by Con Lehane
When I knew Aaron, he’d just joined the workaday world after a stint in Princeton, following a boyhood in private boarding schools. Aaron’s family disowned him not long after that, according to Scott, because he came out of the closet at the wrong time in history. The Aaron I knew was Little Lord Fauntleroy, a dainty, pristine prima donna, the first person I’d ever met with manicured fingernails. Pudgy, his face round and cherubic, except for a sculptured goatee, he looked like a twelve-year-old in disguise. Without the goatee, he would have been the kid in grade school who carried a briefcase, wore rubbers over his shoes, and sat in the front row. Like most managers, he kowtowed to the powers above him and lorded over his underlings. We let him act the part, because the bar itself was firmly in our control. Spoiled all his life, he didn’t know how to be hard—though he tried to be and thought he was. So he didn’t fire any of us, even when he could have.
Scott, it turned out, was a social worker, and part of what he did was to help people walk through their sorrow and grief. Maybe we did that for the hour or so we talked together. I found out some surprising things about Aaron. For one thing, he’d talked about those days down at the shore with Big John, me, and Greg. For whatever it meant, he’d remembered that time as fondly as I did. For the more recent time, Aaron had been working as a maître d’ at a black-tie East Side dining room. He might have been involved in a drug-dealing scheme with Greg and Walter. But Scott said he doubted it, because Aaron was so terrified of being sent back to prison.
Finding out about Aaron’s life didn’t tell me much. I didn’t know what the hell Pop was talking about. All that hearing about Aaron’s life did was make me want to go looking for a gas pipe. Instead, I went back to the Ocean Club and poked around behind the bar again, until the bartender made it clear I was getting on his nerves. Leaving the bar, I went back to the bar manager’s office and tried to make sense out of the ordering book and the inventory forms. I sat at my desk and shuffled papers for a while, went up front and chatted with the bartender about places we’d worked and bartenders we knew, checked out the dark-haired, long-legged, aloof-looking cocktail waitress, and got in both of their ways. I was really disappointed that Ernesto hadn’t shown up for work. I’d tried calling him again, but again no answer.
The next morning, John woke me up by ringing my doorbell. He was double-parked, so I couldn’t do anything except throw on some clothes and follow him. He’d spoken to Frank, and the way was clear for us to visit the optometrist. I demanded breakfast before we did anything.
“If you can find us a place to park, I’ll buy you breakfast,” said John.
I took John first to La Rosita on Broadway. But there was no place to park. I saw a cab parked in a bus stop in front and guessed again that it was Ntango’s, which it turned out to be. John pulled up along side. Ntango was reading the News.
“Don’t you ever work?” I asked him.
“Hey, my friends, Mr. Brian and Mr. Big John.” He looked up from the paper, smiling, speaking in his usual slow drawl that suggested there was no real hurry about anything.
“How do you get to Bay Ridge?” I asked.
“The Triborough to the Cross Island to the Belt.”
“Where can we park and get something to eat?”
“There’s a diner with a parking lot on a Hundred and twenty-fifth Street and the river. But you can park here in the bus stop; just put your hood and trunk lid up.”
I happened to remember that Ntango had recently paid nine hundred dollars in parking tickets to get his cab out of the car pound, so I opted for the diner with the parking lot.
“I forgot to tell you. I have a new dispatcher,” Ntango said, handing me a card through the window. “A high-class operation. Give me a call.”
We got onto the Triborough after breakfast and a stop and go trip along 125th Street, during which John, who was gawking around, almost ran into the back of a bus. As we crossed the bridge, Big John looked over at me a number of times. His expression was guarded. “There’s no danger from this guy,” Big John said after a lapse, while I played with his car phone. “He’s really a professional optometrist.”
“Good,” said I, although I didn’t really have any higher regard for professionals than I did for gunmen.
“Good,” repeated Big John. “That’s why I want you to check him out.”
“Me? I thought you didn’t even want me to go with you?”
