Queens Noir (7 page)

Then, the diaries showed, Eileen went into a period of
deep and prolonged depression. She reapplied for the Novitiate a year later, but Mother Superior said she was psychologically, morally, and spiritually unfit for the sisterhood. She had
no family to turn to. Her religious dreams were shattered. She
tried in vain to retrieve her baby from the adoption agency.
The Queens Family Court refused to restore custody of her
child because she was too emotionally and financially unstable. In thorough despair, Eileen ventured out onto the Throgs
Neck Bridge one summer night and jumped 120 feet into the
inky waters where she had lost her virginity on George Sheridan's boat.

On a Friday morning in the second week of June, a quartercentury later, Nikki spied Dr. George Sheridan through her
telescope as he left his house in Douglaston for his morning
run. She timed it so that she ran into him twenty-two minutes later while descending from the Crocheron overpass of the Cross Island. He undressed her with his eyes so blatantly
that she feared he'd leave a stain. Then he sidled up and ran
alongside her toward the Bayside Marina.

"What are you doing on Sunday night, doc?" she asked.

"I'm free."

"Thought I might take you up on that moonlight cruise."

"Fabulous. Want to eat somewhere first?"

"I'll pack dinner."

"I'll pour you champagne. Where do I pick you up?"

She told him she'd be waiting at 8 p.m. sharp at the little
fishing dock alongside the Cross Island between Bayside Marina and Fort Totten.

"Date," he said.

She promptly jogged up the ramp of the next overpass and
he headed on toward the Throgs Neck Bridge.

On Sunday night, Dr. Sheridan showed Nikki how to start,
stop, and steer The Dog's Life as they cruised back to Little
Neck Bay from their tour of New York Harbor. Nikki wore
black Spandex clam-diggers, a black halter top, a black Mets
jacket, and a black Mets cap, which she tilted up when they
sailed under the chilly shadow of the Throgs Neck. Sheridan
cut the engines and suggested they go down on deck to "eat,
drink, and be silly."

"Okay," Nikki said.

He dropped anchor under the bridge as Nikki opened the
picnic basket and served chicken and broccoli tossed in a cold
penne with olive oil and thinly sliced red bell peppers, seeded
Italian bread, and a tomato and basil salad. He walked into
the salon and she watched as he poured a flute of champagne
from an already opened bottle of Roederer Cristal chilling in
a silver ice bucket. He made himself a Grey Goose and tonic. They headed back out of the salon and he handed her the
champagne as The Dog's Life lolled on the night tide.

"You aren't having champagne?"

"Real guys drink Grey Goose," he said. "From the glass."

She smiled and they sat down and started to eat. She
watched champagne bubbles rise in the flute glass, each one
like a long buried corpse popping to the surface.

"You like it out here?" he asked.

"Nah."

"Why?"
•

She stood and carried her glass to the railing. She leaned
over it and swept her free left hand across the Throgs Neck
as she carefully poured her champagne into the bay with her
right hand, out of Dr. Sheridan's view.

"Too beautiful a place to die," she said, her back to him,
lifting her empty glass and pretending to guzzle her champagne. She turned to him and forced a belch into her fist.

He said, "Die?"

"You told me your parents drowned here under the Throgs
Neck."

He ate a bite of pasta, took a sip of his Grey Goose, and
leaned back in his deck chair. "You have a very good memory."

"Yeah." She waved the empty champagne flute as she
took a sideways step across the deck. She knew it took most
date-rape drugs about fifteen minutes to kick in. She excused
herself and tottered into the luxurious salon that was bigger
than some Manhattan apartments. She spent about ten minutes in the bathroom, then staggered out, tripping over the
step at the threshold to the deck.

"You okay?" he asked.

She grabbed her head and lurched across the deck. He
looped his right arm around her waist.

"Easy," he said.

"Feel funny."

"Maybe you should come inside and lie down."

"Tryin' to 'memba ... something I gotta tell ya ..."

