Revolver

by Duane Swierczynski

  After waiting the appropriate length of time (or so he guesses), Jim excuses himself, telling Aisha he has a quick errand to run.

  “Tell Son-ya I said hi,” Aisha says, drawing out the name like she’s a telephone sex worker or something.

  “Hey,” Jim says. “Cut that shit out.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  (But I don’t honestly mind if that’s what you’re thinking, because it gives me an alibi, of sorts.)

  “Hey, it’s none of my affair.”

  No, it’s not, Jim thinks. Lucky you.

  Terrill Lee Stanton is not at the halfway house at Erie and Castor, best as Jim can tell. No movement in the fourth-floor window, no sign of him anywhere nearby.

  A short drive to Mayfair, however, reveals that Terrill Lee is hanging out near Mugsy’s Tavern at 9:45 a.m., trying to look all inconspicuous. Which to the trained eye of Jim Walczak makes the motherfucker look as conspicuous as hell.

  What’s the idea, dumb-ass? Catch the lone bartender first thing in the morning, so you can empty out his sure-to-be-already-empty till?

  Or maybe it’s not about the money at all. Maybe you’ve got a thing for shooting people in bars while they drink beer.

  Jim honestly doesn’t know what he wants more—to prevent Terrill Lee from carrying out another horrible crime, or to catch him in the act just so he can shoot the old bastard legally, justifiably.

  It’s 9:55 a.m. Guess he’ll find out sooner than later.

  A minute later and the presumed owner shows up—a white guy with dark, bushy hair, young, no more than twenty-five. From the looks of Mugsy’s, Jim was expecting someone a little older, more grizzled. The owner doesn’t pay Terrill Lee much mind as he digs a set of keys out of his jeans pocket, opens up, then steps inside.

  Jim tenses, prepared to run across busy Frankford Avenue with his gun in hand. The very idea of it makes his blood jump.

  Go ahead. Do it!

  But Terrill Lee seems oddly disappointed. He looks up and down the block, then glances at the bar before shaking his head and walking back toward Harbison Avenue and, presumably, the El and the halfway house.

  Chicken-ass motherfucker.

  Jim breathes in deep, trying to get his hands to stop shaking. He should go home—after all, it’s just a dozen or so blocks away—and take a nap before heading back downtown. Eat some breakfast, drink a gallon of water. Tell Aisha he’s feeling sick, to beep him with anything urgent.

  Which of course is when his beeper goes off.

  Aisha’s number pops up.

  It must be important, since she probably thinks he’s balls-deep in Sonya Kaminski by now.

  Audrey and the Old Bastard

  May 10, 2015

  Audrey awakens to the smell of death, of flesh burning, of acrid smoke. Soon it becomes clear: Dad is cooking breakfast.

  She staggers downstairs, grease and salt heavy in the air, cutting through her head fog. Then she comes to the sad realization that Dad probably doesn’t have the ingredients for a proper Bloody. Or a passable Bloody, for that matter. Or a drop of tomato juice. It’s not as if she can toddle off to a hip brunch spot a few blocks away. This is Mayfair. The only bars open this time of morning will be serving the night shift, and their idea of a cocktail is a Coors Light with a shot of Jack. Horrors; she might be forced to make do with a Polish mimosa—vodka and orange juice.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Not sure. I was unconscious for most of it.”

  The Captain shoots her a look: You’re not as funny as you think.

  Whatever.

  Flesh-colored pork roll sizzles in a dinged-up frying pan. Dad’s got the ingredients for a healthy Philly-style breakfast scattered all over the counter: the leftover rolls, dozen eggs, pound of American cheese. The Ween song “Pork Roll Egg and Cheese” starts playing in her head. She hasn’t thought about that one since forever.

  “Are you supposed to be eating that?” Audrey says, looking down into the pan as she steps behind her father and snoops over his shoulder.

  Dad flips one of the meat discs. He’s cut four notches on the edges of the circle, like a rifle scope, to prevent them from curling up. Audrey can’t help but smile. Nothing ever changes.

  “What’s the matter with pork roll?” the Captain asks.

