Forever Haunt

by Adam Carpenter

  Jimmy wasn’t sure if Harris was referring to his mother or himself. He let it go.

  They said their goodbyes, which meant it was time for Jimmy and Frank to leave the Dress-Up Club. Jimmy’s heart beat with uncertainty. He couldn’t discern Frank’s mood, and whether he would still be harping about Jimmy’s visit to the widow Luke, or if he was just unhappy about the night’s entertainment. Frisano wasn’t an easy man to read. They exchanged pleasantries with Terry Cloth, politely laughed off his invitation to join him upstairs, and then at last emerged into the night air. The temperature had dropped, a reminder that it was still winter. A cold front had moved in. Jimmy had to agree with that.

  They walked silently along 19th Street, heading back toward Frisano’s apartment building.

  Neither said a word.

  Jimmy struggled to find the right opening, and failed. Frisano finally spoke.

  “I wasn’t accusing you, Jimmy. About the visit to Dahlia Luke. I knew you’d pursue it.”

  “And yet you bring it up at the worst possible moment.”

  “This is a delicate matter. Even today my father told me to stay away from it. Warned you away from it, too.”

  “What do you mean, he warned me away?”

  “At dinner this afternoon, it came up. He knew all about your visit.”

  “Did Dahlia say something?”

  Frisano shook his head. “No.”

  “Which meant you either have her under surveillance, or me.”

  Frisano said nothing, just kept walking.

  “So, I guess I should head home,” Jimmy said.

  Now Frisano stopped in his tracks, a hard look on his face. “Is that what you want?”

  “No, at least, not at the start of the night. I tried to do something different for us, get away from the things that always tear us apart. But that wasn’t going to be. Frank, this always happens with us…a disagreement, usually job related, or sometimes about how much we need to keep our relationship a…”

  The word secret never had a chance. Frisano came at him, pushing him against the façade of the building they happened to be passing. He planted a deep kiss on Jimmy’s lips, a move that had Jimmy’s knees buckling. It was hot, a take-charge kind of moment, and Jimmy found himself swooning from the impact of their bodies locked together. It seemed Frisano had dropped his inhibitions about PDA, or maybe it was the champagne. Their kisses continued, hot and wanton. Jimmy cupped Frisano’s ass, pulling him in tight against him. He could feel the man’s excitement. Kissing him back, he slipped a hand up Frisano’s shirt, his hand running across the dark fur that coated his chest and wishing he could lick it with his tongue. He felt Frisano bite his lip, playfully. Jimmy felt heat wash over him.

  “You’re not going home, Jim, not tonight,” he said, pulling back for a moment.

  “Good, I didn’t want to…”

  Their private conversation was interrupted by a fresh voice, a shadow approaching them.

  “Well, look at the two faggots, fucking kissing in public.”

  Jimmy spun around and saw two figures approaching, one short but stacked and of Asian descent, the other tall and wiry and Caucasian. The latter with a scar on his face. Neither of them looked like they were shilling Girl Scout cookies. They stepped into the light bleeding down from the lamppost, obviously unafraid to show their faces. Their arms crossed, muscles bulged beneath dark hoodies.

  Frisano puffed up his chest, placed himself between the two men and Jimmy. “Move on, boys. None of your business here.”

  “He’s our business,” said the Asian man. “He piss off our boss.”

  Jimmy stepped forward. “Mess with us, we’ll piss you off,” he said.

  “Don’t make this worse than it is, Mr. McSwain,” said the Caucasian man.

  “Just give back the boy, we can work out other arrangements.”

  “Nah, we don’t deal with faggots. You boys planning on going home and packing fudge?”

  Frisano took an aggressive step forward. “Boys, I suggest you leave. Now. You don’t know who you’re dealing with here.”

