Buffalo Noir

by Ed Park

  He climbed off the boat and began walking up a set of rickety wooden steps to a landing where he would find the body. It was dark but the lights of the thruway on the other side of the canal shone brightly. When he got to the landing, there was no sign of the body. Which sometimes happens. Maybe a crank call. He was about to walk back down to the rocky beach when he noticed, as he looked down, a chalk outline. He stopped, walked around the sketch, studied the figure until, at last, he was satisfied that the outline was of a human body.

  Strange. His work had already been done. But by who? He bent to study it: two amateurish semicircles at midleg, possibly the kneecaps. The concave areas were more impressive. The armpits, the throat, the groin each displayed an eye for retrospective invaginations. In those areas, Tippett had to admit, the lines were fine. The artist drew okay, even if he needed to improve his straights, adjust his wrist parallel to the ground when drawing a leg, since his lines were blurry there.

  As Tippett walked around the sketch, he stepped on something soft and crunchy, a Ziploc sandwich bag. Inside it: a nose and two fingers. The nose had a large bump. Tippett looked at the sketch and noticed that the mystery artist had outlined a bump as large as the one on the nose in the plastic bag. The hands had been tucked under the outline, however, so it was impossible to tell if they’d been drawn with or without the missing fingers. Tippett wondered: had the outline been drawn before the nose and fingers were severed? Or had the artist taken a postmortem liberty?

  The artist had tinkered with the body’s appearance after the person had died, Tippett guessed—a new-age sketch artist, judging by the aura of the total work on the ground. It betrayed the artist’s faith in symmetry and harmony, in the reconstruction of the whole figure. Techniques popularized in the early 1980s, Tippett thought. By comparison, Tippett was an expert in postwar methods, and operated on the principle that the outline of every dead body had to be drawn exactly. You shouldn’t unduly distort proportions by emphasizing a body’s innocence.

  He knew what he had to do next. He had to secure the crime scene, make sure no one tampered with anything else. He telephoned to see what was taking the detectives so long. An hour passed. To keep dry, he climbed up onto a porch and huddled there, shivering. Soon, he fell asleep.

  When he awoke a thick fog had rolled in and he was alarmed to see that the water had risen a foot. It now covered the outline of Dora Sanford. In fact, there was nothing left of her. He heard the water lapping the building—and, faintly, from somewhere below the porch, the sound of someone breathing.

  “Hello?” he whispered. No one responded. Finally, he peered down. The thruway lights caught someone’s breath rising as mist directly below him.

  Tippett slowly walked down the porch stairs and, landing with a splash, began to slog his way to the other side of the concrete base. The breathing became louder. Biting his lip, he sloshed another inch closer, peered around a corner. He saw a large muscled man, his jumpsuit reading Auto Collisions on the back, his name, Lucky, embroidered on the front pocket. With one arm, the man held a woman’s body to his chest, kept her head above the water as he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The woman’s face had no nose. The man, however, had silver pork-chop sideburns, a dimple that seemed to pierce straight through his cheek. His ears had shriveled like dry jellyfish in the cold. Whereas the woman in his arms looked bloated. Her translucent skin covered her bones in a porcelain sheen made even paler by the fluorescent streetlights.

  As of yet, the man hadn’t noticed Tippett. He was too busy puffing mouth, pumping chest.

  Eventually, Tippett moved beside him. The man looked up. His eyes trailed off to the black bag Tippett held in his hand.

  “Doctor?”

  “No,” Tippett hesitated.

  The man stared and then tilted his head. He went back to what he had been doing: pumping her chest with his hands, heaving again as her throat gurgled and water spilled from her mouth. He kept puffing anyway. Tears were streaking down his cheeks; wisps of hair stuck to his face with every pump.

  Tippett shook him lightly by the shoulder, but he wouldn’t separate from the woman’s purple lips. He pleaded but the man did not budge. In order to lead him gently from his shock, Tippett decided to play along, and so he covered the cavity where the woman’s nose once was. Beneath his fingers, her raw flesh was frozen. Still, he tried pressing hard to force the air back in. He pressed his palms down and was able to hold on just long enough to help the man send some air to her lungs.

