Long Island Noir

by Kaylie Jones

  “Atta girl,” he said, laughing against the tickling sensation. “Atta girl.”

  The schnauzer settled into his lap. And Bob Foote settled back for the show.

  When he retired, six months earlier, he’d canceled garbage collection and began dumping the trash himself. He gathered it into large lawn-leaf bags and flung it into dumpsters behind strip malls or 7-Elevens or at the ends of the drives of local schools. He did a rotation, making sure not to visit the same place twice in a month. He found the routine relaxing and refreshing. New places, new views, fresh issues to ponder, such as the relative merits of plastic dumpsters on wheels, as opposed to the heavy metal dumpsters plonked directly onto pavement.

  But before long, it started to seem like a pain-in-the-ass obligation, and he hit on a new idea: regifting the trash. Instead of bundling it up into one big bag, he created small parcels, little boxes, neat grocery bags. He made some trash look like postal packages, with tight string securing the flaps. He made other trash look like recent purchases in shopping bags with the tops folded down evenly. He took these creations to shopping areas and left them in conspicuous places—in carts, on top of car trunks, or against the walls near pay phones. And then, from the front seat of his Monte Carlo, one dog licking his feet, the other curled up on his lap, he watched the parade of phonies, thieves, con men and women, make their discoveries and hatch plans for sneaking his trash into their cars and, eventually, home. He loved watching the shenanigans—the abrupt halt, the slow circling, the pacing back and forth looking for outraged observers. Then the pounce, the tension between the casual departure and the racing heart. The careless deposit into trunks, or onto backseats. The slow exits from the parking lots into the safety of traffic. Sometimes he followed them. They drove around the corner, parked in front of a house, or up the road to another strip mall, a gas station. They couldn’t wait to see what they’d scored. The anxious unwrapping, the tearing away of paper or tape, the sawing at string with the edges of keys. And then, revelation—the looks on their faces! The frantic looking around. Who did this? Or worse, who’s observing this? Who’s seeing them for what they really are: moral amoebas without a scintilla of virtue. God, did Bob Foote love those moments! The best were the ones he tailed all the way home, the ones who slid into their houses with packages under their arms, the lights flashing on and the furious unwrapping, followed by the exclamations and the expletives. Sometimes he covered his schnauzer’s ears.

  And the range of them—the doctors and lawyers didn’t surprise him, but twice he’d seen close friends of his wife, and once a pair of nuns. He had to rub his eyes and make sure he wasn’t the one getting duped.

  Today’s package was the crème de la crème, if he could get French about it. This one packaged all the wrappers, all the bows, the cards (with the names crossed out), and all the tinsel from the meaningless gifts that had been exchanged over the previous two days—excluding the Whitman Sampler, whose chocolates remained good, if compromised. There were the gifts from his two sons. From Cliff, the younger punk, a book about nautical semaphores. Always something about the sea from Cliff, as if someday they might ship out together. On the back it said, Used. From Wally, the older punk, a subscription to a golfing magazine he didn’t read—he didn’t golf. By chance, Wally did. He’d pissed on them both, wiped the dogs’ asses with the pages, tossed them into the box. The gifts from his wife—a card without his name or hers, and a book about famous battles of the U.S. Navy (The fucking Navy! He’d been a Marine) … he used the card to scoop up a few frozen turds from the backyard, bing bang boom, into the box. The box had come with the gift his sons had given their mother, Samsonite luggage that must have fallen off a truck and had about as much utility for his wife as tits on a nun. To that mess, he added the past several days’ debris: chicken bones, the heels and waxes from cheese, cracker boxes, broken ornaments, tissues, napkins, plate scrapings, turkey bones, chicken gizzards, stale bread, burnt lasagna, half-chewed meatballs, pie tins, cupcake wrappers, soup cans, empty milk cartons, half-a-week’s kitty litter. For good measure he threw in the watch he’d received for thirty years retirement, a gold-tone Jules Jurgensen with a twist-o-flex band, water resistant to ten meters, that fogged up and stopped the first time he wore it in the shower—a piece of crap. Like his job, his sons, his life. And that’s what he felt about Christmas, a piece of crap—a holiday when garbage got wrapped up and recycled and presented as gifts to hapless suckers who oohed and ahhed at it, then returned it or gave it away to some other loser.

