Deluge

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

The bartender nodded.

  The job promised to be quick and easy. No one hurt. Pack up. Collect the rest of the payment. Head for JFK with a ticket for Toronto. And then to Australia to wait for the really big payoff.

  Connor smiled and promised he would take care of the pesky tooth on the bottom in the back that had plagued him for months.

  Quick and easy. Only it wouldn't be quick and easy.

  It would go wrong, decidedly, disastrously, deadly wrong.

  Two Months Earlier

  Manhattan

  It wasn't reasonable to expect a normal man with normal impulses to ignore them, the girls. They knew. He knew. It wasn't a matter of self control.

  Alvin Havel had, for five years, pretended that the girls, their hair washed and shimmering, their breasts bobbing, their faces clean and clear and their legs…

  Alvin had pretended, had worked hard at being a good teacher, making chemistry interesting, fun. He had succeeded.

  The students, rich and confident, or pretending to be, talked of homes in the city and in Vermont or Connecticut or the Bahamas where they had their own Lexus or BMW or Mercedes. They talked of trips to Paris or Tokyo or Sydney.

  Summers were supposed to be recovery time for teachers, a perk for having chosen a profession that precluded a decent mortgage. Alvin spent his summers teaching. If the students didn't want to be in school during the academic year, they wanted to be there even less in the summer. Summer school was punishment. Sullen faces, arms folded across chests, drowsy eyes. And the girls. The summer didn't give him a break. He had to see them hot and tanned.

  Most of them were smart. Some of them were brilliant. A few of them were interested in chemistry.

  The morning had been frost layered, a crisp chill. Then the school had been too warm, the heat turned up. Staying awake for students and teachers was a challenge.

  He had given them a quiz. It was too warm in the room to think of real teaching. A quiz would keep them busy for twenty minutes. Then they'd discuss the quiz and class would be over.

  She had come up to him with a question. The other students watched without looking. She had whispered her question, her mouth almost touching his ear. He could smell her hair. Her blue silk blouse was unbuttoned at the top and he had nowhere to look but at her breasts.

  He answered her question and asked her if he could see her after class. He had a free period. She had lunch. She said yes.

  After class when the others were gone, she stood in front of his desk, head cocked to one side, a knowing smile on her lips.

  Alvin closed the classroom door and faced her. He tried to hide his trembling.

  "Am I in trouble?" she asked.

  "No," he said, knowing that what he was about to do, if he was not careful, could ruin his life.

  "Then what?" she asked.

  "I'd like your help," he said.

  "My help?"

  He walked toward her, a pensive look on his face.

  "An experiment I'd like to conduct. If it works out, I want to write a paper."

  "Publish or perish," she said as he moved in front of her.

  "Yes," he said.

  She took a step back as he moved forward.

  "And what do you want me to do?" she asked.

  "I've got to balance six different elements. I need someone coordinated to keep track of each element, see that nothing is going wrong."

  He was looking into her eyes. She met his gaze.

  "Let me see your hands," he said.

  "My hands?"

  "Hands, fingers," he said. "I want to be sure they're clean enough for the job."

  The look on her face was a combination of skepticism and amusement. She held out a hand. God, she looked beautiful. What the hell was he doing?

  He took her hand and ran his thumb along the palm.

  "Good," he said. "Very good."

  She smiled. It was midmorning. He was flirting. She was amused. Mr. Havel was cute. Mr. Havel was safe.

  "Are you interested?" he asked.

  His mouth was dry.

  "Interested?"

  "In the experiment."

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't have much time."

  "You think about it," he said. "If you like, you can take a look at what I've assembled so far. It might help you make up your mind."

  She shrugged.

  "Back in the storeroom," he said, guiding her to the back of the classroom.

  He slid the white board over and stepped behind her into the room.

  This was crazy. He should stop. Not too late. In a few minutes, no, a few seconds, he could have a screaming girl in front of him. His life, his career, could be over.

  "Where?" she asked when he turned on the light.

  He touched her shoulder. She turned to face him. He closed the sliding door.

