“Hey, I knew Martello’s old man, the captain. He was an asshole too, but this is some crazy shit the son was doing. He made a cottage industry outta revenge.”
“Is Mr. Prager free to go now, Detective Feeney?”
Feeney winked at me. “Sure, but don’t go to the South Seas until this is all buttoned down, okay?”
He shook my hand and Carmella’s, wished us both luck. Dukelsky was smart enough not to offer up his hand. Feeney was the type of cop who had no use for lawyers and would have told Dukelsky to shove his hand up his ass.
Outside, the wind in the wake of the thunderstorms was crisp, almost autumnal, but the strength of the sun, even this early in the morning, put the lie to that. The three of us stood there in front of the precinct. I just wanted to get home, take a shower, and get some sleep. I didn’t care who drove me back to my car. Dukelsky kept looking at his watch, but didn’t seem that anxious to leave. Carmella still had that funky, unreadable expression on her face.
“Would you guys like to go to breakfast? My treat,” said the lawyer.
“No, thanks. I just need somebody to drive me back to my car before I collapse.”
Carmella sighed with relief. “I’ll take you. Come on.”
“Just as well,” Dukelsky said, “I’ve got to get back to Sag Harbor.” He was lying and rather unskillfully at that.
“Thanks, Paul,” I said, shaking his hand. “I can’t thank you enough for helping me out. Send me the bill. I’m sorry about getting cranky in there. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me.”
“Tell me about it. Don’t worry about the bill.”
“Okay then.”
“So long, Carmella,” he said.
“Bye, Paul.”
Carmella drove me toward my house and not to my car. She said she would just arrange to have my car driven to my house and that she didn’t trust me to drive in my present state. I didn’t argue. I fell asleep before we made it to Sheepshead Bay Road.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The sun wasn’t particularly bright nor the sky severely blue. The clouds that drifted overhead weren’t shaped like angels’ wings nor were they ominous and gray. The wind blew, but only enough to disappoint. It was a plain summer’s day that no one would ever sing about or write a poem about or paint a picture of. In this way, it was like most days of most lives: a nearly blank page in a forgotten diary. I think if we could remember our individual days, life wouldn’t seem so fleeting. But we aren’t built to work that way, are we? We are built to forget.
The Maloney family plot was, as Father Blaney had pointed out on that dreary Sunday in the rain, a pretty place to be laid to rest. And the priest, in spite of himself, presided over the third burial of Patrick Michael Maloney. It was a small gathering: Katy, Sarah, Pete Vandervoort, and me. I had thought to invite Aaron and Miriam and their families, but Sarah confided in me that she had had to lobby her mother just to let me come. Katy was still pretty delicate, her feelings raw, nerves close to the surface. We all had new things to work through.
Wisely, Katy had waited for the press to lose interest before putting her little brother into the ground for a last time. It was a hot story, but only briefly. Most of the reporting focused on the sensational aspects of the kid’s homicide and the Martellos’-senior and junior-history of misdeeds. There were only a few oblique references to my involvement and nothing about Katy. I’m sure the press would have made more of it if they could have, but no one was talking. A story is like a fire, rob it of oxygen and it dies. Y.W. Fenn taught me that.
No one claimed the kid’s body and John James was buried out in a field somewhere with the rest of the unclaimed, unwanted, and anonymous human refuse New York City seemed so proficient at collecting. I think in my younger days I might have made some gesture, maybe to pay for a decent burial or to find the kid’s people. Not this time, not anymore. My time for the useless grand gesture had come and gone. I just couldn’t muster much sympathy for the kid, even if he had gotten in too deep and hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. It was petty, I know, but I was still pissed at his lying to me about his name. I also couldn’t ignore the fact that his antics had helped shatter whatever fragile bonds that remained between Katy and me after the divorce. Sure, things might someday have collapsed under their own weight, but I would never know that now. Ray Martello had his revenge.