  He’d wrapped the box carefully in the garage, his sons and his wife shaking their heads. And now he was sitting back, waiting to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

  Two women spotted the box at the same time. One came from the shops, her arms full. The other came from her car, she was just heading in; she had two boys who ran in the snow in front of her. Bob Foote saw the boys first, or rather his schnauzer did, and started barking. Bob Foote shushed her, and she curled back down on the seat beside him, her throat grumbling until his fingers tickled her calm.

  Then the women converged. Bob Foote couldn’t hear what they said, but he could imagine. “That’s my box.” “You’re full of shit.” “Well, it’s not your box.” “It is now.” “No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is.” “No, it’s not.” Each with a hand on the ribbon, pulling this way, pulling that.

  Someone, Bob Foote thought, is going to get hurt if this keeps up much longer.

  So he honked the horn. Both women jumped, startled. The woman with the bags lost her grip, and her feet seemed to shoot straight out from below her hips. She fell straight back, flat as a plank. Then the soft dull thunk of her skull hitting the Buick’s bumper. The other woman covered her mouth with her hand. She screamed for her boys to come back. She turned and ran. She didn’t forget to take the box.

  Bob Foote jumped out of the car and rushed toward the fallen woman. His bare feet in the snow sent his mind hurtling back to Korea. So did the blood, the helmet-like puddle seeping into the snow around the woman’s head. He slid his fingers under her scarf and felt for a pulse—he pressed on one side, the other, nothing. A pair of headlights glowed blurrily at the end of the lane, coming his way. He straightened up, hopped back to the Monte Carlo. The oncoming car slowed, and Bob Foote slid below the wheel.

  Lonnie Lonigan sat in a booth of the Good Steer Inn on Jericho Turnpike. A True Blue curled smoke from his lip. He hated True Blue—the smoke was so thin he barely squinted. But his Lucky Strikes made him hack like he had a pint of pus in each lung.

  On the wall at his elbow was a personal jukebox. He flipped through the offerings looking for the Italian love songs that gave Bob Foote such a kick. They’d both married Italian girls from Bushwick. Lonigan got stuck with a mutt. Janet Scaturo—one pregnancy and she pooched out. Two, she pigged. By the time she divorced him, she was pulling a caboose wider than a Volkswagen bus. Bob Foote got Jackie Capello, pick of the Bushwick litter. A pain in the ass, worse than a Jewish princess, but two kids hadn’t blown her figure, and she held on to her looks, more or less. Even back then, eighteen, nineteen years old, she knew how to lick an Italian ice. It should have been the two of them, Lonnie always thought, but Korea, all the rest, shit got mixed up. Now all he cared about was the dirty movies. Was there a greaseball song about that? He punched in “Amore Scusami,” “Mala Femmena,” and “Addio, Mi’ Amore.” These days, three was all you got for fifty cents. There’s your morning in America.

  With his sleeve he wiped off a clear spot in the window. Thick fat snowflakes fell. Headlights glowed on traffic slowed to a crawl. Bob Foote was ten minutes late, but that was okay. No rush. The plan was a lunch, a few beers, and Bob Foote would go home to the wife he couldn’t stand, Lonnie would pick up a six-pack and head to the dirty movies—the second best thing about being divorced. For the holidays the Rocky Point Adult Cinema featured all the skins nominated for the Adult Video Awards. And every day they drew stubs for a free first-class flight out to Vegas for
a stage-side table at the ceremony. Ginger Lynn, Nikki Charm, Christy Canyon—the winner got to sit with them all, three nights, in the flesh. And since seeing this year’s New Wave Hookers, Lonnie had become obsessed. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Traci Lords doing very interesting things. It was going to take more than a blizzard to keep Lonnie Lonigan away from a crack at that freebie. And he had to win—Janet had cleaned him out.

  He’d thought of asking Bob Foote for a loan—he knew his friend could spot him. But there was a funny thing about Bob Foote: he didn’t approve of the skins. Even in Korea, when they were twenty, twenty-one years old. He wouldn’t go along to the brothels. He wouldn’t look at the magazines. The guys both hated him and respected him for it. And Lonigan learned it was best just to avoid the topic.

