Redemption Street (28 page)

“All right, Sam, come on out,” I yelled from behind the wall outside his door.

“What,” he called back, “you’re not gonna tell me I should put my hands up? You disappoint me,
toteleh
.”

“That makes us even, old man. Come on, Sam, let’s go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,
boychik
, it would be rude to my date.”

Now that sick feeling got a whole lot worse.

“Cut the bullshit, Sam, and get your ass out—”

“I don’t think I like your tone. Do you like his tone?” The question wasn’t meant for me. “Unfortunately, my guest is in no condition to answer. I think maybe she had a little too much to drink, but you know what lushes these upstate
shiksas
are, especially the fat ones.”

I walked in. Oddly, the first thing I noticed was the overly bright TV. Like a magnet, the screen pulled my eyes to the distorted freeze-frame image it held prisoner. The black-and-white image was of a man—that much I could make out, in spite of the warped and grainy quality of the picture his mouth agape, suspended in time between words.

“That’s Jackie Jackson on the TV.” Sam chortled. “He was the host on the old
Palais, Palais
show. I was on this show, February 23, 1952. It was my one shot at the big time.”

The trance was broken, and I turned to look at Sam. He was seated facing the TV, in an overstuffed recliner. It was all distressed brown leather and brass tacks. In his right hand he held a remote controller. In the left, he held a double-barreled shotgun. The business end of the shotgun pointed toward the couch. Molly Treat, her arm dangling so that her fingertips touched the floor, lay sprawled across the couch, unconscious. The dismay on my face was not lost on Sam.

“Don’t worry, the fat girl’s not dead,” he reassured me. “I slipped her a Mickey Finn. You know what is a Mickey Finn?”

“You put something in her drink.”

“When she got a little drowsy, I walked her to my car. That was easy. Getting her out of the car,
oy gevalt!
A man could get a hernia, for Chrissakes.”

“Come on, Sam, this is stupid. There’s nowhere to go with this that’s good for any of us.”

“You’ll pardon me,
toteleh
, if I disagree. While we wait, have a seat and watch. And by the way, open up the gun and empty the cartridges on the floor. Don’t think about being a hero. I may be an old fuck, but my finger works plenty good enough to blow the fat girl’s head off.”

I did as he said. The bullets bounced off the hardwood floor. What, I wondered, were we waiting for? Whatever it was, I was glad to have some time to try and talk Sam down or get to the shotgun. I sat in the chair Sam had readied for me. At the foot of the chair was the gift-wrapped bottle Mr. Roth had given me. Only it looked a little worse for wear, as if it had been unwrapped and rewrapped several times.

“Open it up,” Sam urged. “Go on.”

It was, as I had anticipated, an expensive bottle of single-malt scotch, but there was something else in the box, a handwritten note:

Dear Mr. Moe
,

I like you very much. You remind me, if such a thing is possible, of what I hoped my son would turn out like. He is not a bad boy. I was a bad father, and as you will soon see, an unfaithful husband. I won’t blame it on my time in the camps. You can blame the Nazis for a lot of terrible things, but my weakness is not among them. I was always too much interested in the store, in the money and the pride of ownership. I neglected many things, my wife first among them. We lived together for over 40 years, but we had no life together. When I was in the mountains, I oftentimes turned to girls to look for in them what my neglect had killed in my wife. Your friend Sam provided these girls to me. I suppose he is no worse a man than me, but I thought you should know. Don’t trust him. For me already it’s too late. Sam and me, we made our pact with the devil together a long time ago. For you, there’s time. I am shamed that I was too embarrassed to just tell you. You’re a good man, a better man than me. If you can forgive an old foolish man his past, I would like very much to hear from you
.

Israel Roth

I put the letter down. Sam was watching me very intently.

Sam shook his head. “What a hypocrite, that pathetic old prick. I got him more pussy than almost anyone up here, and now he tries to cut my legs out. Fuck him!”

I was silent.

“Whatsa matter,
toteleh
, nothing to say? You think that little burglary scam I ran was my only outside source of income? I did a little bit of everything in those days. If you wanted pot or a little pussy on the side, Sam could get it for you. I was, after all, the entertainment director. You know that bar girl, Sally? Cute, right? She didn’t start out her career mixing drinks.” He smiled cruelly. “Speaking of drinks, go ahead, have one. Maybe the booze’ll make you better company.”

