by Con Lehane
The man who got out from the van’s passenger side and walked toward the office looked a lot like Ernesto. There was no reason on earth to believe the man I saw was Ernesto, but I needed to make sure, so I got out of the car and hobbled up the street a little ways to where I could stand behind a tree and see him in the light of a streetlight when he came out of the office. I stood there a long while, and when I got a good look at the guy on his way back, I was sure beyond a doubt it actually was Ernesto. I debated asking him what he was doing, then thought better of it. I waited until he was back in the van and then hobbled back to the car.
Dr. Parker started the engine when I got in, but I told her to wait until the van was out of sight before she pulled out. The van, however, didn’t leave immediately. The driver slid out of his parking space, stopped, then quickly reversed, until, before I knew it, I was eyeball-to-eyeball with Ernesto’s pal Alberto, the guy who’d guarded Ntango’s cab outside of the South Bronx tenement. The exchange lasted for no more than a second before he dropped the van into gear and sped off.
chapter eighteen
A few minutes later, I picked up my new glasses from Charlie, who spent a few minutes fitting the frames to my head. I didn’t mention having seen Ernesto during this time, and neither did he. Dr. Parker dropped me at the R train stop on Eighty-sixth Street, and I rode a series of rattling, creaking, stalling-between-stations trains back to the Number 1 train stop at 110th Street. When I finally got home, I poured myself into bed. In the morning, my eyes popped open around 6:00. I tried to go back to sleep, but my eyes stayed open and my brain started running. So, around 7:30, I got up, plugged in my phone, which I had shut off the night before, and called Pop, but he wasn’t home. Then, my service called with an urgent message from the night before: a message from Greg that I should come to Sea Isle City right away—it was a matter of life and death.
The message scared me enough that I decided to go, but I went to check on Ntango first. He was sitting up in a chair, groggy but content, despite his slow and slurred speech. He said he wanted to get out of the hospital and was worried about how he’d pay the bill. I told him John was going to fudge some forms and get him on the Ocean Club’s health-insurance plan, so he didn’t have to worry about the bill. But he still wanted to get out of the hospital, so I told him I’d call Dr. Parker and ask if she could get him out.
I went back home and called John’s secretary, the pretty and bubbly Jane, and gave her the information she needed to finish filling out Ntango’s forms. When I asked to speak to John, she said he wasn’t available. “This is important,” I said. “Tell him it’s Brian.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but he’s at a meeting at one of the properties and left instructions not to be interrupted. I’d be happy to take a message.”
I hung up.
I tried Pop and missed again. Finally, I called Dr. Parker on her beeper, and when she called back, asked her if she would go see if she could get Ntango out of the hospital. I also told her I wouldn’t be around for a couple of days. My leg was feeling better, but Dr. Parker said I should use the crutches for a few more days. When I finished this call, I packed a couple of shirts, some underwear, socks, and such things, took the subway to Port Authority, and got the bus to Atlantic City, where I’d change to one for Sea Isle.
Even with an hour layover in Atlantic City, I got to Sea Isle City in the middle of the afternoon, disembarking with the assistance of a kindly old lady at a stop in front of a small grocery store deli that the driver assured me was only a couple of blocks from the address I’d gotten from Greg. I hoisted myself along a quiet block of small older houses and then a block of larger and more garish newer houses. You could date the change from a quiet working-class beach town by the size of the houses. Something happened in the early eighties that required everything built after that date to be expensive and ostentatious; there wasn’t room for simple bungalows anymore.
Those few minutes of walking along the quiet, clean, and sun-drenched streets, pushed gently from behind by the prevailing ocean breeze, in the freshness and warmth of a late-summer afternoon, generated a bit of optimism even for me. Everything might work out after all, I told myself. Problems have solutions. People sometimes live happily ever after. Maybe this time Greg would explain everything. I’d go back to New York then. Ntango would recover. Maybe Dr. Parker could learn brain surgery and lobotomize me, so Ntango and I could sit quietly in the park, feeding the pigeons most days.
As I walked up the steps leading to Greg’s house, a voice from the porch startled me. I jumped but recognized immediately that it was Sandra.
“Who is it?” Her voice trembled.
“Me … Brian McNulty. A friend of Greg’s. We met last week.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Thank goodness.”
The fear in her voice scared me. The red alarm clanged. “Where’s Greg?”
“I don’t know.” It was the tone of premonition one hears in the voice of a miner’s wife when her husband’s fellow workers show up on the doorstep.
“Why are you scared? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice shook. “Last night, he was in the living room; then he was gone.”
She sounded shrill, and because I didn’t want her to get hysterical, I tried to act calm. “Maybe he went out for a drink.”
“He doesn’t drink.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Did he leave by himself?”
“No. Somebody came for him.”
“How do you know?” I stood in front of Sandra’s wheelchair and bent close enough to her that I was hypnotized by the terror in her eyes. She seemed to stretch up out of the chair toward me.
“Something terrible is happening,” she said. Then her voice went cold. “And you know what it is. Tell me!” she screeched.