  She wasn't afraid. She was interested, curious. A kiss in the closet. A teacher who would owe her. She didn't intend to use it against him, but it would be fun just knowing she could and knowing that he knew.

  He kissed her. He smelled her hair, felt her breasts against his chest. Her mouth was open.

  And as she pulled back gently with both hands on his chest, she thought that would be the end of it. She touched his cheek and reached for the door.

  Alvin grabbed her arm, turned her and kissed her again. This time she didn't respond. She didn't fight him, but she didn't respond.

  Then he put a hand under her blouse and she said, "Hey, no."

  He pushed her back against the wall. He didn't care what would happen. Wrong and right didn't matter. He whispered, "No one can hear. I want you to enjoy it. I don't want to hurt you."

  She was afraid now, very afraid. He was bigger than she was, stronger than she would have guessed and he looked crazy, no longer the smiling, helpful, funny Mr. Havel.

  She didn't fight. She didn't want to make him angry. All she wanted was to get out of there. It wasn't as if she were a virgin. She told herself that made a difference, didn't really believe it. She thought about water, waves, imagined the sound of waves against the shore. She just wanted it to be over.

  And when it was he got off of her and said, "Are you all right?"

  The Mr. Havel she knew had returned.

  He helped her up. She didn't answer. She didn't look at him. The unasked question was in the air. Would she tell? She decided that she wouldn't give him the answer.

  He would have to wait and suffer. If she wanted to, she could go into the hall now, screaming, sobbing, but she didn't. She knew she couldn't wait long. She adjusted her skirt and blouse. She started to sob and tried to stop, not wanting him to see her weakness.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't…"

  She slid the storeroom door open and stepped into the classroom. Alvin stepped out behind her.

  "Are you…?" he began, but she had gathered her books and, biting her lower lip, hurried to the classroom door and then out into the corridor alive with students moving, talking, laughing, having no idea of what had happened.

  She did not look back at Alvin Havel. She was already planning.

  She would kill him. Not today. Not this week. He had to suffer, had to be afraid every time he looked at her.

  She would kill him. She might need help. She knew where to get it.

  She would kill him. She didn't have to expose herself, be humiliated by police, by probing hospital hands. She wouldn't have to deal with her parents' anger and anguish.

  She would kill him. And two months later she did.

  Two Years Earlier

  Hempstead, Long Island

  Adam was ashamed. Adam was afraid. Adam did not want to go to the pet shop where he worked after school and on Saturdays. Adam loved animals. He had been grateful when his father's old friend Larry Beckerman had offered him the job. He wasn't grateful anymore.

  Three weeks ago, after Adam had been working at the pet shop for two months, Mr. Beckerman had told him he needed help in the storeroom. A new shipment of cages had come in
and had to be priced, labeled and put on shelves. It was a slow Tuesday night.

  Adam was a small fifteen-year-old. Larry Beckerman was a tall, broad, muscular forty-eight-year-old father of three boys.

  It began with Beckerman touching Adam's hand as he held up a cage to be labeled. Minutes later, when he was lifting a large cage, Beckerman reached over Adam's shoulder and ran a hand down his chest before reaching out to help with the cage.

  Then, when Adam was washing his hands in the small washroom next to the storeroom, Beckerman came in, started to reach for a towel past Adam's face and then suddenly grabbed, both arms around Adam's chest. Adam tried to get away.

  "It's going to happen no matter what you do," Beckerman whispered. "I won't hurt you."

  Beckerman had kissed his neck. Adam smelled something on Beckerman's breath that might have been that morning's breakfast bacon.

  "Don't scream," Beckerman said. "No one can hear you."

  The caged animals chattered, mewed, crackled, cried and barked.

  One of Beckerman's sons, Nick, was Adam's age. They had classes together, but they weren't friends. Nick was a jock like his two brothers. Adam wasn't quite a nerd, but he wasn't varsity material.

  "Tell anyone about this and I call you a liar," said Beckerman. "I don't plan on doing anything that will leave evidence. Take it easy. Enjoy it."

