Oh, my approach seemed to go over smoothly enough. I got a warehouse full of feedback on the subject of John Francis MacClough, but nothing in the warehouse was worth my while. Everyone wanted in on the party for Johnny, Everyone offered to help. Everyone loved MacClough. Everyone had a few choice Johnny MacClough stories. Everyone told me his favorite. Everyone remembered the sergeant’s wife Johnny had porked on a dare or the Puerto Rican deli girl who went down on Johnny in a beer cooler during the ’77 Blackout or Johnny and the twin nurses. No one remembered anyone who fit the dead woman’s description. No one recalled Johnny ever having a pet name or a nickname. Certainly not Johnny Blue.
I made two more stops on my trek back to Sound Hill. One for gas and a piss in Syosset. The other detour had to do with a stranger’s name on a list in my pocket.
Terrence O’Toole was an aging, pot-bellied giant with a red veiny nose to shame Rudolph and a manner crustier than week-old French bread. He answered his front door armed with a dangling cigarette, a can of Coors and an expression as sour as a barrel full of pickles.
“I don’t know you,” he accused, blowing smoke and the sick smell of burped up beer down to me.
“That’s right. You don’t.”
“What you selling then? Nevermind,” the giant raised a meaty paw to cut off any answer I might have. “Whatever it is, I don’t want any. I don’t need any.” He stepped back and started closing the door.
“Wait a fuckin’ second, goddamit!” I blurted out in unthinking frustration.
The door reversed its direction. A beer can fell and one of those huge hands snapped out at me like a lizard’s tongue. Clamped firmly around my throat, it reeled me into the vestibule. O’Toole was one strong old man. He could easily have kicked my ass up and down the block without breaking a sweat.
“What was that, mister?” he tightened his grip about my neck. My head felt like an overfull water-balloon.
“John Mac-” I coughed, not having enough air for the last syllable.
“Who?” O’Toole loosened the lizard’s tongue a bit.
“Johnny MacClough. I’m here about Johnny MacClough.”
There was no further change in the relationship between his hand and my throat, but his sour face mellowed some and his eyes rolled back into his skull. I figured he was running over what was left of his memory. How much remained was a toss-up. Age takes it toll and noses don’t get that red and veiny from the sun.
“What about Johnny?” the old cop had finished cross-referencing.
I didn’t respond immediately, instead pointing to the proximity of his fingers and my windpipe. He made like Pharaoh and let me go. I was still a little nauseous and light headed, so O’Toole guided me-pushed me, really- into his kitchen and sat me down at the table. Something hissed like a rush of steam and an open can of beer appeared before me.
“Drink!” he ordered.
I drank.
“Now what’s this about Johnny?”
I told him about the party.
“You’re full of shit, mister,” the old cop smiled at me for the first time with evil, crooked teeth. “You could just have easily called me about this party as shown up at my door at night in the middle of winter. Come on now, you can do better than that. You couldn’t fool my dead granny with that party yarn. What gives?”
“Nothin’,” I stood up to go. “Forget it. Sorry I bothered you.”
“No ya don’t,” something quick and powerful shoved me back into my seat.
“I didn’t make detective, but don’t ever mistake that for stupidity. I just never looked good in a suit. Now spill.”
I spilled. I spilled like an open milk carton turned upside down. He heard it all. He heard all about my Christmas Eve. He heard all about the ratty mink coat, Johnny Blue, my broken pint glass and the orphaned heart.
He saw tracks in the snow and blood in the snow and death in the snow. I introduced him to Kate, Larry, Mojo, Sylvia and the pinky-ringed sapling in Dugan’s Dump. He listened without emotion, taking it in with a sip now and then. He burped like a cannon when I finished.
“She had some funny kinda name,” the giant finger-combed his thin wisps of white hair. “Something biblical. Andrella, maybe. Something like that. I don’t know. Christ, it was a fucking lifetime ago.”
“You remember the girl?” I jumped up.
“Are you deaf, boy?” he growled and pointed me back to my seat. “I had johnny straight outta the academy; greener than clover and chestier than a motherfucker. But he had the curse of instinct. A natural born cop, that one. Could smell trouble a block before I could see it and I was no slouch.”
I didn’t doubt it.
“Johnny,” the giant continued, reaching for a bottle of Murphy’s Irish, “only had one blind spot.”
“The girl,” I offered.
“The girl,” he accepted with a nod. “I tried warning him off her, but Johnny was a kid. Kids don’t listen. See him,” pickle face pointed to an ornately framed photo of an elephant-eared boy in Marine blues. “That was my son. Told him not to join up. Coulda gotten him onto the force, but kids don’t listen. Got himself killed during Tet. It killed his mother too.” The bitter man lobbed his shot glass at the photo and missed.
“What about the girl?” I tried to snap O’Toole out of his foggy reminiscence.
“Don’t know that much about her,” red-nose admitted, drinking directly from the bottle. “Johnny was smart enough not to discuss her around me once he figured I disapproved. That’s-”
“Disapproved,” I cut in. “Why?”
“She was someone else’s toy. And from what I could sniff out, that someone else was family connected. Do you get my meaning?”
“Mafia.”
“Bingo, boy. You win a drink. Here,” he stuck the Murphy’s in my fist.
I didn’t want a drink, but I plugged the bottle with my tongue and made believe. The tip of my tongue didn’t like it, but the rest of me appreciated the pantomime.
“The bitch was a Jew to boot,” the giant grabbed the bottle back.
Maybe something showed on my face. I don’t know, but O’Toole squinted at me.
“What’s your name anyways?” He tried dressing the question up with an air of nonchalance, but his self-consciousness was showing.
“Klein. Dylan Klein,” I replied with as little affect as possible.
He just smirked, threw up his free palm and raised his brows. That was as much of an apology as I was going to get. And I wasn’t about to push him. I couldn’t afford to plug the the only pumping well I’d struck so far. So what if he wasn’t a flower child. Besides, hate was probably all he had left. I was so good at rationalization.
“So she was a wiseguy’s girl and she didn’t take communion.” I put us back on track. “What else? What about Johnny Blue?”
“There ain’t much else,” he took a small ocean of a drink. “The Johnny Blue stuff was a code thing between ‘em. Like I said, Johnny knew I disapproved. So she’d leave notes at the precinct house for Johnny Blue or Johnny Green. I didn’t make detective,” the booze was making him repeat things now, “but even I could figure that one color meant the coast was clear and the other was a warning.”
“Anything else?” I pumped some more.
“See him?” O’Toole was pointing at his son’s picture again. “Kids-
“-don’t listen,” I finished. “Johnny and the girl,” I prodded.
“Right,” he tried licking the bottom of the bottle. “Kids don’t listen. Coulda gotten him onto the force.”
I figured the well was running dry as the Murphy’s and my time had come to leave. I planted one of my old business cards in his shirt pocket and reminded him to ignore the office number. I thanked him and asked him to call if anything, no matter how insignificant, about Johnny and the girl came to mind.
“Did I tell ya the cunt was a matzoh eater?” he smiled that evil-toothed smile up at me. His blue eyes were as glazed as a holiday ham. “Hey, get me a beer, fella, huh?”
“Yeah, you told me about the girl,” I assured him, popping open a Coors. “Sleep tight,” I handed him the beer knowing he would. I started for the front door.