Authors: Keith Gilman
Sarah ran to her daughter and fell to her knees in front of her. Ahearn was only a few yards away. Her weeping came in shrill, fitful screams. Lou leaned against the stone wall, staring out into the still, black forest. The cold wind didn’t seem to touch him.
He closed his eyes and another sound reached him, from somewhere beyond the circle of trees. It was the pensive vibration of a freight train that was languishing on the eastern horizon, a
locomotive dragging its brood through the desolate countryside, sweeping the snow up from the rails into a swirling silver cloud. It let out a low wailing whistle. Lou listened to the grinding sound of steel on steel, listened to the pulse of the big diesel until it vanished into the night and fell silent.
Carol Ann was buried
next to Sam Blackwell, in a family plot, in a cemetery that held three generations of cops. Lou stood on a hill overlooking the gravesite, with a bright sun reflecting off a pair of dark shades. Mitch was by his side, hands in his pockets, reading the names on the stones, looking for names he recognized. It was an old cemetery, with dates as far back as 1802, the stones crowding each other like children squeezing into their parents’ bed. A priest in a black robe made the sign of the cross, reciting the benediction in Latin as they lowered the casket into the ground. Vince was next to him, and then Sarah and Armstrong and a bunch of people Lou had never seen before. It wasn’t the first funeral they’d been to this week. He wondered if they ever got tired of them.
“Ballistics had a field day with those pistoleros, Lou.”
“I bet. I was thinking of making one of them disappear but I couldn’t figure out a way that whole thing could have gone down with just one gun.”
“There’s never shortage of guns.”
“What did you find out?” Lou asked.
“It was Sam’s gun, Lou. No question about it. Matched up with the slug in Mazzino’s skull.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“I never do.”
Lou wondered why they couldn’t leave some trees in the cemetery, something living among all the faceless stones, something that changed with the passing seasons, something to block the wind and put down a blanket of leaves over the dead in autumn and shade in summer. He remembered a time when trees signified life, and what better place for them to flourish. Maybe, it was the roots, he thought. They were supposed to be as deep as the tree was high. They’d spread out and take hold, upturn the loose earth that was continually getting dug up and filled in. They might disrupt a grave or two, disturb the sleep of the dead, and nobody wanted that.
“What about Ahearn?”
“We compared his DNA with evidence collected from the recent serial rapes and murders in the city, as you suggested. It looks like your girlfriend saved the taxpayers the expense of a lengthy investigation and trial.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“We have a suspect in your mother’s murder. State Police picked him up this morning in Jersey.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not about this. Remember a guy named, Jimmy D’Antona?”
“No way.”
“I take it that means, yes?”
“Yeah sure, Jimmy D. He was a drunk, pissed himself every chance he got.”
“New Jersey State Police pinned a murder on him at the Sacred Heart Rest Home in New Brunswick. He worked there as a janitor. Don’t ask me how he got the job. The staff there had
suspicions about him from the start. Anyway, a lady ends up dead in her bed. No big deal, it’s a rest home, happens every day. Well, they call in the law, and like I said, the rumors about this Jimmy D. surface, how he’s in her room all the time, how he knows her from before, always talking to her, wheeling her around. He’s the fucking janitor. They check his locker and he’s got all kinds of stuff belongs to the old lady. I mean all kinds of stuff. He’s got jewelry, pictures. Oh yeah, did I mention underwear. I think he was wearing a pair of her panties when they locked him up.”
“Jimmy D. never seemed like a murderer, Mitch. A loser, yeah. But not a killer of old ladies.”
“Hold on. The old gal was suffocated, pillow over the face. No question about it. Lou, her name was Rose Conforti. You got it. The same Rose Conforti, from Meridian Avenue.”
“She lived next door. She’d watch me once in a while when my parents were working late. She’s the one who called the police when they found my mother.”
“Yeah. Jimmy gets the job shortly after Conforti’s kids put her in the home, want her to be closer to them in Jersey, only not that close. A year later, she’s dead.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“We’re sending a couple of our boys over there to interview him. They’ll have a full confession before the end of the day. He says he’s willing to talk.”