  Beckerman's hand slipped down between Adam's legs. Adam, through his fear and hyperventilation, felt something stir. And that was the beginning. He was drenched in sweat, fear and shame.

  When it was over, Adam knew he couldn't tell anyone what Beckerman had done to him and what he had been forced to do to Beckerman, an old family friend, his father's college roommate.

  Adam could have quit the pet shop, could have said he had too much schoolwork to do, that he was afraid his grades would drop. He could have, but Beckerman told him he had better not. He could have told his parents, written to his brother, told the police. But what if they believed him? Everyone would know what he had done to Beckerman. He would be be Adam the Queer, Adam the Queen. He would hear it, would know it by how everyone looked at him even if they didn't say it.

  He took solace in the animals, the puppies and kittens, the cockatoo who said, "So's your old man," "Hold your horses," and "GI Jive."

  And dutifully, maybe once a week- he never knew when it would happen- Beckerman would call him into the storeroom. Saturdays were safe from Beckerman. Too busy. But weekdays were different.

  And then, one Tuesday, summoned to the storeroom, told to get on his knees, Adam took hold of Beckerman's hand and bit, bit hard as Beckerman, pants down around his ankles, struggled to keep from falling, screaming in sudden agony.

  Adam tasted blood. Beckerman tripped.

  "No more," Adam said.

  "Get out," Beckerman had answered, lying on his back, his head resting against a small burlap sack of birdseed.

  Adam had left. He told no one. Said he had quit. He dreaded the possibility of seeing Beckerman again, or anyone in Beckerman's family. But it was more than a possibility. Beckerman and Adam's father remained friends. Beckerman said he had been bitten by the cockatoo.

  Adam grew quiet, too quiet, and distant. His parents were concerned. They said they wanted him to see a counselor. He said he was fine and made an effort to look and act fine. The effort was draining, the memories overwhelming.

  Four weeks after he had bitten the hand that abused him, Adam wrote a letter to his brother. He could have emailed, but the email would have existed in cyberspace forever. He asked his brother to destroy the letter after he read it. Adam apologized for writing the letter, but he had to tell someone.

  A month after he mailed the letter there was still no answer. One night Adam said good night to his mother and father, straightened his bookcases, cleaned up the clutter in his room, and made sure the blanket on his bed was neat and unwrinkled. Then he showered, put on a clean shirt, underwear and pants and hanged himself from a crossbeam in his room.

  9

  THE FOUND AGAIN SHOP on Ninth Avenue was a block away from a successful off-Broadway theater that specialized in small musicals.

  The shop wasn't nearly as upscale as Gladys Mycrant had suggested, althought it certainly wasn't a standard resale shop. A sign in the window read: Wear Today What the Famous Wore Yesterday for 1/10th the cost.

  There was only one customer, a young woman with an umbrella, who zipped through racks of clothing with a screech of hangers. Gladys had been standing at the back of the shop next to three tall mirrors. She was speaking to another woman, about Gladys's age, who also looked like a salesperson.

  When Gladys saw Don Flack, she stopped talking, folded her arms and watched him approach.

  "Doesn't look like you're too busy," said Flack. "Maybe we can talk now."

  The other woman, dark, Mediterranean, Italian, Greek? looked puzzled.

  "He's a policeman," Gladys explained. "My daughter was murdered this morning."

  The other woman's mouth opened.

  "I'd better talk to him."

  "Yes. Yes. I'm…" the other woman stammered.

  "It's fine," said Gladys. "Please."

  Myra headed off in the direction of the lone customer.

  "Mrs. Mycrant- "

  "Gladys, if you are going to be polite and pleasant. Mrs. Mycrant, if you plan to be officious and threatening."

  "Polite and pleasant," Flack said.

  "Good."

  "We don't know anything about your daughter," he said. "We don't know why anyone would want to kill her."

  "I suppose it can't be a random killing," she said.

  "Not during a rainstorm on the roof of your apartment building after she got a phone call and hurried out."

  "No, not likely is it?"

  "What can you tell me about her?"