  “Nothing, if you want pork roll listed as your cause of death.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Audrey opens the fridge, bends over to scan the inside. No tomato juice. No OJ. There are not many other liquid options.

  And shit, even she’s not a big enough alcoholic to mix vodka with half-and-half.

  But lo! There is a six-pack of eight-ounce V8s hidden in the back. She plucks one from the plastic ring and carries it to the hutch in the living room, which doubles as Dad’s bar. He’s got some Stoli under there—she scoped it out last night. With a little pepper, she can fake it.

  Dad plates the sandwiches and Audrey stirs her white-trash Bloody. She drinks it down in three swallows, then gets up to make another.

  “You’d better eat this before it gets cold,” Dad says. “And go easy on the booze. It’s still morning.”

  The booze isn’t going to kill me, Audrey thinks, as fast as that hockey puck of processed meat.

  They chow down in silence, Audrey trying to find another way to convince the Captain to help her with her project. The Captain thinking about…well, hell. Who knows what the Captain is thinking about at any given moment? He is an emotionless golem.

  Back in the kitchen, Audrey stealthily makes and chugs her second Bloody, then stirs a third, which Dad will think is her second. Not that she cares what he thinks. She carries it back to the table, the red up to the brim.

  “I know that’s your third,” he says.

  “What does it matter? I’m not going anywhere.”

  The Captain grunts. Chews. Then something seems to occur to him.

  “What’s the Houston number that keeps calling you?”

  “Hmm?” she asks, mid-sip.

  “The area code, 713, that’s Houston. You got a bunch of calls from 713-524-8597.”

  Audrey puts down the Bloody. “You’re seriously looking at my phone?”

  The Captain shrugs. As if to say, Hey, it’s in my house, plugged into my power supply, so I have the right to search your crappy cell phone.

  “You can’t do that,” Audrey says. “You fascist.”

  “Shut up. Who is it?”

  “A Catholic nun. First name—Of Your Business. Weird, I know. Speaking of calls, should I call your vascular surgeon this morning? Tell him you’ll be in for an angioplasty after lunch?”

  “Hey, lay off me and the food.”

  “Fine. Lay off my calls.”

  The Captain stares at her.

  Audrey drains the rest of her Bloody, then rises from her chair to go mix a fourth. She’s in it for as long as the V8 holds out.

  “Come on, enough of that. You should go upstairs and get dressed.”

  “Why? What’s the hurry?”

  The Captain looks at her. “Don’t you want to go off and play detective today?”

  They leave Mayfair an hour later, heading up Frankford Avenue toward Holmesburg. It’s a commercial strip, with plenty of bars and flower shops and delis and even a place to buy a gun. Back in the old days, you didn’t drive to a mall, you just wandered down to the Avenue. If they didn’t have it, you didn’t need it.

  The Captain drives. Which is a good thing, because Audrey is a little tipsy. She managed a fourth crap Bloody while the Captain wasn’t looking.

  “The man who killed your grandfather is dead,” the Captain says. “He spent most of his life in prison for another charge, got out in late ninety-five. But within a few days he was gone.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “They said it was an overdose. Heroin.”

  Audrey knew Terrill Lee Stanton died twenty years ago. But this new bit of information cu
ts through her boozy blur. “Well, geez, that’s a little suspicious.”

  The Captain turns to look at her. “Why do you say that?”

  “Why would he kill himself after spending so long in stir? Sounds like someone with an old score to settle bumped him off. Easy enough to fake an overdose.”

  “Says the forensics expert.”

  “Hey, you’re paying for it. Just want you to know you’re getting your money’s worth.”

  “Well, take your face out of your books and take a look at the man. Some people can’t adjust to life on the outside.”

  “How very Shawshank.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Your brothers talked about it all the time after it happened. Don’t you remember?”

  “Uh…no?”

  Sometimes Audrey thinks her childhood was an implanted memory that never fully took. And her parents, who know the script, will always bring up details or events that mean absolutely nothing to her.

  “Jesus. So the patsy either killed himself, or it was made to look like he killed himself.”