  Outside, a Suffolk County Police patrol car crept by, blue light flashing, the siren muffled in the snow. Then another cop car. And another. An ambulance followed. Lonigan shook his head—he’d driven a jeep at the Frozen Choisin, snow up to his kneecaps, and the only accident he had was pissing his pants when a bomb blew his vehicle into the drifts. This snow—he could drive it blindfolded, he could drive it drunk, and would.

  Bob Foote couldn’t. Lonigan saw him pull into the diner’s lot, watched him slide and fishtail, then try to wedge into the space close to the entrance.

  “Slow, you dumb bastard,” Lonigan muttered.

  Bob Foote spun his wheels again and again, and gave up. He motored over to a wide open area in the lot’s far corner, then lingered outside the car, saying goodbye to that blind goddamn poodle. The guy was becoming a crackpot. When he came through the door near the register, his hair and beard glistened with snow.

  “Bob, you fat bastard,” Lonnie said, “I thought I was going to have to come out and park for you.”

  Bob Foote fell into the booth. He tried to speak, and choked back a sob.

  Lonnie jumped up and waved off the waitress. He threw his arm around his friend and said, “Okay, Bobby, okay. Whatever it is, you hear me? Okay.”

  Lonigan knew all about his tricks with the garbage. Sometimes they went together, drank quarts of Schaefer and watched the show. But from what Bob Foote was blubbering, this one went haywire. His friend had crossed a line. He’d made himself vulnerable. Shit could happen.

  When he finished, Lonigan returned to his side of the booth. “Look,” he said, “it’s two ways. Either she’s dead and you did the right thing, ’cause no use getting fucked for something not your fault. Or she’s not dead, which case someone finds her, they call the cops, she’s all right. You keep your name out of it.” He sat back and put a match to a True. “I’d rather get the cancer than smoke these goddamn things. I gotta suck twice to get half a puff.”

  “Can we keep the focus here?”

  “I’m saying, Bob, you got nothing to worry about.”

  “She had no pulse, Lonnie, did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard you.”

  “The woman died.”

  “That we don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, we don’t know?” Bob Foote said.

  “Were you there? Did you feel her?”

  “Let me ask you something: are you a doctor?”

  “She had no pulse.”

  “Oh, so you are a doctor. Maybe you could have a look at these hemorrhoids?”

  “She didn’t have a pulse, Lonnie.”

  “You didn’t feel a pulse. You, a retired schmuck used to climb poles for the lighting company. You don’t know a pulse from a putz, my friend.”

  Bob Foote smiled weakly. “I know a putz,” he said.

  “I’m a putz, I know. But seriously, Bob—nothing. All right?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Nothing legal, I’m saying. Spiritual, that’s between you and Il Papa.”

  “It’s not the Pope I’m worried about.”

  “Look, legal—they got dick. Two women fighting over a box not even theirs. Freaking blizzard, no one sees past their nose. One falls, cracks her skull.”

  “And they call that manslaughter, Lonnie.”

  “No fucking way.”

  Lonnie Lonigan signaled for the waitress. She brought two schooners of Pabst.

  “Remember,” Lonigan said, “my brother-in-law’s on the Suffolk County force. I’ll give him a call, see what they have, careful like …”

  “You talking about Jimmy?”

  “So?”

  “The one you broke his nose?”

  “That’s a long time ago.”

  “The one I held his arms for you.”

  “Hey,” Lonnie said, sitting forward, “the son of a bitch deserved it, number one.”

  “Number two, he hates my guts. You don’t tell him shit about what happened.”

  “I didn’t say tell, I said find out, all right?”

  “What are you gonna tell?”

  “Hey, Bob, let me handle this, all right? You do the garbage and the dog walking, yeah? And let me handle the cops and the skins, capiche?”

  “The guy’s an asshole,” Bob Foote said.

  “So he’s an asshole. Who isn’t? Now come on, finish your beer. Then we get a pint and a six-pack and go to the dirty movie festival.”

  Bob Foote shot him a look.

  “These broads today, Bob,” Lonnie said. “You heard of Nikki Charm?”

  “What is she?” Bob Foote said. “Eleven?”

  “They’re all legal, Bob. Strictly professional.”

