The bell rang and the spell was broken. No more staring into the black waters, not tonight.
I pressed the talk button. “Hello.”
“It’s Mary.”
I buzzed her in and when she came up, I took her coat.
God, she looked spectacular and without trying. Or maybe that was the trick, to seem like you’re not trying. She wore a blue silk blouse that perfectly matched the shade of her eyes over loose fitting black slacks that still somehow managed to accentuate her curves. There was a little bit more makeup on her face than yesterday, but not too much. Between the makeup and the blouse her eyes made the rest of the room seem positively unlit.
“You look nice,” I said. I could be so articulate.
“As do you.”
“Come in. Red or white?”
I’d already selected one of each and had them waiting. They were both ridiculous, of course. It’s funny how I resented our customers who bought wines just to impress and here I was ready to pour a perfectly chilled Montrachet or the Chateau Mouton Rothschild I’d already decanted-purposely leaving the emptied bottle in plain sight for her to see. But until she stepped through my door, it hadn’t occurred to me that she might not drink wine or that if she did, her taste might run to Glen Ellen white zinfandel or strawberry wine coolers. My fears were allayed when she walked slowly past me and carefully inspected both bottles.
“My god, Moe, you don’t skimp on a girl. That’s several hundred dollars of wine there on your counter.”
“Don’t worry about it, I get a big discount.”
“How’s that?”
“I know the owners of a few wine stores. Well, what’s your pleasure?”
“I’ll go with the Rothschild.”
“Excellent choice,” I said like a gleeful waiter calculating his twenty percent tip. “I was going to have some of that myself.”
“I thought you might. You strike me as a red wine man.”
I poured a finger of the wine for her to taste. “I do? Why’s that?”
She didn’t answer immediately, instead focusing her attention on the contents of the glass. She handled the task expertly, though she dispensed with swishing it around her mouth and sucking air in through her lips. That part of the tasting process is a surefire romance killer. It’s like going for ribs on a first date. Then I remembered that I took Katy for ribs at the Buffalo Roadhouse on what was essentially our first date. So much for shoulds and shouldn’ts.
“Oooh, this is amazing,” she whispered. “As to reds and whites and you-whites, even the best whites, are what they are. They tend to be about one thing. Reds are more complex. They have more depth and character, more texture, subtlety, and nuance. Like you, I suspect, more than what they seem.”
I poured some for myself and added more to her glass. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
“As a compliment.”
“And you reached this conclusion how? From spending a few minutes talking to me in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge? I didn’t think there was much subtext in my giving you directions back to Greenpoint.”
“Between men and women, there’s always subtext.”
We both drank to that. I might have been a little smitten, but I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet, not on the strength of answers any man would want to hear.
“Seriously, Mary, how did-”
She cut me off. “I asked about you. I had to go back to 4 °Court Street again today,” she said, blushing a bit and taking a prodigious gulp of wine, “and I mentioned your name to one of the lawyers and he…”
“What lawyer? What firm?”
“I’d rather not say, Moe. He’s a client and…”
“Okay. What did he say?”
“I’m sorry, Moe, I wasn’t checking up on you. I was just curious.”
“It’s fine.”
She felt compelled to explain. “Like I told you yesterday, I’m new here and I never expected to be quite so overwhelmed as I feel by it all. I’m a grown woman, for goodness sakes, yet it’s gotten to me. For a solid month now I’ve had lawyers hitting on me every day and I’m weary. Lawyers, Jesus, like I’d date a lawyer ever again.” She took another gulp and held her glass out for more. “People don’t realize how hard it is to make friends when you’re near fifty and in a new city and you don’t really want to socialize with your clients. Then I hit your car and you were so sweet about it and here I am. I guess I’m feeling vulnerable.”
“I understand. I do. So what did this lawyer tell you?”
“A lot of things,” she said, turning away. “About your first wife being murdered and your divorce from your business partner. He said you did good work.”
“And the wine stores?”
“That too. I’m sorry.”
“Cut it out, Mary Lambert. No more apologizing. Deal?”
She pecked me on the cheek. “Deal.”
I poured us both a little bit more wine and Mary, feeling relaxed, went back to sipping and began walking around my living room, staring at the photos on my wall and the ones on the coffee table. That unnamed lawyer had actually done me a huge favor. I now felt spared from the pressure of choosing my words carefully when explaining about the faces in the photos.
“My goodness, your daughter is a beauty.”
“I think so.” I kvelled a little about Sarah being a vet.
We went through all the pictures: Katy, Carmella, Israel, Miriam and her family, Aaron and his, Mr. Roth, Wit, Preacher “the Creature” Simmons and me at an Over-50 two-on-two b-ball tournament, Klaus, Kosta, and ten others. Then Mary found a partially hidden photo I’d forgotten was there and wished I’d taken down years ago. It was of three uniformed cops, arms around each other’s shoulders, in front of Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island. The three cops all had shaggy ‘70s haircuts and bad brush mustaches. They all seemed happy and more like brothers than just colleagues. Now two of them were dead.