  “Patsy? Aud, the guy did it. You say there was a second shooter, then fine, I’m not going to argue with your homework. In that case, maybe he had some help. But he’s definitely responsible. I’ve looked in his eyes. He’s a killer.”

  Audrey fishes her notebook out of her backpack. “Hold on,” she says.

  “What, are you quoting me?”

  “If I’m going to write an independent study, I might, you know, need a stray detail or two.”

  The Captain grunts. “You’ll get plenty of details in a few minutes. I called ahead, and he’s awake and ready to talk to us.”

  “Who?”

  “Your grandfather’s former partner.”

  The residents call it the Woods, but to Audrey it looks like a bunch of Cracker Jack boxes lined up on dinky and depressing little cul-de-sacs.

  Back in 1942, a few months after Pearl Harbor, the Philadelphia defense business was booming. You had the Frankford Arsenal, the Bendix Corporation, Budd Company, and five dozen other contractors—many of them slapped up in the wide-open spaces of Northeast Philly. Problem was, where do you house all the workers toiling in these plants? The Northeast was like…way out there.

  That was when a local architect got the idea to slap up a $4-million development of clapboard houses on a giant patch of mud adjacent to Pennypack Park. The mud, they hoped (prayed), would eventually turn into lush green spaces. Instant Suburbia: Just Add White People. “Workers and their families will live among broad lawns in a suburban atmosphere within the city limits,” gushed one press release. Who could say no? The rent was cheap: $27 a month, which most young families could swing. And work was plentiful. Even if the bus service was shitty and the mud got everywhere.

  After the war, the residents decided they didn’t want to let a good thing slip by. So they bought the entire development and established a cooperative. Hells no, it wasn’t communism! Each resident owned 1/1,000th of the land and paid a small monthly upkeep fee. Houses could only be passed down to blood relatives. When free slots opened up, they were filled by people on a waiting list. By the 1980s, the average wait for a two-bedroom, one-bathroom box was ten years.

  Officer Billy Taney waited fifteen years for his.

  Finally got his chance back in ’96, moving out of his row house in Kensington and hightailing it to the faux-burbs. He’s sitting in the backyard now, grass freshly mown, working on his fourth (maybe fifth) Bud of the day.

  “Hey, Bill,” the Captain says.

  “Hey, kid,” Billy says. “And who’s this? Your girlfriend? Hah hah hah.”

  Hah hah hah pervo.

  Audrey doesn’t like him. Not one bit. Reminds her of all the old men playing grab-ass at the Kelvin Arms. You can practically see his bulging liver sticking out of his white V-neck T-shirt, which is actually gray from countless cycles in the washing machine. There’s no sign of a woman’s touch in this place, which means his wife either passed away, split, or hanged herself on the second floor.

  “This is my daughter, Audrey,” the Captain says. “She’s down in Houston, studying forensics.”

  Billy laughs. “You want my body for science, honey?”

  Science wouldn’t know where to begin with your body, Audrey thinks. Honey.

  “How are you, Mr. Taney?”

  Taney, he says, is pronounced to rhyme with “Manny.”

  “Because I’m all man.”

  The Captain smiles politely, declines the third and fourth offer of a Bud, then turns to the business at hand.

  “Audrey’s doing a report on Dad.”

  “Hell of a guy! Saved my white ass during the riots, I’ll tell you what. You hear what those bastards did? They set a couch on fire and dropped it on top of me. Didn’t want to fight me man to man, I guess. Still got the scars, if you want to see.”

  “I’m actually looking into his murder,” Audrey says.

  Billy Taney stops cold as if some invisible hand has reached down from Heaven and slapped him.

  “You’re what? Whaddya want to do that for?” He looks at the Captain for backup. “Jim, why are you letting her do this? We all know the cocksucker who did it, may he rest in pieces—”

  The Captain interrupts. “Yeah, yeah, Billy, I told Audrey what you told me. But I thought she should hear it from the source.”

  “Source? Source for what. Excuse me for a sec, I gotta shake the dew off my lily.”

  Billy Taney toddles back into his cracker box to drain the contents of his bladder into the single bathroom on the second floor. Fifteen years he waited for the privilege of pissing in this part of town, Audrey thinks. Hope he enjoys it.

