Little Easter (8 page)

“God, Dylan,” she gasped. “Hard. Just hard.”

I pounded into her, slapping my mass against her with each thrust. It was over quickly for me. The explosion burned right through me, so intensely that I couldn’t judge whether any of this was hard enough or long enough to suit Kate Barnum.

I staggered into the bathroom. She followed. We showered in silence. We didn’t kiss. We touched only through the medium of soap. None of it had been about romance anyway. Punishment? Manipulation? Maybe. But surely not romance . . . Our fucking was food shared between the starving, food we might otherwise have ignored.

“I need you to find out what you can about the dead woman,” I spoke straight out. We were back in bed, ignoring what had just passed between us.

“Why? Can’t his royal highness, Larry Feld, defender of any and all scumbugs be bothered with such small details?” she asked with feigned surprise.

“Next question,” I waved her on.

“What was the trip to the Diamond Ex—”

“Let’s get something straight,” I stepped on her words. “You’re gonna get your fucking story. I was ringing your house when you knocked. But how I dig and why I dig is my turf. Don’t step on it. When I ask
you
to dig,” I flattened her nose with my left index finger. “You dig. I’ll worry about what your shovel brings up,” I pulled my finger in. “I want to know about the dead woman.”

“Yes Tarzan,” Barnum mocked me with a bow, her still bare breasts brushing the covers. “But if I can’t come along for the ride, what guarantees do I have that you’re giving it to me straight?”

“My word.”

“Your word?” She lit a cigarette.

“That’s all you get,” I grabbed the cigarette and took a puff. “And if,” I coughed the smoke out with my threat, “I catch you pullin’ what you pulled today, it’s no deal. No story. Don’t follow me again. Don’t have me followed. I’ll be lookin’ now.”

“I get the whole story, unedited, unwashed?”

“Dirty as a clamdigger’s toenails,” I assured her.

“Let’s drink on it. Pass me the Grand Marnier,” she pointed out its hiding place.

I leaned over the bed’s edge, recouped the quarter-filled bottle and took a choking swig. Kate Barnum snatched the bottle, matched my swallow and killed the bedside lamp. She moved near me and let the remainder of the bottle flow into my lap. Even in the blackness, I could see that she had moved to clean up the latest puddle. She cleaned and I let her.

Someone Else’s Toy

Kate Barnum had gone. The sun was strong. Most of the snow had turned itself into sewer juice. And the list of John Francis MacClough’s former partners was waiting for me at Larry Feld’s office. I tried to strike up a conversation with his secretary, but she blew me off like last year’s lint. She did, however, give me a condescending scowl when she noticed that my attire hadn’t changed since yesterday. I didn’t take it too much to heart and left Mary to wither and die. Hopefuly, sooner than later.

The top four or five names were familiar to me. I’d already met some of these guys at Emerald Society functions MacClough had dragged me to. One or two of them had even graced the Rusty Scupper with their presence. They’d be easy enough to talk to. Lord knows, they seemed to have an endless stream of Johnny MacClough stories.

It was John’s early running mates that concerned me. They were old school boys from a time when patrolling a beat meant using your feet and not a steering wheel. In their day, all lunches were free, drinks were always on the house and everyone in the precinct had pockets padded by local businessmen. Their weakness for the payoff wasn’t at issue. It was accepted by everyone, except Al Pacino, and condoned at the highest levels. It’s just that old-timers didn’t believe in talking to non-cops. That was a real barrier. That and the fact that one of John’s ex-compatriots was five years with the angels and another lived in Yuma, Arizona.

Cops, all cops, are such suspicious bastards. I’d have to tread lightly, but not so lightly as to reap no results. It would be like tap dancing around a land mine. One misstep, one wrong question and they’d tip Johnny to my game. I couldn’t afford to have things blow up in my face; not yet, anyway. I decided to use the wheeze about throwing Johnny a big party and how it was a total surprise type deal and, while we’re on the subject, do you remember any of his old flames? The line hadn’t worked on Larry Feld, but nothing ever fooled Larry and I was fresh out of alternative ploys.

I started by calling on the cops I’d met and moved onto the ones I’d heard Johnny mention in stories or in passing. Some of them were still on the job. Some were in various states of retirement. By nightfall I’d been in every borough of the city, seen the insides of three precinct houses, walked the floor at Bloomingdale’s with the assistant head of security and shared overcooked shepherd’s pie with one of John’s ex-partners who ran a failing Irish pub in Greenpoint. By nightfall I’d run out of even vaguely familiar names. By nightfall I’d been almost everywhere, but gotten nowhere.

