Harlem Redux (20 page)

The light changed; he was free to cross. But he remained standing there, rocked by a sense of loss. His family, he realized, was dying out.

Adrian Snyder leaned back in his chair and examined his fingernails. They were buffed to a nice soft gleam. He used a letter opener to dig a nearly imperceptible bit of dirt out from under the fingernail of his left index finger, then held his hand up to admire it. He heard a hiccup from his guest and looked up.

His “guest” sat in a chair in the middle of the room, flanked on either side by two of Snyder’s biggest, baddest men, Shotgun and Slate. The guest fidgeted. He was bony and sharp-featured.

Something about him always did remind me of a ferret,
Snyder
thought. He hated ferrets.

The Ferret kept picking at the cloth at his knees, which he jogged up and down nervously.

“Nice pants,” Snyder said in a conversational tone.

The Ferret tried to smile and failed.

“Did you buy them with my money?” Snyder asked.

The Ferret licked his lips. “Look, boss, I, uh—”

“Don’t lie to me, Sully. Don’t lie to me,” Snyder said, still in a quiet tone. He never raised his voice. “There’s only one thing worse than pickpockets and thieves and that’s liars.”

Sully flinched. He’d broken out into a cold sweat and his face was the color of wet putty. “Boss, I—I don’t know what got into me. I swear, it’ll never happen again.”

“I’m sure it won’t.” Snyder examined a bit of loose skin on one cuticle. “So where’s the rest of it? Or did you spend all twenty Gs?”

Sully’s eyes shifted. “I—uh—I got it at home. In a box. Under the bed.”

Snyder threw his head back and laughed. He had beautiful teeth. They caught the light and gleamed like pearls.

“C’mon, Sully. You can do better than that.” He became serious again. “For your sake, you’d better do better than that.”

He sent an eye signal to Shotgun, who dropped a brick-like hand on Sully’s shoulder. Sully jumped and gave a little shriek.

“Okay—okay,” he said, trembling. “It—it’s in a box. Tied to a rope.”

“Um-hmm,” Snyder said. “And what’s the rope tied to?”

“One of the pilings leading into the East River.”

“I see.” Snyder studied Sully, tapping the letter opener against one hand.

“I guess you didn’t believe me when I said I can’t stand liars.” He paused. “I don’t even tell lies myself.” He drew a fingertip over the point of the opener. “You see, my boys already found the money. Wrapped in an oilskin and sunk in your toilet tank. Stupid move, Sully. It was one of the first places we looked.” He gave a sigh of disappointment. “Now, I gave you two chances, two chances to tell the truth. And you fucked up. Actually, you fucked up three times, Sully.
Three
times. First when you stole from me. Second, when you lied to me. Third, when you lied to me again.”

Sully was trembling. A wet stain blossomed at his crotch. Snyder saw it and shook his head with disgust. He glanced at Slate.

“Show him a slow twist.”

Sully jerked forward in his seat, his face contorted in panic.

“Oh, God, no! Oh, please! It was Sheila, boss. She said she’d leave me if I didn’t—”

The thin metal wire that was whipped around his neck cut him off in mid-sentence. His eyes bugged out. He clawed at the wire as it cut into his neck.

Snyder watched without expression. “She said she’d leave you, did she? Well, I’m afraid you’ll be leaving her.”

Sully turned and twisted, his skinny legs kicking at air. Droplets of blood oozed out along the line of the garrote. He pleaded with bulging eyes. Snyder said nothing.

Just as Sully was about to lose consciousness, Snyder signaled again. The wire was removed and Sully fell forward, clutching his neck.

“Oh, God, thank you. Thank you,” he gasped.

Snyder got up and walked around his desk to where Sully sat. He towered over him.

“Look at me,” he said.

Sully raised his bloodshot eyes. Snyder bent and brought his face close to the little man’s. Snyder wrinkled his nose. The guy stunk of booze, piss, and fear. Sully reached out to him with bloody hands.

“Please ... please, forgive me,” he rasped.

“‘Course I do.”

Snyder’s smile was affable. He gave Sully a little pat on the cheek. A tear ran down Sully’s face. His eyes shone with relief.

“You forgive me, boss?”

“It’s forgotten. Look,” Snyder said. “I got something for you.”

He put a chummy hand on Sully’s shoulder and hugged him. Sully stared into Snyder’s eyes with gratitude. Snyder smiled, brought his right hand up, and plunged the letter opener deep into the base of Sully’s throat. Sully’s whole body jerked. He gagged and tore at the letter opener. His eyes fixed on Snyder’s. Then he pitched forward. Snyder stepped aside and Sully fell to the floor with a thump. He twitched for a few seconds, then lay still. Snyder looked down at the dead man with contempt.

“You dumb fuck. I told you to never listen to my sister.”

He signaled to Shotgun and Slate. “Get rid of him. He’s bleeding on the rug. Then come back here. I have another job for you. His name is David, David McKay.”

