Still

by Charlee Jacob

  “I’m sorry, Agnes. I’m sorry, Caroline.”

  Then he got back into his car and had a heart attack.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 12

  “Death ought to be exquisite,

  I only drag it out.”

  —Francis Picabia

  Spermal Chimney

  December 24, 1958

  Pearly was very happy. Larry took him to a party at Tony Zarembo’s. And all the other kids had to sit at the baby table, apart from the adults. But Pearly sat at Tony’s own table.

  “A great honor, you gotta know this,” Gauzy explained. “You did Tony two favors. He’d have gone to jail with either Gegax or that Palmer broad having a day in court. He’s a grateful man. You ain’t never going to have worry about anything. You got a job for life.”

  Pearly nodded solemnly even if inside he was cartwheeling.

  “Mommie, why does that boy get to be near Daddy?” asked one pouting tyke, arms folded akimbo.

  The lady serving replied with a shudder that made the tinsel on her dress shimmy, “Oh, that’s not a child, Li’l Tony.”

  “Is he a midget?” Li’l Tony pressed, frowning at Pearly.

  “Yes. And a toivl,” the woman answered very softly.

  The best meal Pearly ever had. Turkey with dressing and giblet gravy, a peppery roast beef and sweet potatoes, lasagna and fresh ambrosia salad with little marshmallows, and twenty different kinds of pies and cakes. Wine.

  Zarembo even toasted him. “To the newest member of our family, Pearly Soloway.”

  He received presents. A long black cashmere coat, tailored to fit him. (Not intended for business. This was most definitely not a throwaway.) A silk suit with a red tie. A pearl stickpin for the tie. A baseball autographed by Yogi Bera and a bat signed by Joe DiMaggio. The entire set of THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, published six years ago by Encyclopedaedia Britannica, Inc.

  “You’re also getting a tutor,” Tony promised. “Right after New Year’s. Kid with your brains’ll be more useful to us and to yourself with a good education.”

  “Daddy! I want to sit with you!” Li’l Tony cried petulantly, banging his fists on the baby table until the other kids from the various made-men and advisors giggled. “Can’t I sit with the toivl?”

  Tony Senior’s jaw dropped and he shot a withering look at his wife. She was Jewish and he knew what the word meant. She blushed a color that was redder than her hair and bowed her head, ashamed to have insulted one of her husband’s guests.

  Pearly’s smile twinkled to outdo those on the giant Christmas tree. He shrugged and told Mrs. Zarembo in Yiddish, “Bai mir poilst doo.”

  (It’s okay with me.)

  Impishly, he said to the others, “Of course, I’m a toivl. How else can I be explained if I’m not a little devil?”

  The adults’ table went silent for a moment, caught in an awkward pause between shock and uncertainty.

  Then Tony Senior burst out laughing. “Hey, our own Dennis The Menace!”

  They sang Christmas carols later, over frosted mugs of eggnog, stirred with peppermint sticks. They sang, “Happy Birthday, Pearly.”

  The boy told everyone he wanted to go out for a while. By himself.

  “Where you going?” Larry asked, since he was sort of the kid’s guardian now. “And in that coat? Where’s your nice one?”

  “I’m heading over to my old neighborhood.”

  “The Vagabonds? Shit, why?”

  “My mother died two years ago tonight. I want to visit the spot.”

  “Here,” Tony said as he overheard and dug in his wallet for a wad of cash. “Take a taxi.”

  Pearly shook his head. “I’d be pretty conspicuous in a cab. I prefer anonymity. Little toivls should be unnoticed as much as possible. I’ll take the bus.”

  After he left, Tony remarked, “Damn if he ain’t right. That’s one smart boy. You got something extra this year in your Christmas bonus for that find, Larry.”

  ««—»»

  Pearly climbed the stairs, heard Mrs. Schur talking through thin walls. “Of course, they’ll never rent it. It’s haunted.”

