Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  That’s not really true. Long ago still hurts now.

  He talked to the nurse about getting the body to Carmichael’s.

  Back on the elevator, Taylor fiddled with the frayed edge of the field jacket’s sleeve. His father’s last will and testament really did cause him no pain, but the Professor’s death opened a different pit of hurt. He missed Billy; God, he missed him so much now. Only he and Billy could really talk about this. He swallowed against a dry throat. Taylor had lately been going days, sometimes a week, without thinking of Billy, and the realization would jump him like a mugger. When Billy first went MIA, the sense of loss, a shadowy absence, a gap in his world, never went away. Relief in the form of an hour or two came after a while, which was probably for the good. However, there was a huge difference between getting on with your life and forgetting.

  The death mask of his father was replaced by the memory of Billy’s young face—ten years younger than Taylor’s—proud and smiling. He wore the uniform of the 10th Mountain. Why was it getting so hard to recall all the many other memories—what Billy looked like after his second tour, after second grade? The kid chose Vietnam when most other kids chose just about anything else. Despite their age difference, they were always allies in the ongoing struggle to live through the Professor’s drinking. Now, he wanted, needed, Billy back to go over it all—the verbal abuse, their mother crying early in the morning before they were supposed to be awake, Billy’s decision to run to the bad war as the better option than dinner in their kitchen.

  There was the good Billy represented. He missed the good. When Billy was a kid, there wasn’t a story Taylor wrote that Billy hadn’t read as soon as the paper got to the house. That continued any day Billy was home on leave. My brother the big-time newspaper reporter wasn’t sarcasm. It was sincerely meant and the exact opposite of the Professor’s verdict: a scribbler with a high school degree wasting his life. No, the last insult with the letter and the will didn’t bother Taylor; everything before that did.

  Samantha insisted on springing for a cab to get to their Murray Hill apartment.

  Her warm body leaned against his side, her auburn hair spilling across his jacket. He kept few secrets from her. This, this wasn’t a secret. This was only something he could talk about with Billy, the Billy he didn’t think about for a week at a time now. All around him, people were forgetting the Vietnam War as best they could. The U.S. had pulled out in 1973, and North Vietnam had won the war two years later. Now, in 1977, people wanted to believe the war the U.S. couldn’t win maybe hadn’t happened. They danced out of the way of vets begging on the street. The veterans were failures, like the war, to be ignored, avoided, and despised. Didn’t matter how much sacrifice. America only loved a winner.

  Billy was the only witness to what Taylor had gone through with their father right up until Billy had gone off to war. There was no one left to acknowledge what kind of father the Professor had been—no hope of that. He could tell the stories, tell them even to Samantha, but not to anyone who’d lived through his wrecked and frightening childhood. The loneliness of that idea hollowed him out. Billy’s dead. And it seemed like Billy was deader than his father, like there were different grades of death. He could do nothing for himself. Of all things, this kindled a light in the empty darkness inside him. For Taylor, it was always about telling the stories of victims—victims no else cared about. If his witness was gone, his duty to witness for others was all the more important. The stories he wrote to illuminate a life, and maybe, sometimes, bring justice.

  In search of distraction, Taylor took out the Wall Street Final edition of the New York Post he’d picked up outside the hospital. Well, a drink would work too, but he’d skip even one seven-ounce beer the day his father died after a life of vodka mixed with not much else. On page four, the Post gave prominent display to the location of the funeral chapel for the services for Virginia Voskerichian and the cemetery where she’d be buried. Lower down, Mayor Beame said he was ordering a police detail assigned to the Voskerichian funeral to protect the family from curiosity seekers. The Post didn’t see the need to draw a connection between touting the location and the assignment of cops. Murdoch’s paper had the same sense of irony as Taylor’s father.

  Three days later, Taylor went to the Broadway Bar & Grill with a box of ashes and the will. He’d called ahead to confirm Bethany would be behind the bar. Samantha was working a divorce investigation for her employer, Raymond & Associates, Investigators. The investigators totaled two—Samantha and her boss, Lew Raymond, radio detective turned real-life detective.

  Taylor was opening his mouth to offer to take care of cleaning out the apartment when Bethany snatched the will from this hand.

  “There’s not really much,” he said.

  “I’m the executrix and beneficiary?” She was chunky and wore green hot pants and a red-striped tube top. The bar had to be 80 degrees of humid steam heat. A little tropical paradise in March on the Upper West Side.

  “You are. He appreciated all the buybacks. Drinking killed him.”

  “Is that right? He owed me twenty-five bucks.”

  Taylor didn’t reach for his wallet. “He asked that the ashes reside here at the bar.”

  “I can’t put them up there.”

  Taylor looked at the box. If there was one thing he had to do, it was take care of his father’s last wish. It was a law of the universe.

  “Somewhere else?”

  She thought—and that looked like it took an effort—eying the box.

  “I can take care of what he owed.”

  “I’m beginning to see possibilities.”

  “Fifty.”

  “In the back is a shelf with some old darts trophies. No one plays anymore. No one does anything but a shot and a beer anymore. Put it there.”