I stepped back, as if I she had shoved me. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“He was hiding. He was afraid. He went out last night for a long time. But he came back. He didn’t say he was going out again. I was sure he wasn’t. But all of a sudden, he wasn’t here anymore.” Her voice rose as she spoke, and accusation sharpened the tone, until it was a screech again. “How can you not tell me?”
I felt like I was on one of those ancient torture devices that spread you out on the ground and then began pulling you in both directions until you either gave up or split apart. I wasn’t about to tell her that Greg Whoever She Thought He Was led a distinct and separate life from the one he lived with her, that he might have committed a murder, and that he might now be murdered, murdering, or picked up by the police. This is a mouthful for a strong person on a good day—not something to tell a crippled, borderline-hysterical woman.
“I don’t suppose you have a drink?”
She shook her head.
“Look,” I said, shoring myself up under her withering eye. “I don’t know what’s going on myself, but I’ll try to find out.”
“Why did you come here?” Those eyes relentlessly pursued what she seemed quite sure I was hiding. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”
To get closer, I knelt down on the wooden floor in front of her and put my hand on top of hers, where it rested on the arm of the wheelchair. “Greg called me. He wanted me to come here. But I don’t know why.”
Her eyes shifted from mine; the stiffness of her body slackened. “What should I do?”
“I’ll look for him. Is there anyone who can stay with you?”
She shook her head. “No one I want to call. I’m okay.”
I wanted to get started looking for Greg, but I didn’t want to make calls from her house, where she could overhear me. I needed to talk to John. I’d noticed a small Days Inn when I got off the bus, so I hobbled back and registered for a room, since I didn’t want to conduct my business from a phone booth on the corner. The first thing I did was put in a call to Big John. This time, I threatened to wring sweet Jane’s pretty neck if she d
idn’t get me through to him, so she said she’d try to reach him to see if he wanted to call me. I grumbled and fumed, but that was the best I could get. I gave her the Days Inn number. Then I made a few more calls, one to my father, who still wasn’t home; one to Linda, hoping she’d help me look for Greg, but she didn’t answer, either. Finally, I called Sue Gleason to see if she heard about Greg being arrested or anything worse. She offered to check the police stations along the shore to see who had been arrested, then said very quietly she could also check the hospitals and the morgues.
“By the way,” she said. “I found some old news stories that you might be interested in. Should I mail them to you?”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Hang on to them until I call you.” I left her my number at the Days Inn, too. Not knowing what else to do, I went out and asked around the neighborhood: a shoe-repair store, a dry cleaner, a liquor store that was attached to banquet room—type restaurant with a large empty oak floor, and then back to the deli. No luck. I picked up a cold-cut grinder at the deli and a couple of bottles of Beck’s at the liquor store and went back to my room.
When I got back, a little red light on my telephone was blinking. The message was that John Wolinski had called. I called him right back at a New Jersey 609 number. A switchboard operator answered and put me through to a secretary, who put me through to a man with a deep-voiced European accent, who begged my forgiveness for one moment.
John spoke then in his crisp businessman’s voice, “Wolinski here.”
“Wolinski where?”
“Brian?” He sounded impatient. “What is it? I’m in a meeting.”
“Greg’s missing.”
“What?” John sounded even more irritated. “Where are you?”
“In Sea Isle City. Where are you?”
“Goddamn it,” said John.
I explained what had happened.
John was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, it was with the voice of a serious businessman. “You know what’s going on. Maybe he had to take care of something that couldn’t wait. I’ll see what I can find out, but I have to finish up here. If you don’t hear from me or he isn’t back by dinnertime, call me again at this number.”
The beers with lunch made me sleepy. I turned on the TV and found an old Peter Lorre movie, but dozed off anyway. When I woke up, the sunlight had faded and the shadows from the telephone poles along the avenue had lengthened. I walked back to Sandra’s. She was sitting on the porch in her wheelchair, looking bright and hopeful when our eyes met, then darkening quickly.
“What happened?” It sounded like an accusation.
“Nothing.”
“Where did you look? What did you find out?”
“Not much,” I said guiltily. I didn’t have the guts to tell her I’d been asleep most of the afternoon. “I checked around the neighborhood and made some calls. I sort of hoped he’d come back.”
She looked sad.
“I’ll look some more tonight. I think John will come over, and we’ll be able to get around better with a car.”
“A car?” She sounded surprised. “I saw a car pulling away from the house last night.”
“What kind of car? What did it look like? Did you see the license plate number?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know one car from another.” She wrinkled her brow and thought for a moment. “There was something odd about the car, but I don’t remember what. I can’t picture it.”
“Was it a cab … a taxi? It wasn’t a red Cherokee, by any chance?”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
“I told you I don’t remember.”
Sandra seemed to be holding up well enough, so I went back to the motel and called John.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” he said, and hung up.