Oh, my approach seemed to go over smoothly enough. I got a warehouse full of feedback on the subject of John Francis MacClough, but nothing in the warehouse was worth my while. Everyone wanted in on the party for Johnny, Everyone offered to help. Everyone loved MacClough. Everyone had a few choice Johnny MacClough stories. Everyone told me his favorite. Everyone remembered the sergeant’s wife Johnny had porked on a dare or the Puerto Rican deli girl who went down on Johnny in a beer cooler during the ’77 Blackout or Johnny and the twin nurses. No one remembered anyone who fit the dead woman’s description. No one recalled Johnny ever having a pet name or a nickname. Certainly not Johnny Blue.

I made two more stops on my trek back to Sound Hill. One for gas and a piss in Syosset. The other detour had to do with a stranger’s name on a list in my pocket.

Terrence O’Toole was an aging, pot-bellied giant with a red veiny nose to shame Rudolph and a manner crustier than week-old French bread. He answered his front door armed with a dangling cigarette, a can of Coors and an expression as sour as a barrel full of pickles.

“I don’t know you,” he accused, blowing smoke and the sick smell of burped up beer down to me.

“That’s right. You don’t.”

“What you selling then? Nevermind,” the giant raised a meaty paw to cut off any answer I might have. “Whatever it is, I don’t want any. I don’t need any.” He stepped back and started closing the door.

“Wait a fuckin’ second, goddamit!” I blurted out in unthinking frustration.

The door reversed its direction. A beer can fell and one of those huge hands snapped out at me like a lizard’s tongue. Clamped firmly around my throat, it reeled me into the vestibule. O’Toole was one strong old man. He could easily have kicked my ass up and down the block without breaking a sweat.

“What was that, mister?” he tightened his grip about my neck. My head felt like an overfull water-balloon.

“John Mac—” I coughed, not having enough air for the last syllable.

“Who?” O’Toole loosened the lizard’s tongue a bit.

“Johnny MacClough. I’m here about Johnny MacClough.”

There was no further change in the relationship between his hand and my throat, but his sour face mellowed some and his eyes rolled back into his skull. I figured he was running over what was left of his memory. How much remained was a toss-up. Age takes it toll and noses don’t get that red and veiny from the sun.

“What about Johnny?” the old cop had finished cross-referencing.

I didn’t respond immediately, instead pointing to the proximity of his fingers and my windpipe. He made like Pharaoh and let me go. I was still a little nauseous and light headed, so O’Toole guided me—pushed me, really— into his kitchen and sat me down at the table. Something hissed like a rush of steam and an open can of beer appeared before me.

“Drink!” he ordered.

I drank.

“Now what’s this about Johnny?”

I told him about the party.

“You’re full of shit, mister,” the old cop smiled at me for the first time with evil, crooked teeth. “You could just have easily called me about this party as shown up at my door at night in the middle of winter. Come on now, you can do better than that. You couldn’t fool my dead granny with that party yarn. What gives?”

“Nothin’,” I stood up to go. “Forget it. Sorry I bothered you.”

“No ya don’t,” something quick and powerful shoved me back into my seat.

“I didn’t make detective, but don’t ever mistake that for stupidity. I just never looked good in a suit. Now spill.”

I spilled. I spilled like an open milk carton turned upside down. He heard it all. He heard all about my Christmas Eve. He heard all about the ratty mink coat, Johnny Blue, my broken pint glass and the orphaned heart.

He saw tracks in the snow and blood in the snow and death in the snow. I introduced him to Kate, Larry, Mojo, Sylvia and the pinky-ringed sapling in Dugan’s Dump. He listened without emotion, taking it in with a sip now and then. He burped like a cannon when I finished.

“She had some funny kinda name,” the giant finger-combed his thin wisps of white hair. “Something biblical. Andrella, maybe. Something like that. I don’t know. Christ, it was a fucking lifetime ago.”

“You remember the girl?” I jumped up.

“Are you deaf, boy?” he growled and pointed me back to my seat. “I had johnny straight outta the academy; greener than clover and chestier than a motherfucker. But he had the curse of instinct. A natural born cop, that one. Could smell trouble a block before I could see it and I was no slouch.”

I didn’t doubt it.

“Johnny,” the giant continued, reaching for a bottle of Murphy’s Irish, “only had one blind spot.”

