Long Island Noir

by Kaylie Jones

  “The 8-1.”

  The cop’s ensuing grin was out of place. “I used to live not far from there. It’s cleaned up some, but back when I was around … hoo boy.”

  “Hoo boy, indeed,” said Pamela, smiling without mirth.

  “But you still can’t go in there.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The conversation was over, but Pamela stuck around and let her ears be her guide. From careful eavesdropping and casual exchanges with customers who’d been questioned and were leaving the premises, she learned the woman’s name: Esther Danzig. The name rang faintly in Pamela’s mind, but she couldn’t place why right away. And why had the woman wanted to talk with Pamela? More to the point, was the facial deformity—a bright red birthmark covering a third of her face—what Esther meant over the phone with respect to recognition, or did she know she was marked?

  Pamela could guess what had likely happened, though. The woman, Esther, was one of Morris’s financial victims. Trusted him with her money and lost it all, and when she found out, she confronted him. Pamela doubted she had been ready to confess to murder; but whatever it was she’d intended to confess worried the killer enough that she had to be shut up. Just like Lyssa. Just like Morris.

  The documents, the damn documents. Pamela felt oppressed by the milling around, the crime scene tape, the endless chatter. She had to double-check what she thought she saw and the only way was to get in her car, pull over, and spend quality time poring over figures that might give her the answers she needed.

  She made her way to the car, checking the backseat first. If someone was going around carjacking people, even if that theory didn’t hold water, she didn’t want to fall victim to stupidity. Satisfied she was well and truly alone, Pamela drove to another coffee shop down the way, checking her mirrors in true paranoid fashion and pulling into a spot in the very back of the shop.

  The coffee at this place was horrible, unlike the frou-frou stuff Dinero’s served, but it was requisite fuel while Pamela contended with Morris’s documents. As Iris said, there were the Grand Cayman accounts, registered in other people’s names: Morris, Esther, Lyssa, Stuart Cohn, Aline Cohn, Henri Durocher. All that money washed away, never to return to American soil.

  Pamela now knew what would come next. Lyssa hadn’t been carjacked, and neither had her car left the driveway. She hoped to hell that Marky would prove himself to be an excellent guard dog instead of the softy she knew he really was and loved him for.

  Pamela drove quickly but not so fast as to trigger a speed gun. She dialed Stephen on his cell phone and informed him she was close to a solution.

  “Are you sure?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Very sure,” said Pamela, “but you’re not going to like it.”

  Pamela parked her car across the street from the driveway, and when she emerged from the vehicle, kept her gun hand free. It was in her purse, but within easy reach. Darkness had come quickly in Great Neck, as it often did in March, right before spring. Normally this would be a disadvantage, but not for Pamela, who wanted to enhance the element of surprise. She crouched down and slithered through the grass up to the front door.

  As she expected, the door was open. What worried Pamela most was that Marky didn’t make a sound. Her heart began to plummet.

  Pamela pushed the door open, hoping like hell the oil she’d put on the door had worked and it wouldn’t squeak. No sound. Good. The front hall was still dark, as she’d left it, but it was quiet, too quiet. She moved to her purse, took out her gun—

  And Marky barked, loud and clear.

  Pamela hit the lights. Her dog stood on top of the prone body of a feeble-looking old man who had bite marks in his back; his right leg was splayed out at an unnatural angle. Marky wasn’t moving but boy was he barking with triumph!

  The man on the floor had the audacity to say, “Get that fucking dog off of me.”

  “I don’t think so, Henri. Who knows what you might do?”

  “My leg is broken! I can’t do anything!”

  “All the more reason to let other people deal with the matter. You broke into my house. If I search you, will I find the gun that killed Esther and Lyssa? And Morris?”

  Henri Durocher had the grace to stop talking. Instead, he howled in pain, and Marky barked louder.

  Pamela wanted to scoop up her dog and declare him a hero, but she had three things to do first: contact the police and report a burglary in progress, get an ambulance for the fallen rich man, and call Stephen.