The day after the murder, I put in a call to Mary White to let her know how things had turned out. The awkwardness between us that began during my visit to Dayton had a long shelf life. I heard the strain in her voice during our conversation. I guess she just wanted to move on after all these years. Who could blame her? I wanted the same thing. There was genuine surprise in her voice when I told her about Martello’s revenge.
“Really?” she said. “The police are certain it was him?”
“One hundred percent. His car was full of evidence linking him not only to the murdered boy, but to the plot itself. There were cash receipts, fake IDs, just a ton of stuff.”
“If you’re sure then…”
“Well, yeah. Jack’s grave will be left alone from now on. I’m sorry for your troubles. Be well, Mary.”
Blaney kept it short and managed not to scowl during the graveside service. Maybe the priest did have a heart. Still, he used it sparingly. Fallon hung back, waiting for us to clear out before filling in the earth atop Patrick’s newest coffin. The caretaker had already done a masterful job of repairing the damage to the plot. The grass bore none of the scars of the desecrations, the hedges were trim and perfect, but Fallon was no miracle worker. It would be another month before my father-in-law’s new headstone arrived, so Fallon had fashioned a serviceable wooden cross to mark the grave. The simple cross suited him well. In the end, Mr. Roth was right; Kaddish and ashes was the way to go.
With the last Amen of the day, the Prager family of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, broke fully and finally apart. I found myself thinking of what Howard Bland nee Judas Wannsee had said a few days back about the soft tissue of dinosaurs and how it was lost to history. So it was for us, the bonds that had tied us together as one were gone. In the grand scheme of things, the dissolution of my family was no more significant than the death of a may fly. The earth kept turning. There was now only Katy and Sarah, Sarah and me. I pulled Sarah aside.
“Listen, hon, I’m going to get out of here.”
“I think that’s best, Dad. Mom will be okay. This is her shit she’s dealing with. Someday she’ll be okay and we can be-get together, the three of us. What are you smiling at?”
“You really are the best of us, kiddo. So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stay with Mom until mid-August, then I’ll head back up to school.”
“I don’t suppose the cute deputy sheriff has anything to do with your staying up here.”
She cat-grinned. “Robby? Maybe a little.”
“Stay away from cops. They’re nothing but trouble.”
“Not all of them.” Sarah slipped into my arms and kissed me on the cheek. “Not you, Dad.”
“Me most of all.”
“I love you.”
“Me too. Come down and visit before you go.”
I watched Sarah and Katy get into Katy’s car and drive off. Sarah looked back at me. Katy never did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I had heard that it was possible for a man to float on quicksand, but I didn’t know if it was possible for a man to walk across it. I couldn’t have anticipated that I was about to find out.
The page was turning on the first week of August when Sarah came down to Brooklyn on the day after her birthday. We went to dinner at a Thai place in Sheepshead Bay, had Carvel for dessert, then we drove into Coney Island to ride the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. The Cyclone was great. I must’ve ridden it a thousand times since I was a kid. On the other hand, I despised the Wonder Wheel. I never met a Ferris wheel I liked and the Wonder Wheel was my least favorite. For one thing, it was gigantic and it had
big cars that rocked and slid along rails as the huge wheel turned. My daughter always took perverse pleasure in watching me go pale and squirm.
“You crack me up, Dad. You’ll ride any rickety, crappy, old roller coaster, but this thing scares you.”
“I just always feel like the bottom’s going to drop out.”
Sarah clucked at me like a chicken.
“How’s your mom?”
“Nice segue,” she said.
“Seriously.”
“She was doing well for the first week or so after the burial, now…I don’t know. She’s been really quiet and to herself for the last couple of days. Kinda nervous and jumpy. I guess she’s just got stuff to work through.”
“I suppose. You all set to get back to school?”
“Yeah.” Sarah frowned.
“Robby can come visit, you know?”
“No fooling you, huh, Dad?”
“Nope.”
