The Suffolk Homicide detectives were considerably less impressed, but MacClough was light on his feet. Now it was his turn to kiss some ass and kiss some ring and genuflect till his knees got sore. This song and dance wasn’t as much fun as watching Johnny control the uniforms, but it worked just as well. These guys seemed pretty receptive to our cock and bull story.
My words were just a variation on a theme. I was going to throw my buddy, John MacClough, a party celebrating five years of retirement. Unfortunately, I wasn’t well acquainted with his old sleuthing pals. So, I was making the rounds of his ex-partners and such, trying to enlist their help. O’Toole was just one name on this list I had. We’d spoken once before and had agreed to meet soon. He’d called me this morning to say it was a good day for him. When I showed up, the door was open and he was dead. I guess I panicked a little and called MacClough. He came straight away and that’s when I called the cops. Johnny stood firmly at my right shoulder throughout my telling, shaking his head in religious agreement.
We both knew the story would hold up. The phone records would show the O’Toole call to me and mine to Johnny. The times of our separate arrivals would check out. And, if the Suffolk detectives bothered checking on my party yarn, they’d find a half-dozen New York City cops who’d testify that I had, in fact, approached them with that concept. Things were going just swimmingly considering I’d just found my second body in as many months. But such smooth sailing has never been in my stars.
I recognized the belly even before its bearer was entirely through the front door. Detective Sergeant Mickelson shook a few hands, slapped a few backs and walked right up to me. He could see the consternation in my eyes. He liked that. I could see that in his.
“Well, well, Mr. Klein,” he feigned surprise and shook my hand. “Palm’s a little sweaty for such a cold day.”
“Finding bodies sort of unnerves me.”
“Shit, Klein, I thought you’d be getting pretty used to it by now,” the fat detective needled. “If you were as good at finding crude oil as bodies, the fucking Arabs would go broke.”
I decided to jump out of the hole he was digging me. “Yeah and if you were as good at police work as you are at eating, the world would be crime free.”
“Okay, cocksucker,” Mickelson put his face in mine, “let’s hear this week’s bullshit story.”
He heard it. He didn’t like it. But he wasn’t going to like it anyway. That was his schtick.
“You’re improving, Klein,” Buddha belly complimented. “At least this time I can almost believe you. Who knows, by the time you find your next carcass maybe you’ll be good enough to fool me.”
“We live in hope.” I smiled.
“You know, Klein, that broad you found on the train platform’s got a real interesting biography,” the enlightened detective switched gears and bodies.
“Really? No, I didn’t know that.”
“It’s fascinating stuff,” he prodded. “And you know what?”
“What?”
“When I’m done with it, it’s gonna lead right to your friend’s door,” he pointed across the room at MacClough. “I feel it in my belly. And-”
“-your belly’s never wrong,” I cut him off and finished. “There’s always a first time.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “but this ain’t it. I’m gonna tie this all together into one pretty little bundle. And when I do, your ass and his’ll be tucked neatly inside.”
“Thanks for the warning, Detective,” I scratched my ass and yawned to cover the turmoil in my intestines. “Can I go now?”
“You can go,” Mickelson granted my request. “Klein!” he called me back. “Isn’t there anything you can tell me now? Maybe I can keep you clear of the fallout and soften your buddy’s fall. No cop likes to see another cop. . You know what I mean.”
“I know,” I shook my head that I understood. “Mickelson,” I whispered in his ear, “go fuck yourself.” I walked away before the fat man could react.
Mickelson was right. His fucking belly was right. All roads led to John Francis MacClough. I was taking one of those roads when an amused detective shooed me away. MacClough was off limits to me currently. He was too busy entertaining the troops with old war stories from his days on the job to be bothered with the trivia that was me. I get interrogated and he gets laughs. Good thing I never labored under the illusion of fairness.
On my way out, the forensic team relieved me of some of my wardrobe; my green ramie sweater and motorcycle jacket. Nitrate tests again! I was pissed. It was too cold out for this crap. Last time the clothing had been Johnny’s. The cops said it couldn’t be avoided. I saw Mickelson where I’d left him, laughing at my predicament. That was better. Now I was getting laughs, too. Maybe life was fair. I smiled. I left.
Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth
For a guy who was trying to convert himself from an insurance investigator into a writer, I sure didn’t spend much time in libraries. I never had. I never would. It wasn’t that I hated little index cards. Oh, I did hate them, but it went deeper than that. It wasn’t that I didn’t get the Dewey Decimal System. I didn’t. It went back to sixth grade when I took two books-The Jackie Robinson Story and The Babe Ruth Story-that were months overdue and threw them down a sewer behind my elementary school. I didn’t have the money to pay for the late charges nor did I have the courage to ask my folks for the bread. I almost asked Larry Feld, but decided the sewer maneuver would cost me less in the end. I hadn’t had a public library card since. Guilt is a great mystery to me.
Like most of the older buildings in Sound Hill, the library bore a huge metal plaque on one of its flanks declaring it a sight of some historic importance. The Rusty Scupper had such a plaque. It had been a whalers’ meeting hall. The library building had once housed the whale meat, blubber and oil collected by Conrad Dugan’s fleet. Now it housed just so many copies of Moby Dick.
Once inside the old warehouse, I didn’t bother with the pretense of fumbling about and looking lost. I went straight to the front desk. The woman there was fortyish, somber and busy reading The Wasteland and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot. Just some light and cheery stuff for a snowy winter’s day. I wondered if her idea of romance was dissecting small woodland creatures. No, I decided, nothing that fluffy.
She wasn’t a stranger to me nor I to her. In a village the size of Sound Hill, anonymity is just dreamed about. It’s probably the only aspect of New York City life Sound Hillians envied. Sometimes, like now maybe, it was the one thing I missed.
“You’re that Klein fellow,” she snapped and pointed, laying T.S. to rest with respect. At least she didn’t kiss the cover first. “You found the dead woman on Christmas Eve,” she raised an eyebrow, noticing I was without jacket or sweater or proper shirt.
“That’s me,” I winked, “Miss. . Emery,” I read off the engraved, black laminate nameplate, trying to ignore my T-shirt as an issue.
“Miss Emery passed on when I was in high school,” she tisked tisked me. “We keep that nameplate as a memorial to her years of dedicated service.”
Ain’t small town life a grand thing?
“Sorry, Ms. .” I reached around the corners of my memory. Just because I knew her face didn’t mean I knew her name, “Piper. Ms. Piper.”
“Miss Piper,” she fairly hissed.
I hadn’t killed O’Toole, but a few more minutes of this and the next stiff Mickelson and I chatted over would be a product of my handiwork!
“Look, Miss Piper, I need some help,” I pulled out the old newspaper clipping and laid it in front of her. “This is from the New York Times about twenty, twenty-five years ago-”
“It have anything to do with that murder?”
I almost asked which one, but realized she could only mean Azrael’s.
“Could be,” I winked again. I was a good winker. “Official stuff. Hush-hush,” I put my index finger vertically across my lips.
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Ms. Piper nearly flew out from behind her desk. “Come with me.”
I had her. She was hooked. Secretly, everyone thinks they’re Sherlock Holmes. I was kind of partial to Dr. Watson myself.
Out from behind the dark, burdensome desk, Miss Piper displayed a pert, gangly stride that would have been considered cute in her teens. Now it just seemed awkward. My secret Sherlock was pleasantly shaped, slightly bowed at the knees and a little long in the neck. Her face had never been called pretty by anyone besides her relatives, but no one had ever cowered in fear at the sight either. Her hair was mousy brown and wavy, falling here and there about her shoulders. Piper’s eyes were dull copper buttons and the left one sort of drifted away from her nose. She was the type of woman I could just as easily sleep with as walk past in the street.
“Here we go,” she beckoned me to sit before a blue-lighted screen. “All the issues of the Times are on these shelves. Your time-frame issues are in this group here. Let me show you how to work this thing.” Piper plucked out a sheet of microfilm, placed it on a tray beneath the screen and expertly manipulated the print. “You try.”
