Little Brothers

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Marks reached the squad car on the driver’s side just as Regan started the motor. “I thought it was you,” Marks said, putting his hand on the door.

  Regan peered out at him. “What’s new, lieutenant?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “Not much. It’s a quiet neighborhood—most of the time. Anything on Grossman?”

  Obviously Regan had no intention of mentioning Phillips.

  “Not only quiet—it’s closed. Nothing new,” Marks said.

  “Can I give you a lift?”

  “No thanks. Goodnight, sergeant.”

  Marks strode away. He now had anger to walk off. Or else he could find some pretext to confront Julie and Phillips again. His pride would not allow that, no more than it had permitted him to ask a direct question of Regan. Their business probably did not concern him. He had his anger to walk off, nevertheless.

  11

  LOUIS HAD WARNED ANGIE not to go home until he got over the shakes. He was not to worry about the cops, just stick to his story. He’d done fine. But Louis had wanted him out of the clubhouse in a hurry: that was the only thing Angie was sure of. It made him feel like a leper, an outlaw. He didn’t know which he longed for more, his bed or his hideout. He knew, but Louis’ order made him choose the hideout.

  He had the ladder up within a rung of the roof when a violent wrench pulled it out of his hands. He looked down to see the detective steady it on the floor and start up. Angie was trapped. Alone and so soon. Lieutenant Marks stepped onto the roof and shone his flashlight into Angie’s face. Then he snapped off the light.

  “Let’s pull it up and put the door back. Isn’t that how you work it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then do it,” Marks said, when the boy made no move.

  When the door was in place the cop turned on the flashlight again. He threw its beam over the rooftop, letting it linger on the tent. And then on the bucket. Angie’s heart beat even harder.

  Marks said: “So that we won’t get into any misunderstanding, go over and put your hands against the wall above your head.” He motioned with the light. Angie obeyed, placing his hands against the brick of the warehouse that backed the tenement building. The cop’s hand crawled around his waist, under his arms and down his legs. Angie kept thinking of the sand bucket with the knife in it.

  “Are you always this scared of the police, Angie?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s it all about? Your heart’s going like a trip-hammer.”

  “It shook me up, you coming up the ladder like that.”

  “I see. May I take a look?” Marks had already squatted down at the opening to the tent.

  “Sure.”

  The detective explored Angie’s supplies, not missing a thing, edible or readable. He pushed aside Portnoy’s Complaint to see the book beneath it: Outdoor Survival. “Have you ever been in the country?”

  “Once. To my uncle’s chicken farm in New Jersey.”

  “Where in New Jersey?”

  “I forget. We took a bus over the George Washington Bridge.”

  “Know anybody in Weehawken?”

  “No, sir.”

  Marks straightened up. He threw the beam on the sand bucket.

  “If I got to pee,” Angie managed.

  Marks turned off his light and walked to the parapet.

  Angie moistened his lips as soon as he got enough spit in his mouth. He went after Marks, but slowly, and he put his hand to his heart where it was beating so hard it hurt.

  Marks looked at the building across the way, saying nothing for a long time. There were lights on in a lot of the windows, including the girl’s where the one shade was drawn as far as it would go and the other down all the way. In the next apartment two men in their undershirts were playing backgammon. Down one floor, a woman was diapering a baby on the living room rug. “So this is where you were—from what time on last night?”

  “Eleven, a little after.”

  “Did anything special happen over there, something I could check out your story against?”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Try. These are easy questions, Angie. We can go to the hard ones if you want to.”

  Angie knew he had to tell him something, and he couldn’t just make it up. He decided to tell the truth—up to a point. “There’s a girl who lives where that blind’s three-quarters down—with the plants on the fire escape?”

  “Yes.” Angie could see his profile, that was all.

  “I saw her in the movie they’re making on Grand Street. I mean I knew where she lived and everything, so I was watching for her to come home.”

  “And?”

  “They came in—her and a man—and pulled the shades like they are now.”

  “Doesn’t she always pull the shades?” the cop asked, quick as a light.