  Five flights up. Larry had taught him the fine art of picking locks. He skimmed right in. The place had Jupiter’s gravity, enough to squash him flat to the floor. It was heavy with dust, as if the entire place had soil from which something should be growing. The window was so filthy he couldn’t see the sky beyond it.

  The few sticks of furniture that had been there when he lived with Katrin were still there, part of the regular inventory.

  (Make it quick.)

  He opened the small closet, saw the wrapped package on the shelf. He couldn’t believe it was still there.

  That last birthday present from his mother. His, finally.

  He tore off the simple paper, held the Dragos’ red-winged angel in his hands. See? She hadn’t flown away. She’d been waiting for him.

  A feeling of chilled rain. As it had been that night in 1956. Mary Kelly’s key, pressed against his chest under his shirt, got so cold it burned him. He looked up. The window stood open. A second ago it had been closed.

  He saw her, perched on the ledge, one leg over outside and one foot on the floor. She smiled, beckoning him to go out with her.

  A voice silver as those frosted raindrops had been whispered, “Helaas moeten wij nu weggaan. Komen met moeder.”

  He couldn’t move, just as he couldn’t move then, with those vile men breaking into their home.

  “Kunt u ook komen, mijn parel?”

  An outline of a boy huddled on the floor, trying to make himself rise, trying to say to her, “Kunt u op mij wachten, moeder? Alstublieft?”

  But he couldn’t speak, not then, not now.

  And the expression on her face, only of love, understanding. Even as she jumped out the window, silently down. Too bizarre, she clutched her purse. What ought to be have been her scream—and his—inside it.

  Mrs. Death.

  Pearly watched the scene fade, the window sliding closed, slowly like a curtain on a drama, fast as the blade of a guillotine.

  He dropped the red-winged angel and it shattered on the floor.

  ««—»»

  Lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to every kind of thing. Heard a steady beat beat beat. Couldn’t open his eyes. An endless stream-of-consciousness semi-consciousness. The ghosts were there.

  …reformatory, the pool halls of continuing education, homes for unwed mothers, heroin-addicted mom giving birth to premie whose lungs hadn’t developed enough and who died after precisely two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, the public health stations devoted to a “clandestine” eradication of social diseases, yabba dabba doo born squealing on Death Row, Police Blotter/Popular Science, Sturgeon/Ginsberg, Lucy/Desi, Starkweather/Glatman, I LIKE IKE/IKE LIKES DICK, succubi like bleached-blonde sirens astride glitter watchtowers, singing songs from a demonic top forty toward the carnage below…the congenitally brutal tableau, not neon after all, but oranges at the entrance to the underworld, that, and the devil prefers the grapes for his domestic wine, we’re cynical when it concerns the distorted reputations of gods…Kukla, Frankenstein and Ollie…will the real Evil stand up? shook up bottle sneaky pete douche two vampires/jailbait/stake sandwich casualty of the throb, presumptuous dopers, boozers, fuckers playing closet poker in a queer bar and what they used for chips you didn’t want to know, alley trash different from sidewalk trash, death in their eyes or down their pants, crowds of poor like racks of ready-made suicides lined up at a thriftstore clearance sale, a sequestered ferocity/feral city…

  “Am I one of you now?” he asked.

  That, as he found himself standing outside his body, surrounded by those Without Resolution. They reached and touched him, and Zane felt the way each had died, actually saw their killers through their eyes, hurt! But the images of those killers faded as soon as he thought he had them.

  He attempted to touch his sufferers back, finding no hands when he r
eached for a hand, finding no faces when he reached for a cheek.

  Woke up, crime scene photographer standing beside the bed.

  “Found your camera, Z.M. Did your film and brought the pics here on the Q.T. Didn’t hand ’em over to Lieutenant C, got our own. Hope to see you back at work ASAP. Merry X-mas.”

  Guy always talked like that.

  Zane couldn’t open the envelope. He would at home.

