by Sara Gran
I didn’t mind being followed. I wasn’t making any secret of where I was going. But I did want to know who he was. It was probably the same person who had followed me to Brooklyn. And if he didn’t kill McFall himself, he probably knew who did. There was no one else who would be so interested in how I was spending my time. But he was gone now, and I’d have to wait until next time to try to catch him.
I was sure there would be a next time.
Jim answered his door with a copy of the Daily News in his hand, open to the entertainment page.
“Read all about it,” he said. I came in and sat on the sofa and looked at the paper. There was a picture of Shelley. I glanced at the column next to it.
Lovely lady Shelley Dumere is slated to star in the upcoming weekly television production Life with Lydia. The sultry starlet will star opposite Tad Delmont as wacky housewife Lydia Livingston, whose antics and mishaps are sure to keep us laughing all the way until next week. . . .
“Great,” I said. “Listen. I need to talk to you about your car.” His face fell. I told him the car was fine. Only I wasn’t giving it back quite yet, if he didn’t mind, on account of that I might need it, because I was being set up for murder and had a lot of errands to run.
Jim went to the bar and fixed us each a drink in the fancy glasses with the gold seashells, and he stood by the bar while I told him everything that had happened since the last time I saw him.
“So,” Jim finally said when I finished. “What are you gonna do?”
It took me a minute to realize what I didn’t like about that question. It was the you. I was thinking it might have been a we. He brought me my drink and then went back by the bar and leaned against it.
I looked at Jim’s face. It was like something had drained right out of it. Like he was locking a part of himself up, and he wouldn’t let it out again. Not around me.
I didn’t blame him. Jim had stuck with me through some tough times, but this was different. He couldn’t afford this kind of trouble. Nobody could.
I shrugged. “I’m gonna find out who killed Jerry McFall.”
I looked at Jim. His eyes were on his drink. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said. “Anything at all . . .”
It was kind of sweet, when you thought about it. He was saying everything he was supposed to say. He just couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it. Sometimes it was hard to believe Jim was a professional con man. Because he wasn’t a very good liar at all.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said. He was looking at the bar now. “Talk to some people. Ask around.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
I stood up and told Jim it was time for me to go. I could almost see the relief on his face. Then he looked me in the eyes.
“The car,” he said. “It’s yours, Joe, for as long as you need it. Keep it. It’s the least I can do.”
The least he could do. And the most he would.
“You’re gonna be okay, Joe,” he said when I was leaving.
It was a statement, not a question, and I figured the least I could do was say, “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” By the time I got home it was after twelve. I lay in bed and didn’t sleep for hours. I tried to stop thinking, but I couldn’t.
It was always hard for me to sleep. I still dreamed about dope, sometimes. Dreams where I’d be doing something ordinary, walking down Fifth Avenue or something like that, and then all of a sudden I’d find myself in a dark little room somewhere, one of a thousand dark little rooms I had been in, and the room would be full of people fixing and I would be, too. I’d have my works out and my arm tied off and someone would be cooking up a fat dose of junk in a spoon and I would smell that smell and the next thing I knew I’d be taking a shot.
Oh no, I’d think. No, no, no. Not again. Not anymore. It would be like all the hard work of the past two years and all the other times I’d tried to quit before that, all the awful cold turkey and the chills and the crying and the grinding my teeth so hard I chipped them, all the horrible willpower that it took and that it still took, every day—it was all for nothing. Because here I was right back in the middle of it again. I’d be so ashamed of myself that I’d start to cry. How could I be so weak again, so stupid again, when I tried so hard and prayed so much?
No, I’d think. Please God, no.
But then at the same time, I’d also be thinking, Yes. Please God, yes.
Finally I got out of bed and moved a chair over to the window and watched the sun come up over Second Avenue. No one was out. The city looked like it had been abandoned, like a ghost town. The streets went from black to gray to pink to gold, and then the sky turned lighter and lighter until the sun was out and the sky was blue. Soon a few trucks started rattling around delivering bread and newspapers and milk, and slowly it all came back to life. One at a time the people took their places on the sidewalks again and the cars and buses took their places on the streets, and it was like the quiet of just a few hours before had never happened. Like everything had always been this way, and it always would. And it seemed like the whole city was mine, watching it from up there, and I wanted to hold on to it forever.
Chapter Twenty
The next afternoon I drove down to the Red Rooster. Harry wasn’t there, but that was fine, because I knew where he lived. The Prince George on the Bowery rented beds by the night. From what I had heard not only was the desk wrapped in chicken wire, but each bed was, too, to protect each fellow from the man in the bed next to him. That was how Skinny Harry lived.
Like all the others, this Prince hotel used to be better than it was now, but not by too much. On one side of the lobby was a battered wood counter. To the left was a small waiting room, where a handful of old men sat on threadbare furniture. Half of them were on the nod and the other half were drunk. Their shirts were frayed and their hats, if they had them, were crumpled and dirty. Three of them were talking about the races. One of them liked Lucky Lucy for the third tomorrow.