  The ambulance had come and gone and the cops were securing the scene and peppering Pamela with questions when Stephen arrived. Pamela’s story made his face turn several shades paler, and his eyes misted over.

  “What a terrible shame,” he said.

  “I think Henri found out he wasn’t so rich after all and Morris was much richer than he ought to be.”

  “And really, no one had any money.” Stephen Pascal sighed. “But for Henri it would have been the worst blow of all.” Pamela could only nod as Stephen continued. “I think we all forgot that shul politics isn’t a shell game, but Morris in particular let this get away from him.” He looked at Pamela beseechingly.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stephen. But I’m not cut out to run the synagogue. Don’t fight the inevitable.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s inevitable. The average age of a congregant is sixty-nine. The youngsters are leaving, just like they always do, but it’s so much worse now. We have renovations we can’t afford and expenses mounting up. In Great Neck! The community was supposed to support us.”

  “There are a lot of things communities are supposed to support,” Pamela pointed out. “Libraries. Firehouses. Roads. And all of that’s falling away, turning decrepit. Look at Nassau County. They’re nearly broke again, twenty years after building themselves back from the brink. Do we ever learn?”

  “We may not,” said Stephen, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

  After he left, Pamela mulled over the vice president’s final statement. She knew she was making the right decision to leave the shul presidency before she even began, and yet this experience would leave a mark on her. Money trumped religion, and cooperation too often seemed an impossibility. Otherwise how could so many die because of one man’s single-minded, if strangely justifiable rage over losing his money?

  But then, what of Morris’s brother Stuart? He was in the same position, and he hadn’t acted so rashly, so murderously. Or Stephen, for that matter, who wanted to save the synagogue even though it was a futile exercise.

  There were no obvious answers, as Pamela had learned so many times before. But as long as this was a world where dogs could save lives, and love—for a person or for a construct— could rule all, Pamela wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

  Marky toddled up and stared at Pamela. “You can’t lick me!” she said in mock horror.

  Pamela read the dog’s look again when Marky wouldn’t go away. She reached down, scooped him up in a hug, and realized what to do. And as Marky ate his food in bliss and in near-oblivion over what had just happened, Pamela understood. We are who we are, she thought, and sometimes that’s more than enough.

  PART III

  LOVE AND OTHER HORRORS

  BOOB NOIR

  BY JULES FEIFFER

  Southampton

  SUMER LOVE

  BY JZ HOLDEN

  Sagaponack

  I was the managing editor of a new magazine. The introductory issue had been a great success. While I worked diligently to make it so, the aging publisher’s latest girlfriend, La Diva of the cocaine-induced blow job, who serviced him assiduously from beneath his desk each day during lunch, licked her lips sweetly and demanded my job.

  There was no contest. After receiving the news, and since we were at the start of a new season, I was left little choice but to meet with the editor of our rival publication.

  Michael Ashforth was a tall WASP in his fifties, balding ever so sligh
tly, his remaining hair graying silently. He wore a salt-and-pepper mustache reminiscent of the 1970s that he kept neatly trimmed. When he sat cross-legged, you could see that he had a bit of a paunch. He examined my resume like a doctor reading a chart while I sat across from him in an uncomfortable, cool-to-the-touch, middle-school wooden chair. He peered through the wire-framed pharmacy reading glasses that made him look like an intellectual while his elegant, tapered fingers gently fondled the sheets of paper resting on his knee. I quietly waited for him to finish, feeling demoded and pretending not to care. When he was done, we made small talk, discussed the weather, where and how long I’d lived in the Hamptons, and then the conversation took a more personal turn. Where had I grown up and was I married? I explained that New York City had been my home for most of my life. That I was divorced, and childless. As it turned out, we were the same age and we had both grown up in the city. Coincidentally, his uncle’s town house was on the same street as my childhood home.

  Since we appeared to be heading down that road, I asked about the photograph of the attractive young girl above his desk. With a note of pride in his voice, he announced that she was his daughter and the love of his life. He made no mention of a wife. I checked for a wedding band. None. No other photos, not even a smiling group shot complete with cats and dogs, posed on the front lawn.