  “That’s part of the problem.”

  “Yeah, well, spare me the sermon.”

  Bob Foote said, “Spare this.”

  Lonnie sat back. He looked at the storm. They hadn’t called it this big, this intense. All this snow, blankets of it, coming down thick and sticking. Plows banging down the Turnpike, sanders scattering sand like fertilizer on a lawn. If he left for the theater now, he’d miss only the first nut, maybe a facial, depending on how well the plows were working out east. Looking at his watch, he said, “We better roll.”

  “Adios,” Bob Foote said, standing.

  “But Bob, we okay here?”

  “Sure.”

  “I talk to Jimmy, give you a shout at home, yeah?”

  Bob Foote said, “After the dirty movie?”

  Lonigan shrugged. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “Don’t make a mess.”

  Lonigan got the tab, and they walked out together.

  “How’s Jackie?” Lonnie asked.

  Bob Foote said, “How’s Jackie? Her bedroom is pink and she scrapes the cheese off pizza, that’s how’s Jackie.”

  Lonnie shook his head. “How’d two guys like us marry two broads like them, you ever wonder that?”

  Bob Foote took his friend’s hand. “Not too much anymore.”

  Lonnie said, “I hear you.” He watched his friend scrape an inch of snow from his windshield. He watched the Monte Carlo recede into the slow traffic on Jericho, then he went back inside to the phone by the men’s room. He was feeling a little guilty, but he was starting to get the beginnings of something that felt like an idea.

  “Yeah, meet me at the mall,” he said into the receiver.

  “The mall?” his brother-in-law replied.

  “The mall,” Lonnie said. “The fucking mall, over by Macy’s. Half an hour.”

  He hated talking to his brother-in-law like that, but what could he do? Bob Foote was right: the guy was an asshole. An asshole who hated Bob Foote.

  In the men’s room he took a leak, one palm flat on the wall. You shake it more than three times, you’re jerking off. He heard that when he was, what, twelve? Thirteen? Right around the time he met his wife. And Jackie Capello. He shook it more than three times. “I’ll show him a putz,” he muttered.

  The ride home, Bob Foote kept the wipers and defrost on high, and still the windshield looked like it had been smeared with unguentine. He felt as blind as his poodle. Plows and sanders—modified garbage trucks—pounding all over the plac
e. Snow covered the sand a minute after it spread. Every ten yards an accident. Even four-wheel-drive pickups abandoned. Some of them already snowed under. He wondered if the woman’s body was snowed under as well. He wondered if he should have waited with her, should have called the cops … But this was manslaughter, plain and simple, no matter how you looked at it. He hadn’t intended to kill her, but he had intended to deceive, to expose, to embarrass, and the chain of events his garbage instigated led directly to the woman’s body splayed out in the snow. He wondered if anyone had found her. Someone would have to have found her. But what if they didn’t? What if she got plowed? Bob Foote shuddered. He almost wanted to puke.

  The radio was no help—just news about the storm and a lot of the bullshit songs that were hits after Sinatra and before the Beatles. The only songs for him were Jerry Vale—there was a singer. The rest of these clowns …

  Clowns made him think about Lonigan, wasting his retirement in the dirty movies, not that Bob Foote had the answer. He slept past noon, walked dogs, and gift-wrapped garbage. Not exactly a retirement lifestyle breakthrough. But at least it was something, a worldview. Lonigan, day after day, with his beer or his whiskey and his dumb Danish broads with the New Jersey accents. Once, he passed out in his seat. The manager threatened to call an EMS.

  Still, Lonigan wasn’t always a clown. He was crazy brave, and crazy strong. They almost had to issue him a new chest for all his medals in Korea. He was loyal, and he was a goer. He’d fly at a man twice his size, Bob Foote had seen him do it. And it didn’t take much to make him fly. One cross look, one dumb remark. He’d been in four fights just since retirement, and he lost only one, to his ex-wife. He’d missed a support payment, and she found him at the dirty movies. She hit him with her wedding ring right in the orbital bone. Hairline fracture blackened his eye damn near two weeks. Looked like he was wearing a hockey puck for a monocle. He had to squint to see the skins.

  Jackie Foote sat in the kitchen reading editorials in Suffolk Life.