Lou watched the crowd melt away, black suits walking away in small groups, piling into black limos. Some lingered under a tent, stayed in their folding chairs and talked and smoked until the cold got to be too much for them and they left, too. Sarah looked up at him only once. He didn’t know what to do, whether to smile or wave or just nod unobtrusively, so he did nothing and she walked away on Vince’s arm and climbed into the limo between him and Armstrong.
Mitch drove Lou home. They stopped for drinks at Salerno’s on the way. Salerno’s was a dirty little bar where cops went to drink, where they were cleansed of the dirty little things that happened to them, where all the little secrets came out that weren’t really secrets at all, not to them, just things that nobody else knew. It was a place where they filled themselves with drink and wrung themselves out to dry. They were the only people in the place.
“What are you going to do now?”
“No idea.”
“Why don’t you take a vacation, get away for a while, take your kid down the shore like you talked about.”
“Maybe.”
“If I was still your commanding officer, I’d make it an order.”
“Since when did I listen to orders?”
“Why not listen for a change?”
“And ruin my reputation?”
“And do the right thing.”
“I’ve been trying to do the right thing my entire life. What has it gotten me?”
“It’s not over yet. Self-pity doesn’t become you, Lou. Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself now.”
“It’s an ugly trait, isn’t it?”
“I’d say so.”
“Since when did you become the voice of reason? You sound like my ex-wife and the guilty conscience I’m trying to forget.”
“Okay, no more speeches.”
“Hey, did you hear Vince dropped out of the mayor’s race?”
“I’m sure the people of Philadelphia are very disappointed.”
They both finished the glass of beer in front of them in two swallows and ordered two more. An old mantle clock behind the bar read twelve noon. Charlie Salerno filled their glasses and went back to his chair at the end of the bar. Mitch called
his wife on his cell phone, told her he’d be home soon. Lou counted the bottles lined up across the shelf like condemned men before a firing squad. They ordered shots of whiskey to go with the beers.
“Hey Chahlie, make it Jameson. The good stuff. On me.”
“You guys get started early.”
“It’s later than you think, Chahlie.”
“Waste of good booze, to drink it like that. That’s sipping whiskey.”
“Speak for yourself.”
They touched their glasses together and fired the alcohol past their lips. They looked at each other, each waiting for the other to suggest another round. Neither did. They walked out and rode home in silence.
Mitch pulled up in front of the house. He didn’t bother putting it in park. It was warm in the car. The windows began to fog. There would be no long good-byes. Lou stuck his hand out and Mitch did the same. Shaking hands was something neither of them remembered doing before. They’d shaken other men’s hands, at times and places where it seemed appropriate, but never each other’s. Neither could explain why, yet now, as they exchanged glances for what seemed like the final time, it became obvious to them, and they wondered together in silence why they’d never clasped their hands together before.
Maggie was waiting for Lou outside her mom’s house, bundled up in a yellow down jacket and a black ski cap. She jumped off the porch and ran to the car. They’d decided on Chinatown for lunch. They hadn’t gone there in a long time. The Peking Dragon had always been their favorite.
The proprietor was an old gray haired Chinese with an ashen beard and a venerable, toothless smile. Gaunt and hunchbacked,
he waddled like a flightless bird, showing them to a table with a slight bow. It was a highly polished glass-top table for two with an ornate screen behind it, pagodas carved into a rocky hillside, painted in tarnished shades of green and gold. There were two massive aquariums along the inside wall, two more against the back wall and a one in the center of the room. Tropical fish swam effortlessly through the clear water, their empty black eyes fixed on a point beyond the thick layer of glass that bounded their world. A large gray fish with its mouth hanging open and eyes like black pearls seemed the most aggressive, darting with a quick swipe of his tail, biting at the side of any fish that got in its way.
The aquariums dominated the room, capturing the attention of the patrons as they sipped tea and dipped egg rolls and Chinese noodles into spicy sauce. Their eyes followed the movement of the fish, back and forth, behind the glass.