  I reminded myself that I was there to pitch my stories. I offered each one as if it were a delectable, handmade chocolate morsel on a silver tray. Energetically, I presented every article I had planned for my own magazine for the season. He devoured them, saying yes to each and smiling greedily. He explained that I would be standing in for a writer who was on vacation for the summer. But there was something in his manner, something intangible, something electric, simmering beneath the surface.

  The deal made, we stood up to shake hands and say goodbye, when he gently brushed a loose strand of hair from my right eye. His phone calls and e-mails commenced the next day. After all, we had a professional relationship. I was the new writer, and had to be nurtured. Jokingly, I requested to be sent to The Hague to cover the war crimes trials of deposed despots. His response was, only if he could go with me. Assigned to cover a gallery opening, I asked whether he’d care to accompany me there. He politely declined. But by the time I returned from viewing the exhibition, eight phone messages were waiting in my voicemail.

  “Hi. I … er, was just thinking of you and thought I’d say hello.” Click.

  All my life I had successfully employed a policy to never fool around with the men I worked with, particularly if those men were married, and especially if those men were in positions of power. But this guy was making it difficult. A haze of ambiguity surrounded the risks involved in becoming lovers; the fact that doing so might cause me to lose my job which I desperately needed, versus my turning him down, which also might cause me to lose my job, added a certain relish to the mix. I was rushed off my feet by excitation and flattery; imagining what he stood to lose if we were caught.

  My last relationship had ended over a year ago, and I did not care for one-night stands. Instead I chose to spend time on creative projects or activities like dinner and movies with friends. The transition from magazine editor to freelance writer also left me with more time on my hands than I was accustomed to having. To my surprise, I discovered that I was lonely and hungry for attention. His constant calls not only gave my ego a buzz, they reawakened my sensuality, exposing in its wake a voracious hunger for sexual intimacy. The strength of his ardor made me realize just how parched I had become.

  There was no question, he was offering himself to me as a very willing drink of water, slightly toxic perhaps, but water nonetheless.

  The next morning at nine o’clock the phone rang.

  “Hi. I was wondering whether you’d be available for lunch today?”

  “Lunch?” I said. “Well, sort of short notice but okay, yes.”

  “I’ll swing by at twelve-thirty then.”

  I was still toweling off when I heard the screen door slam and a man’s voice downstairs shout, “Hi! I’m early!”

  Running into the bedroom, I dripped water across the floor. The clock read noon.

  “I’ll be down in a minute!” I responded.

  The clothes I’d planned to wear were laid out on the bed. Grabbing the loose-fitting linen shirt and pants, I ran a comb through my wet hair and walked down the stairs, almost breathless. He looked up, came over, took my face in his hands, and kissed me.

  “I’ve wanted to do that ever since we met,” he said.

  I found his behavior disarming. Moving away, I sat on the sofa.

  “I’m starving,” I said, “where shall we eat?”

  “You tell me.”

  Things were happening faster than I had expected and I needed time.

  “How about Yama-Q?” I suggested. “We can walk.”

  “First tell me about this painting,” he said, pointing to the art above the fireplace.

  I felt him stalling.

  “That’s my Great-aunt Sophie with the red hair, holding court at her nightclub in Berlin.”

  “You had an aunt who had a nightclub in Berlin?”

  “In the ’20s.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “No, but she survived the war, whereas most of my family did not.”

  “Who painted the picture?” he asked.

  “One of her many lovers, a Polish artist.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He became a scenic artist in Hollywood.”

  “I’m not worthy of you,” he said.

  “That’s not good.”

  “No, that’s not good.”

  We sat at a little table in the corner. He asked why I left my previous job. I explained about the under-the-desk, cocksucking, drug-using publisher’s girlfriend.

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes,” he said, and looked directly into my eyes.

  “You don’t act married.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “About the fact that you are married or about the fact that you don’t act married?”

