Long Island Noir

by Kaylie Jones

  “Where’s the weapon?” he yelled. Nick said he didn’t have one, keeping his face on the trunk. “Bullshit, everybody in your town’s got some weapon. Never stopped one that didn’t.”

  From then on Nick would only answer direct questions. His knees could hardly hold his weight. His chest ached. He wanted to vomit.

  He was reminded of why he’d never tried to help his brother. The last time was in the sixth grade. Jeffrey was eight. It was the day after the Fourth of July, and Jeffrey had gone off with friends to collect fireworks that hadn’t exploded—either because they were duds, had bad fuses, or were dropped by someone in all the excitement. His friends kept beating him to the prize—grabbing the spare firecrackers, bottle rockets, and jumping jacks before Jeffrey could reach them.

  He came home crying, holding out three broken firecrackers in his palm while he rubbed his eyes and told Nick his friends weren’t being fair. One of them even tackled him to the ground, punched his ribs, and snatched the jump rope Jeffrey had found fair and square.

  Nick rode his bike down to the kid’s house and called him out, shaking his fists at the front window. But the kid stepped out with his three older brothers: thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen.

  Nick limped back home. His bike had been thrown over the fence into a sump. And the only thing Jeffrey could think to do was get mad that Nick hadn’t recaptured his jumping jacks for him, and storm into the house, slamming the door. He didn’t even stick around to hear Nick’s side of things.

  The front door of the car slammed, and the cop had opened the back door to continue his search. It took seconds for him to see the bat lying across the backseat and exclaim, “Ah, I thought so!” He showed Nick the bat with a satisfied smile.

  “I play baseball from time to time,” Nick said, which was a lie.

  “And what were you planning to do with this tonight?”

  “Nothing,” Nick said, which was the truth.

  “We’ve had three smash-and-grabs this month on Dune Road. Think I got the guy who did ’em?”

  “What’s a smash-and-grab?” Nick asked.

  The cop came around the car, grabbed Nick’s shoulder, and flipped him over so he was faceup. Then he waved the bat at him.

  “You’re in enough trouble as it is, you wanna be a fuckin’ wise-ass, I’ll jam this bat right down your throat. You’ve been smashing windows and stealing shit from cars.”

  “I have not!” Nick said.

  “Then why do you have this?”

  “I told you, I was heading over to that guy’s house. He’s got my brother.”

  “So you were gonna do something with it—a minute ago you play baseball, now you’re gonna use it on someone?”

  “I don’t know why I took the bat,” Nick said.

  “Just shut the fuck up before you make it worse on yourself. You got any drugs on you?”

  “What? No!”

  “I’m going into your pockets, if I stick myself on a needle you’re a dead piece of white, Mastic trash, you hear me? I’ll ask you once more.”

  “I don’t do drugs,” Nick said “I’m a sophomore in college.”

  But the cop said that meant nothing, and after the lie about the bat he didn’t believe a word he said. He had probable cause to search him. He recited his legal cover all while clutching at the outside of Nick’s pockets. Nick could see the cop’s breath pulsing into the cold night past his shoulder, as the cop rifled through his pockets. He came out with a few dollars and put them on the trunk. The wind blew them onto the street. Nick reached to catch them, which earned him another face-plant onto the trunk.

  “Are you seriously on something?” the cop asked. Nick thought it was rhetorical, until the man stepped back and told him to undress. Nick must have looked as if he’d never heard English before. The cop repeated it, and told him he needed to complete his search.

  “It’s January,” Nick said.

  “You wanna cooperate and get undressed here, or in jail? It makes no difference to me—I still get a paycheck.”

  Nick pulled his jacket off, slowly, while shaking his head. The cop told him to throw the jacket on the ground toward him. He did. The cop picked it up. Same with the shirt. Then the pants. He collected them all. His dirty sneakers, his socks. He told Nick he could pull his underwear down below his balls, turn slowly around, and then pull them back up. It was then that Nick first felt the cold—when a solid wind coming in from the bay slid through his underarms.

  “Good—sit on the trunk of your car.”