  He’d been in the hospital for more than a month when the doctors released him. New drugs to take now, little nitro pills.

  Downstairs, the doctor shook his hand. Asked, “You planning on going back to the police station anytime soon? Homicide, right?”

  And some teenaged pimple-farmer nearby cracked wise, “Yeah? You a killer or a victim?”

  Zane lost it. Walked out, started going down the sidewalk, busy last-minute shoppers passing by. He’d step in front of one, asking, “Are you a killer or a victim?”

  He’d stare into their surprised faces, studying them. “Oh, you’re a victim.”

  And on and on. Most of the time deciding, “Oh, you’re a victim.”

  Sometimes growling, “Yeah, you’re the killer. I’ve seen you!”

  And he passed this little boy, ice blond hair on skin like snow. He bent down, thrusting his face into this kid’s. “Are you a killer or a victim? Yeah, you’re a killer! I’ve seen you!”

  “Hey, leave the child alone,” some woman yelled, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Want me to call a cop?”

  Zane whipped out his badge in one hand and his gun in the other. “Care to file a complaint, madame? I’m all fuckin’ ears!”

  ««—»»

  Pearly had taken advantage of this to slip around a corner. He waited until the altercation was over, the samaritan lady hustling herself away, huffed and puffed. He watched the man continue down the street. He knew this old guy. It was the cop who’d been outside Caroline Palmer’s house the morning Pearly cooled her for Zarembo.

  The man recognized him. Why didn’t he arrest him?

  The old fart was acting scary movie ooh—wee—ooh weird.

  Pearly followed.

  ««—»»

  Zane didn’t talk to anyone else after the woman got between him and the kid. Not that he’d completely come to his senses. He made his way more or less toward home. Where was his car? Maybe back in the hospital parking lot. Maybe in the city’s impound. Possibly the boys at the precinct had driven it to his house and locked it up in his garage.

  He took a bus. He stopped by the Catholic church. They were holding some sort of Christmas play. Manger and Mary and Joseph. The baby reminded him too much of the sad lady’s infant, dead in its crib.

  He stared at the enormous rendering of Christ on the cross upon a cathedral wall. And he couldn’t help it, he screamed, “Hey! Are you a killer or a victim?”

  Everyone looked at him, Father Laing hurrying up the aisle to help him. Because he’d seen Zane lots of times.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Zane muttered, putting a hand across his eyes. “You’re a victim.”

  Then he snickered and added, “Maybe you’re both.”

  He rushed off before anyone could stop or help him.

  He went the last few blocks home, let himself in, turned on the lights, took the scrapbook from his bed. Started with Agnes.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’.”

  Went through the regime, the schtick, the rote stations of the loss. Opened the drawer at his desk and took out the photo from two years ago this very night, a Marilyn Monroe blonde, smiling madonna on the pavement, little son in shock only a few feet away.

  He put glue on the back of the still and pasted it in. No adding semen to it. He couldn’t get it up so he didn’t try. Probably because of some of the drugs for his heart.

  Handwrote beneath it WITHOUT RESOLUTION BUT PROBABLE SUICIDE. Slow. Every letter a caress to her memory.

  He noticed someone had brought his camera home for him. It sat on the t.v. set. (The car was in the garage, by the way.)

  Zane opened the envelope the photographer had brought him. Took out one of the pictures he’d taken of Caroline Palmer. She was puffed up, descending/rising clouds of flies creating a dark minaret across her face.

  He’d wave the customary two year wait.

  He understood who’d killed her.

  He had. Being stupid, being a failure. Being a drug addict stumbling along a cryptic timetable.

  But that didn’t make the case resolved. He turned the page and fastened her picture down.

  Blinked. God, he felt fuzzy.

  What?

  He turned back to Katrin Soloway’s swan dive into fate.

  The little boy on the apartment house stoop. In the rain.

  Same one, wasn’t it? Walking down the sidewalk that first morning Zane sat in front of Miss Palmer’s. The only time he saw him in that neighborhood. Matching what the M.E. said was the approximate time of her murder.