Big John’s expression was stony. “It’s safe, bro. I wouldn’t send you in if it wasn’t.”
“Why?” First, I wasn’t even supposed to come on this crusade. Now I was expected to lead it.
“I got my reasons.” He watched the road in front of him. I watched the city skyline out my side window from the crest of the bridge—all that stone and steel and glass. No matter how many times I’d seen it, each time I was awestruck.
Not until we left the Belt Parkway and were driving down Fourth Avenue did John speak again. “The guy’s name isn’t really Wilson.”
“You sure he’s an optometrist?”
“Yeah, He’s a goddamn optometrist.” Perspiration beaded on his brow, despite the air-conditioned car. “He would know me. That’s why I can’t see him.” Big John took me in with his soulful expression. Loyalty called.
“Okay! Okay! What am I supposed to find out from this drug-dealing optometrist with an assumed name?”
“Ask about Greg. See what he tells you.”
When we pulled up in front of the office, John peeled off three twenties from his bankroll, handing them to me along with his business card. “Here, I got some things to do. Take a cab back. Call me at the office later and let me know what happens.”
chapter seven
Dr. Wilson’s office was in a square two-story wooden single-family house on a quiet tree-lined street of formidable single-family homes—shades of Bedford Falls—a block off Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. DR. CHARLES WILSON was printed on a gold plaque on his door, and a receptionist stood guard in the outer office. The sentry was thin, with hair a color between gray and blond. She wore a white uniform, smiled efficiently but without warmth, the expression on her face a perfect mix of boredom and disapproval.
“I’d like to see Dr. Wilson,” I said.
“Do you have an appointment?” She smiled sweetly, but her manner was supercilious: She knew damn well I didn’t have an appointment. Instead of answering, I took a white pad with a drug company logo from her desk. On it, I wrote “Greg Phillips? Dead body?”
“Would you hand this to the doctor?” I folded the note quickly, almost catching her nose in it.
To all appearances, Dr. Wilson was a working optometrist, with eye charts, cabinets filled with instruments, and large machines with lenses and lights on arms with hinges, like a dentist’s drill. He didn’t have any patients, but it was still early.
“Interesting note,” he said, standing amid his equipment and machines like a captain on a ship. “Who are you? Why do you think I know Greg Phillips?”
“Brian McNulty.” John had said to leave his name out of this, so I did, and I didn’t see any reason to bring up Walter. This left me with no believable answer to his second question.
The doctor was a good-size man—“husky,” my mother would have said. His hair was gray, thick, and wavy, worn in a style left over from the Sinatra era. He had a full mustache, also gray, and large eyes that gave him a startled expression, like a vaudeville comedian rushing out onto the stage with a gag. And because he had dimples when he smiled, he seemed harmless and friendly. He sized me up, seeming unperturbed by my nonanswer, but persistent all the same.
“Someone told you I knew Greg. Who was it?”
“I can’t say.”
“Well, I can’t say, either.” He held out his hand. “Nice meeting you. Have a good day.” He seemed pretty cocksure as he stood there waiting for my next move.
Since I didn’t have a next move, I told him about Aaron being killed and Greg disappearing. “I understand you and Greg had
business together. I just want to make sure he’s okay. Do you know where he is?”
“I want to know why you came to my office,” the doctor said, his eyes lively and penetrating, his manner gruff and down-to-earth, like you might expect from a bookie or a nightclub operator, not modulated and precise, as you might expect from a doctor. “And why you think I have any information for you.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I had to do something. John said to leave his name out of this. But he hadn’t said anything about not dropping Walter’s name, so I did.
“A person named Walter told you I had business with a person named Greg? Is that it?”
“Not exactly, but close enough. Walter’s Greg’s roommate, and you know goddamn well what I’m talking about, because Walter came here last night. A friend of mine followed him.”
The doctor looked worried for a moment, but when he spoke, he had a twinkle in his eye. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I did know this Greg Phillips. Why would I tell you?”
“Because I want to help him. He’s in trouble.”