“I’ll be damned,” she said, “that’s you at the end there! Jee-sus, will you look at that hair and those whiskas? These days, you’d be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for that look.”
“Ah, the ‘70s…”
“Who are these otha two happy fellas here?” The wine was definitely bringing out the Boston in her speech.
“That guy there on the right’s named Larry McDonald and the other guy’s Rico Tripoli. The guys in our precinct used to call us the Three Stooges.”
“Moe, Larry, and… Rico?”
“Rico had wavy hair, so he was Curly.”
She asked, “Where was this picha taken?”
“Coney Island, in front of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs.”
“I’ve heard of that place.”
“Yeah, well, famous is in the name.”
“Wise guy!” She slapped my arm. “Come on, let’s go there fah dinner. I’ve always wanted to see Coney Island fah myself.”
“It’s freezing out and it’ll be deserted.”
“Even betta.”
It was freezing out and Coney Island was deserted, at least the amusement park was. Nathan’s Famous, on the other hand, was bustling with activity. That was the amazing thing about the joint. It was nearly always busy: day or night, no matter the season. Years ago I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t about the food, not really. It was about what the food and the smells and the sight of the place represented. I mean, the hot dogs were okay and the fries were the best on earth, but Nathan’s was about so much more. It was a touchstone, a safe place where people could time travel, where they could return and relive, if only briefly, their happiest childhood memories. For so many people, Nathan’s represented comfort and security and, sometimes, sadly, the one good thing in their fucked-up lives. I can’t tell you how many suicides ate their last meals at Nathan’s. I didn’t mention that last bit to Mary. She was having too good a time and I wasn’t about to break the trance.
Noticing two couples dressed in tuxedos and killer gowns, she said, “We’re not close to being the be
st dressed folks here, are we?”
“Nope. This place is a kind of crossroads. When I was in the Six-O, I used to think that someone standing with a camera on that corner over there,” I said, pointing to where Surf and Stillwell Avenues met, “could capture the essence of human experience if he stood there long enough and had enough film. Now he wouldn’t need film, just memory.”
“I was right about you, Moe Prager. You’re a complicated fella.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I didn’t know cops were so philosophical.”
“Ferguson May, he was our precinct philosopher. I guess he rubbed off on me a little.”
“Ferguson May, where’s he nowadays?”
“Dead. Got stabbed through the eye during a domestic violence call in the projects more years ago than I can count. He was a good guy. Weren’t many black guys on the job back then and he suffered through all the bullshit by being philosophical about it.”
“C’mon,” she said, looping her arms through mine, “show a girl the sights.”
We walked out of Nathan’s, our bellies full of hot dogs, fries, and watery beers, and turned right onto Surf. We went up the steps onto the boardwalk, the moon high above, the soft roar of the invisible ocean and the wind whistling in our ears. I drove past Coney Island nearly every day on my way to work, but the days of my stopping by, of my coming here for comfort and to think things through were gone. It had been many years since I’d stood on the boardwalk in winter, looking out at the white-haired waves and the hibernating dinosaurs of the amusement park rides. I’d spent so much of my childhood in this place and walked countless miles on the boardwalk as a cop. In a parallel universe somewhere you could probably still hear the echoes of the warped and pitted boards squealing under the weight of my ugly black cop shoes.
“What’s that there?” Mary asked, pointing up at the orange super structure looming over our right shoulders.
“That’s the Parachute Jump. It used to be part of Steeplechase Park, but it hasn’t worked in years. That enormous Ferris wheel there is called the Wonder Wheel. It has enclosed cars that swing and ride on rails as it turns. And that roller coaster over there is the Cyclone, the most famous wooden roller coaster in the world.”
“And this was your precinct?”
“In some ways, I guess it always has been. I grew up around here too.”
“Let’s walk.” She tugged me towards Brighton Beach. “So tell me about the bad old days. When you were a big tough cop with bad hair. What about you and the other two stooges? What were they like?”
“Larry was a shrewd customer. To call him ambitious was like calling Hitler mildly anti-Semitic. He was always working an angle, but he never climbed up over the bodies of his buds, never threw us under the bus to clear the path for himself. He nearly made it to the mountain top too. He was top brass when…”
“When what?”
“He committed suicide. Gassed himself in a car by the old Fountain Avenue dump.”
“Oh… I’m so sorry. What about Curly?” she asked.
“Rico? God, I haven’t thought about Rico in years. I think he was the closest friend I ever had, but he threw our friendship away.”
“How?”
