Soul Patch mp-4

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Not really, but can you be a little more specific? Even with good hearing, it helps to know what you’re listening for.”

  Clever man. I knew we’d eventually get to where we now were. I just hadn’t counted on it being so soon. I’d spent the better part of my sleepless last night trying to sort through everything I had on my plate, never mind the kiss. The kiss. It was all I could do not to let it consume me. But looking across the table at Fishbein’s snide expression made the task that much easier. I went with the truth. An edited version of it, at least.

  “Chief McDonald had a wire installed in an interview room at the Six-O.”

  Fishbein’s eyes got big and greedy. It was all he could do not to salivate. “A wire, huh? And you know this how?”

  “I heard a tape.”

  “Of what?”

  “For now, that’s my business and it’s beside the point. What I need to know is why.”

  “You’re presupposing this wasn’t authorized,” said the D.A., taking a second sip of his coffee. He didn’t like this one any better than the first.

  “I’m not presupposing anything. I’m eliminating possibilities. So, can you find out?”

  “I can.” Fishbein stood over me. He liked that. Suited his personality much better than speaking to dairy farmers. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I didn’t bother shaking his hand, nor did I wish him well. The better I got to know the D.A., the more I hoped he’d get hit by a bus someday. I stayed and finished my coffee. It was bitter, but not so much as Fishbein’s. His lips hadn’t touched my cup.

  Like a lot of towns on Long Island, Massapequa, or Matzohpizza, as the locals jokingly called it, was a popular destination on the white flight express. So many city cops, firemen, and school teachers fled there in the ’60s and ’70s that people said Massapequa was Algonquin for civil servant. If you screamed “Help, police!” at midnight, half the porch lights in town went on. One of those porch lights had once belonged to Larry McDonald-Larry having made the move to the Burger

  Long Island gave me the chills to begin with, and the thought of visiting Larry’s old house wasn’t making me feel any better. I parked in front of the tidy colonial on Harmony Drive in Massapequa Park and took a slow walk to the door. Yeah, even out here the stratification of neighborhoods had taken hold. The collars were bluer in North Massapequa than in plain old Massapequa, and the houses were a little nicer and the lawns a bit more trim in Massapequa Park than in Massapequa proper. But if you had some gelt, some ’scarole, you lived down by the water in Nassau Shores.

  The first thing I did was look at the numbers on the front of the house when a squat man of sixty pulled back the door. Who did I expect, Larry McDonald’s fucking ghost? It’s weird how humans are so good at denying reality. I suppose I thought Margaret would answer. Maybe hoped is the better word.

  “Is Margaret home?”

  “She’s not around. Who are you?” he asked, but without guile.

  “Moe Prager. I’m-”

  “Sure, sure, Moe. I heard all about you. You were friends with Marge’s first husband. Come in. Come in.” I stepped inside. The interior of the house was as clean and tidy as the outside. “Frank Spinelli,” he said, offering me a thick hand. I took it. Had the grip of a working man, but the skin of a retiree. His accent was Bronx Italian, maybe with a taste of the old country mixed in.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Frank.”

  “Same here. Glad for the company. Gave up the pizzeria a few years back, but I can’t get used to this leisure thing. I tried golf a little bit, but I figured if I wanted to suffer so much, I’d just stick pins in my eyes. I’m home so much, sometimes I think I make Marge a little ubotz, crazy, you know?”

  I liked this guy. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “For almost forty years I’m working twelve-hour days, and then this beautiful young woman walks into my shop and she takes my heart. She come in for calzone and winds up with a husband. Life is crazy, no? Hey, I’m being rude. You wanna drink? A little homemade red?”

  “Sure, but only with some ice and lemon slices.”

  That stopped Frank Spinelli in his tracks. “Hey, who taught you how to drink homemade like a guinea?”

  Rico Tripoli. “Another ex-cop. A friend of Larry and me.”

  “Come on in the kitchen.”