“Suppose he is,” said the doctor. “What can you do to get him out of trouble?”
He had me there. “I don’t know … . A friend of mine and I—” I stopped, realizing I was treading on dangerous ground.
But the good doctor was right on it. “This friend,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “what’s his name?”
Taking a deep breath and feeling like a fool, I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”
“Oh? I’m supposed to provide you with all kinds of information based on a bunch of wild allegations you throw at me. But you don’t have to answer my questions. Is that how it is?” He watched me squirm for a minute or two without losing his twinkle or amused smirk. “This friend wouldn’t be John Wolinski, by any chance?”
Well, if I was befuddled before, I was surely twisted now. Big John had hung me out to dry. Of course, I didn’t have to tell Dr. Wilson about John. Walter would have told him.
The doctor was downright jovial, and I must have looked as bewildered as I felt, because he laughed again and cuffed me on the shoulder. Suddenly, he bent down and looked at my face quizzically. “Have you had your eyes checked lately?”
“No,” I said carefully. “Why?”
“You’re squinting.”
Actually, my eyesight had been growing dimmer; I had to squint and move the book closer and then farther away from me when I read at night. I’d been ignoring the symptoms. Now I was scared I was going blind.
“Are you really an optometrist?”
This time, the doctor’s eyebrows went up and down a couple of times. “What did you think I was?”
I got flustered. The guy was toying with me. He knew whatever Big John knew and I didn’t, so I was making an ass out of myself.
With a warm smile, the doc threw a paternal arm over my shoulder and led me toward a chair. “Look, I’ll tell you a secret. I do know Greg. I’ve known him a long time. But I don’t have any business with him.” He sized me up once more, continuing in his paternal tone. “If you know Greg, you know he wouldn’t kill anybody—whatever else he might have been doing.”
I knew nothing of the sort. To my mind, no one was the kind of person who would kill someone—yet they did, all the time. But I let it go. “Greg’s in trouble,” I said again.
The doctor had a twinkle in his eye. “If Greg’s in trouble, Greg will get himself out of trouble. It’s nice of you to worry about him, but it’s not your business.”
“I don’t want to get into anyone’s business,” I persisted. “Why don’t you just tell me where I can find Greg?”
“No,” the doctor said carefully. “For one thing, don’t be so sure I know where he is. For another, even if I know where he is, there’s no reason for me to believe telling you would help him.”
This doctor had a pretty good hold on his composure and was unlikely to tell me anything if he didn’t want to. But I took one more shot. “Where were you Friday night?”
The good doctor’s expression slipped for a fraction of a second—an instantaneous flash of alarm that I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been looking directly into his eyes. When he spoke again, he’d lost his good humor; his expression was severe. “Trying to tie me into this isn’t going to help Greg. I’d drop it if I were you.” He stared at me for a moment to let me know he meant business, then picked up some papers from his desk, stuck his nose into a file, and turned his back on me. This is one way doctors get a leg up on the rest of us, who don’t have files to look into.
“Make an appointment, and I’ll check your vision—on the house,” Dr. Wilson said as I turned to leave; his tone was friendly, his manner professional and paternalistic once more. “Don’t worry about Greg.”
As I left, I noticed three or four people in the waiting room. It looked like an optometrist’s office after all. Everyone glanced up when I came out of the inner office, probably to make sure I had both my eyes and wasn’t tapping along with a cane. One guy, a dark-skinned Latin-looking guy, glowered at me like I’d stolen his appointment.
Considering I might want to talk to the doc again, I signed up to have my eyes checked the following week. Sourpuss called a car service for me, and I went outside to sit on the stoop and wait for the cab. I was reading my Daily News and waiting patiently when the doctor’s door opened and the Latin guy walked down the steps and right past me, still scowling. I watched him walk toward Fourth Avenue and get into a car that someone else was driving—a fire engine red Jeep Cherokee.