  “The first.”

  “Depends …”

  He ate his sushi with chopsticks, slowly, meticulously, taking small breaks between pieces, placing his chopsticks on the side of the plate and tilting his head as if to indicate that he was listening.

  “We haven’t been together in a long time.”

  “Sexually?” I asked.

  “I no longer love her.”

  “Why do you stay?”

  “It’s complicated,” he answered, and washed down his last piece of pink tuna with some steaming green tea.

  I thought, He’s full of shit, but said nothing. Beneath the pretense I sensed need, warmth, and something else, sadness perhaps, something tragic. After lunch, we walked the halfmile to my house. It was a sunny June day, the buds on the trees had burst, all the leaves were fresh and bright. I invited him inside. We sat on the sofa and talked about the stories I would write and we kissed again, and hugged for a long time. He was gentle and his clothes smelled of laundry detergent. I felt a mixture of tenderness and sorrow.

  “Your experience of working with me will be the antithesis of what occurred at your previous job,” he said, “I promise.”

  I didn’t quite know what he meant by that remark, but feeling that it required a response, I said, “Okay.”

  The next morning we began working together. I agreed to produce two to three stories a week. We spoke on the phone every day. We e-mailed jokes to one another along with stray thoughts and poems. I acquiesced to lunch once a week. Before I knew it, it was July. The temperature was up in the nineties, even at night.

  Then he started stopping at a phone booth to call when he’d take the dog out for a walk.

  “Hey.” The greeting was always the same.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you wearing?” he’d ask.

  “A pale pink silk nightgown
.” It wouldn’t matter if I were wearing gray flannel men’s pajamas, he couldn’t see me.

  “Describe it,” he’d say, breathing heavily. And telling me that he adored me. That he wanted to make love to me.

  “Not like this. Not the first time.”

  One day he refused to stop. “I’d start at your toes and work my way up. I want to make love to you tomorrow. I’ll be there at one o’clock … I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  The sun rose over hundreds of parched and windless lawns in a season of cloudless skies. The fan had been pushing hot air around all night long and the oppressive lack of a breeze was crushing. We were entering the eighth day of a heat wave.

  My next door neighbors had spent the last two days screaming at one another, taking intermittent breaks to beat their five-year-old son. The child’s screams would sear the air, piercing my heart. I considered running across the street to save him, but believed his parents would have me arrested if I interfered. Eventually the slaps ceased, or I turned up the music sufficiently to mute the sounds of his cries, while praying for the breeze that would liberate the dark and heavy lethargy into which we had all descended.

  I pulled on a white Indian shirt that came to my knees and drove to Peter’s Pond Beach. I was a lone black sedan on a recently paved asphalt road. The windows and roof were open, the hot air a giant hair dryer against my skin. I parked at the end of a long, sandy street hidden between fragrant beach grass, nestled in a cornfield alive with stalks, motionless in their brackish inertia.

  Walking barefoot to the edge of the water, the ocean appeared flattened by the weight of the sun. I slipped out of my shirt and dove naked into the strangely peaceful surf, the blindingly sunlit water like a sheet of aluminum foil. The empty beach was my temple, the ocean my god. Only submerged could I forget myself. There was a bit of time before the others would arrive with their dogs. I remained immersed, floating, diving, skimming, until I heard a Rhodesian Ridgeback’s familiar yelp and knew my neighbors had arrived, and it was time for me to go home.

  After coffee and a shower, I slipped a silk chemise over my head and headed downstairs to the tune of tires grinding in the gravel driveway, followed by jaunty footsteps on the kitchen stairs. As I stood next to the fridge little beads of sweat formed behind my knees, and my heart started to beat faster when the door swung open. Michael was wearing unspeakable sunglasses. They were a cross between Goodfellas and Miami Vice, early drug deal gone bad, purple and mirrored, blue plastic wraparounds. He put his arms around me and we kissed. Then, without talking, he took my hand and led me up the stairs to my bedroom.