Suspension

by Richard E. Crabbe

  Joe was not a particularly tall man so he went down the crowded cobblestone streets craning, bobbing, and hopping in an effort to see a cop over the multitude. He looked like a damn fool, he knew, with his beer-stained bar apron flapping. The thought of that body and all the business he was likely to lose because of it kept him hopping and craning past Front, and all the way to South Street, where he turned South toward the market. Joe came upon a young patrolman who was trying to supervise the untangling of two freight wagons, their steaming draft horses wide-eyed and straining. The cop was doing his official best to keep the teamsters from coming to blows and the wagons from crushing someone in their struggle to get their wheels unlocked. He waved and shouted to be heard over the cursing teamsters and the general clamor of South Street. From the look of things, he was having little luck at this. As Joe Hamm approached, one teamster was letting loose with a creative stream of curses and oaths. The driver on the other wagon was probably just as colorful, but he was cursing in Italian. Joe could pretty much get the gist from his hand gestures, which seemed to encompass the cop as well.

  Hamm took all this in as he trotted up to the cop and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  “There’s been a murder,” he said breathlessly.

  “Listen, don’t bother me now. I’ve got a situation here,” the cop snapped back.

  Joe gave it another try “I don’t think you heard me.” He was annoyed that the cop wasn’t paying attention. “I’ve got a dead man, a murdered man maybe, out behind my bar. He’s in the alley behind Paddy’s.” That got the cop’s attention.

  “A dead man, you say? Paddy’s? Where the hell is Paddy’s?” asked the patrolman, looking around.

  God, this kid was fresh out of the box, Joe thought. Everyone knew where Paddy’s was.

  “It’s over on Peck Slip,” he said patiently. “Right next door to the chandlers shop.”

  The young cop still had a blank, distracted look. The two teamsters were gathering steam.

  “Stick it up your arse, ye goddamn dago,” one shot at the other.

  “Uppa you ass,” the Italian sallied back in what was probably the sum of his English.

  “Let’s go then,” the cop said absently.

  “So who are you, and what’s this about a body?” the cop asked.

  “Name’s Joe Hamm. Tend bar at Paddy’s. One o’ my regulars found him behind the bar.”

  “What do you mean, behind the bar?” the cop asked.

  “Out back in the alley.”

  “Oh.” The cop took a last look over his shoulder at the receding mess on South Street.

  “Watch it,” Joe said as he threw out a hand to stop the patrolman. He had almost walked out in front of a wagon loaded with barrels of salt fish. “You new on the force, or just new to the precinct?”

  “New to the force. How’d you know?”

  That didn’t really take a detective to figure, Joe thought, but trying not to offend the kid, he said, “Well, you didn’t know where Paddy’s was. Haven’t seen you around before neither. Where’re you from?”

  “Staten Island.”

  “Took the ferry there once,” Joe said. “Nice ride. Never knew anybody that lived there though. What’s your name, Officer?”

  “Patrolman Jaffey. Elija’s my given name. This the place?”

  They stood in front of Paddy’s, with its dying paint and its dusty windows. Jaffey looked up at the carved and painted wooden prizefighter hanging over the door and wondered if that was Paddy himself or just an appeal to the “fightin’ Irish.” Taking a deep breath, he dove into the shimmering gloom of Paddy’s common room. He and Joe were walking deeper into the place, swirling sawdust in their wake, when from the corner table Bob the veteran said, “That’s Terrence Bucklin out back.”

  That brought them both up short, turning. “Took a look while you was gone, Joe. Good man, Bucklin,” Bob muttered almost to himself. “Worked on the bridge—mason, I think. Shared a beer with him once or twice … Friendly fella. Damned shame.”

  Joe and Jaffey stood in the sawdust, and, for an instant, it seemed, they all bowed their heads for the good man who had been Terrence Bucklin.

  A septic breath of air from the alley carried a reminder of why Joe and Jaffey were there. The patrolman didn’t know quite what to expect. This was his first body, and he wanted to be professional and dispassionate about it. He could handle this, he told himself. He just had to concentrate on the job. He had an important job, and it was important that he do it right and …

  “Oh my Lord, oh my …” Jaffey blurted when he got a good look at Bucklin. The patrolman’s stomach twisted inside him. He took an involuntary half step back and croaked to Joe, “Go to the station house and get Sergeant Halpern. He’s my watch sergeant. You know where it is, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I know Sam too. I’ll get him.”