When I noticed the Cherokee pull slowly from its spot next to the curb, a poorly maintained early-warning system in the back of my mind began sputtering. Just as the car stopped directly in front of the doctor’s office and Mr. Scowl opened the door and stepped out, the old warning system kicked In—about a minute too late to be of any use.
I don’t like stereotypes, it told me. Brooklyn has many Latino lawyers, doctors, and hardworking family men. But a Cherokee in Brooklyn? Driven by a mean-looking Latino?
My adrenaline started pumping, and I suppose I attempted to move, but I don’t remember. I do remember Mr. Scowl raising a long-barreled handgun. Bang went the gun, and I thought I was dead.
The next thing I knew, I was on the sidewalk at the bottom of the stoop, a searing, burning pain ripping through my left leg. Mr. Scowl stood calmly next to the door of the car, watching me, his angry glare saying it was my fault he’d had to shoot me; then he climbed back in. The Jeep drove off slowly down the street as I stared after it, too dazed or too dumb to read the license number.
I rolled over on the sidewalk, trying to sit up, watching my blood soak my pant leg; then, I began to shake—from shock, from fear, from pain, I don’t know. I got dizzy and couldn’t have stood up if I’d wanted to. I kept seeing that gun barrel and feeling the bullet go through my heart. But it hadn’t. The guy shot me in the leg, and, strangely, I felt grateful for that.
Dr. Wilson was beside me before I saw him. No one else seemed to care that a man had been shot on this quiet tree-lined street. Since I was a stranger and had been shot by strangers, why should they care? All we were doing was giving the neighborhood a bad name and putting a dent in property values. This, I thought about later. For the moment, I thought of the nearness of death. I wanted to see my son.
But the doctor had strong arms and someone helped him. The strong arms felt good—safe and secure, something to hang on to in this cruel and dangerous world—until, halfway up the porch stairs, I realized he might be taking me inside to finish me off. I started struggling, twisting away from the arms that supported me, but the arms held. When I’d twisted far enough, I could look into his eyes. They smiled reassuringly.
“You’ll be okay,” the doctor said.
Once more, I believed him. I believed him, I realized, because I needed to. He would have to be my hero; all my other choices were used up.
Dr. Wilson sat me on a chair in the inner office, wrapped a great d
eal of gauze around my wound, and, with the help of this other guy, who had come from somewhere, carried me to his car.
“Where are we going?”
“To the hospital. I’ll take you to Kings County. They have a lot of experience with gunshot wounds.”
“It’s too far away. What about Coney Island?”
The doctor seemed to be figuring out how to say what he wanted to say, and the process must have been distasteful to him, because his face was contorted with the effort.
“It would be better for me if this shooting didn’t take place in front of my office.” His expression wasn’t exactly pleading when he looked at me; it was more like embarrassed. I was pissed that he was concerned about his own well-being while I bled in the seat beside him, though I did take some comfort from the fact that I was bleeding on the leather seat of his Mercedes.
“Yeah,” I said huffily. “Just tell them you found me while you were jogging in Prospect Park.”
“I won’t have to tell them anything. But they’ll report a gunshot wound. You might just say someone tried to hold you up and you resisted. A young black guy wearing tennis shoes and a gold chain around his neck is as good a description as any. That’s what they’d expect you to say.” He smiled.
“How about if I tell them it was a white guy in a three-piece suit, carrying an attaché case?”
The doctor’s brow wrinkled.
“Doesn’t everyone know they’re crooks, too? They are, you know. Look at you; you’re a crook. Everyone I know who wears a suit is a crook.” My head was spinning; I couldn’t stop babbling.
“Put your head down between your knees and close your eyes. You’ll be okay,” said Wilson in a reassuring voice. “I’ll make it worth your while to keep me out of it.”
“Everyone can be bought,” I said. My eyes closed. I felt dizzy and nauseous, but my head cleared a little. “I got shot near Prospect Park. A guy picked me up and drove me to the hospital. I don’t know who shot me.” I looked over at Wilson; he looked straight ahead. “It was a white guy in a business suit.”