Oil lamps were lit on every table. They were the only light, other than those luminous tanks. A waitress brought them tea in a silver pot, with two small cups and menus with leather bindings. She looked about twelve.
“The police station was really cool. Sergeant Stepkowski showed me all around. She is one tough woman. You should ask her out. I think she likes you.”
“You think.”
“She took my fingerprints and locked me in one of the cells—let me feel what it’s like. It’s really cold in there. Don’t the prisoners freeze?”
“We give them blankets and pillows and hot chocolate.”
“You should. Maybe they’d be a little nicer when they got out.”
“I’ll mention the idea to Mitch.”
They ordered and sipped tea. It was hot and bitter and he forced it over his lips. Maggie mixed in a teaspoon of sugar. A
busboy in a white shirt and black vest loaded dishes into a plastic bin at the table next to theirs. He was saying something in rapid Chinese to the waitress, his hands moving as fast as the words coming from his mouth. The waitress wiped down the table, set it neatly with water glasses and folded white napkins and ushered in another couple. Maggie was still waiting for the cup of tea to cool off.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Maybe Mitch was right. Maybe you and I need to get away for a while, take a vacation. We could go to Florida, stay at Uncle Herman’s for a couple weeks. They’re always inviting us down and we never go. The sun will do us some good. We could drive, maybe do some sightseeing on the way.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Me, too.”
The waiter brought two steaming bowls of egg drop soup on a round tray he had balanced over his shoulder. He set the tray down on a folding stand and placed the bowls in front of them, one at a time. He put a plate of egg rolls between them and walked away after a polite “thank you” from Maggie.
“What about when we get back?”
“What about it?”
“Are we just going to come back like nothing happened? I’m supposed to go back to my mother’s and you’re just going back to Heshy’s to eat corned beef sandwiches and read the paper. What kind of life is that? She’s getting remarried, you know.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes, my mother. How do you feel about that? It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it? Is it the dentist this time?”
“Yes, it’s the dentist. She’s marrying him for his money. It’s so obvious. Or just ’cause she needs to be married, so she can say that she’s Mrs. Rosenblatt or whatever.”
“Why don’t you come and live with me, Maggie, permanently, or for as long as you want? With one condition, though. As soon as we get back, you enroll in college. We’ll look around, maybe Temple, maybe LaSalle, maybe St. Joe’s. Is it a deal?”
“It’s a deal. But what about you? What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking of starting my own business. How does Main Line Investigations sound? I’m thinking of bringing Joey on board. He’s been looking for something to do and he still knows a lot of people in town.”
“You’re opening a detective agency? I think you’re nuts.”
“It’s in my blood, honey. Even you say I have to do something and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It’s what I’ve done my entire life. Only now, I’d be working for myself. I’d be my own boss.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I hope not.”
The waiter returned, balancing the same tray on one hand. He served them huge plates of chicken and vegetables with white rice. Lou doused the whole thing with soy sauce as though he was putting out a fire. Maggie did the same. The waiter bowed and his black hair fell down over his face. Lou thanked him. Maggie had shoveled a spoonful of rice into her mouth and was reading the placemat under her plate.
“Did you know it’s the year of the rat?”
“The year of the
what?
”
“The rat. The year of the rat in the Chinese calendar. It says so right here.” She tapped the place mat with her finger. “Not a good year to try new things.”
“Why’s that?”
“Rats don’t like change. They like to keep things just the way they are. Once they learn their way around, they feel safe and they want to keep it that way. And Dad, not everyone likes rats.”
“Tell that to Freddie Mac.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Are you calling me a rat?”
“Hey, I think rats are cute. And they’re smarter than you think.”
“How do you know so much about rats?”
“It says it right here. Their best quality is loyalty, especially to their family. Sounds a lot like you.”
They ate in silence. The waiter filled their glasses with water. They watched the fish float in the tank in the middle of the room. They smiled at each other, Maggie experimenting with a set of chopsticks, leaving a trail of rice across the table and onto the floor.