  The man sat there a few more seconds. He had to know by now that hopes of resuscitating her were wasted. Suddenly, he stood up; then began dragging her body away through the water. At first, Tippett sat dumbfounded as he watched the man lift her into the skiff, and when he understood the man was about to leave him stranded there, his heartbeat quickened. Never before had Tippett witnessed a crime taking place. He much preferred the role of a straggling investigator, always arriving after the fact, in time only to reconstruct a scene, label the evidence, compose a portrait that stayed still long enough for a complete investigation. In his field, there was no call for works-in-progress.

  He scuttled over to the man and grasped hold of his jumpsuit sleeve, but the man pushed him down, untethered Tippett’s borrowed skiff, then paddled away with the corpse of Dora Sanford, leaving Tippett stranded on the beach.

  After climbing back up to the dry porch, his clothes soaking, he sat waiting for the detectives who finally arrived an hour later. Tippett said nothing about what he had witnessed, and five minutes after they rescued him, they all departed the scene.

  * * *

  Tippett arrived home well after the morning commute. The door to his apartment had been left unlocked, which was no surprise given his roommate’s recent state of mind. When he walked in, he saw Steve’s undershirt tossed under the kitchen table, and a half-filled glass of orange juice (likely a vodka screwdriver) sat next to a spread-out newspaper. Tippett could barely muster up a sufficient amount of disgust at the sight of it; he was still thinking of the previous night’s events. Again and again, he searched the auto collision shack of his mind for an explanation of what had happened. That’s what bugged him now, not Steve sleeping off another hangover upstairs. In fact, Tippett was so disturbed by the man who hauled off Sanford’s body that it took him awhile to notice the newspaper on the table, and the red circle drawn around a picture of Lora Gastineau on the front page.

  Steve hadn’t stirred the entire time, and though Tippett had half a mind to wake him up so his roommate could accompany him to the café, he decided against it. He’d rather sit alone today as the evening arrived. And besides, Steve’s charm, that puerile innocence that transports men (mainly men) of all ages back to boyhood, had worn off, and now Steve was as irritable and resentful as the fan-letter critics published on the back pages of Tippett’s favorite comic books. The men had bonded over the idea that there was truth, valor, and heroism in the world: that’s what they’d discussed in the prison library. But during the days that Steve trolled the Allentown bars for free drinks and Tippett stiffly ignored the gruesome violence that confronted him on his job, they remained oblivious to the many ways that life, like art, and even like some comic books, had deflowered them. Steve had always liked the comic book villains as much as the heroes. In detention, he understood very well the balance between them. But on the streets of Buffalo, he began to appreciate the darker side, like Spain’s nefarious JFK, and though he’d never quite tamp down his love for an avenging Joan Dark, he began to think of Spain’s Che as just superficially good, not truly good. He despised such smarmy deifications. Steve had changed. His Buffalo had changed. Life was more about corruption and lies, an aesthetic that the best comic authors would admit into their pristine universe. If art could be moral and full of valor, it could also be perverse, debauched, and destructive, in the best ways possible. Even the sketch of a corpse’s outline, though revealing the artist’s sensibility, roots into abundant misery. You can enjoy a ske
tch of a corpse, if you ignore the violence and brutality that preceded it.

