Then there was the earlier exchange between Melendez and me as we both searched along the curb for the car keys she had earlier tossed out her window.
“You still haven’t told me why you were at the Six-O yesterday.”
“I didn’t, did I?”
“Don’t be smug, Mr. Prager.”
“This isn’t smug, it’s silence.”
“Yeah, well, before this thing is through, we’re gonna need each other.”
Detective Melendez didn’t seem interested in explaining herself any further. I found my keys. We left it at that.
I did what any self-respecting detective would have done when investigating the suicide of his friend-I ignored it. With the press so busy crawling over Larry’s corpse, I figured there was little to gain and a lot to lose by my nosing around. The press tended to use cleavers when scalpels were called for, but they could be pretty effective. The problem was that they, too, often left huge scars on the lives of people they mowed down as they struck out blindly in pursuit of the story. Time was a luxury not afforded the press, so they sacrificed innocence for expediency. Other people’s innocence, their expediency.
I was also worried about being noticed. It was one thing for me to show up at Larry Mac’s wake, at the cemetery at the memorial, if there was to be one. But if some stringer or crime beat reporter caught wind of me nosing around in Larry McDonald’s past, the red flags would fly and it would only serve to confirm any suspicions about dirty dealings in my dead friend’s closet. Instead, I called in a favor.
There was noise on the other end of the phone, but not human speech.
“Wit? Wit, for chrissakes, is that you?”
“God’s day may launch come dawn, but mine does not get into swing till well after morn.” You had to admire an angry man who woke with poetry on his lips. “This had better be of consequence.”
Yancy Whittle Fenn, Wit to his friends, was like Truman Capote pulled back from the abyss. Well, that’s an inexact description if you knew the man, but it served those unacquainted with him. When I met Y.W. Fenn in 1983, he was just as famous for his brand of celebrity pseudo-journalism as his taste for Wild Turkey. That’s the kind you
Never quite as beautiful or wealthy as the company he kept, Wit had invested unwisely, married badly, and began drinking. He became a hanger-on instead of one of the crowd, but as I was once told by a crony of his, “He used to be fun back in the day, a life of the party sort-funny, biting, and bitchy.” Then his grandson had been kidnapped and brutally murdered. Wit had always done crime reportage, but dealt with his grief by becoming vindictive and focusing on the rich and infamous. He’d write exposes for the big magazines whenever crime-murder in particular-money, and celebrity aligned.
He had been assigned to the Moira Heaton investigation. By Esquire, as I recall. Of course, neither Wit nor his editor gave a flying fuck about Moira. It was the wealthy and handsome State Senator Steven Brightman who had their eye. Until Moira Heaton went missing, Brightman had been the up-and-comer, the next Jack Kennedy. Talk about a curse. Somehow they all begin as the next Jack and end up as the next Teddy. But during the investigation, Wit found something to grab onto, something to stop his slide into an early grave and snickering obits. I think maybe he remembered his grief and forgot about his rage.
“Not only is it of consequence,” I said, “there might even be a book in it for you.”
“Enlightened self-interest is what makes the world go ’round, my friend. Maybe you should begin speaking now.”
“Anyone ever tell you you were more fun when you drank?” I teased.
“I tell it to myself every day when I gaze into the mirror. Then I’m reminded that I would not be here at all had I continued my lifelong quest for the perfect gallon of bourbon. Or maybe, sir, you are looking for me to thank you once again for saving my life.”
“You know better than that, Wit.”
“Yes, I do. How are the lovely Sarah and Katy? Well, I hope.”
I didn’t answer. “Go get your morning paper. I’ll wait.”
He put the phone down. I listened to the retreating slaps of Wit’s slippers against his hardwood floor. A minute later, the sound of his slippers returned.
“Oh, I am so sorry, Moe. I rather liked Larry, though I wouldn’t have trusted him as far as I could drop-kick a polo pony.”
“I know a lot of people who might say the same thing about you.”
“And they’d be right. But you and I needn’t worry about that. I owe you more than I can say.”
“Save it for my eulogy.”
“Let us not discuss such things,” he chided. “Is this call about the late Chief McDonald?”
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he’s part of it. No, in that he’s not nearly all of it.”
“We’re being rather cryptic, are we not?”
I could only laugh.
“Do I have a career in stand-up, do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe, but it’s just that I said the same thing about being cryptic to Larry the last two times I saw him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence on the line. Then, “You know, Moe, I don’t think I can recall the last thing I said to my grand-son.”
“Probably, I love you.”
“Yes, probably.”
“I think I told Larry to go fuck himself.”
“Well, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but he seems to have taken your advice quite literally.”
I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but I wasn’t exactly consumed with guilt.
“I think that’s what I’m getting at, Wit. I’m not sure he did the fucking himself, if you get my point. And there’s too many of your mishpocha around for me to-”
“Say no more. I’ll handle it. Give me a day or two.”
“Thanks.”
“None required, my friend. I’ll get back to you.”
He was off the line.
As soon as I placed the phone down, it rang. It rang until I left the house. First, it was Aaron calling, then Klaus, then Robert Gloria, the detective who originally caught the Moira Heaton case, then Pete Parson, then. . They were all calling to say they were sorry and all wanted to know what had happened. Popular question, that. I took
No one on Surf Avenue had hung black bunting out their windows or off the railings of their terraces for the late chief of detectives. I made sure not to crane my neck as I passed West Eighth Street to see if the old precinct had so honored him. My soul, at least, was at half staff. Grief is a harder hurdle when it’s for someone you’re unsure of. How much of it was I supposed to feel? How much would he have felt for me? For how long? Why? There were those easy questions again, the ones with the complex answers.
The block was once right in the heart of what we used to call the Soul Patch, but the drugs of choice back then-pot, ludes, black beauties, acid, mesc, a little heroin and even less coke-seem almost innocent by today’s standard. Crack-coke’s ugly little brother-and junkies sharing needles in the time of AIDS had ravaged much of the area. The row houses all looked on the verge of collapse. But all was not lost. On some of the surrounding streets, signs of rebirth were taking root and, if the sea breeze blew just right, you could detect the chemical scents of vinyl siding and construction adhesive.
I pressed the three bells at the row house that Malik Jabbar had listed as his last worldly address. None of them worked.
Such was the nature of poor neighborhoods-lots of bells, none of ’em work. So I pounded the door. Black faces stared suspiciously out dirty windows and through frayed curtains. I could feel their eyes branding the word COP on the back of my neck. Hell, I was white and pounding on a door like I owned the place. Old habits die hard. So much of what you do as a cop is a matter of training and practice. I stopped pounding.