  Frank Spinelli stood at the island with two jam jars filled with ice cubes and lemon wedges. He poured the red wine into the jars from a big jug. He corked the jug and slid a jar my way.

  “Salude! ”

  “Salude! ”

  “So, Moe, you know your friend Larry, he really hurt Marge.”

  “I know, Frank.”

  “Why did he do that? Marge is a beautiful woman, a good woman.”

  “The best. But Larry’s loss was your gain, right?”

  For the first time since I stepped inside the house, Frank stopped smiling.

  “Marge, she loves me, but she never loves me like Larry. I knew that when I married her. That is a once in your life thing, the way she loved Larry. Me, I’m a chubby old wop from the Bronx who respects a woman, who knows how to treat her right, but I never fool myself. My poppa,” Frank said, crossing himself, “he always said the only real fools were people who tricked themselves. I’m no fool, Moe.”

  “No, Frank, I don’t suppose you are.”

  “So why you wanna talk to Marge, you don’t mind me asking?”

  “About Larry. Something was going on there. I knew Larry was an ambitious bastard, and he could do some incredibly cold and calculating things, but suicide. .”

  “Marge, too. She don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to her. Maybe she knows something she isn’t aware of. You know, something that happened a long time ago.”

  “Sure. Sure. Makes sense.”

  We went out to their back deck and stood in silence, drinking our wine and watching the cardinals and robins darting from branch to branch. Before I left, Frank promised he would have Margaret call me. We shook hands and said our goodbyes, but Frank wasn’t quite finished. With the front door nearly closed behind me, I could hear Frank mutter, “Why did he hurt her like that?”

  It was a good question. Larry seemed to have left a lot of those behind.

  I made one more stop on my way back to Brooklyn. I pulled off the L.I.E. at Queens Boulevard and drove into Rego Park. Mandrake Towers was a ten-unit apartment building complex. The buildings were red brick boxes that were as homey as an off-ramp and as cozy as a prison cell, but I wasn’t apartment shopping, thank God!

  The security office was in the basement of Building 5. Although the incinerator had been replaced years ago by a garbage compactor, the stink of the fire and ash remained. Didn’t matter how many coats of fresh paint were laid over the cinder block walls, it seemed the odor was there to stay. Maybe it was in my head. My friend Israel Roth, forty-five years removed from the nightmare of Auschwitz, says he can still smell burning flesh in pure mountain air. He told me once, “There’s no forgetting some things. Some things, Mr. Moe, demand to be remembered.”

  Who was I to disagree?

  The security office was unchanged since the first time I’d seen it in 1983, but the man behind the desk had grown a little grayer, a little thicker around the gut. He no longer wore a trooper’s hat and there were now shiny captain’s bars on the collar of his khaki shirt.

  “Shit!” he said looking up from his book. “Security sure do suck in this place they let broken-down old white people like you in here.”

  “Security’s fine, but their leadership’s a little shaky.”

  “Y’all don’t want me to come around this desk and kick your scrawny little Jewish ass up and down the block.”

  “You’d have to catch me first.”

  “Good point. Come over here and let me give y’all a hug, man.”

  Preacher Simmons stood up in pieces. When you’re six-foot-eight and close to three hundred pounds, you’re allowed to unfold you
rself one part at a time. In the mid-’60s, Preacher “the Creature” Simmons was an all-city, all-world forward from Boys High in Brooklyn. These days, he would have been drafted directly into the NBA and given a few million dollars to sit on the bench and learn the pro game. But back in ’64 he wound up at a basketball factory down South and in the midst of a point-shaving scandal. Unlike Connie Hawkins, Preacher didn’t have the resources to resurrect his career. He was a power player

  “What brings you down to the bowels of hell today, Moe?”

  “You busy tonight?”

  “Busy? Nah, man, why?”

  “Feel like helping me with something?”

  “A case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Help how?”

  “Meet me in front of Nathan’s at nine tonight.”

  “Coney Island Nathan’s or Oceanside?”

  “Coney Island.”

  “We investigating hot dogs and beer?”