  Sitting outside the café at a small table, Tippett determined not to let his optimistic disposition sink him. It wouldn’t get the best of him, he thought. He shut his eyes, inhaled his mint tea, and sipped. When he opened his eyes, he looked across the street at the CowPök Tattoo gallery and admired the sign above the entrance. An umlaut, very clever. Two of the tattoo artists sat on a sofa opposite the door, hands folded behind their heads, their accustomed pose. Tippett saw them clearly through the plate glass—nothing obstructed his view today nor distracted him. He hadn’t noticed yet, but there were no soap bubbles floating down upon the intersection of Allen and Elmwood. No bubbles to comfort Tippett and assure the neighborhood that there are people in this world with habits that die hard. For at least nine years, bubbles had rained down on this intersection every single day. Bubbles that, however familiar and steady, invariably filled you with joy. Many times before, Tippett had thought how heroic it was to blow bubbles day after day, with a doggedness that insisted people were more than outlines one glimpsed through plate-glass windows, a steely will that pushed through the boredom of sitting by a fan day after day, waving one’s hoop, a will that mocked the old ego that wailed and gnashed its teeth and insisted there were better things to do in this world and better places to be. But today Tippett was not his usual self. As he drank his mint tea, he didn’t feel the need to contemplate his surroundings and make of them something more glorious, to color this corner of Buffalo with a dignity beyond its rust-belt reality. No need either to look up at the Bubble Man’s fourth-floor window and suspect that anything was amiss, no need to wonder why the top of the Bubble Man’s head was visible on his windowsill, why the Bubble Man’s face lay in his tray of red soapy water.

  Behind the Bubble Man stood a tall dark shape with hair spiked high in a ten-inch mohawk.

  PART II

  Hearts & Minds

  Falling on Ice

  BY LISSA MARIE REDMOND

  South Buffalo

  The wind blowing off the lake stabbed Mike Sullivan’s cheeks as he made his way along Downing Street. He pulled the collar of his Carhartt higher. December in Buffalo. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t lost his license three months before. At least tonight he’d been able to stop into Malloy’s for a shot after his shift at the cheese factory. One shot led to two, which led to three and now here he was, carless, no girlfriend, shambling drunk down the snow-clogged streets smelling like cheddar.

  It was late when he got to his house. The front walk wasn’t shoveled and there were no footprints up the driveway. Erin must still be out, he thought as he turned his key in the side door lock. He would yell at his little sister for breaking curfew when she came in and she’d yell back that he wasn’t her father. Then she’d stomp upstairs and slam her door.

  Mike looked out to see if Erin was with her friends in the church parking lot. Their house butted right up against St. Martin of Tours’ property. The neighborhood kids liked to hang out at night and smoke cigarettes in the dimly lit lot. But it was too cold and snowy tonight. The lot was empty.

  Mike shook his head and went over to the kitchen table to look for a note. The stove clock said twelve thirty. He pondered whether to call his mom at the hospital. Maybe Erin had gone on a sleepover? Usually his mom would call him on his cell to let him know.

  Headlights cast a glow through his kitchen window. A couple of driveways down, a car door slammed. Mike jammed his phone in his pocket, ready to give Erin hell.

  A noise in the front hall. Mike craned his head to see the doorknob twisting back and forth. No one used the front door. He went over and turned the dead bolt and threw open the door.

  Erin stood on the stoop, face white. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she pitched forward. Mike barely managed to catch her. Awkwardly, he sank to the hardwood floor, his sister’s body limp in his arms. A bubbling sound came from deep in her chest. Despite the snow clinging to her coat, her back felt warm and sticky.

  When he took his hand away, it was covered in blood.

  * * *

  An hour later Mike was sitting with his mother in the trauma unit waiting room at Mercy Hospital. Tears ran down both cheeks but she cried silently, clutching Mike’s hand in hers. She was still in her scrubs. She’d been on the maternity floor bringing babies into the world when another nurse came in and got her.

  His mother’s voice brought him back to the present: “Did she say anything? Anything?”

  “No, Ma, I already said. She just collapsed. Then I noticed the blood and I could see where it was coming from. I yanked up her coat and she had a big bruise on her back.”

  “A big bruise,” his mother repeated to herself, trying to make sense of it.

  There was a knock at the door. They looked up to a doctor in green scrubs standing in the doorway. “Marge? Can I come in?”

  Mike’s mom jumped up. “Frank, how is she?”

  The older man walked in and shut the door behind him. He was carrying all kinds of paperwork under one of his arms. There were no other families in the trauma room that night. Just what was left of the Sullivans.

  “She’s awake. She’s going to be okay, Marge, but we’ll have to operate and soon.”

  “Operate?” Margaret echoed. “Did she say what happened?”

  “Her lung is punctured,” the doctor went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “We need your permission to operate.”