“He had ambitions too, but he wasn’t as clever as Larry Mac. Rico never understood that wanting isn’t worth a thing in this world and that there’s a big gulf between wanting and getting. Larry, he always understood the difference and was good at paying his own way up the ladder. Rico paid his bills too, but with other people’s sweat and blood. I guess I wouldn’t have minded if he didn’t pay so much for so little in return.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rico wanted to make detective. We all wanted to, only Rico was impatient about it. The city was in bad financial shape back then and you practically had to be the second coming of Christ to get your gold shield. So Rico made a deal with some political hot shot, which wouldn’t have been so bad, I guess, if the deal hadn’t involved me. He set me up to bring a powerful man to his knees, a man who turned out to be my future father-in-law.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. And the ironic thing is that if Rico had only waited a few months, he would’ve made detective on his own merit. He was on a joint task force that broke the biggest murder-for-hire and car theft ring in this city’s history. Every uniform connected to the case got his shield and every detective got a bump up in grade.”
“That’s sad.”
“It gets worse, but do you mind if we skip this conversation?”
“Of course not,” she said, stopping to slide her arms around me. She kissed me, softly, tentatively. It wasn’t an invitation for more, but rather a kiss of possibility. It wasn’t a thanks-for-dinner-and-goodbye kiss either. It was kind of sweet, not hungry or bitter. Those kinds of kisses were rare to come by these days.
“What now?” I asked.
“Let’s go back to your place, try the white, and make out a little bit. I have to give you a reason to ask me to dinner again.”
“I already have reason enough.”
“Jesus, Moe Prager, for such a bright and complex fella, you’re slow on the uptake. You mind if a girl gets to have a little fun?”
“Perish the thought.”
“Then come on.”
When Mary Lambert left my condo that night, lipstick smeared, but most of her clothes intact, I was a little lightheaded. I hadn’t had a good make-out session since my freshman year at Brooklyn College. Back then, making out used to leave me more frustrated than anything else. I was feeling a lot of things as I watched Mary’s car pull away. Frustrated wasn’t one of them.
THIRTEEN
I woke up feeling a little less giddy than I had when I went to bed. Not because I wasn’t still into Mary Lambert. On the contrary, a night of sleeping on the memory of the way her skin warmed to my touch and how the scent of her perfume changed as we kissed, and the way her nipples stiffened when I brushed my hands across the front of her silky blouse, had done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for her. But too much expensive wine on a hot dog and french fry stomach wasn’t a prescription for a happy morning. I used to be able to drink, but these days hangovers didn’t just vanish with a few sips of water and a fistful of aspirins. Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Aspirins. Ah, the joys of growing older.
Just after I crawled out of bed, breakfasted on two bottles of water, Pepto, and painkillers, the house phone rang. House phone, now there’s a quaint idea about to go the way of the front yard water pump and the transistor radio. No one I knew under the age of thirty even had a house phone.
“Yeah.”
“Prager. Detective McKenna.”
“I don’t usually date men who blow me off when they promise to call.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s up?”
“You got anything?”
No beating around the bush with this guy. He asked the big questions right away. The thing is, I didn’t want to answer. If he found out about where I was going with Nathan Martyr, McKenna might step in and do things his way. And while the detective didn’t strike me as a hard-ass or strong-arm type of cop, there was a girl missing for over three weeks now and his patience was probably at low ebb. Hard-ass or not, I doubted McKenna would approve of my agreeing to Martyr’s extortion demand. Paying off a no-talent, scumbag junkie with the last painting of a lost girl whose abilities he ridiculed and reviled was utterly perverse, but there was a kind of twisted symmetry to it. I just didn’t want to waste time by trying to make McKenna see it. I also doubted he would have thought much of my manipulating Candy to get the extra paintings. He would think that what I planned to do with them was beside the point. Again, I didn’t want to waste time convincing him it wasn’t.
“Nothing, not really. Just reinterviewing people you’ve already spoken to. How about on your end?”
He wasn’t buying. “That’s it? You got bubkes?” Only in New York did people named McKenna
speak Yiddish.
I didn’t want him to pursue this any further, so I played one of the two cards I still had in reserve and said, “I got a feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“Max and Candy aren’t telling us something. It’s something big, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I’m with you on that, Prager. But I don’t think they’re lying. More like they’re-”
“-holding back,” I finished his sentence.
“Exactly. That’s it. From day one, I felt there was a part of the puzzle they had that they weren’t showing me. Any ideas?”
“Not really.”
“You’re an old friend of the mother’s. Work on her.”
“I will. How about you?”
“It’s cold out there, very cold and very fucking dark. Three weeks and counting…”
“Okay. If I get anything or make any progress with Candy, I’ll let you know.”
He didn’t bother with goodbye. That worked for me. My head and gut were feeling a little better, but McKenna’s words stayed with me. We needed to make some progress soon or the real mourning would soon begin.
I went back to bed thinking that it would be a waste of time. Wrong. I woke up three hours later with the phone trilling at me like a pissedoff cricket.
“Mr. Prager?” It was Wallace Rusk. “Are you quite all right?”
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