Revolver

by Duane Swierczynski

Just one look.

  As they pass each other, Terrill Lee does look up, and there’s a moment of instant recognition on his face.

  But there is no gun, there is no shootout, there is no bloody climax to thirty years of hate.

  There is only Terrill Lee Stanton ducking his head back down because a burly white man is looking at him funny, and he doesn’t want to start any trouble, not up in this neighborhood.

  Jim eventually figures it out.

  He’s casing the bars.

  On the long, downward-sloping block of Frankford Avenue between Harbison and Robbins, there are three lower-middle-class drinking establishments. Havens for the hardworking folks of Mayfair, Wissinoming, and nearby Frankford to order up a Bud and watch the Eagles game.

  You have the venerable Chickie’s & Pete’s tucked away on Robbins Street, just a quarter of a block east of Frankford Avenue. Middle of the block, you have Mugsy’s Tavern, a watering hole with a piano. And finally, near the top of the block, Lou’s Bar, a shot-and-beer dive. All of them working-class joints that do most (if not all) of their business in cash. This is Friday, after all. Best time of the week to go rob a bar. Like he told Cary a few months back—this is when the tills are full.

  Jim has tucked himself into the doorway of the apartment complex across the street, which affords him a view of the entire block. He watches Terrill Lee Stanton walk up and down, up and down, as if trying to make up his mind about which bar to rob. The sun’s already set; night is when the predators come out. Terrill Lee Stanton: not such a pathetic old man after all.

  But he is possibly senile, because he’ll go up to the front of Mugsy’s, pause, then shake his head and walk back down toward Chickie’s & Pete’s, where again he’ll hesitate before walking the length of the block up to Lou’s, again hesitating. Does he not remember which bar he intended to rob?

  Just go ahead and pick one so I can arrest you and we can all move along with our lives, Jim thinks.

  (Go ahead, stick a gun in a bartender’s face so that I can justifiably blow your head off.)

  After a solid twenty minutes of hithering and dithering, however, Terrill Lee Stanton walks toward Harbison Avenue and continues south down Frankford. He’s changed his mind, apparently. Perhaps he needs another few days of hauling trash and cleaning toilets before he has the courage to fall back into his old line of work.

  Jim follows him back to the El, back to Erie Avenue, back to the halfway house, with the ex-con having no idea he’s had a police escort all this time.

  For the longest time, Jim stands across the street, staring up at the fourth floor of the house.

  You’re working up the courage, that’s all.

  Well, that’s fair.

  So am I.

  After dinner Jim is out digging around in the garage, which is actually just a piece of his basement sectioned off by cinder blocks. Theoretically there’s room to squeeze a car in here, but they use it for family storage. One half of the garage is Halloween decorations, Thanksgiving place settings, Christmas gear (including a giant fake blue spruce in its original box), Valentine’s Day crap, all of it in plastic bins and carefully labeled by Claire. The other half is more or less Jim’s stuff—books, papers, and everything else he doesn’t know what to do with.

  The search is driving him nuts. He knows the file is here somewhere. He wouldn’t get rid of it. No way. Did Claire move it?

  As if responding to his thought, the back screen door slams shut. Jim turns to see Claire there, backlit by the security spotlight behind their house.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” she says. “I didn’t even know you were home.”

  “Did you or the kids move any of my files?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jim snaps at her without intending to. “My old files!” But he catches himself immediately. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

  “The girl on Pine Street,” she says.

  “Yeah,” Jim lies.

  “Any luck?”

  “Some, but not the kind I was hoping for.”

  Claire steps into the garage, despite the fact that she’s barefoot with her thin silk robe wrapped tight around her skinny body. She knows not to press any further. He’s never been one to talk about his work. Doesn’t want that shit in the house, he’d explain. But when your life is your work, what else do you have to bring home?

  “Let me help you find it.”

  Claire—who’s been up all day, too, chasing after three kids by herself while trying to squeeze in tutoring hours. Offering to help him dig through old boxes at one in the morning.

