamn you!”

  “I know.”

  “Fuck you, Charley!”

  Her fury sputtered through the sobs that were rapidly gathering in her throat. Charley gazed into his coffee and swallowed hard.

  “Fuck you,” she repeated. “Go to hell.”

  “Okay, Eve. Okay.”

  “I never wanted anybody to see those filthy goddamn things again,” she said through the hands that were covering her face. “I almost killed myself finding them all. Fucking hell, there were so many.”

  “I know,” he said. “Ninety-six, by my count.”

  “There’s more than that. I’ve got most of them, I think, but there’s more. I’ll never find all of them. God, my poor Lizzie.”

  “Do you know why she did it? Drugs?”

  “I don’t—no, it’s not that. I mean, sure, Lizzie got high. Everybody gets high sometimes, right?”

  Charley shrugged. He didn’t. But he did not want to contradict her now.

  “I never understood it. I didn’t even know about it until it was too late. She didn’t tell me shit, though. I got stopped by some creep on the subway, thought I was Lizzie. People always said we could have been twins.”

  “I believe it.”

  “This dickhead grabs my ass and starts howling like a dog, thrusting his crotch at me and everything. I’m thinking he’s lost his marbles, and then I realize he thinks I’m her. He says, ‘Come on, bitch, give papa a kiss,’ or something awful like that.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, fucking asshole, right? Well, I don’t say anything to Lizzie about it. I’m not going to lay this heavy trip on her when I don’t got all the facts, am I? Like an idiot, I just wait it out. Then, I guess a week ago last Wednesday, I find these pictures in her room. At her place, I mean. The most disgusting thing you ever saw, Charley. I mean that. Animal stuff and fat, hairy pieces of shit slapping her around, pissing on her. I found some of the first loops later on. They’re worse. One of them, this asshole puts a cigarette out on her…”

  Eve stopped herself and sniffled loudly. Charley reached out and put his hand on hers. She did not take hers away, just like Elizabeth didn’t that night in the Harris. He shivered.

  He said, “You don’t have to keep talking if you don’t want to.”

  She gulped and stifled a moan.

  “I want to, baby. I want to.”

  “Okay.”

  “On Thursday, Thursday before last I mean, I finally got the guts to talk to her about it. I called her from home, but she said she couldn’t get away just then. Said she was working. On what I don’t want to think about. So I said could she meet me at work, then, at the Connection on Forty-Two? Yeah, she says. She’ll be there.”

  Charley’s heart began pumping harder, faster. Thursday before last. The night Elizabeth was killed.

  “She came to meet you, then?”

  “Yeah,” Eve said. “She came. I told her what I knew, which wasn’t much except for the photos. Lizzie, she got real upset and the next thing we’re in the middle of a screaming match, and my manager tells me either she splits or I’m shit-canned. That was the last time…”

  She did not finish, but Charley understood. Elizabeth left Love Connection and somebody trailed her down Forty-Two until she ducked into the Harris and spotted Charley. The rest registered in his own memory. Eve was weeping hard now, her back and shoulders heaving with each wracking sob. Charley felt his own eyes dampen, and he looked away, blinking rapidly to stave off the tears. He wished badly that something would happen to break up the sobbing fest, and Andy obliged.

  “So,” he cooed with exaggerated femininity as he minced into the room. “Charley tells me you kids met when he was stalking you?”

  He flashed a toothy walrus grin at them, and Eve managed a tight smile. Wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her low-cut blouse, she narrowed her eyes at Andy.

  “Have you got any lighter fluid?”

  “There’s some gas for the generator in the shed out back. Why do you ask, darling?”

  Eve turned to face Charley, her expression stern and serious.

  “I’m going to burn those goddamn films,” she said.

  It was a quiet and somber ceremony. The three of them stood in the Colonial’s backyard in a triangular formation, their fingers laced over their midsections. The small blaze between them threw jumping yellow light on their faces. Pretty soon all that was left of the box and its contents were the little metal canisters, twelve in all. Everything else—the eight-millimeter loops and the shoebox itself—were reduced to smoldering black ashes. Charley felt relieved now that he would never have the opportunity to view them. Eve looked relieved that no one would. Never again.

  “When this all blows over I’ll get the rest of them from your place,” Charley told her. “Then we’ll burn those, too.”

  She nodded sullenly. Charley took a hesitant step toward her and she collapsed against him, her arms squeezing him tight. Andy gave them a sad smile and went back inside.