We had Nathan’s hot dogs for a nightcap and Sarah dropped me back at my condo. She made some noise about wanting to get back up to Janus to see Robby, which was probably true, but I could tell she was worried about Katy. I hugged her tight, then let her go. I was doing a lot of that lately, letting go.
When I got inside, my answering machine was winking at me. I gave serious consideration to not listening. Aaron was pissed at me because I extended the time I’d taken off to work the case into a vacation. When he started ranting, I reminded him about what he had said about the stores thriving without me for twenty years. He didn’t much care for my throwing his own words back at him. It was a big brother vs. little brother thing. Still, I’ve never been good at avoidance or procrastination. Bad news was better than no news. I pressed PLAY.
First message:
“Hello, Moe, it’s me, Connie Geary… Oh, this is terribly awkward, isn’t it? I’ll just say it then. Truthfully, I got tired of waiting for you to call me, so I decided to call you. I hope you weren’t simply humoring me that day when you said we could have dinner together. It was great seeing you and it brought back the happiest times of my life. Let’s say you pick me up on Friday at eight. If I don’t hear from you between now and then, I’ll assume we’re on. Okay then, that’s Friday the eleventh at eight.”
It had been a long time since I had that nervous feeling in my belly. Suddenly, I was back in high school again, staring at the phone, trying to summon up the courage to ask a girl out. Oh, God, the terror of those days. I had the phone in my hand even before listening to the second message. I put it down.
I wasn’t going to live out the rest of my life in monk’s robes and if I was going to be dating again, Constance Geary was a hell of a start. We had shared history, people in common, things to talk about. There wouldn’t be any of those endless, awful silences to be filled in with uncomfortable stares or panicky trips to the rest rooms. And Connie was certainly pleasant enough to look at.
Next message:
“Yo, Five-O, dis Marlon Rhodes, man… You remember me… from Cincinnati? We talked once ’bout dat crazy lady, Jack White’s sista. I got all up in your face and shit. Dat was a bad day when y’all called me. You still interested, I can be put in a better mood, if y’all hear what I’m sayin’.”
End of new messages.
I heard what he was saying, all right, but that ship had sailed. Poor Marlon had missed his big payday. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d chosen today to call.
I opened my eyes on the Irish Wolfhound of dog days. It was nearly a hundred degrees by noon and the humidity was beyond ridiculous. You could have baked French bread on the sidewalk and grown orchids in your car. Even the stop signs were wilting. When I was a kid, this weather never bothered me. Back then, summer weather divided up only two ways: it was either raining or it wasn’t; you could play ball or you couldn’t. It was simple. Life was simple. My biggest concern was how many innings of stickball I could pitch. Nothing was simple now, especially not sleep.
Sleep was heavy on my mind because I woke up in worse shape than when I went to bed. After sending Sarah on her way, I hadn’t been able to get to sleep and then, when sleep finally came, it kicked my ass. I tried blaming it on the weather. That was total bullshit. My condo was as cold as a meat locker. No, something was up besides the heat and humidity. It wasn’t the stress of the final breakup or Sarah’s impending return to school. It wasn’t even those damned phone calls, though they were part of it. Connie’s call made me happy and nervous. Marlon Rhodes’ made me curious. Curious had its dangers.
The truth was that had I never received either call, I still wouldn’t have slept well. I hadn’t slept well since the day John James was murdered. I knew it was ridiculous, but it still bugged me that the kid lied about his name. I made the mistake of sharing that information with Carmella.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I told you I knew it was dumb.”
“Dumb! This isn’t dumb. This is stupid. I would never have closed a case if I looked for every little thing to make me miserable. The stars don’t ever align the way you think they should.”
“But why would he lie to me? He had nothing to gain from it.”
“C’mon, Moe. You’re looking for logic where there is none. The kid was a piece of shit. He was in the game. You know what hustlers are like. He lied because that’s what skells do. It’s a reflex, they don’t think it out.”