  Audrey goes inside and takes a look around Taney’s place. The Captain follows her, hands in his pockets, mouth zipped shut.

  A set of marbled, mirrored glass panels, straight out of your favorite early-eighties porn film, covers the main living room wall. Audrey hates the sight of her own self in the mirror. God knows how Taney puts up with it. The shag carpet looks like it was last vacuumed on installation day. Everything else is covered by a visible film of nicotine.

  “Charming fella,” Audrey says.

  “Taney and your grandfather were partners for a long time,” the Captain says. “You want someone who knows what happened, he’s your guy.”

  “But not for the last nine months of his life,” Audrey says.

  The Captain doesn’t respond. The heavy creak of steps heralds Taney’s return. Taney blinks, surprised that little Jimmy and his baby daughter are standing in his living room.

  “Do you guys want a drink? Maybe something to eat?”

  “Do you ever leave sausages around here and wait to see if they’ll smoke themselves?”

  Taney lights up. “What?”

  “We’re good, Billy,” the Captain says.

  “Your grandfather was a good man,” Taney says. “I’m sorry you never had the chance to meet him.”

  “Me, too.”

  “But that murzyn partner of his got him killed, and I’ll never forgive him for that.”

  Audrey really can’t believe she’s hearing this racist shit pour out of this man’s fat mouth…right here…live. The worst part about being white around racists is that they automatically assume you’re one of their kind. Don’t even think twice about it. She thinks about Bryant, back home in Houston, and she’s overcome with the urge to slap the shit out of this guy.

  “Excuse me? Do you mean his African-American partner? The man who also was shot and killed in that bar?”

  Taney snorts. “Bet you voted for Ho-bama, didn’t you, honey?”

  “What can I say? I thought we could use a Muslim in the White House.”

  Taney looks like he’s about to have a stroke due to cognitive dissonance. Here is his partner’s granddaughter—and he doesn’t want to disrespect her or anything, but he also doesn’t want some snotty little bitch sassing him in his own house.
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  The Captain lowers his eyes and shakes his head. At first, Audrey think he’s mad. But then she catches it. That little hint of a smile he’s trying to hide from Taney.

  “Well, let me tell you a little something you probably don’t know,” Taney says. “Nobody knew, except just a few of us. Wildey was bad. News.”

  He separates the words for emphasis.

  “He worked undercover back in the fifties, trying to run with some black heist gangs that were cropping up all over town. Got a little too friendly with the brothers he was supposed to bust. Suddenly, Wildey’s flush. Living high on the hog, hitting the nightclubs, wearing silk suits. Gee, how did that happen? Oh, I don’t know, maybe he’s using police files to help his criminal buddies? But they could never prove it, so all they could do was bust him back down to patrol, bouncing him from district to district. But see, I didn’t know this, back when we first met him. Thought he was an okay guy at first. He was slick, that one.”

  Audrey periodically glances over at her father, but his face is set in stone again as he listens. Guess he knows all this.

  “We met him at the riots, your grandfather and me, and like I said, he seemed okay. But later, when I was in the hospital, I started hearing things. Like how Wildey was back with some of his old gang buddies. And this time they were pushing dope, all over the Jungle. You know what the Jungle is, don’t you, honey?”

  “I am indeed familiar with that racist term used to describe a certain section of North Philadelphia,” Audrey says.

  Taney’s not sure how to take that. The Captain swallows another smile. Taney decides to ignore the remark, keeps going.

  “Terrill Lee Stanton ran drugs all over the Jungle. Wanna know when heroin first started showing up? The fall of sixty-four and spring of sixty-five, right after the riots. You know who to thank? That scumbag Stanton. You know who gave him protection? Officer George Dubya Wildey.”

  “Are you saying my grandfather was involved in this, too?”

  Taney holds up his liver-spotted hands. “No no. Not Stan. All this was behind his back. Wildey used your grandfather as his own protection. See, back then you’d never send two black guys out as partners. Shit, you might as well not send a car at all, in that case. But the white cops was supposed to keep an eye on their black cop partners, to prevent shit like this.”