The James Deans (14 page)

“Why don’t you shut your mouth and look in the mirror, Heaton? I just came here to ask you a question about a package Moira re—”

He grabbed my shirt, balling my collar inside his fists. “See, I fuckin’ knew it. You and your buddies—”

“This has nothing to do with my buddies, John, so leave them out of it. Now if you don’t take your fuckin’ hands off me, I’m gonna have to—”

He didn’t wait to hear the end of my threat and let go of my collar with his right hand. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing given he still had hold of me with his left. He cocked his right arm, but because most of his red blood cells had been replaced by scotch, his movements were slow and cumbersome. The punch, however, was quick enough, his knuckles grazing my cheek as I forced my head against his restraining hand. If he hadn’t still been holding on to my collar, I might have been able to avoid the punch altogether. The near miss just pissed him off, rage twisting his face into something ugly and barely recognizable as human. He reared back, but never got the second punch off. The cavalry had arrived in the body of Preacher “the Creature” Simmons.

“What the fuck you think you doin', John?” Simmons’s voice cut a wide swath through the din and darkness. His massive hands locked on to John Heaton’s shoulders. Heaton, no shrimp himself, looked like a scale-model human against the backdrop of Preacher’s six-eight frame. I was suddenly very happy the empty barstool hadn’t belonged to Domino.

“Thanks,” I said, rubbing my neck where Heaton’s left fist had dug into my flesh.

“What you want?” Preacher asked impassively.

“To ask your friend a question.”

“Ask it,” Heaton spoke up.

“Your ex-wife says you received a package of newspaper clippings just after Moira disappeared.”

“Yeah, what about it?” he wondered, shaking free of Simmons’s grasp to reach for his drink.

“You remember it?”

“Yeah, so … Why you wanna know?”

“Your ex sent me some of Moira’s things because I was interested in getting to know who she was,” I confessed, figuring the truth might be worth a try. “It’s not any more complicated than that.”

“I threw it out. It was just a bunch of old newspaper shit, nothing at all to do with my girl.”

“Can you remember where the clippings were from or what they were about?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to forgive me,” he mocked, swigging the remainder of his scotch, “but I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Anything, do you remember anything?”

“Something about a bike, I think, a kid and a bike. That’s all. Something like that, a kid and a bike. I’m not sure. Now if you don’t fuckin’ mind …”

I left, nodding good-bye to Preacher Simmons.

If that drunk asshole was right, and the clippings were about some kid’s bicycle, I really was just chasing my own tail around for no good reason. On the other hand, Heaton was currently so liquored up, it was impossible to know if he had been telling me the truth in there or if he even knew what the truth was. Walking to the car, I found myself wishing John Heaton was correct. I was way too distracted by this, and even my industrial-strength curiosity couldn’t build much of a mystery out of old newspaper stories about a kid and his bike.

IF THE LICENSE plate theory wasn’t dead, it was probably a dead end. HNJ1956 was indeed a current tag number in six states, but five of the states were west of the Mississippi, three of the plates had been issued since Moira’s death, and two of the plates were assigned to cars owned by women over sixty years of age. Even if I had been inclined to look into it any further, I couldn’t see how a license plate issued to a sixty-year-old grandmother in Wyoming or Utah related to old newspaper clippings about a kid and a bicycle.

Klaus came back to the office to take his lunch break. As he was clearing off the desk, he noticed the pad on which I’d written down the information about the license plates.

“Utah, huh?” he kind of mumbled to himself.

“What about Utah?”

“If there was any
what
in Utah, boss, I wouldn’t be living in New York,” he said, his turned-down lips hinting at the pain behind his flippancy. “What’s this, HNJ1956?”

“I thought it might be a license plate number.”

“Well, 1956 was the year my brother Kirk was born. Maybe it’s somebody’s birthday. You know, Harold Nance Jacobson, born 1956. Or maybe it was the year someone died.”

Bells didn’t quite go off in my head, but Klaus had a point. It’s an amazing thing how the human mind works, how different minds process the same information to divergent ends. I’d been focused on HNJ1956 for over twenty-four hours, yet it had never occurred to me that HNJ could be somebody’s initials, nor had I seen 1956 as anything other than the individual numbers 1-9-5-6. Once Judith Resnick had suggested it was a tag number, my mind seemingly closed off other interpretations. I’d have to be careful to keep that lesson in mind.

There was more to recommend Klaus’s analysis beyond its simply being different from mine. It resonated. I didn’t have to perform mental gymnastics to see the potential connection between someone’s birthday and newspaper stories about a kid and a bike. But what kid? What bike? Whose birthday? Like everything else since I’d first flipped through Moira’s checkbook ledger, each possible answer gave rise to more questions.

As I walked the aisles of the store, distractedly dusting and straightening bottles, I tried imagining how I might be able to replicate the newspaper search Moira had paid for a few weeks before Ivan Alfonseca had strangled the life out of her. Even if Klaus was exactly right that HNJ1956 was a group of initials followed by a year, it wasn’t enough. Or as my old philosophy professor was fond of saying, it was necessary but not sufficient. I tried anyway.