  "Patricia was smart, willful and hardworking when she had something to work hard at," Gladys said, meeting his eyes.

  "She must have had some friends, people she knew, things she was interested in," he tried.

  "She wasn't allowed to meet with the few people she knew."

  "Wasn't allowed?"

  "It was a condition of her parole," said Gladys. "My daughter was a convicted sexual predator, as you no doubt know."

  * * *

  "He walked funny. Like this," Dorrie said, demonstrating how the limping man had looked.

  She had seen him coming down the corridor.

  "He smiled at me like this," she told Mac, showing a sad smile.

  "Was he young? Old?"

  "Old like you mostly," she said.

  They were sitting on the steps to the second floor. Dorrie was alone for the day with her ball, her toys, the television.

  There was no school today. Her mother was working at Jack the Steamer's, six blocks away. Jack the Steamer operated one of a few dozen illegal shops that prepared meat products- hot dogs, gyros, souvlaki- for illegal pushcarts.

  Jack the Steamer operated out of the back of Wargo's Electronics. Today the carts were not coming by. Even the most desperate pushcart men who had families to feed and no green card for other work couldn't see the point in getting swept away. Besides, who would buy knishes in a deluge?

  When the uniformed cop named Kovich who knew the neighborhood had come through the door, Jack the Steamer was sure that this was the final nail in his palm on the worst day of his life. Kovich, however, was not there to make a bust or get a free fake kosher red hot. He had come to fetch Dorrie's mother, Rena Prince.

  In the apartment building where Mac and Dorrie sat six blocks away, a voice boomed down from above, a man's voice, vigorously arguing in a language Mac didn't understand.

  "That's Laird," Dorrie explained. "He's crazy. He makes up his own words."

  "He talk to himself like that a lot?" asked Mac.

  "A lot."

  "Did he do it this morning before you found…?"

  "Yes. He doesn't hurt anybody. When he comes out of his apartment, he's very
sad, very nice."

  "Sad like the limping man?"

  "Yes."

  "You know anyone really old, older than me and the limping man?"

  "Oh yeah. Jack. He's a nice guy. When I go to work with my mom, he gives me stuff to eat. You want to know a secret?"

  "Sure," said Mac.

  "I think it smells bad at Jack's and the food tastes like shit."

  With that Officer Kovich and Rena Prince appeared.

  The woman was no more than twenty-five, skinny, pale, smooth, pretty face with hair held in place by a rubber band.

  "I don't leave Dorrie alone," she said, moving in front of her daughter and taking her hand. "Do I, Dore?"

  "Nope. Just when school gets closed and you can't get me to Tanya's in Brooklyn."

  "Officer," Mac said. "Mind taking Dorrie back to her apartment?"

  "Sure thing," said Kruger. "Come on, Dorrie."

  He held out his hand. She shook her head "no" to the hand but followed the officer down the hall.

  "We're not here to arrest you for neglect," Mac said when they were out of earshot. "Timothy Byrold in One-A was murdered a few hours ago. Dorrie found the body."

  "Oh," said Rena. "I've got to- "

  "This will just take a few seconds," Mac said gently.

  "Was it-?" she began and halted.

  "It wasn't good," said Mac. "Dorrie seems to be handling it pretty well."

  "She's seen too much. A kid shouldn't see what she's seen."

  Mac had a feeling the woman was talking not just about what her daughter had seen, but what she herself had seen and experienced.

  "You know Mr. Byrold?"

  "A little. Dorrie talked to him more than I did. Seemed harmless, but who the hell really knows, you know?"

  Mac nodded. "He have any friends, visitors?"

  "He lives in that apartment. I mean, lived there. Once a week, Wednesday's I think, he went to some meeting downtown. No visitors. Well, I did see some guy knocking at his door about a month ago when I was going to work."

  "What did this guy look like?"

  "Nice looking. Maybe thirty. Clean slacks, nice pullover. Built like he worked out."

  "You got a good look?"

  "Yeah. I thought he might say hello. I don't see many good-looking, clean guys in my life."