  “Maybe after.”

  “After what?” he asked.

  “After you teach someone a lesson in basketball.”

  “Y’all talk some shit, Moe. You know that?”

  “Can you meet me?”

  “See you there.”

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, waving my goodbye.

  “Why later?”

  “Because I hope to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to be doing by then.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I came up with something, but like the rest of my ideas about being a detective, it was half-baked and spur of the moment. You make do with what you have, I guess. As scheduled, Preacher Simmons met me out in front of Nathan’s at nine. I always liked playing ball on an empty stomach. Preacher had different ideas on the subject. He had four hot dogs, two large fries, and two enormous lemonades before I dropped him off at the courts. They didn’t call him “the Creature” for nothing.

  “I guess sitting on your ass all day in that security office makes for hungry work.”

  “Man, you know me going on seven years, Moe. For me, breathing makes for hungry work.”

  Argue that.

  When I picked him up at the entrance to the courts about an hour and a half later, Preacher had toweled off and changed into some fresh clothing. Even after a full day’s work, the drive in from Queens, and ninety minutes of ball, his eyes were on fire. He’d once told me that the only place he ever felt truly alive was on the court. That was never going to change. He was forty-three now and I wondered where the fire would go when his hips and knees started to break down. You can’t carry as much weight as he did and pound your legs on concrete and asphalt courts for as long as he had without paying a big price.

  There was a burning in me, too, but mine was envy. At least Preacher had a place in the world where he felt alive. All I had now were French Cabernets and California Chardonnays. A stupid piece of carbon paper-did they even have carbon paper anymore? — had taken that place away from me forever. Being a cop, putting on that blue

  “So?” I said, trying not to let my envy show.

  He thought my scouting report on the Nugget kid was right on. “For such a big head, he don’t seem to have nothing in it. You can’t tell that boy nothing.”

  Preacher said he’d caught a lucky break, that another old-timer had recognized him from his Boys High years. Reggie Philbis was his name and they’d played against one another back in the day-Reggie for Thomas Jefferson. Currently, Reggie worked as a drug treatment counselor for the city, having come upon his education the hard way. Knowing Reggie paid off in two ways: it helped open up lines of communication with the guys waiting winners, and it got Nugget’s grudging attention.

  “Anybody have anything to say about Malik?”

  “You mean Melvin? Shit, yeah, but none of it kindly. He was like the neighborhood joke, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Every neighborhood’s got ’em, guys that fancy themselves something they’re never gonna be. Guys that think they’re cool, but can’t get outta their own way with a tour guide.”

  “That’s the boy.”

  “But what did they say about him?”

  “Strictly small-time, you know, a loser-”

  “A loser that could afford half a key of coke.”

  “You didn’t let me finish, Moe. My man Reggie say Melvin not only got a new name, but he got hisself some new friends in recent years.”

  “New friends?”

  “Wiseguy types.”

  “Wiseguy types, not wiseguys?” I asked.

  “Well, shit, ain’t like old Melvin been introducing his new white brothers around, if you know what I’m saying. The boys at the court seem to think they was sorta like Melvin in their own way.”

  “Wannabes.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “And Nugget?”

  “Boy’s got some severe offensive game, but on D he moves his feet like a statue.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Some. He ain’t ready to hear me.”

  “He’ll learn the hard way.”

  “Nah, man, some go the hard way, but they don’t never learn a thing.”

  It was getting close to midnight. Preacher wanted to treat for a nightcap, but I took a rain check and dropped the man back at his car. He asked me what was wrong. I lied and told him nothing. He left it at that. Preacher was good that way-he knew when to push and when not to push.

  I had in mind to pay a visit on Malik Jabbar’s girlfriend, Kalisha. Given Mable Broadbent’s less than glowing commentary on her late son’s taste in women, I didn’t figure on asking her to make formal introductions. So I just sat in my car across from Rancho Broadbent and waited, hoping Kalisha would appear. I hadn’t a clue as to what Kalisha might look like, but somehow I just felt I would know her.