  Christ, I’m such a dick, he thinks.

  Jim steps over the array of boxes and crates he’s pulled out and goes to his wife, wraps his burly arms around her.

  “They let him out yesterday, Claire. The guy who shot my father.”

  The look on Claire’s face confirms what Jim already knows: she wasn’t expecting this. “Oh Jesus, Jim. I’m sorry. How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. It was in the paper. Time off his parole for something.”

  “You told me they don’t know who shot your father.”

  “Yeah, well, I do.”

  They hold each other in the open garage. Claire shivers.

  “You should go back up,” Jim says. “I’ll be there soon, I promise.”

  Jim can tell she knows he means it, but also knows he’s lying.

  He needs to find a binder.

  The binder he spent years assembling—the one with the spine marked STANISłAW WALCZAK.

  Audrey Knocks Back a Beer

  May 9, 2015

  So apparently Claire issued a BOLO to the entire goddamned family because her sweet grandma Rose is now telling her that her father is on his way. Yes, at 11 p.m. Why? She won’t say. Audrey guesses that apparently it’s his turn to “deal with her.” Oh blessed joy.

  CLAIRE: 1

  FAT AUDREY: ZIP.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Grandma Rose asks.

  Oh yes, a drink would be splendiferous right about now. Audrey follows her grandmother into the kitchen and starts opening cabinets. One thing becomes clear: Grandma’s house has an alarming lack of Bloody Mary ingredients. Most alarmingly: zero vodka. Come to think of it, Audrey can’t remember her grandmother ever enjoying an alcoholic beverage. It’s probably a safe bet that Rose Walczak hasn’t had a bottle of booze in this house since May 1965.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Grandma Rose says.

  Audrey nods, not because she wants coffee (she never touches the stuff) but because she wants to seem totally agreeable before she pleads her case. She slides into a kitchen chair, one of the same Grandma’s had since forever. When she was a kid she’d rock the wheels back and forth, spin around on the rotating seat, much to the annoyance of anyone who happened to be sitting nearby. She likes to think of them as AUDREY STOP IT RIGHT NOW™ chairs.

  Grandma Rose asks if she wants sugar or milk.

  “You know me, Grandma. I like my coffee like my men—strong, hot, and black.”

  Grandma Rose should be used to this sort of sass from her only granddaughter. This time, however, it only seems to piss her off. Her face hardens into a petite scowl. Without responding, Rose sits down across from her granddaughter and waits until she catches her attention.

  “What?” Audrey asks. “Are you all out of coffee? That’s okay, I didn’t really want any.”

  Grandma Rose doesn’t make eye contact with Audrey as she quietly says, “Your mother told me what you were doing for your school project.”

  “I’m glad she told you. This is why I thought it might be a good idea for me to stay here for a couple of days. I would completely stay out of your way, but help out when you needed me.”

  Grandma shakes her head. “Oh no, that wouldn’t work.”

  “But you’d hardly know I was here.”

  “No, no. I understand, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But I
could help you out, you know? You shouldn’t be living alone anyway. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise!”

  “Audrey, I’m telling you no.”

  “Apparently,” she mutters. And yes, there is some eye-rolling here, too.

  “Young lady!”

  The stern tone in Grandma’s voice catches Audrey off guard. She’s never heard her use it before. Never. Even when Staś and Cary used to bloody each other’s noses in the backyard and threaten to set each on fire for an encore. Not even when Audrey accidentally flipped a freshly cooked pot roast upside down and onto the kitchen floor.

  “You will not do this,” Grandma Rose says. “It’s profane and wrong and I will not have it. Do you understand me?”

  All Audrey can do is nod, stunned. How can she possibly defend her profane and wrongheaded quest for the truth?

  But Grandma’s anger fades away as quickly as it appeared, and what’s left in Rose Walczak’s eyes is a weary sadness.

  As much as it pained Audrey to hear those words, it pains her more that her grandmother was forced to spit them out.