  “Punctured by what? What’s going on?” She had stepped up to Frank, all five-foot-two of her, facing down this doctor she’d worked with for twenty years.

  He pulled an X-ray from one of the folders under his arm. Mike’s mom snatched it and held it up to the light. “What is that?” she whispered.

  “My best guess? Something metal and sharp that pierced her back. To me it looks like the tip of an ice pick.”

  Mike was now standing next to his mom, looking at the X-ray of his sister’s back which clearly showed a long, pointed shaft lodged like a skewer in a side of beef.

  “We won’t know for sure until we take it out.” The doctor reached for the X-ray and slipped it back into its folder. “The surgeon’s on his way. Thankfully, the damage could have been a lot worse. If we get in now she’s going to be fine, Marge. Come on with me and we’ll get all the papers signed.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder and started to lead her out of the room.

  “Wait!” Mike called. “Did she say anything? Did she say how it happened?”

  The doctor reached back under his arm and handed Mike a yellow legal pad. As they left the room Mike stood staring down at the shaky words scrawled across the front of the pad: I fell on the ice.

  * * *

  Erin spent six hours in surgery while Mike and his mom dozed on and off in the nurses’ lounge. Word of what happened to Erin had swept out of the hospital and across the neighborhood. A steady trickle of people had pooled together in the downstairs waiting room. By nine o’clock over thirty people had crowded in, including five guys from Sully’s firehouse. Everyone was milling around with their cups of coffee, whispering about the tragedies the poor Sullivan family had to endure, ready to help out with whatever was needed.

  As Mike slept with his coat still on, his mind replayed the last three months of his life like some old tragic black-and-white movie he was the star of. In his hazy brain he saw his mom’s cousin Jimmy sitting him down in his pickup truck after liberating Mike from the police station, blood still oozing from a cut on his forehead. He stunk like booze and piss. Jimmy slid into the driver’s side, took a good look at Mike, and punched him square in the jaw.

  “If your father could see you now,” he spat as Mike held his face. “I get you’re all fucked up about Afghanistan. I get you’re traumatized about losing your dad. You got every excuse there is. But you are twenty-five years old now, almost twenty six. I can’t keep bailing you out. You got a responsibility to your mom and
sister.” Jimmy ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. They were the thick, callused hands of an ironworker. Someone who had no sympathy for people who weren’t willing to work as hard as he did.

  “It was an accident.” The words were slurred and shaky. “I didn’t do this on purpose. I’m sorry,” Mike muttered.

  “Yeah, well,” Jimmy threw the truck into drive, “I was sorry when your dad got crushed in that building and that didn’t count for shit either.”

  Mike’s dad had been a Buffalo firefighter. Sully. Everyone looked up to Sully, literally. At almost six-foot-five he was broad-shouldered with a thick, dark handlebar mustache. He had a happy, booming voice that carried through the firehouse and a reputation for taking you places in a burning building no other firefighter could go. He was South Buffalo Irish through and through.

  When Mike was sixteen, a junior at Bishop Timon, a chimney had collapsed on Sully. It killed him instantly.

  * * *

  It’s always a big deal when a firefighter dies on duty, especially in South Buffalo where police and fire jobs span generations. But young Mike wasn’t prepared for the spectacle. The funeral was televised, cameramen lined each side of the overcrowded church. Mike was up front, flanked by politicians who all got the chance to talk about the tragedy. Firefighters from all over came to the Mass and fire trucks lined the streets as they made their way to the cemetery. Mike stared out the window of the limo at the sea of faces. He felt nothing.

  Sully died a hero, of that there was no doubt. And hollowed-out, washed-out Mike was now the head of the house.

  Only that didn’t work out so well.

  When Mike was nineteen and got caught in his second stolen car, it was Jimmy who drove him down to the army recruiters and stood next to him as he signed his life away for six years.

  He was no standout in the service. He had just wanted to come home, find a nice girl, or a not-so-nice one, get his union card, and wait for the firefighters’ exam. Instead he returned to Buffalo and went out drinking.