Noticing two couples dressed in tuxedos and killer gowns, she said, “We’re not close to being the best dressed folks here, are we?”
“Nope. This place is a kind of crossroads. When I was in the Six-O, I used to think that someone standing with a camera on that corner over there,” I said, pointing to where Surf and Stillwell Avenues met, “could capture the essence of human experience if he stood there long enough and had enough film. Now he wouldn’t need film, just memory.”
“I was right about you, Moe Prager. You’re a complicated fella.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I didn’t know cops were so philosophical.”
“Ferguson May, he was our precinct philosopher. I guess he rubbed off on me a little.”
“Ferguson May, where’s he nowadays?”
“Dead. Got stabbed through the eye during a domestic violence call in the projects more years ago than I can count. He was a good guy. Weren’t many black guys on the job back then and he suffered through all the bullshit by being philosophical about it.”
“C’mon,” she said, looping her arms through mine, “show a girl the sights.”
We walked out of Nathan’s, our bellies full of hot dogs, fries, and watery beers, and turned right onto Surf. We went up the steps onto the boardwalk, the moon high above, the soft roar of the invisible ocean and the wind whistling in our ears. I drove past Coney Island nearly every day on my way to work, but the days of my stopping by, of my coming here for comfort and to think things through were gone. It had been many years since I’d stood on the boardwalk in winter, looking out at the white-haired waves and the hibernating dinosaurs of the amusement park rides. I’d spent so much of my childhood in this place and walked countless miles on the boardwalk as a cop. In a parallel universe somewhere you could probably still hear the echoes of the warped and pitted boards squealing under the weight of my ugly black cop shoes.
“What’s that there?” Mary asked, pointing up at the orange super structure looming over our right shoulders.
“That’s the Parachute Jump. It used to be part of Steeplechase Park, but it hasn’t worked in years. That enormous Ferris wheel there is called the Wonder Wheel. It has enclosed cars that swing and ride on rails as it turns. And that roller coaster over there is the Cyclone, the most famous wooden roller coaster in the world.”
“And this was your precinct?”
“In some ways, I guess it always has been. I grew up around here too.”
“Let’s walk.” She tugged me towards Brighton Beach. “So tell me about the bad old days. When you were a big tough cop with bad hair. What about you and the other two stooges? What were they like?”
“Larry was a shrewd customer. To call him ambitious was like calling Hitler mildly anti-Semitic. He was always working an angle, but he never climbed up over the bodies of his buds, never threw us under the bus to clear the path for himself. He nearly made it to the mountain top too. He was top brass when…”
“When what?”
“He committed suicide. Gassed himself in a car by the old Fountain Avenue dump.”
“Oh… I’m so sorry. What about Curly?” she asked.
“Rico? God, I haven’t thought about Rico in years. I think he was the closest friend I ever had, but he threw our friendship away.”
“How?”
“He had ambitions too, but he wasn’t as clever as Larry Mac. Rico never understood that wanting isn’t worth a thing in this world and that there’s a big gulf between wanting and getting. Larry, he always understood the difference and was good at paying his own way up the ladder. Rico paid his bills too, but with other people’s sweat and blood. I guess I wouldn’t have minded if he didn’t pay so much for so little in return.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rico wanted to make detective. We all wanted to, only Rico was impatient about it. The city was in bad financial shape back then and you practically had to be the second coming of Christ to get your gold shield. So Rico made a deal with some political hot shot, which wouldn’t have been so bad, I guess, if the deal hadn’t involved me. He set me up to bring a powerful man to his knees, a man who turned out to be my future father-in-law.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. And the ironic thing is that if Rico had only waited a few months, he would’ve made detective on his own merit. He was on a joint task force that broke the biggest murder-for-hire and car theft ring in this city’s history. Every uniform connected to the case got his shield and every detective got a bump up in grade.”
“That’s sad.”
“It gets worse, but do you mind if we skip this conversation?”
“Of course not,” she said, stopping to slide her arms around me. She kissed me, softly, tentatively. It wasn’t an invitation for more, but rather a kiss of possibility. It wasn’t a thanks-for-dinner-and-goodbye kiss either. It was kind of sweet, not hungry or bitter. Those kinds of kisses were rare to come by these days.
“What now?” I asked.
“Let’s go back to your place, try the white, and make out a little bit. I have to give you a reason to ask me to dinner again.”
“I already have reason enough.”
“Jesus, Moe Prager, for such a bright and complex fella, you’re slow on the uptake. You mind if a girl gets to have a little fun?”
“Perish the thought.”
“Then come on.”
When Mary Lambert left my condo that night, lipstick smeared, but most of her clothes intact, I was a little lightheaded. I hadn’t had a good make-out session since my freshman year at Brooklyn College. Back then, making out used to leave me more frustrated than anything else. I was feeling a lot of things as I watched Mary’s car pull away. Frustrated wasn’t one of them.
THIRTEEN
I woke up feeling a little less giddy than I had when I went to bed. Not because I wasn’t still into Mary Lambert. On the contrary, a night of sleeping on the memory of the way her skin warmed to my touch and how the scent of her perfume changed as we kissed, and the way her nipples stiffened when I brushed my hands across the front of her silky blouse, had done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for her. But too much expensive wine on a hot dog and french fry stomach wasn’t a prescription for a happy morning. I used to be able to drink, but these days hangovers didn’t just vanish with a few sips of water and a fistful of aspirins. Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Aspirins. Ah, the joys of growing older.
Just after I crawled out of bed, breakfasted on two bottles of water, Pepto, and painkillers, the house phone rang. House phone, now there’s a quaint idea about to go the way of the front yard water pump and the transistor radio. No one I knew under the age of thirty even had a house phone.
“Yeah.”
“Prager. Detective McKenna.”
“I don’t usually date men who blow me off when they promise to call.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s up?”
“You got anything?”
No beating around the bush with this guy. He asked the big questions right away. The thing is, I didn’t want to answer. If he found out about where I was going with Nathan Martyr, McKenna might step in and do things his way. And while the detective didn’t strike me as a hard-ass or strong-arm type of cop, there was a girl missing for over three weeks now and his patience was probably at low ebb. Hard-ass or not, I doubted McKenna would approve of my agreeing to Martyr’s extortion demand. Paying off a no-talent, scumbag junkie with the last painting of a lost girl whose abilities he ridiculed and reviled was utterly perverse, but there was a kind of twisted symmetry to it. I just didn’t want to waste time by trying to make McKenna see it. I also doubted he would have thought much of my manipulating Candy to get the extra paintings. He would think that what I planned to do with them was beside the point. Again, I didn’t want to waste time convincing him it wasn’t.