  Taylor wrote out a check while she watched with a smile that wasn’t kind.

  He drank one Rolling Rock pony. Took the whole beer for her to read to Page Three of the will.

  He was at the door when she stopped him.

  “Hold on. Did you read all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the bottom of the paragraph that says I’m beneficiary, it says except for one thing.”

  “Yeah, I know. His poetry books. They’re supposed to be mine. You can have them.”

  “They worth anything?”

  “Big collection. Might get you to paradise.”

  “Is there any money?”

  “Not really. Most of what’s left needs to go for the medical bills. I’m owed three hundred twenty-five dollars for the cremation. I was hoping to get that from the estate.”

  “This isn’t really much of a tip. I’ll get back to you.”

  There was a call Taylor didn’t expect to receive.

  Chapter 6

  Taylor lost most of a week before getting back to the Martha Gibson story. He had to deal with his father’s death, taking one day off because Novak insisted, though he spent that day searching the Professor’s apartment for anything of his brother’s before Bethany got the key. He found three black and white pictures from a trip to Jones Beach, a high school yearbook, a medal he’d have to research, and the telegram saying Billy went missing. That appeared to be the complete collection of his father’s family memorabilia.

  Three workdays were chewed up pursuing a bank robbery, a mugging turned murder, and rewriting the usual collection of soft press releases into minor features. He turned one around on the Bronx Zoo, which was opening a Wild Asia section on 38 acres of undeveloped land, complete with a monorail tour of a habitat featuring elephants, lions, tigers, and rhinoceroses.

  In Manhattan, something called the Big Apple Circus had set up for the first time under a tent in Battery Park.

  “We’re an old fashioned onering show,” the ringmaster said in a phone interview.

  You’re not the only circus in town.

  Abigail Gibson offered the long-used New York greeting. She opened the door with the chain still on—no
t a good sign—and peered at Taylor through the two-inch gap with black eyes that had a telltale glassy appearance.

  “Aren’t you the dude who was asking the wrong sorts of questions last time? What do you want now?”

  Her speech was slurred. Though he’d already been near certain after his last visit, her condition now confirmed for Taylor that New York’s scourge of choice, heroin, was also Abigail’s. Every third murder he looked into was connected to smack.

  Shit, how am I going to get anything out of her?

  “I want to tell the story of your sister’s life, not just her death. I need to talk to you for that.”

  The door shut. Re-opened with the chain still on. “We only talk about Martha. Nothing else.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The chain came off. The door didn’t move, so Taylor had to push. Abigail was already at a round plastic table, scooping up a big glass ashtray and heading to the kitchen. Taylor caught a glimpse of the hypodermic needle. He could guess the rest of an addict’s works were in the ashtray. The Sly and the Family Stone album from last time played again. Was that a junkie thing, playing the same music over and over?

  Best I can hope for is she shot up a good while ago. If not, she’ll doze off. Or not remember anything helpful.

  Taylor sat down on a white wooden stool covered with a pleated cushion. Abigail settled into a red canvas butterfly chair, more like was swallowed by it—the perfect place for a junkie’s doze. Her face wore a slack smile.

  “When I was last here, you said your sister talked about the DeVries family having dark secrets.”

  “That’s all she said. Didn’t I tell you that? She didn’t trust me. Not a bit.” Anger. Good, maybe that will keep her focused. “She didn’t tell me what was going on.”

  “Why didn’t she trust you? Your habit?”

  “You said we weren’t talking about anything else. I’ll kick you out again.”

  “Yeah, you can kick me out. You care about your sister’s memory? Anyone else trying to figure out why she was shot?”

  The anger stayed with her, giving her a more awake, alive demeanor than last time. “My sister was a snob with that college degree. Those months working up in an Empire State Building office made her the biggest of the big. She didn’t change any after she got fired either. If you didn’t measure up to her standards, she treated you different.”

  “She let you live here.”

  “She said she was trying to help me.” Wasn’t getting far. “Wouldn’t give me any money, though. She didn’t trust me, but I heard things.”

  “Like what?”

  The smile changed, more sly than slack. “A phone call. It was someone from that family she worked for—”

  “How do you know?”

  “I answered. I know the way those White people talk.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A man’s voice. He wanted her to come out and meet him somewhere. She refused. She got anxious. She said, ‘I didn’t overhear a conversation at the residence. I don’t know who was in there.’ Her voice got low, but I was right around the corner there.” Abigail pointed to the entryway to the kitchen. “ ‘I just want the job, not trouble.’ She set the phone down, and she was wiping away tears when she came back in here.”

  “Did she say for sure it was a member of the DeVries family?”

  “No. But I know how White people—”

  “There are a lot of White people.”

  “Yeah, but she mentioned her job on the call.”

  Abigail’s not stupid.

  The lock above the knob to the front door snapped to the left. Taylor had put the chain back on. New Yorker’s instinct. Abigail, struggling as if the butterfly chair held her in its clutches, finally got up and raced to the door like her life depended on it, took off the chain, and opened the door without checking.