  Nick asked for his clothes back, but the cop was already making a retreat to his squad car, with Nick’s clothes held in a heap in front of him, like evidence. The cop asked Nick if he had a record, and Nick shook his head.

  “Bullshit. You wanna tell me now, get your clothes back, or you gonna make me look it up?”

  “Look it up!” Nick yelled. “I don’t have a record.”

  “We’ll see,” the cop said, and slid into his car with Nick’s clothes.

  Seated on the ice-cold trunk, Nick stared across the bay at the scattered lights that rose above the shoreline—like white holes punched into black paper. He could only hear the bay, leaping up with a spray to kiss the wind, while reeds sang softly between them, lined like Christmas carolers along the foot of the bridge.

  What about afterward? he thought, when he tried to imagine his brother. He hugged his arms, now leathered from the cold. If Jeffrey is rescued, will he ever be saved? Will he appreciate it? Alter, or change?

  He pulled his knees up—to fold the parts of his body not normally exposed into the parts that were. Get the back of his thighs elevated off the trunk. He thought to move to the hood, where it was likely still warm from the engine—but he stared into the cop’s windshield and thought better of it. Instead, he forced his mind away from the cold again, and thought of the ride out—the tree-lined boulevards, the loop through Main Street, and the theater marquee he’d driven past. The oldfashioned bulbs mounted beneath, pouring yellow pools onto the sidewalk. As if they’d blink and John F. Kennedy would suddenly be alive. Be superb again. Be hoisted on shoulders. Back before everyone had given up on the cure for death.

  As he’d passed the marquee he was reminded of his first movie. Being taken by his father to see Snow White. He was ten, and Jeffrey was six. Nick had begged to see the movie all week. They were between paychecks, so his parents decided to leave Jeffrey home with his mother. On his way out, Nick turned in the doorway and saw Jeffrey’s blank face peeking out from behind Mom’s legs. Nick started to cry and asked if Jeffrey could come, but they said it was the only way.

  Shivering now—his mouth stiffening at the jawline—Nick could only remember those few things. Jeffrey’s unmoved face staring quizzically back at him while he wept. His father finally “putting an end to this dinner theater” by shutting the door. And the dry taste of popcorn he barely ate.

  Even in the cold, through clenched eyes, he pictured Jeffrey’s face staring back at him. Blank as lions from the kill. Could there be an afterward, after that?

  In greater nightmares, Nick often fixed his mind on one solitary image. A cop coming up to his mother’s door. Wipers would nod across the windshield of his squad car. The only movement Nick would notice on the dull gray screen behind the officer. Are you Mrs. Mahler? he’d ask. Whatever the outcome. Dead or arrested. Nick had never allowed himself to imagine what would happen after.

  But those nightmares had stopped awhile ago. Nick wasn’t sure when. He figured the mind could only hold so much before it either stops dead or says: Do what you must. I can’t feel you anymore. But since he was only twenty, midway though his sophomore year at college, his mind didn’t stop, and so he did the latter. Jeffrey drifted in, and through him, around him. Left when Nick arrived, arrived when Nick left.

  Somehow the milk in the fridge needed replacing. The cereal was left out. A door slammed. Someone turned on the shower and a voice mumbled from it. That voice, which never asked a question. Shouted.
Sang. Needed something—a ride to the store for cigarettes, even. Nothing. Mumbles. The occasional hums from its room late at night, when the stuff hits the veins and the limp body leans back against the baseboard. Mmmm. Mwahhh. The numb sound of the voice breathing, as if through a straw.

  Somehow a door would be locked, and Nick’s mother would bang to be let in. She’d know, but not really know, what he was doing in there. She’d suspected often, but only caught him once. Jeffrey had found his old skates and his hockey stick one day, and rolled through the house laughing, out onto the porch, sloshed across the grass like wading through water, and moved into the street. Nearly hit by a car, he spun around. Slap-shot a rock as it passed. Ducked away from another car that honked. Then he skated off. Crashed into the mailbox and bounced the back of his head off the street. When his mother ran out to him, some blood had trickled from his ear.