  “No, sir.”

  “What happened then? Something—to keep you here till three in the morning.”

  Angie wanted to empty himself of the whole story, the theft of the coat and plane ticket. The cop was going to pull it out of him, bit by bit.

  Marks said, “Was that the first time you’d seen the man over there?”

  “Yes, sir.” It occurred to Angie then that the cop already knew … And Angie had put the coat in the locker: that would prove something in his favor.

  “Between twelve and three, Angie?”

  “I was pretending something. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try. I’ve done some pretending in my day. I know what it’s like to be sixteen and think about a girl. I know what it’s like to be thirty-six and think about a girl. How do you like that?”

  Angie was wary, but what could he say? “I pretended the man was somebody important in the movies. I pretended they came up to the roof over there and I was dancing. I don’t know how but they could see me … I know it sounds crazy, but I really did dance.”

  “And they came over and got you and took you to Hollywood and you became a star.”

  “Crazy,” Angie said again.

  “Not the dream part, but here’s what’s crazy, boy: your saying in front of the Brothers tonight that you were going to be a dancer.”

  “It just came out.”

  “Nothing just comes out. You’re scared, my boy, that’s why it came out. What’s it got to do with Grossman’s death?”

  “Nothing!” But his voice cracked on the word.

  “Okay. How did you get into that club in the first place, the Little Brothers?”

  “They’re all right,” Angie said.

  “You’re somebody’s patsy. Do you know what a patsy is?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “It’s a fall guy, somebody who does the dirty work, who gets the blame.”

  Angie didn’t say anything. He was afraid in his guts that it was true, Ric getting him in the club and everything, and then the way Louis wanted him out of the place quick. But he did not know for sure. What he did know was that the cop was trying to soften him up.

  “Am I wrong?” Marks asked finally.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you do know how you got into the club in the first place.”

  “Somebody recommended me—Ric Bonelli.” Angie felt better just saying the name.

  “Peculiar, wasn’t it, him happening to come along in time to see you in the restaurant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Three-thirty.”

  “How is it you’re so sure of the time?”

  “My mother goes to work at five. If I was going home before she got up …”

  “I see, but you didn’t go home. You stayed with Alice.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I guess I’d better talk to Alice, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah … sure.” Angie tried to sound more willing.

  The detective left him at the parapet, but he turned on his flashlight and went back to the te
nt. Angie ran after him. It was like a terrible game, the detective getting closer and closer to the bucket. This time he touched the bucket with his foot. Or so Angie thought. He was not even sure, but he panicked.

  “Lieutenant, there’s something I got to tell you.”

  “That’s better,” Marks said.

  “It’s easier if I show you from the edge,” Angie said, and Marks returned with him to where he could point out the girl’s fire escape and the steps that led up to the roof. He managed to pour out the whole story except that he took the blame for selling the plane ticket himself. He even told how he’d run away and left Alice in the bus depot.

  “Where’s the coat now?” the cop asked when Angie paused, thinking he might not have to go any further. He had said he was returning it to the man.

  “It’s in a locker he’d rented in the bus station. The key was in the pocket.”

  “And what was in the locker?”

  “A black suitcase …” The priest was going to have to take care of himself. “It wasn’t locked so I opened it to put the coat inside. He’s a priest.”

  “What?”

  “I saw the breviary and the Roman collar.”

  Marks laughed aloud and Angie hated him almost as much as he hated himself at that moment. “I’m not laughing at him—or at you. I was just thinking of the little things that trip a man up, the best and the worst of us. So everything’s back in the locker—except the plane ticket?”

  “Yes, sir. Even what was left of the money.”

  “And the key?”

  “I got to find a way to get it to him. I don’t even know the girl’s name.”

  “Julie Borghese.” The cop stood, one foot on the parapet, an elbow on his knee, and stared over there. Finally he rubbed his chin between his forefinger and his thumb. Angie could hear the rasp of his beard stubble. “Let’s have the key, Angie. I’ll give it to him and you can work the rest out yourself.”