  The women sit in silence. Audrey too embarrassed to drink the coffee her grandma made (not that she wanted it in the first place). Rose, looking like she’d like to be anywhere but here.

  Audrey is almost happy to hear the Captain’s voice call out,

  “Ma?”

  “Going back to Unruh Avenue” is right up there with “lemon juice and Sriracha douches” on Audrey’s list of Least Favorite Things. The very idea of returning to her childhood home makes her twitch. She still doesn’t know why her father lingers there, after all these years. Big swinging police captain, he could afford to live anywhere. Yet he chooses to remain in that dumpy three-bedroom place in Mayfair. The place can’t exactly be swimming in happy memories. Least of all for Audrey.

  But as painful as it might be, she has no other option. Unless she wants to tuck her fat tail between her legs and slink back home to Houston, where she can flunk out of grad school in person. Or stay here in Philadelphia and investigate the fifty-year-old homicides as a homeless person. Call it CSI: Skid Row.

  Her other family options are not options. Her older brother? Please. Staś and Bitchanne would sooner welcome a bucket of body lice into their Jenkintown home. Cary’s place up in Somerton wouldn’t be a good idea, either. Even though he’s fun, his near-suburban house is a circus of full-on crazy. Jean would spend most of the time smiling at her while searching for the ideal location on Audrey’s back to insert a steak knife. Ooops, I’m sorry, did I do that? And their kids wouldn’t want their Ugly Aunt Audrey from Texas around. God forbid one of their parents should give a moment’s attention to another sentient life-form in their presence.

  So it’s down to the one family member who has two bedrooms to spare.

  The Captain arrives, hugs his mother, barely looking at Audrey when he says, “You got everything?”

  She shrugs. “Pretty much got nothing.”

  “Let’s go, then. Bye, Ma. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  The drive home takes barely five minutes, especially this time of night. You just drive down Bridge Street, hang a right, drive past four cemeteries—oh yeah, the dead rule this part of town—and a few minutes later you’re in Mayfair.

  Audrey’s pals in Houston don’t believe such a neighborhood exists. It just sounds so made-up. Which it is. Thank the local chamber of commerce during the Great Depression for giving it such an uplifting name, as in “May you be given a fair deal.”

  Her father says nothing the whole five minutes. Audrey can smell his aftershave, which means he cleaned himself up before coming over to retrieve her. She wonders if he’s drunk and is covering up.

  When her parents split, Audrey moved with her mom to a rented house over in Rhawnhurst to be closer to Claire’s family. To Audrey, the ’Hurst was the Wurst. She couldn’t wait to leave. Visits back to Mayfair were limited and awkward and usually weekend deals; Audrey realizes she hasn’t slept in this house since the last century, when she was nine years old.

  The Captain hasn’t done much with the place.

  There’s a newish couch in the living room, and of course, his beloved turntable, tuner, and speakers, along with a dozen crates of vinyl. An IKEA bookshelf stuffed with hardcovers—all history. But that’s about it, as far as the living room goes. The dining room contains the same table the Walczaks have used since before Audrey was born.

  “You hungry?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  She isn’t, but it feels rude to refuse food.

  Late dining on Unruh Avenue means cold cuts on rolls and macaroni salad of questionable vintage, all of which the Captain no doubt picked up from Acme up on Harbison and the Boulevard. He pulls out the plastic bags of rolls, lunchmeat, and cheese and puts them on the table. Audrey hangs her bag over the high back of one of the surviving chairs. (Half of the original six have seemingly bit the dust.)

  “Mind if I use the ladies’?”

  “You know where it is.”

  She doesn’t have to go. She just wants to scope out the old place a little.

  Dad’s bedroom has a California king that appears not to have been made since Claire moved out. The door to the second bedroom, the boys’ old room, is shut. This, of course, is merely an enticement for Audrey. Growing up, she had a fascination with drawers, closets, boxes, doors, and anything else hidden from public view, much to the dismay of her older brothers. She found shit in their dresser drawers that still gives her nightmares.