  A tall, slight Black man in flared jeans and a red-checked shirt with the sheen of polyester entered and stopped a step inside the small living room.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “He’s that reporter I told you about.” She turned to Taylor, who was already rising. “This is Jerome.”

  “Taylor with the City News Bureau.”

  Jerome passed close to Taylor, almost close enough to collide, and dropped down in the middle of the tan corduroy couch and spread his arms to claim the whole thing. Abigail went back to the butterfly chair.

  “The fuck’s a City News Bureau?”

  “A wire service for radio stations and newspapers.”

  “Whitey news.”

  “We’ve got a jazz station—”

  “You think I care about jazz, asshole?”

  “I don’t know what you care about. Just mentioning. What I care about is Martha Gibson’s murder.”

  “The apartment goes to Abigail.”

  “I’m not worried about the apartment ….” Then Taylor got it. “It’s rent-controlled?”

  “We’re not talking any private family business with you. Like I said, this apartment goes to Abigail.”

  Taylor knew of serious fights—trips to the hospital—over who ended up with the lease on a rent-controlled flat. There’d even been a couple of murders. The locked-in, regulated low rents were valuable enough to make people crazy. Leases were handed down through families. Could that be the motive for the crime in the hallway outside a week ago? Taylor needed a read on Jerome fast.

  “Can I get your last name?”

  “Fuck no. Why are you really nosing around?”

  “Said why. Trying to figure out why Martha was killed. Starting to wonder if drugs were involved.”

  “Why you think that?” Jerome casually pulled out a knife, the kind you brought to a knife fight to scare all the other knives, and balanced the point on the plastic coffee table.

  “Abigail’s an addict. That’s obvious. She looks enough like her sister.” Abigail’s right hand went to the crook of her left arm, but she stayed quiet. The fight was out of her. Jerome was in charge. “Drugs are money and money attracts murder. Something like that could have happened out in the hall.”

  “Best be careful with your could-haves.”

  “Any chance you’re in the pharmaceuticals trade? If there were a supply and money in the apartment, that’d make for an even bigger target.”

  Taylor already knew no one had broken into the apartment the night of the killing. He wanted to figure out what Jerome was about. Was it more than the lease?

  Jerome rose smoothly, the knife at this side. Mission accomplished, but Taylor now needed to get out of there with what he knew.

  Taylor eased off the stool and took a step back toward the door.

  Judo in a real fight? Not ready for this.

  “Take it easy. More violence gets into this case—that makes things worse for you. The detectives around here are busy, but it’ll get their attention.”

  “Never met a reporter before. Not much impressed. You’re bothering me with some serious impertinence. I want that to go away.”

  The knife, still down by Jerome’s side, had been an invitation to keep backing toward the door.

  Jerome brought the weapon up and settled into a fighting stance.

  Shit.

  First, a distraction.

  Taylor hurled his reporter’s notebook at Jerome’s face. Taylor’s instructor wouldn’t have been impressed—notebooks weren’t part of the judo tradition—but improvisation had gotten him out of worse jams.

  Jerome batted away the flapping paper like a big annoying moth.

  He thrust with the knife in a modified roundhouse even as Taylor stepped the other way.

  Taylor moved his left arm up to the vertical, hand in a fist, and blocked Jerome’s swinging arm in the middle. Taylor’s right hand grabbed the knife arm higher up.

  Now isn’t the time to review steps. Do.

  He snuck his left arm under the man’s elbow and grabbed his wrist.

  Twisted hard.

  Harder.

 
The knife dropped to the rug. He increased the pressure, forcing Jerome facedown into the shag carpet.

  He snatched up the knife and the notebook with his free hand.

  From the floor, Jerome grunted, “I’m going to fuck with you.”

  Taylor slipped to the door.

  “Your knife will be at the One-One-Two. Along with my full report to Detective McCauley, the narcs, the desk sergeant, and the janitor. The cops will know who to look in on if something happens to me. I’m writing Martha Gibson’s story. If you’re not a part of it, good for you. Stay out of it.”

  “Why do you give a shit?”

  “The usual reason. No one else does.”

  Chapter 7

  The knife dropped with a pleasing thunk on Detective McCauley’s desk.

  The thunk didn’t please McCauley. “What the fuck?”

  Taylor laughed.

  McCauley scowled. “Oh, so the reporter who’s interested in other murders is a comedian too.”

  “I liberated that from a guy named Jerome, boyfriend to Martha Gibson’s sister. The sister, Abigail, is a smack addict. Jerome looks good for a sales agent in that booming New York trade. Reacted like it, at least.”

  “How’d you get the knife off the guy?”

  “Been studying a little judo at the insistence of my girlfriend.”

  “That’s so nice. She worried about you? She ought to be.”

  “She’s an ex-cop. Said the academy didn’t give much hand-to-hand training to the women.”

  “As it should be. What’s a five-foot meter maid going to do when the shit hits the fan?”

  “I’ll let her know your views. Help you up off the ground afterwards.”

  McCauley frowned, seemingly unsure how his machismo should react to a threat from a female ex-cop delivered by her boyfriend.