The Long Wake
by David Dean
A winner of the EQMM Readers Award, and on the top-ten list for that award a baker’s dozen more times, David Dean began his writing career in our Department of First Stories in 1990. The many stories he’s produced since have earned nominations for the Edgar, Derringer, Shamus, and Barry awards. This dark psychological tale in the noir style is a perfect fit for our Black Mask Department, for what is now called “noir” in crime fiction had its source in Black Mask Magazine tales.
He sat at the bus stop on EightyFirst and stared at the building across the street. It had changed over the years, and he had almost walked past before recognizing it. The grime of the seventies had been blasted from its yellowish bricks and the entrance had been altered entirely. It now sported gleaming brass doors and a grand russet-colored awning. Standing beneath it, a doorman in a matching uniform awaited the pleasure of its occupants. Unlike the previous guardian, he was young and did not appear to be a drinker. The building had gone “condo” since Jimmy’s last visit.
Tugging a pint bottle of cheap vodka from his overcoat pocket, he swept the cap off and brought it to his lips. When he lowered it once more, he noticed several people waiting for the crosstown bus eyeing him. He glared dully at each until they turned away.
He knew what he must look like to these younger people, what he looked like to himself — a hulking grey man, unshaven and grim, with a wide, deeply seamed face and close-cropped grey hair; even his eyes the shade of a bleak winter sky. The only color about him was a faded tattoo of a green shamrock on his neck, a drop of bright red blood at its center — the tribal brand of his mob days.
Wiping his mouth with his coat sleeve, he dropped the empty plastic bottle onto the pavement with a faint clatter amidst the traffic noise, the winds off the Hudson sending it skittering along the sidewalk.
A bus wheezed up to the curb and the dozen or so commuters hurried aboard, anxious for their homes at the end of a long day’s work. Remaining behind, Jimmy was cloaked in a cloud of diesel exhaust and street grit.
Alone now, he removed the letter he had carried since 1977 from an inner pocket and smoothed the stained dirty envelope out on the leg of his trousers. The name of the sender and her address — the address of the building across the street — were nearly erased by the grime and oil of his fingers, the decades of handling. Having memorized it long ago, he didn’t bother extracting the letter within, as touch alone now served to unlock its power.
In a looping, difficult cursive, with a bewildering scramble of sentences, Miranda pleaded for his forgiveness, asked if he would call her, come to her, allow her some small chance to redeem herself. She had made a terrible mistake returning to Graham; the worst decision she had ever made. She couldn’t understand, or properly explain, his hold over her. Please, she begged... please... please.
At twenty-four, he had been unable to comprehend the pain she had inflicted upon him, and his heart, softened by the passionate tumult of Miranda’s love, had hardened over again at her abrupt departure. The letter arrived several months later. It had taken him two months more to finally act on it despite his raging desire to see her — his pride had been that wounded, and it had been his greatest wish that she suffer as he did.
He was on his way to shake down a saloon on Eleventh Avenue when he first saw Miranda. Fat Frankie Lonegan and his crew were crowding a scared-looking couple outside the Irish Rose. Frankie was asking the guy, who sported a bad toupee, whether he had been bitch-slapped lately. The girl, blond, with a slender willowy figure, stepped between them just as Jimmy came upon the scene. She looked frightened, and Jimmy couldn’t imagine what had brought them to this part of town.
Frankie reached out and squeezed her left breast, and she jumped back as if burned.
“When’s the last time somebody bitch-slapped you?” Jimmy asked Frankie, walking into the midst of their little drama.
“Jimmy...!” Fat Frankie blurted, startled at the appearance of one of the Westies’ enforcers. The other guys gave Jimmy room. Up close, Frankie’s big red face and bulging blue eyes were like the face of an ugly clown. Jimmy got up close. Seizing Frankie’s balls in his right hand, he gave them a good hard squeeze to get his attention.
He got it.
“I’m gonna yank these little bastards out at the roots if I catch you being impolite to my friends ever again. Understand me, fat-ass?”
Frankie, his eyes closed in pain, managed to nod. He understood.
Jimmy let go, and Frankie fell back clutching his private parts, trying to walk away without sinking to the litter-strewn sidewalk. His buddies frogmarched him down the street.
Turning to the exotic couple, Jimmy remarked, “You don’t belong here.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. Her narrow, delicate face was flushed with anger and humiliation; her brown eyes wide and startled. He was only vaguely aware of the older man with the bad hairpiece standing behind her.
“We were looking for the Lion’s Head Theater,” she answered, the slightest quaver in her voice. “Thank you for helping us.”
Jimmy nodded, thinking she was nothing like the women he knew here in Hell’s Kitchen. She was not hard or burned-out. He knew it had probably been a mistake to have interfered with Fat Frankie, but didn’t care — she was looking at him now.
He responded after too long a moment, “That’s two blocks south of here on West Fifty-Fourth. This is Fifty-Sixth.” Standing in the doorway of the Rose, a heroin-thin hooker studied them with narrowed eyes, as if trying to place the girl, a cigarette dangling from her smeared lips. Jimmy glanced her way and she went back inside. “What are you going there for?” he asked. Then added, “I should prob’ly go with you.”
She smiled at him and replied, “Okay,” then said, “My name’s Miranda Westbrook. I’m auditioning for a new off-off-Broadway play.”
“You come to the right neighborhood...” Jimmy said, smiling back, “... for off-off , anyways; we’re all a little off-off around here. I’m Jimmy Hennessy.”
“Hennessy,” she repeated, looking him right in the eyes now. “That’s my favorite cognac.”
Jimmy could think of no reply to this.
“This is Graham Rixley,” she said, turning to her male friend, then paused before adding, “He’s my manager.”
The smaller man smiled. “Among other things.”
Jimmy didn’t like that, nor did he care for his rose-tinted glasses, his pale, doughy face, his improbable jet-black hairpiece or expensive overcoat.
“Thanks,” Graham added without a hint of sincerity.
Jimmy walked them to the theater, a desanctified church of grey stone. Having seen them safely inside, he was turning away when Miranda came back out alone. Rushing up to him, she placed a piece of paper in his hand.
“That’s my number if you ever want to call.” Then, she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Before he could think of what to say, she had already rushed back inside, leaving him stunned and dizzy on the dirty sidewalk, disoriented beneath the grimy facade of the former church.
He didn’t make his collection on Eleventh Avenue that day, and before the month’s end Miranda and he were lovers.
Looking up at the building once more, Jimmy noted the last of the day’s light making red sunbursts on the windows of the upper floors, the shadows deepening on the street.