I twisted open the still-sealed bottle and had a sip. I liked blended scotch better, but even Dewar’s wouldn’t have held much appeal for me now.

“Good,” Sam smiled. “Now close the bottle and roll it across the floor to me, slowly. I wouldn’t want you should get any ideas of cracking me over the head with it.”

I rolled the bottle by his feet.

“These new VCR things are great,” he said, pointing at a big machine atop the TV. “This one’s a Betamax, the Sony model. The picture’s much better than those other ones, even with old kinescopes like this. Here, watch.”

With that, Sam pressed a button on the remote, and the frozen image sprang to life: “And here now is an act we’ve all been waiting for. He’s opened for the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., and the late, great Al Jolson. Let’s have a warm
Palais, Palais
hand for Sudden Sam Gutterman….”

Even before Sam appeared on camera, I had the sense that this was not going to be a triumphant debut. How could a man like Sam succeed on TV in an era when you couldn’t say “hell” or “brassiere” without being labeled a communist? I was not far wrong. Unable to resort to his usual blue shtick, Sam was lost. You could see he had impeccable comic timing, but his jokes were weak and unconvincing. They might’ve worked coming out of the mouth of Myron Cohen or Red Buttons. It was painful to watch. The audience was thunderously silent, and two minutes into the routine, Sam was bathed in flop sweat. Mercifully, the orchestra broke in.

“I sucked,” he said, hitting the pause switch. “I was a one-trick pony,
boychik
. If I couldn’t work blue, I couldn’t work. I had great timing, maybe the best. Berle used to think so. I had a snappy delivery. The crowds liked me, but …”“So being a thief and a pimp seemed like a good second career.”

“You
used the fat girl tonight, not me. Just because she wasn’t getting paid for it, that doesn’t make you a pimp? That was ham-handed on your part, by the way. I had my suspicions that you might be catching on, but getting a call out of the blue from Molly—then I knew for sure. If you hadn’t gotten her involved, maybe nobody was gonna get hurt. Now … You shoulda thought things through, my friend. You set up such a perfect scenario to let me get out from under that I couldn’t pass it by.”

“What scenario is that?” I asked.

“You and Molly were fucking around up here. Christ, half the town’s seen you two together at Hanrahan’s. What, you think Molly didn’t talk to her girlfriends about being smitten by your manly charms? Men aren’t the only people who embellish,
toteleh
. The fat girl talked plenty. You think Sally won’t back up my story? I got tapes of her doing some rather unpleasant things with some bored wives and husbands. You’d be amazed what a godsend cocaine dependency can be. Somehow I get the feeling Sally would do just about anything to not have those tapes surface. You wanna see the tapes? They were originally eight-millimeter, but I got them transferred to video. I’m telling you, it’s a wonderful thing, this new video stuff.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You sure? For a thin girl, Sally can really fuck.”

“Some other time.”

“I’m afraid not,
boychik
. You see, Molly’s going to murder you in a little while, and then she’s gonna kill herself. She found out you were going back home to your wife and couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Tragic, don’t you think?”

“No one will buy that.”

Sam held up a piece of paper. “They will when they read this suicide note. One of my many talents. It’s not perfect, but no one will question it when things play out. And, unfortunately for you, you don’t know our fat little Molly as well as the rest of the people in Old Rotterdam. Stand up and take a close look at her wrists. Go ahead, it’s okay, but do it slow.”

I did as he suggested. There were faint, barely noticeable scars across the undersides of both wrists.

“High school,” Sam said. “Her boyfriend dumped her on prom night. Word spreads in a small town. Even the dogcatcher knows.”

“Come on, those are cry-for-help scars. She barely broke the skin, and the scarring is almost imperceptible.”

“You must be kidding,
toteleh
. You’re whistling in the boneyard here. Those scars will look like the Himalayas when the cops look into her history.”

We both knew he was right.

“How are you going to explain you and Molly being together at the bar tonight?”