“The girl,” I offered.

“The girl,” he accepted with a nod. “I tried warning him off her, but Johnny was a kid. Kids don’t listen. See him,” pickle face pointed to an ornately framed photo of an elephant-eared boy in Marine blues. “That was my son. Told him not to join up. Coulda gotten him onto the force, but kids don’t listen. Got himself killed during Tet. It killed his mother too.” The bitter man lobbed his shot glass at the photo and missed.

“What about the girl?” I tried to snap O’Toole out of his foggy reminiscence.

“Don’t know that much about her,” red-nose admitted, drinking directly from the bottle. “Johnny was smart enough not to discuss her around me once he figured I disapproved. That’s—”

“Disapproved,” I cut in. “Why?”

“She was someone else’s toy. And from what I could sniff out, that someone else was family connected. Do you get my meaning?”

“Mafia.”

“Bingo, boy. You win a drink. Here,” he stuck the Murphy’s in my fist.

I didn’t want a drink, but I plugged the bottle with my tongue and made believe. The tip of my tongue didn’t like it, but the rest of me appreciated the pantomime.

“The bitch was a Jew to boot,” the giant grabbed the bottle back.

Maybe something showed on my face. I don’t know, but O’Toole squinted at me.

“What’s your name anyways?” He tried dressing the question up with an air of nonchalance, but his self-consciousness was showing.

“Klein. Dylan Klein,” I replied with as little affect as possible.

He just smirked, threw up his free palm and raised his brows. That was as much of an apology as I was going to get. And I wasn’t about to push him. I couldn’t afford to plug the the only pumping well I’d struck so far. So what if he wasn’t a flower child. Besides, hate was probably all he had left. I was so good at rationalization.

“So she was a wiseguy’s girl and she didn’t take communion.” I put us back on track. “What else? What about Johnny Blue?”

“There ain’t much else,” he took a small ocean of a drink. “The Johnny Blue stuff was a code thing between ‘em. Like I said, Johnny knew I disapproved. So she’d leave notes at the precinct house for Johnny Blue or Johnny Green. I didn’t make detective,” the booze was making him repeat things now, “but even I could figure that one color meant the coast was clear and the other was a warning.”

“Anything else?” I pumped some more.

“See him?” O’Toole was pointing at his son’s picture again. “Kids—

“—don’t listen,” I finished. “Johnny and the girl,” I prodded.

“Right,” he tried licking the bottom of the bottle. “Kids don’t listen. Coulda gotten him onto the force.”

I figured the well was running dry as the Murphy’s and my time had come to leave. I planted one of my old business cards in his shirt pocket and reminded him to ignore the office number. I thanked him and asked him to call if anything, no matter how insignificant, about Johnny and the girl came to mind.

“Did I tell ya the cunt was a matzoh eater?” he smiled that evil-toothed smile up at me. His blue eyes were as glazed as a holiday ham. “Hey, get me a beer, fella, huh?”

“Yeah, you told me about the girl,” I assured him, popping open a Coors. “Sleep tight,” I handed him the beer knowing he would. I started for the front door.

“Crazy,” the sour cop’s voice boomed to my back.

I considered not turning to him, but I don’t always pay atttention to what I’m thinking. “What?” I shouted.

“Crazy, I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely,” the giant sang in a queer falsetto. “Johnny was always singin’ that. I told ya.” He hadn’t. “The kid had some good pipes on him. I got him right outta the academy; greener than clover . . .”

I closed the door quietly behind me as the scarlet-nosed giant ate at his bitter heart and finished his drunken tape loop of stories.

Dark Pride

The only thing working hard the next morning was my dialing finger. O’Toole had finally given me some meat for my table. But when you spilled out all the fat and reduced it over high heat, there really wasn’t much to chew on. I’d gotten just enough to eat to let let me know how hungry I really was.

I punched up Larry Feld’s office. Much to my chagrin, his secretary was still alive. She didn’t exactly treat my call like the second coming, but Mary managed to put me through before any more of my hair turned gray or fell out. I knew it was in my head, but the phone got cold against my ear when Larry spoke. I bit my lip and thanked the man for his guide to the Diamond Exchange and the list of Johnny’s cop mates. Before he could ask, I admitted both seeds had borne fruit. Larry lied about being happy to help. Larry didn’t understand happy, but even at this distance I could hear him tallying up the payback. Larry understood debt. I decided to increase mine.