  She was too nervous, sitting in the waiting room, to wonder about how they would pay the bill for his stupidity. That was Nick’s father’s job—staring up at the TV as if he were paying attention to the woman on Maury obsessed with knitting dog clothes. Her family crying and begging her to stop. He shook his head and stood up, muttering, “How the fuck does this happen?”

  It happens, so said the doctor, because acid makes it happen. They found it in his system. It was complicating his concussion. Nick’s mother wanted to see him. His father was pacing the floor, repeating stories of wrapping the bleeding heads of drunken sailors back from shore leave before they got shipped off to Vietnam. He hated the sight of bandages. He’d go in, he said, and make sure to only look at Jeffrey’s feet. But the doctors wouldn’t let either of them visit just yet. There were “hurdles,” they said.

  After that, Nick’s mother put Jeffrey in all sorts of therapy sessions, which made the ghost in Nick’s house seem like a ghost finding final peace. Drifting away. Only the stories of him began to fill the rooms. How long he’d been using. How poorly he fit in at school. And another piece of puzzling information that had somehow been tucked away from his parents all these years: he had a vastly above-average IQ. A “superior genius” rating, said one doctor—and he asked if they hadn’t noticed this. They hadn’t. Nick’s father had actually suspected the opposite. The doctor asked if they’d ever witnessed Jeffrey pick up a violin, or sit at the piano and start making sense of it, but they admitted that they never had instruments lying around the house. They weren’t really music people, Nick’s mother said, though that wasn’t really what she meant.

  “If you had instruments, you might have caught this. It’s generally where extraordinary intelligence plays itself out,” the doctor said. He shook their hands after the meeting.

  Nick could offer nothing to the investigation his parents launched after that—to get to the bottom of who knew about Jeffrey’s genius. The only thing Nick was able to contribute was an instance when they were in elementary school waiting at the bus stop, and fat Danny Yukely was challenging other kids to fight, and Jeffrey told Nick that Danny was the only person he would never fight because he had no “triangles.” He was only circles. When they boarded the bus, Nick asked him what he meant. Jeffrey—second grade and laughing all the time—went into an explanation of a system of his own making, that people are made of shapes, mostly triangles, and you can beat people who have a lot of triangles because triangles are clumsy. He could see when people had triangles and when people didn’t, and fat Danny Yukely didn’t. He was all circles. And circles could not be knocked over. No one’s ever seen an upside-down circle, have they?

  When Nick’s mother finished listening to this story she told Nick it sounded idiotic. Nick agreed. “Except,” Nick said, squinting, “I still remember that because it’s sort of true.”

  The car door slammed again. And the cop—all circles, Nick suspected—was carrying his heap of clothes in front of him. He stepped a little closer and threw them at Nick, who instantly snatched as much as he could from the air and started to dress. His jaw shook terribly.

  “All right,” the cop said. “Doesn’t look like you have a record.” Nick nodded. The cop noticed and added, “So I was right again.” Nick was too cold to question his logic.

  “My brother,” was all he could mutter, and the cop pulled the e-mail out from a pile of things he’d grabbed during the car search.

  “Your brother’s doing drugs?” He shook his head in disgust. “Younger or older?”

  “Younger,” Nick said.

  “So this is your fault. Okay, here’s what’s up. As far as I’m concerned he’s over on Dune Road, he’s the bay constables’ headache. If he’s still alive. I’ll radio his name to the constables. If he turns up, we’ll let you know. But you should know, I’m keeping this e-mail and he will be under arrest.”

  “What about Ed Schiffer?” Nick asked.

  “Don’t worry about him—I’m telling you about your brother—he’s out here, he’s using substances, if we find him, he’s ours. But you’ll be notified.”

  “He needs help,” Nick said, though he knew it wouldn’t matter. “He’s a prodigy—he’s supposed to do better things.”

  The cop asked him what a prodigy was.

  “A genius,” Nick said.

  The cop made a fart noise. “Some genius.”

  “Will he get help if we find him?”

  “Not up to me.” The cop was writing something. “And what do you mean we?”

  “Can’t I go look for him? On Dune Road?”