 
By midnight everyone in the house was stone drunk. Charley went to bed with Eve after that and there was some awkward fumbling under the sheets, but before it could develop into anything more they both conked out. The window in the upstairs bedroom Andy gave them was cracked just enough to let in some cold, fresh air from outside. The combination of chirping crickets and the almost imperceptible gurgling of the nearby tidal strait served as an ongoing lullaby for the snoring lovers, a welcome contradiction to the undying Babel of the city across the bay.

  All of that went to hell at half past three in the morning.

  It was the smash and tinkle of the shattering window that jarred Charley awake, but it took his vocal reaction to the event to stir Eve.

  “Shit!” he shouted as the flames spread out from the busted wine bottle by the foot of the bed. Somebody had fashioned a Molotov cocktail and had a pretty good pitcher’s arm. Barring the theory that Tom Seaver was outside the house and trying to kill them, Charley had a pretty good idea what was going down.

  “They found us,” he croaked.

  He dragged Eve out of the bed and tackled the flames with the quilt on top, hoping it was not a precious family heirloom. By the time he got the minor blaze under control someone was kicking in the front door downstairs. Eve screamed.

  Charley rasped, “Andy!”

  He seized Eve by the arm and rushed out of the room and onto the landing atop the steps. Andy’s master bedroom was on the other side of the stretch, but Charley could not see any lights on in there. Then a pistol cracked and a bullet sang close to his ear like a noisome insect. It struck the wall behind them, tearing through the floral wallpaper and splintering the wood underneath. Charley swooned.

  “Two of em,” Eve gasped.

  Charley squinted in the darkness, scanning the first floor through the posts in the banister. She was right; two thick forms skulked in the shadows. His eyes were only gradually getting accustomed to the dark, but he could make out the shape of an extended arm with a gun at the end of it.

  “Down!”

  He pulled Eve down to the floor as a second report cracked. One of the posts in the banister exploded in a fresh shower of sawdust and splinters. Charley’s ears were ringing from the close quartered shots, but he still heard the heavy, thumping footsteps ascending the stairs. He was thoroughly terrified, shaking all over, but he did not freeze up. Instead he scooped Eve up in his arms and scrabbled backward down the landing. He did not have a plan quite yet, though he was seriously considering tossing Eve out of the bedroom window and then jumping out after her. In the span of two seconds, however, his plan was rendered moot.

  Andy came screaming out of the blackness of his bedroom, the jerry-rigged broomstick boom mike in his hands like a spear. The two gunmen spun around, startled, and they both took aim. Eve gasped as Andy surged for them, extended the boom ahead of him until it jammed into the first man’s gut. Andy gave a wild war whoop as he kept barreling forward, driving the mike harder into the large man’s substantial belly. The gunman tumbled back and fell against his partner. The second man threw his arm up and squeezed off a shot that whizzed past Andy and into the door behind him. Andy did not notice, or at least he was too keyed up to care, because he drew his makeshift weapon back and then gave it one more sharp thrust, effectively knocking both gunmen over and sending them rolling down the stairs. There was another shot and one of the intruders cried out—he’d been nicked by his own partner.

  “Yeah, you bastards!” Andy hollered in triumph.

  Charley squeezed Eve’s shoulder. “Stay here,” he said. He ran across the landing and down the stairs.

  On closer inspection he recognized the burly man at the foot of the steps. He was curled up in a fetal position, holding fast to his left leg and moaning in anguish. The opaque light that filtered through the sheer window dressings from the streetlamp outside reflected off the shiny blue polyester of his greasy suit. It was the guy who tried to kill Charley in the New Rose Hotel. Charley frowned. Then he delivered a sharp kick to the small of the guy’s back. He groaned loudly.

  Andy was tramping down the stairs when the grip of the other man’s gun came down hard on Charley’s neck. Charley grunted and dropped to his knees as the man jammed the barrel of the gun against the back of his head.

  “Goddamnit,” Charley snarled.

  The guy chuckled nastily.

  “Take it like a man, now,” he muttered in a syrupy Jersey accent.

  Charley squeezed his eyes shut and waited for it. He guessed it was probably another small caliber junk gun like the one his buddy had, but being so close it would penetrate his skull easily and then ricochet around until his brains were mush. There would be pain for two, maybe three seconds tops. Then nothing. Small comfort.

  There was a click, and for a moment Charley thought it was the last thing he was ever going to hear. But then he heard the guy shout out and when Charley opened his eyes he saw Andy looming over him, having just swatted the jammed pistol out of the gunman’s hand. Good old Andy. Charley leapt up and took a swing at the unarmed man, making contact with his collarbone. He felt it buckle a little, but so did a couple of his own knuckles. Both men wailed.

  “Get the gun,” Charley said.