  Audrey tries the knob; it turns. She pushes the door open a few inches—no squeak. Beyond the edge of the door she can see stacks of cardboard boxes, black-and-white photos stuck on corkboards, a laptop on the floor, with its extension cord snaking its way to the wall outlet. Covering the walls are mug shots and news clippings. This is the way a five-year-old or a serial killer might decorate a room.

  “What are you doing?”

  Shit.

  Audrey turns to face the Captain, whose frame fills the hallway. She puts on a look of confusion.

  “Um, this room full of files and stuff clearly isn’t the bathroom. Sorry!”

  He takes a moment, one of those lingering cop moments, then says, “Just close it.”

  Shit shit shit. Audrey pulls the door shut, then continues to the bathroom, where she pretends to pee. The bathroom smells like Old Dude. Not entirely a bad thing, but slightly overwhelming. There is nothing feminine here to balance things out. This relieves yet depresses Audrey.

  Back in the dining room, Audrey and the Captain spend the next twenty minutes pretending that second bedroom full of files, clearly police shit, doesn’t exist. She makes an imported-ham sandwich slathered with enough spicy mustard to choke a horse. The Captain sticks with turkey and pickles on a kaiser, dry.

  With dining formalities out of the way, the Captain gives her the eyes that say, To what do I owe this pleasure?

  “You know I just started my second year,” Audrey says.

  “Yeah, I just got the bill a few days ago. Glad you’re sticking with it.”

  “Well, it’s a two-year intensive program, but they make you do an independent research project over the winter break.”

  “Huh. So what’d you end up doing?”

  Audrey exhales. “I didn’t do it. I mean, I worked on some of it, but it’s late. Don’t worry, though. I have an extension.”

  “Until when?”

  “The end of next week.”

  “That’s one hell of an extension.”

  Audrey smiles. “I can be very convincing.”

  But the Captain is unconvinced. Audrey’s smile evaporates. She takes a bite of her sandwich. The Captain eases his burly frame against the seat back. And in that moment, she realizes that Claire has no doubt told him, too. He’s just drawing her out, like a cop with a suspect.

  “So what’s the project?” he asks.

  “I’ve already completed the proposal and experimental design. All approved. Which just
leaves the data collection and analysis.”

  The Captain lifts his right eyebrow a fraction of an inch. And…?

  “I want to investigate Grandpop Stan’s murder.”

  The Captain just stares at her. His eyes lock onto his daughter’s, and she’s treated to the strangest transformation. Usually his eyes throw up a force field to repel anyone attempting to read them. But slowly, with each blink, the defenses fade away. And for a moment, Audrey isn’t staring at her sixty-two-year-old father anymore. For an instant, he looks like a big kid.

  Then he stands up and the spell is broken. “You want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  As the Captain fetches two cold bottles of Yuengling from the fridge, Audrey tries to divine any kind of reaction from his movements. Is he upset? Is he interested? Is he feeling any glimmer of an emotion?

  The Captain twists the top off one Yuengling, hands it to his daughter. She takes it, brings it to her lips, tips the end up. Her father does the same, still standing there.

  “I was reading this travel article about France, sightseeing the old World War Two battlefields where American soldiers died,” he says.

  “Oh, you planning a trip?” Audrey asks. “You, bunch of old guys, doing the history thing?”

  He ignores her. Takes a long swallow of his beer, then places the bottle back on the table. “If you head into the woods in Lorraine, Champagne, or Picardy,” he says, “you can still find shrapnel and bullets in newly plowed fields. You can even find live shells. And every year, people are still getting maimed or killed by these things. Can you imagine that? A hundred years later?”

  Audrey sees where this is going. “Well, that’s subtle, Dad.”

  She presses on as she makes her pitch—the same one she gave her professor.

  “Look, you know better than anybody—forensic science has improved a great deal in the past five years, let alone fifty,” she says. “I want to enter as much data as possible to come up with a computer model of the shooting and see where it all leads.”

  “Where it leads,” the Captain repeats.