  It was getting late and I was beginning to worry that Mable had exaggerated about the hours Kalisha kept. Another few minutes and I’d have to head back home or risk passing out in my car. When I looked up from my watch, a streetlight flickered and I noticed Mable Broadbent’s backlit silhouette in the front window of her flat. She, too, was waiting. I wondered if this was how she dealt with her grief, keeping tabs on a woman she despised, a woman who had somehow replaced her in her lost son’s life. It’s hard getting inside other people’s emotions, but grief is, I think, the hardest to slip into. Grief is a dark place, the darkest place.

  The stoop light popped on, the front door swinging open. A woman came out onto the concrete landing and closed the door behind her. She hesitated at the top of the short stairs, turning to her left to stare directly at Mable Broadbent. Mable did not move. It was a test of wills. After an endless ten seconds, the woman on the stoop shouted, “Fuck you, bitch.” By any standard, Mable had won that round. The woman I took to be Kalisha made a left and moved toward Surf Avenue. I got out of my car. As I did so, I looked to where Mable had sat in her front window. She was gone.

  I stood in the shadows across the street from Kalisha. She checked her watch and paced as if she were waiting for someone to pick her up.

  “Kalisha?”

  “Whatchu want?” she barked, her pride still hurting from losing her stare-down with Mable Broadbent.

  She had a svelte, angular body. Up close, she was a pretty woman with almost yellow-brown skin and green eyes, but she exuded a kind of hardness that argued against her looks. She wore an expensive, grassy perfume, and way too much of it, so much that it dominated the scent of the sea and sewerage. Kalisha’s clothes cost some bucks, but cheapened her somehow. She stared at me as if I were a lone roach caught out in the light. I realized I had crossed the street fully prepared to dislike her, and nothing about her was changing my mind.

  “You want some company, baby, you a long way from Mermaid and Stillwell. Twenty bucks’ll get you all the black pussy you can handle down there.” My silence made her uncomfortable, and she reached a hand into her bag. “I ain’t in that life no more.”

  I showed her my old badg
e, bluffing to the max.

  “That supposed to get y’all a discount?”

  “No, just your attention.”

  “Now you got it, whatchu want with it?”

  “To talk about Malik.”

  “He dead.”

  “No shit. That’s why I wanna talk.”

  “Fuck y’all.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “not interested. Now it looks to me like you’re waiting on somebody. I bet he won’t be thrilled if he has to come collect you over at the 60th Precinct. You think?”

  “Whatchu wanna know ’bout Malik?”

  “Where’d he get the money for half a key of coke?”

  The belligerence in her face was replaced by blankness. The question scared her and she didn’t like being scared. She liked showing it even less.

  “I don’t know whatchu talkin’ ’bout. Malik didn’t-”

  “Bullshit, Kalisha. Malik was a loser, a guy that didn’t have two nickels to rub together his whole life. Then he scores a fine-looking woman like you and he’s dealing weight. Something changed. Maybe he got some new friends, some white boys, maybe. You wanna talk to me about that?”

  “Fuck y’all. Ain’t met a cop had a dick bigga than my pinky.” She demonstrated, waving a ringed little finger my way. It was false bravado. She’d grown shrill and any sense of composure was gone from her voice.

  “That may be, but it doesn’t answer the question. Listen, Kalisha, you don’t talk to me now, okay. But there’s gonna be some detectives coming around on a regular basis starting tomorrow. So even if you aren’t talking, maybe Malik’s buddies will think you are. You know, maybe I should just wait here with you till your ride shows up. Maybe I should chat with him. What do you think?”

  “Oh, fuck, man! Why you gotta fuck with a girl’s life like that?”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way if you just talk to me.”

  “Ask your damned questions, man.”

  “Malik ever talk about a cop named McDonald?”

  “E-I-E-I-O. He the guy owns that farm, right?” She smiled, and for just a second, I saw there were still remnants of a little girl inside the hard woman in front of me.