  Andy reached for it, but the wounded gunman surprised him with a punch to the ribs. The punch knocked the air out of Andy’s lungs, giving the attacker the upper hand. He climbed on top of Andy and commenced a rapid series of blows all over Andy’s face and neck and shoulders. There was an animal intensity to it, an enraged primate attack that scared Charley. Even the other gunman looked stunned. Charley shook it off and lunged for the guy on top of Andy, but the other man seized him by the shoulders and pulled him back. Charley struggled to free himself from the gunman’s grip, shifting violently from side to side, but it was to no avail. Instead the man just tightened his grasp on Charley, digging his bony fingers into his shoulders like huge, blunt knitting needles. The pain was dull and hot. Charley ground his teeth and growled, forced to do nothing but watch his friend get beaten to death by the hulking beast that was straddling him. They were all turning into animals.

  The melee was interrupted by a sharp report, a quick burst of gunfire that made Charley jump and his attacker loosen his grip. The guy on Andy stopped hitting him right away. He just sat that for a moment, swayed a little, and then slumped over. After that he did not move at all. Neither did Andy.

  Charley took advantage of the moment’s shock and dug an elbow hard into the other gunman’s stomach. The guy howled and let go of Charley’s shoulders. Charley then spun around and cracked him in the jaw with his broken knuckles. He went down and Charley yowled. Cradling his maimed fist with his good hand, he rushed over to Andy and kicked the oily guy off of him. The erstwhile attacker had a dark red, dime-sized hole in the ridge of his brow, just above his left eye. He was dead, and Eve stood on the stairs with the gun in her hand. Her eyes were like saucers and she was trembling all over.

  Resolving to check on her in a moment, Charley gently lifted Andy’s head. He was still breathing, if shallowly. His eyelids fluttered for a moment and then closed again. He tried to say something, but his mouth was full of blood and his jaw had been smashed to pulp. While Charley cradled Andy’s mangled head, the surviving intruder scrambled to his feet and made tracks out the door.

  Tears spilled down Charley’s face as he cried out to Eve, “Call a damn ambulance, will you?” Then he bolted out of the house after the gunman.

  He did not see him, not at first, but Charley could hear the guy’s pounding steps on the pavement. He was running down Main, toward the marshland that separated the dead end of the street from the strait beyond. Charley gave chase, and in a moment he was up to his stomach in tall, damp grass and sour smelling cattails. The wet earth beneath splashed and squished with each successive step he took, sucking at his shoes and trying to pull him down. The streetlamps long behind him now, the only light Charley could see came from the Jersey shore across the Arthur Kill, but th
at was hardly bright enough to light his way. Instead he stopped for a moment and listened as carefully as he could. The frigid breeze coming off the straight stung against his damp legs and sweaty neck. He shivered, listening to the anticipated noises of the breeze moving through the tall cord grass and the singing insects and the lazy motion of the cold tidal water. But nothing suggested human activity to his ears.

  Charley sighed heavily, defeated. He sloshed a little further into the marsh, stopping just short of a rusted out Plymouth that was filled to overflowing with trash. It was no use; he’d lost the bastard and besides, Andy needed him. He turned to wade back to the street when a heavy blow landed on his neck. Charley cried out and crumpled into the swampy rushes.

  “Stupid,” the gunman said. It came out as stoopeed.

  He bent over and roughly grabbed Charley by the front of his shirt. Then he threw him up against the wrecked Plymouth. Oxidized metal groaned as the car rocked behind Charley. Crushed beer cans and moldy take-out boxes spilled out of the broken windows. Charley lunged at the guy, but he was met by a solid punch in the gut that sent him right back to where he started. The gunman chortled through tight lips.

  “I kill you,” he shouted. To Charley he sounded just like Khrushchev banging his shoe on the delegate desk. He screwed up his face, wondering if he was about to be murdered by some covert KGB agent.

  The gunman delivered another quick blow to his midsection, and while he was doubled over the guy went for the gun in his waistband. He watched as the man drew the little pistol and pointed it at him, but then he squeezed his eyes shut. A weak whimper escaped his mouth, much to his chagrin. He was terrified, but also disappointed. He was never going to know why he got killed in the marshes of the city’s southernmost point.

  The bang was thunderous, more like an explosion than a gunshot. Charley tightened his mouth and braced himself for the pain that would precede his death. Seconds passed but the agony never came. For a brief moment, he could not help but question if he was already dead. When the gunman screeched a string of incomprehensible foreign words, however, Charley popped his eyes back open and saw the guy grasping his right wrist. He was gaping at the mangled mass of twisted, bloody meat and bone that was dangling where a hand used to be. The lousy little Saturday night special the bastard was going to kill Charley with had blown up in his hand.