Judith Resnick, though happy to hear from me, wasn’t very encouraging. Even if I could tie the initials HNJ to the year 1956 and could further tie those two elements to newspaper articles written about a kid and a bike, it probably wouldn’t do me any good, not as far as her company was concerned. Not only would it take an eternity to search through all the archives, but it would cost a fortune. “Certainly more than a hundred and fifteen bucks,” she said.

The bottom line was this: I needed to come up with a specific name or geographic region in order to replicate or approximate the search Moira had paid for. Until then, I was just spinning my wheels.

The other line started ringing before I hung up with Judith. I told her I had to go. She apologized for not being more helpful and let me know she’d already mailed out that brochure I’d asked for.

I picked up line
2
: “Bordeaux in Brooklyn.”

“Hey, you gimpy Jew fuck, how you doing these days?” It was Larry Mac.

“Don’t tell me you got promoted again. What is it now, chief of the Sioux Nation or grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan?”

“Shut up or I won’t take you and Katy to dinner this evening.”

“Call 911.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m suffering from auditory hallucinations. I could swear you just said you were inviting Katy and me to dinner.”

“Asshole, that’s what I said.”

“Then call 911 anyway, because now I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

THE BLIND STEER, located only a few blocks away from 10-9-8, was one of the oldest steak houses in New York City. I suppose, like 10-9-8, it had been trendy once, probably around the time Lincoln was giving the Gettysburg Address. Even if you didn’t know its exact address, you could spot the life-size red, white, and blue neon steer swinging above its front door from all the way down Ninth Avenue.

Larry Mac was waiting for us at the bar when we arrived. I was surprised to see him alone. I had just assumed his wife, Margaret, would be joining us. When Katy asked after Marge, Larry was kind of vague about the reasons for her absence. Now I was suspicious. Earlier, on the phone, Larry had said he had been meaning to take us to dinner since his promotion, that it was the least he could do for me. He explained how the promotion had come so swiftly and as such a shock to him that he hadn’t even had time to arrange for the time-honored tradition of a promotion party. That was true. Rob Gloria hadn’t thrown his yet either.

Larry signaled to the maître d’ that his guests had arrived, and we were shown to a prime table in a private corner of the dining room. While Katy and Larry studied the menu, I studied Larry. As was the norm, he was impeccably dressed in a black linen suit over a gauzy white shirt. I always admired that about Larry—he had an abundance of substance and style. That he had taken us here to celebrate was another indication of that. Yet, there was an unfamiliar tension in his expression that I could not decipher. He seemed to be working too hard at his usual easy charm.

Without a sign, verbal or otherwise, a waiter in a long white apron came to the table carrying a bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge. Larry offered toasts to me, to Katy. We toasted his successes, current and future. All the toasting out of our systems, we ordered dinner. The food was excellent, the aged beef melting like butter in our mouths. The meal was all so splendid, but there was also that tension Larry had brought with him as an escort. It held tight on to Larry’s arm, whispered in his ear even as he ate and made small talk. I wondered if Katy noticed it too. Tonight was about more than just saying thanks. There was definitely something besides steak on my old friend’s plate.

After dessert, Larry ordered cigars and three Grand Marniers in heated snifters. Katy excused herself as a darkly attractive young woman in a black satin cocktail dress came to the table toting a humidor. Though not her equal, her looks were reminiscent of Steven Brightman’s wife. She placed the humidor before Larry and opened the mahogany box in a very formal, almost ritualistic manner. I half expected her to recite some ancient incantation. When the high priest had selected two cigars, he pressed a folded bill neatly into the woman’s right palm. She closed the box.

Larry ran a cigar under his nose, taking in an exaggerated breath.

“All right, Larry, what’s going on?”

He laughed a little self-satisfied laugh, clipping the end off a cigar and handing it to me. He repeated the motion and used the outside of his pinkie to sweep loose bits of tobacco off the white tablecloth. Katy and the waiter arrived back at our table simultaneously.

The drinks served, the cigars lit, I noticed Larry’s escort had seemingly vanished in a haze of smoke. The tension was gone. Larry reached into his pocket and placed a small, unwrapped box on the table in front of him.

“This,” he said, sliding the box toward me, “is yours if you want it. No strings attached.”

Though it was nauseatingly clichéd, I picked up the box, placing it to my ear. Then, almost involuntarily, I shook it. I think I knew exactly what it was the second I felt its weight. I had a replica of one in my sock drawer at home.

“Open it, for chrissakes!” Larry prodded, cigar smoke gushing from his mouth.

My hand trembled. I immediately put the box on the table and hid my hands beneath the tablecloth.

“Open it, Moe,” Katy urged, curiosity getting the better of her.

My hands somewhat settled, I placed one on the box and slid it to Katy. “You go ahead.”

She removed the lid without a moment’s hesitation and gasped. Katy’s too-thin lips formed a smile fraught with a sense of deep-seated satisfaction. It was the kind of smile you smile not for yourself, but for your kids, or for your team when they pull off an impossible comeback. Katy slid the box back in front of me.