“If I could get a ride to Belmont,” he said over and over again, “I could turn this dollar into fifteen. I know I could.”
I heard a man sobbing from upstairs. The sound echoed down through the lobby. When I was trying to get the attention of the old man behind the counter another man walked in, a respectable-looking man in a black suit. The old man behind the counter sprang to life.
“Oh no, you son of a bitch,” he shouted. “I said you’re never stepping foot in here again and I meant it.”
Without a word the respectable-looking man turned around and left. Then the clerk turned his attention to me.
I told him that I needed to see Harry and I needed to see him now. He shrugged. “I ain’t leaving the desk. But you can ask one of the boys to get him for you.”
He looked out toward the lobby. The boys. I went up to one of them, a tall heavyset Negro around a hundred years old who looked like there still might be some life left in him. At least enough to go upstairs and get Harry.
“Hey, mister,” I said. “You know Skinny Harry? I’ll give you a dollar if you go upstairs and get him for me.”
He looked at me. And kept looking. I reached into my purse and got a dollar out. “Look,” I said. “I really got a dollar. And it’s all yours if you go and get my friend.”
He kept on looking. I gave him the bill. He took it. Then he smiled, and when he smiled he didn’t look like an old Negro in dirty clothes wasting time in the lobby of the Prince George hotel. He looked like someone you’d like to have a cup of coffee with.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll be back down with Harry before you can spit.”
I didn’t spit, but Harry came down the stairs fast. I don’t know what the old man had told him, but Harry looked happy, like maybe someone had come by with a puppy dog and a ten-dollar hooker for him. But when he saw me his face fell and he rolled his eyes.
“Oh Jesus Christ, Joe. Ain’t I done enough for you already?”
“Yeah, you son of a bitch, you did plenty for me. You got me set up for murdering Jerry McFall.”
Harry’s face twisted up and he looked at me. “But Jerry ain’t dead, Joe. What the hell are you talking about?”
“He is now, you nitwit.”
I watched as Harry’s face twisted up even more, and then slackened out to something like sadness. He started to speak a few times, but couldn’t get a sentence out.
Finally he said, “I can’t believe it. Jerry’s been kilt.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, a little more softly. “Jerry’s been killed. You didn’t know anything about it?”
He shook his head, slowly. “I gotta sit down or something.”
He looked pale so we went back inside and sat on two armchairs, near the old men. I gave Harry a few minutes, and then I asked him if he knew anything else about the job Jerry had pulled off right before he died.
He ignored me. “Jesus,” he said. “Jerry’s dead. I used to do stuff for him—you know, run errands and stuff—and he always took care of me. He always took care of me good. Now . . . don’t know what I’m gonna do now.”
“You’ll be okay,” I said.
“I can’t work like I used to,” he said, shaking his head. “Remember the jobs we used to pull? Like in Buffalo? And then that other time, in Chinatown with Easy Mike?”
“Sure,” I said. “I remember.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t do that stuff no more. Not since the war. I fucked up my head.” He smacked himself lightly on his forehead with the heel of his hand. “That’s why I run errands and stuff like that now. I fucked up my head.”
“You’ll be okay,” I said again. “Jerry treated you pretty good, huh?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. Not really. We weren’t really friends, like I made it out to be to you and everyone else. I just did things for him, that’s all. Sometimes he would call me stupid and stuff like that. But he never stiffed me. Bring this package to this girl, I’ll give you a dollar. He always gave me a dollar here, a quarter there. Now I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“Listen, Harry,” I said. “I know you’re shook up. But I want you to think for a minute. Really think. You’re gonna help me find out who killed Jerry. Do you know where he got his dope from?”
Harry shook his head. “I’m thinking, Joe, I really am. But he never told me nothing like that. I’d deliver it to the girls for him, sometimes. But I never went with him to get it. I don’t know anything about that.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. How about the job he pulled, the one that made him go hide out in Sunset Park. Do you know anything about that, anything at all?”
Harry thought for a long time. “He never told me stuff like that. The only reason I knew about that at all was because he called me up and asked me to come out to Sunset Park to bring him some things from his apartment. He called me at the Red Rooster—there’s no phone here.”
“What did he say when he called?” I asked.
Harry thought some more. “‘I was taking some dope off someone’s hands and it didn’t turn out like I planned,’” he finally said, in a good imitation of Jerry’s oily voice. “Of course I knew what that meant. I’m not stupid. He’d torn someone off, and he’d been busted. Then I asked if he was okay, everything like that. He said ‘Sure, I’m okay. I’ll tell you, Harry, it was all worth it just to stick it to that son of a bitch. You know the type, thinks they’re better than everyone else.’”
“Then what happened?”
“Then he asked me to get some stuff from his apartment—just a couple of suits, some underwear, things like that—and bring them out to him in Brooklyn. Which I did.”
I showed him the photo of Jerry and Nadine. By now it was getting soft and crumpled around the edges. “How about Nadine? Did you ever meet her?”