David’s head ached from having been smashed against the pavement. His eyes hurt even from the pale light of the overhung sky. And his thoughts churned restlessly inside his head.

A lot’s done happened .. .A lot’s done happened .. .A lot’s done happened since you been gone .. .

Well, there was nothing he could do to change the past, but—

“Hey, mister, you wanna shine?”

David blinked and looked down. A grizzled old man with milky blue irises stood looking up at him. A battered hat sat jauntily on his round head. His lower lip hung a bit, revealing missing teeth and tobacco-stained stumps. His eyes gleamed with benevolence.

“Here, you wanna sit down?”

The old man gestured to a shoeshine stand built alongside a grocery store on the street. David saw then that the old man’s hands were stained with boot black. His wooden shoeshine box stood nearby.

“No, thank you. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

David had to smile at the old man’s candor. Truth to tell, he didn’t feel well. He yielded when the old man took him by the arm.

“Here, you sit down. Let me give you a nice shine.”

“No, really, I—”

But the old man insisted. Finally, to be polite, David climbed up onto the mounted chair and placed his feet on the supports.

“I’m Roy,” the old man said. “Roy, Roy, the Shoeshine Boy. See, it rhymes. Kinda catchy. Customers like it. You new in town?”

“Not really, no.”

Roy poured some drops of liquid shoe cleanser on David’s shoes, spread it around with a soft little brush, then snapped open a strip of stained gray cloth and started to rub David’s leather shoes with vigor.

“Set out to see Seventh Avenue, have you? That’s what all the folk new to Harlem do. Well, it’s pretty quiet today, but in the summertime, it’s sumptin’ t’see. The gals strut they stuff and the crowds is deeper than deep. We gets all kindsa parades up and down the street. It sure is sumptin’ t’see.”

Roy whipped out another rag from his back pocket, twisted open a tin of black polish, used the rag to apply the polish, and began to shine the shoes: from side to side, across the toe, around the back. He was quick and strong and while he worked he talked.

“Yeah, we’s had lotsa parades.” His voice trailed off. “But the one I best r’members, the one that meant the most, was back in 1919, when our boys come home from that there war over in Europe.” He was silent a moment. “My son went to France and didn’t come back. My missus say he died for nothing, but I can’t say that, don’t want to say that. The hurt done nearly killed her. That and believing he died for nothing.” He looked up at David with cataract eyes. “You weren’t here for that parade, son. Too young to know what I mean.”

“I was there,” David said. “I was in it.”

“You was over there? For real?”

“Yeah,” David nodded. “For real.”

The old man’s eyes grew shrewd. “When d’you ship out?”

“Summer of ’18.”

“You was an officer, right?”

“A lieutenant.”

Roy studied him. “You look way too young for them kind of mem’ries. But they’re in your eyes ... You got old eyes. My missus would say you got an old soul, son. A very old soul.”

David said nothing, but he was touched.

“I bet you got a medal,” Roy said. “You look the type.”

“Do I now?” David smiled. “Well, yes, I did ... I did, at that.”

“It was hell over there, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah ... in many ways it was.”
But the war over there,
he wanted to add,
was nothing—nothing compared to one over here.

The knife of regret stabbed him.

Forgive me, Jonah. Forgive me. At least, you’ve found your peace. Maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll find mine.

12.
 
A Voice Stilled

“Excuse me, Mr. David, but I have sumptin’ for you.”

Annie’s voice brought him out of his reverie. He hadn’t heard her as she entered the parlor, her skirts rustling softly. She reached into one of her deep apron pockets, withdrew a slender rose cloth-covered book, and handed it to him.

“It was Miss Lilian’s.”

Taking the book, he opened it. The book’s delicate pages were covered with Lilian’s fine script. His face registered surprise. He looked up at Annie.

“Did she leave other papers?”

Annie shook her head. “Mr. Sweet burned everything else. Even her last manuscript—”

“He burned her
book?”

“Did it right after the funeral. But he didn’t get this. I’d taken it. Hidden it.”

He thanked her. She gave a slight bow and moved away. His suspicion and resentment of Sweet hardened. How could the man have destroyed her work? It was beyond callous; it was cruel. Or did the manuscript contain something Sweet wanted no one to see? That manuscript represented Lilian’s last creative effort. It contained her last written thoughts.

But did it?

His gaze dropped to the diary. The book was new. He turned the pages one by one. She had written it as though it were a novel, recording the events like scenes from a book. Perhaps she’d intended to use it later as material. She’d begun it in October, the day Gem arrived. The last entry was dated last March. She must have stopped writing in it at about the same time Gem returned to Europe. Strange. He turned back to the first page.

Friday, October 31, 1924

Gem is back. How apt that she reappear on Halloween, the day on which ghosts return to bedevil the living. God help me. I don’t want her here. Not now, when everything is finally turning out well. I must get her out of the house swiftly, but she must leave voluntarily. I can’t just turn her out. People will talk.