  Angie had never known such relief as came with this token restitution and the sight of Marks striding across the roof. He kicked aside the hatch-door and dropped himself down to the floor below, ignoring the ladder. Angie watched until he went into the building opposite. Then he got the knife from the bucket, fastened it to his belt inside his jeans, and started for home.

  12

  MARKS WAS WELL AWARE that he was using the boy and the key as a pretext to crash Julie Borghese’s. Granted the validity of checking the boy’s story, he should have brought the youngster with him. No, in that, he decided, he was being harsh on himself. Admit that he was infatuated with Julie Borghese and let it go at that. He understood now Regan’s circumspection. Phillips would have gone to the stationhouse and confessed his predicament to a Catholic officer. Understandable, if you understood a vow of celibacy.

  He knocked on Julie’s door and got no answer. He knocked again and said aloud, but not too loudly, “It’s Lieutenant Marks, Miss Borghese.”

  Julie opened the door on the latch chain.

  “I have something for Mr. Phillips, a key to a public locker.”

  “He’s not here,” Julie said.

  Marks did not believe her, but decency forbade his saying so. “Then you can give it to him.”

  “I don’t want it, but thanks just the same.”

  She was about to close the door. He now believed her to be alone, hurt, he suspected, and angry. “Please … I’d like to verify the boy’s story. It may connect with the homicide.”

  “Where’s your partner? Don’t you come in pairs?”

  “Not this trip.”

  She slipped the chain from the latch and let him enter. Marks closed the door and then said, “Or shall I leave it open?”

  “Don’t overdo it, lieutenant. I know all police are perfect gentlemen.”

  “That’s an old-fashioned word.”

  “Isn’t it?” she said, even more sarcastically.

  There was no one else in the apartment. Phillips had taken off either while Marks had paced the street to Houston and back or while he had followed the youngster up to his rooftop. The girl’s morale was low and she made no attempt to conceal it.

  Marks nodded at the Virgin ascending. “That’s the one you bought from Grossman. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “I wonder what he thought.”

  “I know what he said: Esprit de corps.”

  “Ach,” Marks said: he glimpsed another facet of the dead man and this one hurt, somehow. “So there was humor underneath—a musician with humor.”

  “I didn’t know he was a musician. I mean it never came out to me.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “His humor didn’t come out often either. Sit down if you want to. Between the fan and the window—that’s the coolest place.”

  “I’ll try not to intrude any more than I have to,” Marks said and forgave himself the hypocrisy. “But I want to tell you about a sixteen-year-old boy who’s been watching you from the roof across the way.”

  Julie sat near the fan and lit a cigarette. Marks sniffed the smoke when the fan blew it his way. Julie said, “It’s not pot, Lieutenant Marks.”

  The detective lit a cigarette of his own and repeated Angie’s story. He omitted the fact that Angie had discovered the man to be a priest. It occurred to him that Julie might not know that.

  “It’s straight,” she said, “as far as it goes. I picked him up on location, as they say in movie jargon. A movie buff.”

  “A film editor, I thought,” Marks said.

  Julie’s very blue eyes met his. She knew. She fought back the tears. “What do you want, Lieutenant Marks?”

  He smiled wryly. “At the moment, to say I’m sorry you got hurt. Which is none of my business.”

  “That’s right, man.”

  Marks described Angie.

  Julie said: “There are a lot of handsome youngsters in Little Italy.”

  “But this one has a crush on you. Of course, all the others may too.”

  “Not all,” Julie said with the faintest of smiles.

  “What I’d better arrange,” Marks said, “is a viewing at the precinct house in the morning. Angie runs with a group that calls itself the Little Brothers. And there’s a boy among them that Phillips might have been describing this morning. Do you know where I can reach him?”

  “Father Phillips? Oh, yes. The rectory of St. Patrick’s down the block. He’ll have checked in by this time.”

  “Then I suppose I can give him the locker key myself.”

  “He doesn’t need it, lieutenant. With his magic, he can open every locker in the terminal.”