Inside was a hunk of gold-plated metal in the shape of a glittering nine-pointed star. Within the rim of the star was a field of cobalt blue enamel. At the center of the rich blue enamel was more gold in the guise of a Dutchman and an Indian standing on either side of an eagle perched atop a coat of arms. The words CITY OF NEW YORK POLICE formed a gilt-lettered horseshoe around the central symbol. Beneath the symbol was another word: DETECTIVE. In a rectangle below was the number 353.

“The pay ain’t great and the hours suck, but it’s yours for the asking,” Larry rephrased his earlier offer. “You can take Gloria’s spot in Missing Persons. If that doesn’t move you, you can work a precinct or inside with me. It’s your call. In me, you got a rabbi and a Dutch uncle all wrapped up into one.”

I heard a voice that sounded like mine say: “Thanks, Larry. I … I don’t know what to—”

“Don’t give me an answer now,” he said, squeezing my shoulders. “There’s no rush. I know it’s a surprise and you’re running a successful business and everything. I’m sure you and Katy and you and that brother of yours got a lot to talk about. Call me in the next few days and we’ll discuss pay and grade and benefits and that crap.”

“This on the up-and-up, Larry?”

“Just as if you got that promotion they fucked you out of in ‘72 when you found the little girl.”

“But my knee, the pension stuff.”

“Hey, didn’t Rabbi Larry just tell you he’d take care of it? If you didn’t notice, schmuck—sorry, Katy—you solved a case involving a cop’s daughter. A case no one in this town wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole. You made a lot of people happy, Moe, a lot of people. Forget Geary and Brightman, everybody from the Queens DA to the mayor got mileage off this. Why shouldn’t you get what you’ve always wanted? Believe me, buddy, I had no problem smoothing out the bumps to get you that shield.”

“Thank you, Larry,” Katy said, reaching for my hand. “You’re right. We have a lot to talk about.”

I pushed the box toward Larry Mac.

He winked, pushing it back. “You hold on to that. Try it on for size.”

We finished our drinks in a sort of peculiar silence. Standing up to leave, I noticed that my barely smoked cigar had put itself to sleep. Larry had meant it to be a kind of victory cigar to celebrate my return to the job. It was good, I thought, that I hadn’t smoked it. There was nothing to celebrate, not yet.

THE SILENCE FOLLOWED us from the Blind Steer home to Sheepshead Bay. Katy understood without needing to be told that there was nothing simple or easy about the decision with which I was now faced.

To the casual observer, even to some participants, all silences can seem equal. But there are differences in silence as there are in darkness. The absence of sound or light reveals little about what has caused the silence or the dark. There is a difference between a broken bulb and a moonless night, no? So it was with my silence. Katy understood one piece of it, the piece I gave her access to. There were, however, layers and textures in my silence to which she was not privy. Once before, in 1978, at a restaurant in Bay Ridge, I’d been offered a detective’s shield. And though there was much about the current offer that bore no relation to that situation, there were certain undeniable similarities impossible for me to ignore.

Rico Tripoli, the closest friend I ever had or was ever likely to have, had brought me into the case of Katy’s missing brother. At the time, it seemed like a perfect fit. Both parties, the Maloneys and myself, were just desperate enough to take a chance on each other. The Maloneys had exhausted all conventional options in the search for their son. As for me, I was just retired, in terrible pain from my second surgery, and flat out of ideas on how to raise the money for my share of the business. I think I would have tried almost anything. But Rico, as it happened, hadn’t brought me in to find Patrick at all. No, I had been brought in to play the foot, to be used as a conduit to leak information that would ruin my father-in-law. Ultimately, I managed to both find Patrick and ruin his father’s career, accomplishing the latter without exposing his family to the pain and embarrassment my users had intended for me to unleash.

Understand this, I despise my father-in-law, Francis Maloney Sr. He is a cruel, calculating bastard who, through God’s mysterious grace, helped create my wife. I haven’t lost a second’s sleep in five years over his loss of political sway, nor would I shed a tear on the day of his death. But the notion that my best friend, a man whom I had trusted with my life, had set me up and betrayed our friendship for career advancement has plagued me every day since. Rico’s handlers had wanted to gift me with a shield for my keeping my mouth shut and a job well done, kind of like rewarding a dog with a treat for giving his paw and rolling over. I took a pass. I didn’t do tricks.

In spite of the quiet in the car, it was noisy in my head. I kept telling myself that this time it was different, that Larry wasn’t like our old precinct mate, Rico, that he was high enough on the totem pole not to sell me out. I told myself that it was different this time because I had done good for the right reasons, like when I found Marina Conseco. Not because I felt guilty or threatened, but in spite of those things. Sure, luck had played a part. It always does.

It wasn’t luck I was worried about. I was worried about me. That, I decided, was what this apprehension and jitteriness was all about, not the past, not betrayal. Was I up to it? Could I handle the job after so long away? For years I had wanted that shield so badly I could taste it. Now, with all that had gone on, the miscarriage, the second store, did I really want it anymore? My father-in-law, of all people, had once warned me to watch out what I wished for. Did wishes, I wondered, have a shelf life? How long after you stopped wishing could they come true?