The cop’s blanket answer for everything. I had known all of that before she said it. I’d uttered versions of it several times myself. I even agreed with her, yet…
I was wise enough not to share with Detective Feeney the reason I asked him to lunch. We met at a Chinese restaurant on Avenue U near Ocean Avenue. His choice. He was already seated in a red vinyl booth when I arrived. He was dressed as he was the first time we met: white shirt, same polyester tie. His hair must’ve been made of real bristles the way that brush cut stood up to the humidity. We shook hands and stared at the menus. I don’t understand why people stare at Chinese menus. They always know what they’re going to order.
“Food good here?”
“Who cares? The air conditioning’s great.” Feeney grinned.
Feeney was old school down to what he ordered: egg drop soup, chicken chow mein, and pork fried rice. Christ, it was like eating with my parents. I ordered crispy duck that wasn’t especially crispy and was barely duck.
“So,” he said, shoveling a fork full of fried rice into his mouth, “does this mean we’re goin’ steady?”
“I just wanted to say thanks for not making it as hard on me as you could have.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Prager.” Funny, I had said those same words to the kid. “You got a bug up your ass about something. Wait…” He put down his fork, wiped his mouth with his linen napkin, and then reached under his chair. “You wanna take a look at the file, right?”
“I do.”
“Last person who said those words to me had my children.”
“From me, you’ll have to settle for the chow mein,” I said.
He plopped the file on the table, but kept his forearm across it. “Before I let you take a look-see, I just wanna give you a chance to forget it, to finish your meal and walk away.”
“And why would I do that?”
He tapped the folder with stubby fingers. “Because you ain’t gonna find what you’re lookin’ for in here. The only thing you’re gonna find is unhappiness.”
“How do you know what I’m looking for?”
“I know. Believe me, Prager, I know. You think you’re the first ex-cop I ever dealt with?” Feeney didn’t wait for an answer. “Ask your partner, Melendez, she’ll tell you.”
“She already did.”
“See, this here file contains the answers to questions of what and when, but that ain’t what you want. You don’t wanna know a what or a when. You wanna know a why. Am I right or am I right?”
“Right. But why agree to have lunch?”
“I was hungry.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me, so I can get some peace. If I didn’t let you see it, you’d be calling me with all sorts a stupid questions. Eventually, you’d show up with a court order and I don’t got time for that shit. I got cases on my desk from the year of the flood. This way, I figured to save me a lot of time and grief.”
I didn’t argue. Why argue with the truth? When I reached for the file, however, his arm didn’t budge.
“Last chance, Prager. Take my advice. There’s only more unhappiness waitin’ for you in here.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“First, I wanna know what’s eatin’ you. Then you can see the file.”
I guess I blushed a little bit.
“That stupid, huh?” he said. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
I explained about the kid lying to me about his name. Feeney had enough respect to let me finish before he started laughing. When he got done wiping the tears from his eyes, he slid the file across the table.
We didn’t speak again for another quarter hour. During that time, Feeney finished his meal, had a dish of pistachio ice cream and a plate of pineapple chunks. When I was done, I slid the file back across the table to him.
“You satisfied?” he said, patting his full belly. “What’d I tell you? It’s as solid a case as I ever made. We got every kinda evidence against Ray Martello that’s ever been invented and then some.”
“Yeah, it was like he wrapped himself up in a neat little package for you and then by getting himself squished, saved the mess of a trial. No loose ends. Nice and tidy. Pretty convenient all the way around.”
“Perfect.”
“Yeah, maybe a little too perfect,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let’s take a ride.”
Feeney agreed, a look of resignation on his face. My guess was he knew this was coming and he had already cleared a few hours to waste with me.
I parked my car on Avenue Y in approximately the same spot Ray Martello had parked his Yukon on the night he killed the kid. As I slipped into the space, Feeney’s resigned expression reshaped itself into a knowing smile. When I unlocked the doors, he didn’t move.
Empty ever after mp-5 Page 18