“That’s easy,” Sam said. “It even helps the credibility of the story. She called
me
, remember? There are phone records of such things, no? I’ll tell the cops she asked me to set up this little rendezvous with you. Being your friend, how could I refuse? I asked you to meet me here. You agreed. I dropped her off. I drove away and …
Voilà!
All of Sam’s problems are gone.”

“Not Karen,” I pointed out. “She’s still around.”

“I don’t give her two weeks with that liver of hers. And, what, you think she’s gonna lose a liver and grow a conscience all of a sudden? The joke’s on her, anyway.”

I was confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, whatsa matter, the big-shot private detective didn’t figure everything out? I guess there’s no harm in telling you now. Karen didn’t kill the other girl. What’s her name … Andrea, right? Andrea Cotter. She knocked her a little unconscious, maybe, but she didn’t kill her.”

“You cocksu—” I started for him.

He swung the barrel of the shotgun around. “Sit down,
boychik
, right now! I wasn’t planning on killing you myself, because I like you, but I will if you force my hand. I’ve killed before.”

I went over Karen’s story in my head. “You son of a bitch! Karen told me you went back to their room to make sure Andrea was dead.”

“So—I kept my word, no? I made sure she was dead. It was easy, with her being unconscious already. When Karen came to me and told me she’d killed Andrea, I almost came in my pants. You can believe it. That bitch was gonna rat me out. It was like my prayers were answered. Ah, but, just my luck, she wasn’t dead.”

“You sick fuck. You’ve let Karen live her life with sixteen deaths on her head.”

“Hey, mister, if she had just listened to what I told her, the fire wouldn’t have gone so crazy. Stupid little girl!”

“Hammerling knows,” I blurted out.

“Hammerling knows
gotz!
That
nebisheh
thyroid case couldn’t find his own
shvontz with
a roadmap. Besides, what’s he got in the way of proof, some cockamamie story from a guy he barely knew? So, if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you catch on?”

“It was a lot of little things, but,” I admitted, “I barely noticed them at first. That fire on my car hood at the hotel, that was a nice touch. You were very matter-of-fact about the young Robby Higgins and his broken family, very sympathetic, almost affectionate. That was very good. If I had thought about it, I suppose you were a little too anxious to get your hands on my faxes from the city. You read them, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Then you started pressing too hard. You shouldn’t have taken me to Hanrahan’s that night. For one thing, it hurt your image as poor old Sam the hotel keeper. The fancy car, the cigars, the expensive brandy. Showing off like that was a mistake. It made me question who you really were. Which, by itself, wouldn’t have raised my suspicions, but when other things started happening … Then you slipped by telling me that Sally had worked for you. First you were almost boastful, and then you cut yourself off mid-sentence. I thought that was odd?”

“That was stupid,” Sam agreed. “But what satisfaction is there in things if you can’t brag about them?”

“When I later mentioned it to Sally, she fairly spit in my face. I didn’t realize it then, but she must have assumed you told me about her past and thought I was soliciting her.”

Sam shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to hear the phone call I got from her that night. What else?”

“Your biggest mistake was bringing Bailey into it. He was about as subtle as an avalanche. First with all the strong-arm tactics, and then Robby Higgins’ old police file magically appearing. I mean, come on! It showed me someone was pushing way too hard to hang Anton Harder for the Fir Grove fire. I think you probably realized as much, which is why you staged the fire at your utility shed. ‘Die Jews!’ Very nice. But something about that bothered me. It was too convenient. And then there were the footprints.”

“Footprints? What you talkin’, footprints?”

“In the snow, Sam. When I was helping you put out the fire, I noticed there were no footprints leading away from your hotel. All the footprints ran between the shed and the hotel.”

I heard a car coming down the gravel road. A door slammed shut. I turned in the direction of the sound, and when I looked back at Sam a sort of a wistful smile washed across his face. Then I heard footfalls. Sam’s help had arrived. Up to now we’d been killing time before killing time. I had to think fast.

“I’ve got the diary. It’s hidden in—”

“This diary?” Lieutenant Bailey asked, Andrea’s journal in his hand, as he strode in the door. “Hiding it on your front seat wasn’t smart. You stupid fuckup. I’m going to enjoy this.”