  This was to be a day of firsts for Eli Jaffey. He had never been alone with a corpse before. He couldn’t count his aunt and little sister who died of the typhoid three years ago. They weren’t corpses, really, they were family. They had lain in the front parlor of their house on St. Mark’s Place, with flowers in their hair and the smell of lilies floating like a fog bank. They weren’t dead like this, lying twisted in an alley, filling with the gases of their own decay. This was different—no lilies, no candles, no satin pillows, just stink and flies.

  Jaffey stood, staring down at the corpse, for what felt like an awfully long time. Slowly Eli began to feel that Terrence Bucklin could see with his dead, doll’s eyes into his most private place, where he locked away his doubts and fears. And he seemed to say “Can you do this? Can you look me in the eye?”

  Bucklin’s eyes were not easy to look at. Jaffey didn’t want to look at them, but felt compelled to nonetheless.

  “It’s the flies, isn’t it?” the corpse said to him. “Come on, look me in the eye and see for yourself, if you can really wear that new uniform. May as well get it over with.”

  Jaffey looked long and with a will at the dead eyes of Terrence Bucklin. When Sergeant Halpern arrived a few minutes later, Jaffey was doubled over, retching up the last of his lunch. Halpern was about to say something unkind but remembered his reaction to his first bloated corpse, so held his tongue. He was annoyed but a little amused too, though he tried to keep it from the kid, hiding the ghost of a grin behind frowning eyes.

  Jaffey had the shine and delicate green coloring of an underripe tomato. At least he had the good sense not to puke on the corpse, Halpern thought, although God knew he had seen that done in his time.

  “Go on into Paddy’s and get yourself something to wash the taste out,” Sam said. “And see if you can get some statements from Joe Hamm and anybody left inside while you’re at it. You’re doin’ nobody any good here, pukin’ on your shoes.”

  Jaffey gave Sam Halpern a hangdog look as he wiped the remnants of lumpy lunch from his shoes with a bit of rag. A cop should never be seen with his lunch on his shoes, and young Jaffey did pride himself on his spotless uniform. Without a word, he turned toward the back of Paddy’s. He was happy for something to do, and he fumbled for his notebook and pencil. He tried to think of all the questions a good cop should ask of witnesses to a crime, and it helped to take his mind off the corpse on the alley floor with that grin on his face and the flies in his eyes. Jaffey’s eyes strayed back to the body, and for one awful moment he could have sworn that Terrence’s glassy eyes followed him as he moved toward the door. He quickened his pace.

  Jaffey turned into the back door of Paddy’s that opened on a storage area and hallway. It was black as coal compared to the light in the alley. The black of the hallway congealed into something very solid and Jaffey bounced off it with a grunt, dropping his pad and pencil. In the instant it took for his eyes to adjust to the sudden lack of light, he realized that it was a man he had walked into. To his credit, he recovered his composure quickly and in his best official tone said, “You’ve got to keep this hallway clear, we’re i
nvestigating a murder here. Now move back into the bar. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  An amused “Humph” came from the shadow that was the man’s face. He made no move. Jaffey put his hand on the butt of the nightstick hanging at his waist.

  “Move back, I said, and do it now! Don’t be startin’ any trouble,” he told the big shadow, “just move back into the bar and be quick about it.” Jaffey gripped his nightstick tighter with his right hand. With his left he poked two fingers hard into the man’s chest in an effort to get him moving in the right direction. This seemed to have no effect. Jaffey was a little alarmed at that. Boozer or not, this fellow just didn’t have any give to him. The man’s features were materializing out of the gloom as Jaffey’s eyes became fully accustomed to the light. The stranger started to say something and made a move to get past the patrolman.

  This would never do, Jaffey thought. He couldn’t let his sergeant see him get pushed around. He drew his nightstick. In his hurry he missed what the shadow-man said. Jaffey thought a crack across the knees would set his man to rights. It was the last thing he thought.

  “Sorry about your boy there, Sam. Hope I didn’t do any permanent damage,” Tom Braddock said without appearing to mean it.

  “Jesus, Tommy, did you have to do that? It’s hard enough gettin’ the boys broken in without you bustin’ em up,” Sam grumbled as he bent over the prostrate patrolman.