  Jimmy feared that Frisano might take out his badge. Which would in turn take this case to the police, something he’d promised wouldn’t happen. He had to step in, and he had to show these two goons he wouldn’t be intimidated. Suddenly, impulse winning out over reason, Jimmy lunged forward, his leg stretching out, scoring a direct hit on the Asian guy’s nuts. The man went down, fast, crying out. The best way to dismantle any man; even one Jimmy suspected might know about martial arts. The Caucasian man lashed out, a hard swing that caught Jimmy’s face. He felt a rush of blood, knowing the man had connected with his nose. Through a sudden haze he saw Frisano jump in, two fists knocking down their opponent with ease. A kick to the head knocked the man unconscious. The Asian man was still on the ground, holding his sack and fighting back tears.

  “You tell Mr. Wu-Tin, he wants to talk, let’s talk. Sending two useless goons ain’t gonna get him what he wants. And you tell him, if anything happens to that little boy, something’s gonna happen to him, too. Something bad.”

  “Fuck you, you fucking faggot,” the Asian guy said.

  Jimmy stood over him, kicked him once more in the nuts just to make his point. “Yup, and while you nurse your swollen balls with a bag of ice, my hot guy and I are going to be banging our brains out. Nothing you can do about it, either, you fucking piece of shit.” He paused, his breath coming in waves. “Like I said, the boy stays safe. Or else.”

  Jimmy grabbed Frisano’s hand, and the two of them started off down the street, leaving in their wake two men who probably hadn’t anticipated the result. Jimmy knew they had won the battle, but the war had just escalated. His heart was racing just knowing it. At last they came to Frisano’s building, the two of them entering the empty lobby, walking up the three flights of stairs and finally coming to the front door.

  “You were totally hot just now,” Frisano said.

  “You weren’t so bad yourself.”

  “I’m pretty turned on.”

  “I can’t wait to take you,” Jimmy said.

  They entered the apartment, lights remaining off. Clothes fell away, kisses consumed them, and soon their bodies fell to the bed. Jimmy grabbed at his sexy beast, pulling him in tight against him, loving this moment, wishing there was a way to forever shut out the ills of the world. Just the two of them, no intrusions, no thugs, no drag queens with suggestive comments, no crimes and no murders. Just passion, all night long, until they were spent and content and asleep in each other’s arms. Jimmy grabbed at him, seeking out nipples buried beneath the dark blanket coating his chest. He sighed, he heaved, he wanted to feel this man inside him.

  “Frank, make love to me,” he begged, his voice quiet in the intimate darkness.

  It was a wish destined to go unfulfilled. Their night of renewal to be broken. Their heated silence was interrupted by the sharp ringing of a telephone. Both men, naked bodies entwined, suddenly stopped, gazing up as shadows intruded from the blinds on a nearby window. The outside world couldn’t be denied, neither could the phone unless answered.

  “Sorry, it’s my work phone,” Frisano said, reaching over to his pants, tossed on the floor.

  Jimmy waited. It was nearly eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. The world should be, if not in bed, getting ready for it. Except there was always someone roaming the street, intent on ruining it. The two goons of Mr. Wu-Tin nearly had, but now it was Frisano’s job that was taking them from this heated moment. He sat up, watching as Frisano nakedly paced the room. He felt the night had just ended.

  “Okay, I’ll be right there, yeah…no, no worries, it’s okay,” he said, looking over at Jimmy, a wistful expression on his face, “No, you’re not interrupting anything. Give me ten minutes. Yup, our work is never done. Thanks, Wren.”

  He set the phone down.

  “Do you have a half hour? Time for a quickie?”

  Jimmy was turned on, ready for his man. Hungry for him. He
slipped the blanket down, an attempt to sway the direction of the night.

  “Tempting. But with you there are no quickies, Jim. No, I have to leave now. I’m sorry.”

  “Care to tell me what’s going on?” Jimmy asked, pillows from the bed propping him up. The rest of him deflated. “I’m guessing there’s a problem. They don’t call the captain of a precinct on a Sunday night unless it’s important.”

  “You got that right,” Frisano said, sighing with frustration. “There’s been another murder. Another victim with a single gunshot to the head.”

  Part Two

  Blue Life

  Chapter Nine

  The police would call it a stakeout. A private investigator would call it sneaking around.

  Hopefully it would yield the same results.