We agreed to meet at the Driftwood Lounge, the antiseptic-looking bar with the attached liquor store and the ship’s lounge floor. When I got there this time, I found a bit of a crowd, mostly chinos and polo shirts. I ordered a shot of Jameson and a glass of water. When I’d finished the shot and ordered a second, this one mixed, I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone who was out of place. Bartenders develop this sensibility if they want to last—a kind of sonar that goes off when someone who isn’t right for your bar comes in.
This guy attracted my attention as he was leaving, hurriedly. He didn’t fit in because his face was darkly reddish and sharply featured, not white, like everyone else’s in there. He was out the door by the time all this registered, so I followed him out into the quasi darkness and stood in a deserted intersection, watching a traffic light blinking yellow toward me and red in the other direction. A car pulled out of a space across the street, so I ran toward it. The man was by me before I got a good look. But the quick glimpse I did get confirmed my impression of a dark-skinned Hispanic with Indian features, dressed in workingman’s garb.
I went back, finished my drink, and asked the bartender, a smiling, tanned, muscular young blond, if he knew the guy who’d just left. He looked blank, as if it were a surprise to him anyone had left, then shook his head—another sign the profession was going downhill.
Could Alberto or one of his pals have followed me? I tried to remember if I’d seen someone on the bus, or if anyone had been behind me on the walk to Greg’s house. I should have noticed someone following me along the quiet street, but I didn’t come up with anything. It was disappointing to think Ernesto—whose standing had already slipped a couple of notches—and the rest of the salt of the earth were stalking me.
A little over an hour later, Big John slid onto the bar stool next to mine. I’d been nursing Irish whiskey and water for about forty-five minutes. He ordered a double Johnnie Black on the rocks. I told him what Sandra had told me, but I didn’t tell him about the guy who’d left the bar earlier. “I don’t have the slightest idea where to begin looking,” I confessed.
John took several sips of scotch before he said anything. He didn’t look as worried as I felt, giving the impression, by his bulk and carriage and the way he had of surveying wherever he happened to be, as if he was in charge, that he would now, in fact, take charge.
“What a fucking day,” John said. “The asshole manager of that Atlantic City property got himself punched by one of his bartenders last night.”
I waited for John’s analysis.
“He’s a good bartender,” John said, a barely perceptible smile around his mouth. “I told Bernard he couldn’t fire him, so I spent the afternoon pretending I gave a shit whether Bernard walked out or not.” John took another drink, looked around, and let himself shrink a little bit. “Actually, I would have been in big trouble if Bernard had walked out.”
I didn’t enjoy the story as much as I might because I was impatient and nervous. “What are we going to do?” I asked John.
He swallowed the rest of his drink, then shook his head. “What the hell are you doing here anyway?”
“Greg called me last night and told me to come here.”
“Last night?” John asked. “What did he say? Why did he want to see you?”
“I don’t know what he wanted. It was a message. What do you think he wanted?”
Big John shook his head, “I don’t know. Maybe Sandra knows.”
“She doesn’t. She didn’t know he called me. She doesn’t know what’s going on. She just saw him leave in a car.”
Big John looked into his empty glass, then set it down on the bar and turned to face me. “A car? What kind of car?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Great,” said Big John sardonically. “Never mind. Let’s go.”
And go we went, in Big John’s Cadillac, hurtling through the night along a straight stretch of road through a thin strip of sand dunes, the bay glittering in the moonlight on one side and the ocean a stone’s throw beyond the dunes on the other, until we slowed for a bend in the road and a large barnlike gin mill loomed before us, set back from the road agai
nst the bay.
The place was spacious—high ceilings, well lighted, with a wraparound bar like a corral and a few wooden tables—the kind of place you’d bring the family for fried fish or come to watch a Monday-night football game. John shook hands with the bartender, ordered a drink, as did I, and conducted a whispered conversation. Before he went for our drinks, the barman bent over and whispered something to John. They both rolled their eyes in the direction of a group of barflies at the far corner of the bar. I turned and saw an apparition: Charlie. John’s face worked through variations of irritation and toughness, but his eyes smiled, too, before he walked over and swallowed the other man up in his big bear hug.
I shook hands with Charlie like we were old friends. The older man’s grip was firm. His eyes danced when he looked me in the eye. Pumping my hand heartily, he put his other arm around my shoulder. He had John’s sincerity and that same fullness of life that made the room around him seem not large enough. When they were together at the bar, everyone else receded into the background.
Charlie Wolinski, having traded in his white doctor garb for a gray suit from another era, looked like an old-time Broadway hustler. With his gray hair, thin gray line of a mustache, and a pale blue handkerchief in his breast pocket, he carried himself with a kind of disreputable suaveness. Yet, even with this reprobate style, his air of solicitousness and charm suggested concern for someone else’s comfort.
Charlie’s cronies acted like they’d known John for years. John, being John, paid attention to each and every one of them with a kind of dutiful and ritualistic politeness, which resulted in a good deal of backslapping, hand shaking, and waving at the bartender to order a round of drinks. Taking command, John ordered the first round for the entire bar. Not long after this was delivered, Charlie bellied up and ordered another round.