I tried, getting the hang of it rather quickly. She hung over my shoulder to make sure. I liked the way she smelled. God, I was easy.
“Good,” Miss Piper patted my back. Maybe I was going to get a gold star. “We had a reporter on the Times once,” she offered, her voice half full of pride. I couldn’t be sure about the other half. “Do you know Kate Barnum?”
“No,” I lied and played dumb. I was better at those things than winking.
“Are you certain you don’t know her? She writes for the Whaler now.”
“That’s quite switch,” I turned to Miss Piper.
“That’s a kind way to put it, Mr. Klein.” The other half of the librarian’s voice was sounding kind of nasty.
“How would you put it, Miss Piper?”
“I would call it more of a fall than a switch. Yes,” she seemed to be searching the ceiling for approval, “most decidedly a fall, a very big fall.”
I tended to agree and fed her a few syllables of encouragement: “That’s a shame.”
“You are too kind.” She was properly encouraged. “Kate Barnum has no one to blame but herself. The way she was with boys in school, it’s no wonder her first husband kicked her right out. Drove her second husband to suicide. Now I’m no gossip. .”
“Of course not,” I pushed a tad harder. Why is it that the guilty always deny the obvious?
“Word in town was,” Piper drew her cruel lips close to me, “the city police were trying to build a murder case against her. I don’t think she did it though.”
Yeah, sure she didn’t believe it. Little Missy Piper sounded as convincing as a hungry leopard swearing off fresh-killed gazelle.
“So that’s why the Times let her go?”
“I’m sure it had something to do with it. Her drinking too. But it was the Pulitzer Affair that did it,” the gangly madame let that hang in the air for a minute before going on. “Apparently, Katy was a lock for the Pulitzer Prize a while back. But out of the blue, she goes to her editor and admits to faking some research and using some questionable sources. Imagine the embarrassment.”
“Yeah, just imagine,” I turned my back on Miss Piper. Suddenly, I wasn’t liking the way she smelled. “Thanks for the help,” I choked on my words.
“If there’s anything else I can assist you with. .” she hinted hopefully.
“One thing,” I didn’t turn around. “Would I be way off if I guessed that this Pulitzer thing happened within a year, one way or the other, of her husband’s death?”
Miss Piper’s answer was this: “Are you sure you don’t know Kate Barnum?”
I didn’t reply. I listened to her footsteps fade away.
This microfilm thing was pretty tedious work. I mean I liked newspapers, but this was total sensory overload. I knew it was getting to me when I began rummaging through Mets’ boxscores from April of 1966. About two hours into the ordeal, I found the first articles relating to the trial. You know the kind of headlines; “Reputed Crime Boss Indicted,” “Underworld Trial Set To Begin,” “Government Witness Takes Stand Against Mr. Gandolfo,” “Jury Sequestered,” “Verdict In: ‘Not Guilty’. ” I garnered only inconsequential details from these additional readings. Apparently, Roberto Gandolfo liked to take long siestas in the courtroom and the pressure of testifying made Azrael nauseous and faint. Not very earth-shattering stuff.
Eventually I came to the clone of the article I found behind the snapshot of O’Toole’s deceased kid. And like I suspected there were accompanying pictures; the usual grainy, blurry, newspaper fare. There were headshots of the accused, their attorneys, the prosecuting attorney and of Azrael. Even in this photo you could see some of the life and beauty had already been bleached out of her. Azrael’s face was bloated and her eyes were full of only surrender. And in those eyes I saw the makings of the dead woman I discovered in the snow on Christmas Eve. But there was nothing in these pictures to explain why they had been ripped away from O’Toole’s copy. Maybe I just wasn’t seeing the obvious. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I rubbed my eyes, looked around and slipped the relevant sheets of microfilm into my pants. My ribs were probably sore, but my back hurt so much it was difficult to tell. I replaced the files, minus my deletions, and went for the door. Miss Piper had returned to her reading. When she stood to say her good-byes, I just waved her down, mouthed a silent thank-you and blew her an insincere kiss. Once outside, I removed the acetate sheets from my pants and thought about getting caught. I thought about Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth. It’s funny what you think about.