  M. Despair’s stair steps next door. Blood on the kid’s knee. Baby-killers and baby killers.

  Zane turned back to Caroline’s terrible portrait.

  “Was it the blond angel-boy?”

  But a question didn’t make a case solved. Even if he felt it in his gut and his shattered heart. He clutched the pencil, prepared to write WITHOUT RESOLUTION or SOLVED. But solved meant there must be an identity, a name…

  ««—»»

  Pearly had observed first from the window, then crept inside on sneakers, listening. What was this old guy doing?

  If he’d made him for the woman’s rub, why was he waiting?

  The more he watched, the more it became obvious to him that this cop was crazy. He’d turned the corner at STRANGE and DISTURBED and was already crossing the intersection to INSANE.

  Then he heard, “Was it the blond angel-boy?”

  Yeah, you’re a killer! I’ve seen you!

  Pearly was pre-sound, he was so quiet. Came up behind this cop and stabbed him in the back of the neck, then stabbed him in the throat. One through the eye. Ice pick. Three gestures so fast, they were pre-movement. The pencil flew across the room like a number 2 javelin.

  The man fell out of his chair, blood spraying the scrapbook.

  But not so much Pearly couldn’t see the still of the first job he’d done for Tony. He flipped through it, somehow missing sight of his mother’s picture. Saw all these dead people.

  He grinned. Saw the Land Camera and couldn’t resist. He took a picture of the dead cop. Pulled the positive strip from the negative, nose wrinkling at the smell of developer. He pasted the instant snap on the page after Miss Palmer’s. It was the last portrait in the book. Fitting, cop was now part of his own gruesome collection.

  Then he closed it, putting it on a shelf with a bunch of novels and such. He scanned the titles in case there were any books he might want to take with him.

  Mostly crime stories. Justice as a cure for anarchy.

  — | — | —

  Part two

  “He was now in full possession of his physical

  senses. They were indeed, preternaturally keen

  and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of

  his organic system had so exalted and refined

  them that they made record of things never before perceived.”

  —Ambrose Bierce

  An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 13

  “The frightening revelation of abysses that

  defy the human understanding is dismissed as

  illusion, and the poet is regarded as a victim

  and perpetrator of deception.”

  —C.G. Jung

  Modern Man In Search of a Soul

  Peter Beta’s head moved up and down, watching his kids rise into the air, soft hair flying like wheat and storm, all tweaked knees and elbows, maybe spinning before they fell back again, tugged at their bones by hungry gravity. And laughing their asses off.

&nbs
p; “Ellis… Melody!” he called out to caution his son and daughter. “Don’t bounce too close to each other or you’ll knock yourselves off. Don’t want to end up in a pair of matching body casts, right?”

  It wasn’t anywhere near as loud as what he’d expected. He didn’t hear a cartoonish sproing sproing! It actually made a solid noise when their feet hit the surface of the large trampoline, not unlike an old war movie with paratroopers landing on hard-packed earth. Except that in the film the jumpers wouldn’t then be going right back up again.

  The kids obediently bounced apart. It was easy on that monster. The thing was huge, the kind a school’s gymnasium would have. (Which was where it had come from.) Took up half the back yard, too. Not much room left for the barbecue grill, the plastic lounge chairs, the shed the lawnmower sat in, and his wife’s dozen-or-so tomato plants.

  Diane’s jaw dropped when the truck delivered it that afternoon. He hadn’t warned her. She’d nudged him and commented, “Honey, we can’t afford this.”

  Peter gave her a squeeze. “Our school’s getting new computers and sports equipment. It was ordered last summer and we should’ve had it a month ago, when school started. Anyway, employees were given a chance to buy the old stuff, cheap.”

  She’d observed as it was unloaded—and unloaded, “Isn’t it dangerous? I’ve heard about broken legs and backs and necks…”