  Midnight, nearly forty-eight hours since the shooting death of a man named Bobby Decca. A single bullet to the center of his forever-scorched forehead had done the trick, eliminated a life, the third similar death in the past three months. First, a nasty west-side thug named Mickey Dean, then a young, impressionable NYPD officer named Denson Luke, and now this Decca guy, who, based on where Jimmy stood, was nothing but a shady, opportunistic fence who no doubt trafficked in illegal items. Hot items. Because he stood across the street from an area that remained cordoned off by yellow police tape. The business was called The Decca Exchange, which was just a fancier name for a pawn shop. What Jimmy needed to figure out was the link between these three men.

  What he was already convinced of was the fact that all of them hadn’t just been killed, they had been executed. Silenced. Not unlike how Jimmy felt about his father’s murder. His shooting death outside the deli those fifteen years ago might have been designed to appear like a random robbery gone wrong, but too much had happened since then, more questions had come up than answers had been provided, for it to anything but a hit. But how to tie all these elements together? Could he? Had the trail gone too cold? Not after three more men were dead. And who knew how many others over the years that Jimmy had yet to discover.

  He thought again: a thug, a cop, a pawn broker.

  Standing on the corner of Rivington and Clinton streets, Jimmy hoped to not call attention to his presence. On this Tuesday night, the sidewalks were mostly empty, though on nearby Delancey Street, where he’d walked up from, traffic had been busier. The Lower East Side wasn’t his usual haunt, but this was still New York, and during these late hours, there were enough people cruising about for him to get lost amidst the city’s famed anonymity. That is, unless the two officers seated in their blue and white cruiser in front of the closed pawn shop—not doubt there to observe any unusual activity on the darkened street—had already marked Jimmy.

  Neither made a move toward him. He just looked like some millennial busy texting on his phone.

  Which he was faking, while out of the corner of his eyes he checked out the goings on of the neighborhood.

  The Decca Exchange was a small storefront, with a yellow awning that tonight was bathed only in the light of a nearby streetlamp. The shop itself was closed, a metal grate pulled down over the front entrance. Jimmy could tell the large plate-glass window had signs hanging in them, their usual neon glow as lifeless as the man who’d owned the questionable business. Pawn shops were legal, they bought and sold jewelry, gold, watches, for people needing instant cash, but some had reputations that went beyond normal business hours. Where money was exchanged, borrowed, and if not paid back in time, paid back in more intimidating ways.

  Bobby Decca, from what Jimmy had gleaned from an Internet search, was a small-time crook, arrested more than half a dozen times for petty theft, assault, one case of B&E. Each arrest warrant reduced to a misdemeanor with the aid of a crafty lawyer. Decca had spent six months in jail when in his late twenties, sixteen years ago, but otherwise he’d been able to keep himself on the other side of the bars. He was forty-seven at the time of his death, killed on that Sunday night around 9 p.m., right around the time Ms. Mister Mrs. was performing her set at the Dress-Up Club. Unbeknownst to them, Jimmy and Frisano’s planned romantic night had been about to take an unexpected turn. Frisano called Jimmy the next morning with some details of the crime, leaving him wondering why a captain from the 10th Precinct in Chelsea was getting a call about a small-time pawn broker found dead on the Lower East Side. Jimmy had kept away from the scene of the crime, at least until now.

  Jimmy’s curious eyes gazed down the street, taking in the other businesses that populated the area. A deli, but what block in New York didn’t have one, a Starbucks, but what block in New York didn’t have one, and a Chase bank, but what block in New York didn’t have one. Manhattan neighborhoods had lost a lot of the qualities that made them unique. They were decided not by streets but by east, west, north, no longer by denizens who once embraced a style that helped define their cribs. One throwback to another era did catch Jimmy’s attention, a 24/7 laundromat located two doors down from the Decca Exchange. It was as good a place as any to get him closer without suspicion. Jimmy slipped his phone into his pocket, dashed across the street, and with a quick look at the police cruiser—glad to see the cops were paying no attention to him—opened the door of the A-Z Laundry.