  “He was going to crack my kneecaps,” Tom said defensively. “I can’t abide a pup like him goin’ off half cocked, thinkin’ the world has to jump ’cause he’s got new brass.”

  “Seems to me I recall you bein’ pretty green when you started too.” Sam hooked a hand under Jaffey’s arm. “Here, help me get him up.” Sam and Tom leaned Jaffey against a barrel.

  “Sam, we weren’t green when we started on the force. Ignorant maybe, but not green. We were green back in ’62 when we enlisted,” Tom said. “But when we started here that had rubbed clean off.”

  There was a lot of truth in that. When the war ended and they joined the force, they were a well-seasoned pair.

  “Sure, you’re right, I guess, but we still didn’t know a damn thing about police work, as I recall,” Sam muttered.

  “There’s some that say you still don’t, Sammy,” Tom said with a grin.

  “Screw you, Braddock.” Sam grinned back.

  Halpern and Braddock stood over Jaffey as he came around. Jaffey looked up from his seat against the pickle barrel where the two had propped him. If he thought Braddock looked big before, he looked positively immense from the floor. Two sets of hands sky-hooked him onto his feet, and he saw at once the reason why the big man had not backed down when Jaffey had run into him. Braddock wore the shield of a sergeant detective. In the dark of the hallway, Jaffey hadn’t noticed it, and with Tom in plain clothes …

  “Shit,” he mumbled to himself. He had botched the job again. But that wasn’t what was important to him.

  “How the hell did you do that?” Jaffey asked with a mixture of surprise and respect as he rubbed the base of his neck. “Feel like I was poleaxed.”

  Braddock was surprised. He expected indignance, or bravado, or maybe even a bit of a fight from this kid with the fresh brass. A commendable swallowing of pride, Tom figured. The kid was doing his best to recognize his mistakes. Tom wasn’t so sure that if the tables were turned, he’d have the same humility. Perhaps he’d misjudged Jaffey just as quickly as Jaffey had misjudged him.

  “It’s a form of Chinese self-defense,” Tom said. “I picked it up when I was working patrol in Chinatown. Studied under Master Kwan on Mott Street.” He said this as if it should mean something to Jaffey, but of course it didn’t. “I’ll tell you that story some other time, Patrolman,” Tom continued. “And from now on, make sure of what you’re doing and who you’re doing it to before you do it. You understand me, son?”

  “Yes, sir, sorry, sir.”

  “Right,” Braddock said. “Now go on into the bar and talk to Bob. That poor bastard knows everyone who’s been in this place since after the war. Might have to buy him a drink to get anything out of him, though, and get one for yourself while you’re at it. You look like shit.”

  “Sergeant Halpern said the same thing,” Jaffey said.

  “You should listen to your sergeant. He knows a thing or two.”

  Jaffey hesitated a moment. “I’m on duty,” he said lamely.

  Sam and Tom rolled their eyes and Sam said as patiently as he could. “Jaffey, if Tom Braddock tells you to get a goddamned beer, then you get a goddamned beer. Now be a good lad and put your rulebook in your pocket and see what Bob has to say about our friend over there.”

  “Said his name was Terrence Bucklin.”

  “Good. Get whatever you can from Hamm too. He’s a decent sort for a bartender. Find out if he’s seen this fella before, who he’s been seen with, that sort of thing. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hm … and Jaffey, don’t call me sir. Sergeant will do just fine.”

  Jaffey headed down the hallway toward the bar. He stopped to pick up the pad and pencil that he’d dropped when he walked into Braddock and felt himself a fool again at the small reminder.

  “Well, Sam, let’s get on with it,” Tom said as he walked out into the alley. Sam knew what was coming. Braddock was one of the better investigators in the department by some accounts, though he did have one unsettling habit when it came to murder investigations.

  “Terrence, Terrence, Terrence, look what’s become of you now.” Tom stood over the corpse, his head hung low and his magnificent handlebar mustache seeming to droop in grief at the terrible end Bucklin had come to.

  “Who would want to do this to you, man? Or maybe you just drank too much and knocked your head when you fell? Was that the way of it?” Tom paused as if the corpse would answer. “This is Sergeant Halpern and I’m Detective Tom Braddock, and if you don’t mind I’ll be askin’ your help as we go through this.”