Harry looked at the picture and smiled. “Oh, that girl. Yeah, she was hanging out with Jerry a lot for a while there. Real nice. Real sweet girl. But when I went out to Sunset Park he was with that other girl. I asked where Nadine was and he said she was more trouble than she was worth, now. That’s exactly what he said. ‘That girl’s more trouble than she’s worth, now.’”
That was all Harry knew. I was getting ready to leave when I thought of something. I asked Harry if he still had the key to Jerry’s apartment.
“Sure,” he said, “right here.” He reached into his pocket and took it out. I asked if I could have it.
“I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “Would this really make us square? I mean once and for all?”
“Harry,” I said, “we’re really square.”
I gave him ten dollars and told him to look out for himself. He gave me the key.
Driving north on the Bowery I saw a black Chevy behind me. I was at a red light and I saw it just a few cars behind me, waiting for the light to change. He was back. I thought about what to do. Did I want to lose him, or did I want to draw him out, find out who it was? If I wanted to confront him, I could just not start driving again when the light changed. At the very least he’d have to go around me, and maybe I could get a look at his face that way. . . .
And then I saw something else. A few cars behind that was another black Chevy. I looked around. There was another, parked around the corner on Fourth Street. I looked up. Across the street, on top of the gate of a parking lot on Bowery and Fourth, was a billboard. There was a drawing of a black Chevy with a family of four inside. A dog was hanging his head out the window. They looked like they were on their way to a picnic.
Chevrolet, it said underneath the picture. America’s most POPULAR car!
Chapter Twenty-one
Jerry lived in a brownstone turned over to apartments on West Twenty-seventh Street. The lock on the front door was busted and inside the building smelled like boiled chickens. Jerry’s place was on the fourth floor in the rear. I looked around to make sure no one was watching and then I let myself in. It was a stupid thing to do and I knew it. The cops were still investigating and they could be around any minute. But if I was quick I should be okay.
His apartment looked like a hurricane had been through it. Either the cops had already been through it or his killer had been looking for the dope, or probably both. The closets and the dressers and the cabinets were emptied onto the floor. The furniture had been turned upside down and sliced up. There was a bedroom and it was the same in there—everything destroyed. I walked around, trying not to disturb anything too much. Being in a dead man’s apartment spooked me.
You’d think you’d be able to tell a lot about a person from his apartment, but nothing stood out. The mirror didn’t scream “Jerry McFall’s mirror!” It was just a plain mirror hung on the back of the bedroom door. The sofa didn’t look like something you’d see and say, “Now that’s a sofa a pimp would buy.” It was just plain furniture. I don’t know what I had been hoping to find there. Maybe a big sign with “SO-AND-SO KILLED ME” hung up on the refrigerator.
I looked through the piles of stuff. There were some household items, things you’d find in anyone’s apartment—coffee cups, ashtrays, a corkscrew, a can opener. Magazines. Dime novels. Clothes. A cigarette case. Matchbooks. Records. A pillow from the bed that ended up in the living room. In the bedroom, lying on top of the sliced-up mattress, was a little ceramic deer. There were no signs, no clues, no secret messages.
In a pile of junk in the corner of the living room I found his phone book. It was one of those automatic types, where you slide the lever to the letter you want. I slid it to “A,” opened it, and broke the lever off so I could flip through. Most of the names meant nothing to me. I could call every one and ask if they knew who killed him. That probably wouldn’t go over too well. But I knew some people in there. Harry, after which he wrote Red Rooster. Jim was in there. I was
n’t surprised. He said he knew him. I looked through the book some more. Lots of girls’ names: Hazel, Clara, Nadine.
And Shelley.
I left everything as I found it and went back downstairs.
On the street in front of the building was a police car, with Springer at the wheel. Parked a few cars down from him was a black Chevy.
“Don’t even think about running, Joe,” Springer said. “You’re coming with me.”
“I got a call from one of the neighbors that someone was in McFall’s place,” Springer said in the car. “It’s funny, because I was going to come and find you today, anyway. So you saved me a lot of trouble. I got a lot more people who say you were looking for McFall, people who say you’ve known the man for years. I think it’s time we had a talk.”
So I went to the station with him to talk. We talked for about ten hours. It was a funny kind of talking, because no matter what I said, he didn’t believe me. Instead Springer kept slapping the table with a big phone book and threatening to do the same to me if I didn’t come clean. I told him I was coming clean.
“Listen, Joe,” he said. “The mayor’s getting pretty pissed off about all the dope on the streets, and we’re not taking any shit from the junkies and the dealers anymore. The whole thing’s gone too far. Why, you’re bothering good people, regular people. Folks can’t even walk around Times Square without getting sick just looking at you, bags of bones begging for change and looking for drunks to roll and tourists to rob.”
I told him I wasn’t using anymore. He called me a liar. I rolled up my sleeves to show him the scars on my arms, as healed up as they’d ever be. I asked for a female officer to give me a strip search. Springer said there were no female officers in his district, and he’d damn well search me himself, but it wouldn’t mean anything, because us goddamn junkies were always finding new places to shoot up. He was right about that.