  Bright fluorescent lights glared at him, a sharp contrast to the dark, cloudy night outside. It took a moment for Jimmy’s eyes to adjust, and when they did he found a heavy-set man of about sixty sitting behind a Formica counter. He had wiry gray hair that hadn’t seen a comb, much less a barber, in a while. He was chomping on an old cigar like the tip was a piece of gum.

  “Usually people come with laundry, you know, cause that’s what we are. A laundromat.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said, “yeah, sorry. I’m new to the neighborhood. Was checking out some of the local places, see what might be right for me.”

  “At this hour? Tell me another story, kid.”

  Jimmy stepped forward, walking past a bank of washing machines, only two of which were in use. A couple people sat in a nearby bank of chairs, plugged into their phones with earbuds. An older couple were in the back by the dryers. Another young woman busily folded her delicates. Which meant the only person paying attention to Jimmy was the slovenly attendant, who just happened to be the person he wished to speak with.

  He figured he’d try a different tactic, the truth.

  “Looks like you had some trouble a couple doors down.”

  “Yeah, what’s it to you?”

  Jimmy dug into his pocket, pulled out a $20. He held it between the tips of his fingers.

  The attendant laughed. “You think that’s gonna get you information?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “Or I could ask for two rolls of quarters, you know, for the machines.”

  A phlegmy laugh escaped the man’s lips. “We use cards now, you get one over there.”

  Tossing the bill down on the counter, Jimmy leaned in. “Decca had a watch of mine.”

  “Gonna have to wait to pick it up, he’s not usually open this late.”

  “Doesn’t seem like he’ll be opening again, anyway. Heard he got whacked.”

  “Whacked? Okay, kid, at least you’re good for some laughs. You some kind of cop?”

  “Private. And curious.”

  “I’m working the graveyard shift at the laundromat. You might have to be more curious.”

  Jimmy found another twenty, made it a matched set. The man raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe there’s more, but you gotta give me something. Decca on the up and up?”

  The guy snorted. “He ran a pawn shop. What do you think?”

  “Lots of dangerous elements coming through, all day, sometimes at night? You know, since you work the dead hours.”

  “He’s had his share of trouble. I try to mind my own business.”

  “He ever open late at night? Like after midnight? Surely you heard the opening of the metal gate. Those things tend to be screechy. Like nails on a chalkboard.”

  The guy grimaced. “That Decca was int
o all sorts of shit. Shady stuff, sure. An opportunist, moral code taking a back seat to the American Dream. Guy didn’t care who he dealt with, so long as he got something out of it, usually cash. The untraceable kind.”

  “You know a lot.” Jimmy put down a third twenty. “What’s your story?”

  “Wife took me for all I had about two years ago. Except for a gold Rolex I got after retiring. Sold it to Decca for a nice sum before she could get her paws on it. Pays my rent while I sit here watching the world tumble dry away and help these clueless brats who without me wouldn’t know their colors from their whites. Kids today know nothing, don’t know when to add fabric softener, much less how to operate the machine that spits out the laundry detergent. Parents today should be ashamed.”

  “What about Decca? He knew how the world worked, huh?”

  “Until the other night, when the world showed him.”

  “Were you here?”

  “Didn’t hear anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “When did the cops show up?”

  “Saw them go into the store around four in the afternoon. Then again around nine.”

  That was a curious development. Didn’t fit the timeline. “Same cops?”

  “Couldn’t say. Two officers. One guy looked more official. Barking out orders.”

  “Which time?”

  “Oh, right, sure, the second time. That’s when they found the body right inside the store, front door was left unlocked and Decca’s blood was apparently seeping out onto the sidewalk.”

  “Someone didn’t want him rotting inside. Deliberate placement,” Jimmy said. “What about the first visit?”

  “Just a regular cruiser. Like the one they got parked out front now and since it happened.”

  “Cops go in that day, or just do surveillance?”

  “They went in, maybe all of five minutes. Like they were delivering something, maybe just a message, or a warning. Didn’t see anything.”

  “You’re good, thanks, uh…”