He led her inside, slammed the salon door closed, and
shoved Nikki onto her back on his couch. He pulled off his
shirt in a single flourish. "Now the fucking fun starts, mama."

Nikki lay motionless on the couch, hands in her jacket
pockets. "Whajoo give me?"

"Ketamine," he said, unbuckling his pants. "Horse tranquilizer. When it wears off you'll remember nothing. But tonight you're mine, for any fucking thing I please." He stripped
to his boxer shorts, turned his back to hang up his pants. Then
he kneeled before Nikki and slid his two index fingers under
the waistband of her Spandex pants. "Now, let's see what you
have here for the ass master."

Nikki pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket and
rammed a .25 caliber Colt automatic to his left temple. "What
I have here is the end of your miserable life, motherfucker,"
she said.

Sheridan froze, still kneeling in front of Nikki. "Please ...
It's a joke."

"Real side splitter," she said. "Let's see if you remember
the same old joke you pulled on a girl named Eileen Lavin."

His face collapsed into a spasm of tics, coming apart in
pieces like a mosaic held together by a lifetime of lies. "Who?"

"Maybe a little champagne will improve your memory."

Nikki stood up, pointing the gun, grabbed the bottle of
champagne, and poured.

"Drink," she commanded. He looked at the bubbling
flute, his eyes skittery. He licked his dry lips. "Drink the
fucking champagne, Dr. Sheridan."

"No, please-"

She shoved the pistol into his left ear again and yanked
back the metal slide. "Then I will blow your sick fucking brains
across your boat and leave you for the gulls."

He drank the entire glassful.

She poured another. "Drink, motherfucker."

He downed it.

She said, "Eileen Lavin was going to be a nun."

"Her? She was a nut. Everyone called her Sister Psycho."

"You took her on your father's boat. Out here where you
take all the young girls, because this is the spot where your
parents died all right. But they didn't drown. No, this is the
spot where your father discovered your mother screwing his
best friend on his boat. The place where he killed them, in a
jealous rage. And then shot himself. When you were seventeen. I found all this with a few keyboard strokes. Jilted Hubby
Kills Wife, Lover, Self. Nice. And so what was it, doc? When
you wanted to get even with Mom, you took poor Eileen Lavin
out here to the same spot? On the same boat? Here, under the
Throgs Neck Bridge, you drugged and raped her. Over and
over and over again. All night."

"No girl gets on a boat with a man unless she wants to go
with the flow."

"Like your mother? Your father found out she was going
with the flow on his boat while he was busting his ass at work
to pay for it. He heard talk, slipped out here in a dingy, snuck
aboard, and made her pay. And you're still making her pay,
aren't you, you sick fuck? Every time you take another young
girl out on your boat, you're getting even with Mom. Am I
right? But you got careless with Eileen Lavin. You didn't use
protection. Or maybe the rubber broke because she was a virgin. Something went wrong. And you knocked her up. But it was 1982. Before DNA testing was refined. She couldn't
prove it was you."

"You're as nuts as Sister Psycho," he said, yawning.

"She was a fucking virgin! You took her out here, you
drugged her, you raped her, you knocked her up. She had to
give the baby up for adoption. Then she tried to get her baby
back. Everyone abandoned her. You destroyed her life. You
destroyed her soul. You destroyed her mind. Until she went up
on that bridge and jumped. And died right about here, right
where we're anchored."

"You can't blame that on me. And why the hell do you
care? What's it to you?"

"That baby she put in the orphanage? That baby was adopted by a good family, a nice elderly Greek family in Astoria.
They called her Nicola. They died when the kid was twelve.
Then that baby was bounced around the foster system like a
meal ticket. Treated like, well, a bastard. Scroungy orphan.
Second-class citizen. She was beaten, abused, neglected. The
only time anyone paid any attention to her was when she grew
a pair of tits. Then she couldn't get the filthy bastards off her!
Then she became a party favor."

"Fuck ... you ... talking 'bout?" His voice was becoming
disjointed.