  Halpern caught himself nodding to the corpse at the introduction. God, he hated when Tom did this. He remembered the first murder scene he and Tom had worked together and how startled he’d been when Tom started talking to the body like the son of a bitch was going to sit up and tell them all about it. He had kept his peace at the time, feeling that Tom was just trying to keep down his nervousness with the banter. Later, when the body had been carted off in the coroner’s wagon, Sam had said “The dead won’t answer you, Tom.”

  “Oh, Sam, that’s not true. The dead have a lot to say. Helps to talk to them, helps them say what they have to, I think.”

  Sam remembered Tom telling him how he started talking to the dead. It was during the war, at the Battle of the Wilderness.

  “Don’t look at me that way, Sam. I know they’re not really talking to me, but they were people once, and if you talk to them maybe you’ll get answers you don’t expect,” Tom said thoughtfully. “Does no harm. Helps me, anyway. Helps me put myself in their shoes, see things how they saw them.”

  Sam remembered that day with a silent grin. He and Tom had seen a lot since then, but Tom’s habit of talking to the dead had never left him. And if Sam had to be honest about it, he guessed it didn’t hurt any.

  Tom looked up and took in the place where the body lay. He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the doorway to Paddy’s, the trash in the alley, the three-story rough brick walls, the high gate where the alley opened onto the street. He seemed to be absorbing the place. Like a bird, his blue eyes were unblinking, reflecting back the scene in miniature as if it all were now inside his head, shining out, photographed there and filed away. Finally, as if coming up for air out of deep water, Tom filled his lungs and sighed. “What do you make of this, Sam?”

  “Not a whole hell of a lot, Tom. No bullet holes, not much blood, no murder weapon, no witnesses we know of. He looks dead though,” Sam said, nodding down toward the body. “I’m pretty certain of that.”

  “He’s been gone
about two days,” Tom said. “Probably died sometime Saturday night. It’s been pretty warm last couple days. Wouldn’t take long for him to swell up like he has.”

  “With the bar closed for the Sabbath that explains why nobody found him sooner,” Sam observed.

  “He’s a worker,” Tom muttered as he stooped over the body. “A mason, unless I miss my guess. Did pretty well for a while but he’s down on his luck lately.”

  “How d’you figure that?” Sam asked, clearly skeptical.

  “Cement on his shoes and his pants are worn at the knees,” Tom said, pointing. “See his hand?” Tom turned Bucklin’s hand palm up. “Calluses, and cement dust in the cracks … see? Shoes aren’t the cheap kind but he’s worn them clear through. That’s why I guess he’s seen better times. Looks to have been pretty healthy, although I’ll grant you he don’t look too healthy now.” Tom looked at the body closely. “I’d guess he was thirty-four, thirty-five or thereabouts. Did you look through his pockets?” Tom glanced up at Sam questioningly.

  “Just his jacket. Nothing in the pockets except an orange. Didn’t have time to do more. You got here only about five minutes after me. I was standing off while Jaffey puked up his lunch.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for sending for me.” Tom put a hand over his nose. “Wish that rookie hadn’t lost his stomach. Smells bad enough as it is.”

  Sam gave a grim little laugh—It was shallow, as if the air weren’t fit for laughing. “It ain’t rosewater and lilies. Jaffey’s all right, though, you’ll see. He just needs to get his feet under him. There’s something in that boy that shines.” Sam looked back at the doorway toward Paddy’s. “Been keepin’ an eye on him.”

  “We’ll see,” Tom muttered. He wasn’t convinced by a long shot.

  “So, Terrence, mind if I go through your pockets?” he asked the corpse. He searched Terrence’s pockets, starting with his vest. Slowly he felt inside and out, feeling the fabric for something that might have been sewn into the lining. Sometimes a man would do that with something he didn’t want a cutpurse to find. The vest turned up a few coins, a cheap pocket watch, and a tattered piece of paper. Tom examined the watch, looking for an inscription or perhaps a tintype tucked into the back. It was an ordinary watch, a Waltham with a dented brass case, and nothing in or on it of any note. Tom had hoped for more but was not surprised. A working man rarely had the money for gold watches or inscriptions, for that matter. Next, Tom turned over the yellow folded piece of paper, feeling its worn edges and dirty sheen.