  “I should have thought of that,” Marks said. “He’s in for a shock when he opens the suitcase and finds the coat inside.”

  “Ha!” Julie’s eyes screwed up and she smiled at the picture he had conjured for her.

  “But no plane ticket. However, the boy did leave him some of the money.”

  “I’d like him to get back every penny of it,” Julie said.

  “I understand.”

  “No you don’t. How could you? A casual pick-up—a priest? Who cares nowadays?”

  “The priest himself.”

  “Yeah, you got it exactly. The way he went out of here, mea culpa-ing—it made me feel like a whore. And I’m not. I’m not even casual. I liked him.”

  “I didn’t,” Marks said. “I’m not sure why I disliked him so much. When I saw him get out of the squad car earlier tonight and come up here, I could have killed him. Mind you, I didn’t know a thing about him then. I just felt that he wasn’t up to your caliber. But if I hadn’t felt that way, and hadn’t marched up and down the street trying to figure out what to do about it, I wouldn’t have spotted the youngster and I wouldn’t have got the story.”

  “So gallantry pays off.”

  “Is that what it was?” Marks got up and put his cigarette out in the ashtray near Julie.

  “He is a film editor. Besides the other business. He teaches film.”

 
; “Okay. It doesn’t matter much, does it?”

  “I guess not. I ought to feel sorry for him. Instead, I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Pride,” Marks said.

  “Is that what it is?” She gave him back his own words mockingly, and Marks remembered her doing the same thing with Regan in Grossman’s shop. “Would you like a drink?”

  “I’d like to, but I’d better not, thank you.”

  “Oh, shit,” Julie said. “Men are hypocrites. If you want a drink, man, have one.”

  “No, thanks,” Marks said, feeling put down. “Ten o’clock in the morning at the bottom of Elizabeth Street. Shall I have someone pick you up?”

  “Never again,” Julie said, so that he left with laughter between them.

  But on the way downstairs he was aware of his first twinge of sympathy for Phillips.

  13

  MARKS HEADED FOR THE precinct house by way of Hester Street. The entire Grossman building was in darkness, including the third-floor apartment where the windows were opened wide which added to the look of desolation. It surprised him, how little activity there was on Hester Street. It was going more and more to factories. And scheduled for urban renewal. Some of the buildings were already vacant. Marks by-passed the clean square of glass which still bugged him, and looked into the shop through the padlocked door. The broken statuary lay in a box near the door. It occurred to him that if it had been the killer who turned the shop into its present state of chaos, the technicians would have an easier time of it. There was something discouraging about tackling a clean house: so Mattie, the woman who had worked for his mother since Marks’ childhood, always said. It was at this point he remembered that it was Friday night and that he had promised to attend a dinner party at his parents’. He looked at his watch. It was almost ten. Neither the first nor the last of such delinquencies.

  He crossed the street to the entry of the leathergoods factory. The light was too dim for him to read the notice on the door, but he assumed it announced the vacation closing. There was a crackling sound among the debris beneath his feet, not paper … He stooped down and groped gingerly. Conscious of the third-floor windows across the way, he did not want to use his flashlight. Peanut shells. He had recently seen whole peanuts … it came to him where: among Angie’s supplies in the tent, a plastic bag of them. While he remained squatting, thinking about it, something caught his eye, a whiteness, a movement at one of the Ruggio windows? There was nothing more and it might have been the flutter of one of the pennants strung across the street. He remained achingly immobile and studied the window. Instinct, nothing else, suggested that somebody up there was watching him. He did not move. A car passed, the beam of its headlights just missing him. Allioto was closing up the delicatessen. Earlier than last night. Was he frightened? On the side streets there were people, but not a soul on Hester. His legs grew numb. A sound he didn’t identify immediately: then, a baby starting to cry, its first cries muffled as though it had wakened on its stomach. The crying picked up in strength. Marks saw the movement at the window. The watcher gave up the vigil to go to the child. A light came on. Marks stood up and massaged his legs, but without taking his eyes from the window. The child stopped crying. He saw neither shadow nor person and very shortly the light went out again.