"I'm talking about your own daughter, asshole! The one
you made when you raped Eileen Lavin. The rape-baby that
caused her to jump off that bridge." She pulled the diaries out
of her jacket pockets and read wrenching portions of Eileen's
words to Dr. George Sheridan.

"She ... wush ... fucking nuts!" he said, his voice slurry
and his jaw slack. "Jush . . . like . . . joooo." His eyes were
bloodshot and glazed, like stained glass. He stood and staggered sideways, a straw man, his body devoid of muscle con trol. Nikki pulled a pair of driving gloves from a jacket pocket,
wiggled them on, and led him back onto the rear deck of The
Dog's Life, rocking in the bay under the Throgs Neck.

"You started using the horse drug as a veterinary student.
You used it on Eileen Lavin. You literally fucked her out of
a life." Nikki paused and looked up at the bridge, crowded
with cars under the crescent moon. "You also fucked me out
of a mother. And you gave me a fucking monster for a father.
When I was old enough, I went into computers just so I could
trace my biological parents. I found out who my real mother
was from the old baptismal records. My first adoptive mother
told me the name of the church where I was baptized. I was
the only girl baptized there the year I was born without a father's name on the certificate. Once I had my mother's name,
Eileen Lavin's father-my grandfather, that piece of sanctimonious dogshit-gave me her diaries. From them I found
marvelous you. Times change. People don't. Your hardwiring is the same. Crisscrossed, short-circuited. You're fucking
e-vil, doc. Twenty-five years later, you're still taking girls my
mother's age out on your boat. Drugging them. Date raping
them. Only now you're more careful. You use a rubber. You
shave your body. You pay for meals in cash. You wipe away all
fingerprints. You leave no trace of anything. But you are still
getting even with your mother, aren't you? Before you tried to
rape me, you even called me mama!"

"I never . . . hurt anybody," he said. "I just fucked 'em,
thass all."

Nikki shoved him into a deck chair, pressed the button
for the mechanical winch, and the anchor rose. She climbed
to the fly deck and started the twin engines. When she was
done here, she would simply steer the boat to the small fishing dock, hop off, and let the tide take The Dog's Life back out into the dark bay. But first Nikki descended to the deck
and packed up the picnic basket which she'd take with her,
then washed the flute glass, filled the champagne bottle with
water, and threw them into the bay. She used the Windex to
wipe her fingerprints from everything she'd touched on board.
She'd get rid of her sneakers before she got home, in case they
left footprints.

Nikki led Dr. Sheridan, who was barely able to walk,
to the edge of the aft deck. She opened the entry gate and
looked him in his bleary eyes. "Do you know what today is?"
she asked.

His head flopped like a bobble doll's. "Shuuunday."

"It's the third Shuuunday of Juuuuune, assbag," she said,
mocking him. "That's the day my mother, Eileen Lavin,
jumped from this bridge twenty-five years ago."

"Fuckin' nutjob." His voice sounded like it was coming
out of a deep well.

She opened the gate. "Fuck you."

"How ... can joo do thish ... to me?"

"Easy," Nikki Lavin Sheridan replied, shrugging. "I have
your blood in my veins."

"Please ..."

"Happy Father's Day, Dad," she said, and pushed him
into the black water. She watched him flail and kick. The ketamine was paralyzing him. He tried to scream but his mouth
filled with water, and Nikki watched Dr. George Sheridan slip
into the same grave that had swallowed her mother under the
Throgs Neck Bridge.

e's waiting for her to die, Rose knows. She's no
dummy. It's June and her son, Paulie, is once again
thinking about inheriting her house on Rockaway
Beach.

"You're getting up there," is this year's phraseology, as if
turning eighty-five begins her ascent. Up and up, she'll levitate a little higher each birthday, while Paul, Maureen, and
the kids line up on the sand waving bye bye. Paulie's latest
brainstorm is to just move in now-this weekend. "We'll take
care of you," he insists, somehow oblivious to the way this
sounds.