  “Are you drunk?” the cop asked. “Say the alphabet.” Nick said it. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. These are yours.” He handed Nick four tickets and his information. “You’re gonna get into your car and you’re gonna swing the front end around so it’s facing north, okay?” Nick nodded. “Then you’re gonna take this road all the way up to the roundabout, and you’re gonna take the left exit. Got it?” Nick nodded again. “That road leads straight into Mastic and Mastic Beach. Go there. Stay there. We’ll call you if we hear something.”

  Nick, realizing he’d been listening to false directions, shook his head and looked at the tickets.

  “You in college?” the cop asked. Nick nodded. “Get good grades?”

  “Dean’s list,” he said quietly.

  “Are you bragging or complaining?” the cop said with a slight smile.

  Nick laughed a little. He started to walk away. The cop called out to him. Nick stopped. The cop walked closer.

  “One of these days when you get a house out here, you’ll realize why we’re so by-the-book. This is the gateway to the stars; there’s a lot of money out here, and they don’t want just anybody drivin’ around. Sorry I had to be a hard-ass, but you understand, right?” He waited for an answer, but none came. “I mean, look at me, I come from the same town as you—I didn’t get it either, but these people, they’re real intense about riffraff coming into the village. People bringing fights and stealing shit—people like your brother, all due respect, you know?” The cop was again answered with silence. “No hard feelings,” he said, and turned to walk away. “I hope we find your little bro.”

  Minutes later, Nick was reaching the roundabout where he needed to yield, and noticed that the cop had followed him out. He locked stares with him in the rearview mirror, and the cop nodded to him just as the circle cleared. They parted ways.

  His body warmed as he blasted the heat and watched the slick surface of Twin Ponds glide by his passenger window— frozen under a foot of ice. Winter birds waddled with their young through paths cleared by skaters. Every star was visible. It made everything inside Nick seem immense. Earth, a place to be swallowed. Mastic Beach, a labyrinth. Guilt, anger, love—unavoidable. Life … long. Stars … mighty things to hide between. Waddling birds and their roost … sage in their simplicity.

  It stuck in his chest to think so, but just then he wanted Jeffrey to run. Run and hide, and disappear. Even if it meant he would never see him again. Jeffrey wasn’t part of the same world, Nick knew this now. He’d break spirits t
hat tried to ground him. Was bigger than all of them—Nick was mistaken to try and find him. For what, and who would he find? And do what? And how would he convince something that had sailed away so long ago to come back over the bridge? To his own destruction? The cop even told him so.

  He shook his head at how, just hours ago, he was praying to find him—a short while ago he breathed with relief that a cop might be able to help him. Now he couldn’t imagine a worse fate, and wasn’t that how the world he lived in really was? Always having to wait for a bad thing to happen so it makes way for something potentially good?

  He pulled into his driveway and idled there. The heat was still on. Light bled white and silver onto the frost-speckled lawn when his mother pulled the front door open. He watched her peer through the reflection of their glass door, shield her eyes, and press her face against the glass.

  She focused on Nick. The exhaust pulsed—spat clouds of mist around his car. Nick watched her and then looked over at the empty passenger’s seat where he knew his mother was hoping to see her other son. He looked at the seat and half smiled at Jeffrey. Not there, but never before so close.

  THY SHINY CAR IN THE NIGHT

  BY NICK MAMATAS

  Northport

  My father told me around the time I seriously started reading books as a teenager that he used to know Jack Kerouac. “When I was a young man, he was living right here in Northport,” he said. When we were next on Main Street, he pointed to Gunther’s Tap Room as we passed it and said, “Petey, Kerouac used to play pool in there all the time, and sometimes he’d hold court on whatever subject bubbled up in his writerly brain.” There were even a few photos of Kerouac in the window, and a sign reading KEROUAC DRANK HERE, which I’d never noticed before. I was a kid; I had eyes only for Lic’s Ice Cream, the Sweet Shop, and the little newsstand that carried comic books alongside Newsday and car magazines. But then I started noticing the other Northport, the one day-trippers don’t see.