“There’s a stiff buried in Dugan’s Dump,” I tried a new tack. “It’s wearin’ a gold and onyx pinky ring. But maybe you know about that already. I figure he’s-sorry-he was the shooter. Maybe you figured that, too. Maybe you planted him there. Why don’t we talk about it, MacClough? Come on.” Again nothing. “Listen, I’m not the only one interested in this. Soon, the whole neighborhood’ll be working on the puzzle,” I paraphrased Kate Barnum’s warning.
This time I gave him a pause pregnant enough to have two sets of twins. I was willing to wait. My ribs were not so patient. I dragged my coat sleeve across my face, smearing the cracked leather with scarlet-laced mucous, bitter tears and sweat from the pain. I poured myself a sip of stout to wash away the pasty vomit coating in my mouth. It didn’t work and the sweet, pungent flavor of the syrupy brew made me want to puke again.
I popped a lonesome quarter into the jukebox, punched up three numbers and started back toward the alley and the front seat of my car. Patsy Cline was singing the second line of “Crazy” by the time the back room door slammed behind me. MacClough hadn’t moved. He just stood there blank-faced and cold-eyed, unmoving but probably not unmoved. I wanted to say something to him, but the ripe odor of my thrown-up breakfast wouldn’t let me. I ran past him and fumbled with the exit door handle.
“Stay out of it, Klein,” MacClough muttered over my shoulder, reaching around me and pulling the door open to the fresh, freezing air. “By the time anyone else puts things together, my business will be done.”
Business! What’s he talking, business? Murder wasn’t business. Murder was murder no matter how you dressed it up. I’d worry about that later. For now, I was preoccupied with folding myself into the driver’s seat and cursing the day I met John Francis MacClough. After the drive began, the target of my disdain switched to manual transmissions. On the journey to the hospital, my ribs made certain to point out every bump, pothole and road hazard. Every fucking one!
A great feature of eastern Long Island is the less tainted attitude of its health care professionals. Unlike the “if it’s not a gunshot wound above waist, sit down, shut up and wait your turn” attitude which prevails at city hospitals, local trauma units will treat the non-terminal without a notarized letter from a clergyman certifying you have valid health insurance, and you won’t even have to wait half as long as Penelope did for Ulysses to see a physician.
I had mixed feelings about my doctor. He was male. That was good because I didn’t feel obliged to suck in my gut, which might have killed me, or to flirt. On the other hand, flirting in my current state would’ve been a real challenge. The doctor was young. That meant his education was still fresh and his techniques current. Unfortunately, his only application of those techniques might have involved lab cadavers that tended not to complain or litigate.
His nameplate indicated he was Jewish. That was, unless Steven Cohen had suddenly become a popular moniker in the Christian world. Oh, did I mention, he was wearing a yarmulke? I could be so observant. Normally, a doctor’s religion didn’t move me, but today I had a question.
“That was some nasty fall you took, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen muttered sarcastically, reaching around my back to grab the roll of tape. “Lucky they’re only bruised. There!” he patted down the edge of the tape with equal amounts pride and aplomb. “In a few weeks they’ll be like new. As for your nose. .” he referred back to the X-ray, “it’s fine, but you may wake up tomorrow with a black eye or two.”
“Assuming I ever get to sleep,” I slapped the binding about my ribs and immediately regretted the gesture.
“I see your point.”
“Hey Doc,” my smile surprised him, “I got kinda an odd question for you.”
“Ask away, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen liked questions.
“How good are you with the Torah?”
“That is the oddist question I’ve been asked today,” he smiled back, self-conscously adjusting his skullcap. “I’m fair. Why?”
“I’m a freelance writer and I’m researching a story on the flight of European Jews to Palestine after the war.” Hey, it wasn’t a total lie. I was a writer and I figured my approach would hook him. “Anyway, two sources of mine have mentioned a little girl who escaped from Auschwitz and made it to Palestine entirely on her own. Unfortunately, they can’t remember her name exactly and I can’t print the story without confirmation.”
“It sounds quite amazing,” Cohen admitted, his eyes as wide as silver dollars, “but what does my familiarity with the Torah have to do with any of this?”
“Patience, Doc. Patience.” We both laughed at my inadvertent pun. “I’m getting to that. One of my sources swears she had a strange name, something biblical, something like Andrella. I don’t know. I guess I’m just grasping at straws now.”
Cohen started pacing, scratching at his hairless chin and rubbing the back of his neck. “Andrella, Andrella,” he mouthed over and over, “Andrella.” He stopped pacing: “Sorry, Mr. Klein. I’m drawing a blank, but I can check up on it and get back to you.”
“Thanks, Doc, I’d really appreciate that.” We shook hands. “And thanks for patching me up.”
He told me it was no trouble at all, suggested that I come see him in a week and gave me something for the pain we both knew I was going to have. He warned me to take it easy and apologized for his coming up with zero on the girl’s name. He assured me he’d get my number off the hospital report and that he’d call if his sources could deliver a name. He shook my hand and shook his head. Dr. Cohen didn’t like not knowing answers. This was going to eat at him.
A butterball of a nurse in old-fashioned whites, a silly hat and elastic hose with enough tensile strength to support a small office building cleaned me up a bit, helped put me back together and gave me half a roll of Certs for my breath. I winked at her. She liked that. She escorted me to the exit at no extra charge. From here to the car I would have to fly solo.
“Mr. Klein!” Dr. Cohen came sprinting after me, one hand holding his yarmulke against the wind. “Mr. Klein!” I stopped to let him catch me and to catch my breath. “I don’t know if it’s the name you’re looking for,” he was gasping for air himself. “Too much time trying to keep everyone else in shape,” the young doctor held his heart.
“The name, Doc,” I put him back on course.
“Could it have been Azrael?” he wondered sheepishly, as if regretting the speaking of those words aloud.
“I guess it could’ve been. It’s odd. It’s biblical-sounding,” I was non-committal and just this side of unenthusiastic. The fact was, I didn’t know.
“No,” he kicked disappointedly at the ground, “it wouldn’t be that. I don’t even know why I suggested it.”
“Educate me, Doc. Why wouldn’t it have been her name?”
“Azrael, Mr. Klein, is the angel of death. Would any parent name his or her child after the angel of death?”
“In this world, who knows?” I threw up my hands and almost collapsed in pain. “But I suppose you’re right, Doc. Nice try, anyway. Thanks.”
He left me without a farewell, walking back to the hospital like the Mighty Casey walking back to the dugout after the third strike. Doctor Cohen was a little less familiar with failure than myself. That was good for him.
Once folded in, I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes thinking about the angel of death. I thought about the angel’s trail I’d been following lately, about the stiff in the dump and the little drowned girl with the stolen name. I thought about the dead woman in orange make-up and mink. And, I thought, if her name wasn’t Azrael, God, it should have been.
And She Did
“You look like shit,” Kate Barnum noted before I had both of my legs through the door of the scavenged old whaling ship.
“The best part is, I get to feel worse than I look,” I winked, easing myself into her age-shredded sofa. “Got a beer to wash down my pain killers with?”