“Sure.” She ambled barefoot into the kitchen and reappeared holding a glass mug smeared with fingerprints on the outside and full of unnamed beer within. “How’d it happen? And don’t tell me you fell into an uncovered washing machine.”
“Nah. If that happened, I’d be dead. Can’t swim a stroke.” I got guilty quiet thinking about a little girl floating face down in Ponsichatchi Creek. Sometimes it’s not funny. What you think about, I mean.
Barnum mistook my change of expression for bad beer. “The beer sour?”
“No. Just everything else.”
She lit a butt and nuzzled up next to me, her free hand falling carelessly onto my chest. I nearly passed out when it landed.
“Ribs,” I coughed out.
“Sorry. Christ, you really are in bad shape. I thought the black eyes were just a fashion statement!” the reporter snickered nervously. “You must be getting close. Someone warn you off?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Next question.” I sat up again, breathing as normally as a man could with a hundred yards of tape around his middle.
“MacClough, huh.” Barnum lit up the room with her self-satisfaction.
“You are good.”
“I didn’t get to where I was by being dull-witted, Klein.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “but how’d ya get to where you are now?”
“Next question.” It was her turn to look like a swallow of bad beer. We were even.
“Do you still have access to the Times morgue?” I wondered.
“Not officially. Why?”
“You’re not Jewish, Barnum, so stop answering my questions with questions. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” she acquiesced.
“Go back twenty-five years and work-”
“Twenty-five years!”
“And work forward,” I continued. “You’re lookin’ for a mob trial in which a woman turns state’s evidence and then goes underground.”
Kate pulled a bottle of house brand bourbon out from under the kidney-shaped coffee table and took a warm-up swallow. When she was warmed up, she took another.
“You want to give me any details or am I going to have to stay in the morgue for twenty years just looking?” she queried with as much enthusiasm as a pig for a ham sandwich.
“Don’t get so excited. One thing is you won’t have to look that far forward. The envelope is twenty-five to twenty years ago. It’s the only time frame that fits. Secondly, I’m pretty sure the woman’s name was Azrael.” I wasn’t certain at all, but I was getting pretty comfortable with lying. “Might’ve been a nickname. I don’t know.”
“Azrael?”
I spelled it for her.
“Not much to go on,” she yawned and took another swig. The cheap stuff was tasting like Wild Turkey by now.
“It’s enough.” I tamped out her cigarette to underline by two words.
“Let’s fuck, Klein,” she changed gears and subjects and removed her sweatshirt.
“Christ,” I laughed uncomfortably, “I wish you’d just get to the point.” I don’t know what it is exactly. Maybe men are unnerved by women who not only think like they do, but who give voice to their thoughts. “Sorry,” I ran a fingernail along the tape ridges about my ribs. “Besides, you play too rough.”
“Just come with me, baby,” she helped me out of my seat, her left nipple brushing my cheek. “I’ll do all the work.”
And she did. Most of it, anyway.
Now we were just lying there, sleepless and lonely on her smoky sheets in the dark; the absence of love robbing the room of breathable air. Even before she could finish taking what I had to give, I could feel the emptiness creep in the window like poison gas. In the absence of love, consummation is the cruelest part of desire. Barely able to make out her shape in the blackness and gas, I wondered if she’d simply gotten used to it. I never have.
“Do you know what question couples forever wonder about but never ask until it’s too late?” Barnum spoke into the night.
“No,” I answered, somehow relieved that she felt the absence, too.
“Where did it go? That’s what they ask. Where did it go?”
And I did not respond. What was there to say, anyway? In any case, I was in no shape to look any harder at myself than I was already. She got up to find the bathroom and the bottle and a pack of cigarettes. I also think she went to take a look.
Magic Trick
My black eyes had just about finished their technicolor journey through the contusion spectrum. Their deep purple stage was definitely my favorite. I looked good in dark colors. As for my ribs. . They were still sore, but it now took more than the brush of a careless hand to set me into convulsions. I decided to skip my follow-up visit with Doc Cohen until the painkillers ran out. MacClough and I were avoiding a rematch by avoiding each other. We both knew I couldn’t leave things alone, but hey, stuff happens. Right?
Kate Barnum was splitting her time between two newspapers. Her articles in the Whaler concerning subtle changes in the local zoning ordinance were right on, but about as compelling as a compost heap. Covering this kind of stuff would kill her way before the butts and the booze. I could almost understand her desperation. Barnum’s spare moments were spent digging at the Times; unofficially, of course, and without result.
I was sitting at the word processor watching the eleventh snowfall of the winter. Eleven stuck in my head because that was one more page than my short story about the Japanese contained. That’s how many pages it had two weeks ago. That’s how many pages it was going to have. I’d been making lots of lists lately of writers I’d never be. I caught myself praying for the phone to ring. Sometimes prayers get answered.
“This Klein?” the man’s vaguely familiar voice wanted to know.
“This Klein. You Jane.” I took a weak shot a humor.
“Huh?” My shot missed. “Funny man. Real funny.” Johnny’s ex-partner Terence O’Toole lashed out scornfully. “You remember me, funny man?”
“I remember you, O’Toole. I guess you’re callin’ about Johnny.”
“Yeah, I been thinking about him and that bitch.”
“What you been thinking about ‘em?” I tried moving things along.
“You remember where I live?” The ex-cop was in a nasty mood.
“I remember.”
“Get here. I got something to sell you.” he laughed uncomfortably.
“What about the snow?”
“Fuck the snow. And hey, Klein, I’m almost dry. Bring me something for my throat. Maybe I’ll knock a few bucks off the price,” the old giant burped into my ear.
“One thing O’Toole,” I didn’t let him hang up.
“What?”
“The girl’s name. Was it Azrael?”
“You been doing your homework, Klein,” I could hear him smile. “Yeah, that was the Jew cunt’s name,” he stuck the verbal knife in and twisted it. “It’s good that you done your homework. It’ll make our business easier. Be here soon!”
I got there, but it wasn’t soon. Old Volkswagens don’t like the snow. I played my one cassette of British Invasion hits twice. It might’ve had time for a third go around, but I couldn’t stand to hear “Pictures of Matchstick Men” again. Like most things in my VW, the fast forward and rewind buttons hadn’t worked in a decade. I kept pulling the new fifth bottle of Murphy’s Irish out of the sack, but no combination of bad traffic, bad weather, bad ribs and bad music could make me take a sip.
O’Toole’s block was beehive busy with snow day kids hitting up their neighbors for snow shoveling money. In one form or another every driveway and every inch of sidewalk on the street had been dug out or cleared. No, not every driveway, not every inch. O’Toole’s driveway was still a field of beaten egg whites and his sidewalk was invisible under the white snow. I didn’t like it. I don’t know why. I just didn’t.
There were two sets of footprints leading up the steps to the old cop’s door. One set was small and irregular. Probably the result of a neighbor kid fighting the accumulation, looking for snow removal work. The other set was widely spaced and deep and made by an adult foot. I’d guess a man’s foot, but what the fuck did I know from footprints. The bigger prints had come first. I could tell that much. More snow had re-accumulated in their cavities than in the small prints. I thought about the print Azrael had left in the snow outside the Rusty Scupper and then rang O’Toole’s bell.