Brooklyn Noir (9 page)

I sat on an empty stool in the middle of the wavy bar and ordered a beer. I felt strangely nervous there without my father, like a child about to be caught doing something bad. Everyone knew me. Marty, the round-shouldered bartender, approached first, breaking the ice. He spoke around an enormous, soggy stub of a cigar, as he always did. And, as always, he seemed constantly annoyed by its presence in his mouth; as though he’d never smoked one before, and was surprised to discover himself chewing on it.

“Daniel. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry for your loss.”

He extended one hand, and when I did the same, he grasped mine in both of his and held it for a moment. It had to have been some sort of signal, because the rest of the relics in the place lurched toward me then, like some nursing-home theater guild performing
Night of the Living Dead.
They shook hands, engaged in awkward stiff hugs, and offered unintelligible condolences. Frank Sanchez, one of my father’s closest friends, squeezed the back of my neck absently until I winced. I thanked them as best I could, and accepted the offers of free drinks.

Someone—I don’t know who—thought it would be a good idea for me to have Jameson’s Irish whiskey, that having been my father’s drink. I’d never considered myself much of a drinker. I liked a couple of beers on a Friday night, and perhaps twice a year I would get drunk. I almost never drank hard liquor, but this crew was insistent, they were matching me shot for shot, and they were paying. It was the sort of thing my father would have been adamant about.

I began to reach for the photograph in my pocket several times and stopped. Finally I fished it out and showed it to the bartender. “Who is she, Marty?” I asked. “Any idea?”

The manner in which he pretended to scrutinize it told me that he recognized the woman immediately. He looked at the picture with a studied perplexity, as though he would have had trouble identifying my father.

“Wherever did you get such a thing?” he asked.

“I found it in the basement, by my father’s shop.”

“Ah. Just come across it by accident then.”

The contempt in his voice seared through my whiskey glow, and left me as sober as when I’d entered. He knew, and if he knew they all knew. And a decision had been reached to tell me nothing.

“Not by accident,” I lied. “My father told me where it was and asked me to get it.”

Our eyes met for a moment. “And did he say anything about it?” Marty asked. “Were there no instructions or suggestions?”

“He asked me to take care of it,” I said evenly. “To make everything all right.”

He nodded. “Makes good sense,” he said. “That would be best served by letting the dead sleep, don’t you think? Forget it, son, let it lie.” He poured me another drink, sloppily, like the others, and resumed moving his towel over the bar, as though he could obliterate the mildewed stench of a thousand spilled drinks with a few swipes of the rag.

I drank the shot down quickly and my buzz returned in a rush. I hadn’t been keeping track, but I realized that I’d had much more than what I was used to, and I was starting to feel dizzy. The rest of the men in the room looked the same as when I walked in, the same as when I was twelve. In the smoke-stained bar mirror I saw Frank Sanchez staring at me from a few stools away. He caught me looking and gestured for me to come down.

“Sit, Danny,” he said when I got there. He was drinking boilermakers. Without asking, he ordered each of us another round. “What were you talking to Marty about?”

I handed Frank the picture. “I was asking who the woman is.”

He looked at it and placed it on the bar. “Yeah? What’d he say?”

“He said to let it lie.”

Frank snorted. “Typical donkey,” he said. “Won’t answer a straight question, but has all kinds of advice on what you should do.”

From a distance in the dark bar I would have said that Frank Sanchez hadn’t changed much over the years, but I was close to him now, and I’d seen him only last night in the unforgiving fluorescent lighting of the funeral home. He’d been thin and handsome when I was a kid, with blue-black hair combed straight back, and the features and complexion of a Hollywood Indian in a John Wayne picture. He’d thickened in the middle over the years, though he still wasn’t fat. His reddish brown cheeks were illuminated by the roadmap of broken capillaries that seemed an entrance requirement for “regular” status at Olsen’s. His hair was still shockingly dark, but now with a fake Jerry Lewis sheen and plenty of scalp showing through in the back. He was a retired homicide detective. His had been one of the first Hispanic families in this neighborhood. I knew he’d moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey long ago, though my father said that he was still in Olsen’s every day.

Frank picked up the picture and looked at it again, then looked over it at the two sloppy rows of bottles along the back bar. The gaps for the speed rack looked like missing teeth.

“We’re the same,” he said. “Me and you.”

“The same, how?”

“We’re on the outside, and we’re always looking to be let in.”

“I never gave a damn about being on the inside here, Frank.”

He handed me the photo. “You do now.”

He stood then, and walked stiffly back to the men’s room. A couple of minutes later Marty appeared at my elbow, topped off my shot, and replaced Frank’s.

“It’s a funny thing about Francis,” Marty said. “He’s a spic who’s always hated the spics. So he moves from a spic neighborhood to an all-white one, then has to watch as it turns spic. So now he’s got to get in his car every day and drive back to his old all-spic neighborhood, just so he can drink with white men. It’s made the man bitter. And,” he nodded toward the glasses, “he’s in his cups tonight. Don’t take the man too seriously.”

Marty stopped talking and moved down the bar when Frank returned.

“What’d Darby O’Gill say to you?” he asked.

“He told me you were drunk,” I said, “and that you didn’t like spics.”

Frank widened his eyes. “Coming out with revelations like that, is he? Hey, Martin,” he yelled, “next time I piss tell him JFK’s been shot!” He drained his whiskey, took a sip of beer, and turned his attention back to me. “Listen. Early on, when I first started on the job—years back, I’m talking—there was almost no spades in the department; even less spics. I was the only spic in my precinct, only one I knew of in Brooklyn. I worked in the seven-one, Crown Heights. Did five years there, but this must’ve been my first year or so.

“I was sitting upstairs in the squad room typing attendance reports. Manual typewriters back then. I was good too, fifty or sixty words a minute—don’t forget, English ain’t my first language. See, I learned the forms. The key is knowin’ the forms, where to plug in the fucking numbers. You could type two hundred words a minute, but you don’t know the forms, all them goddamn boxes, you’re sitting there all day.

“So I’m typing these reports—only uniform in a room full of bulls, only spic in a room full of harps—when they bring in the drunk.”

Frank paused to order another shot, and Marty brought one for me too. I was hungry and really needed to step outside for some air, but I wanted to hear Frank’s story. I did want to know how he thought we were similar, and I hoped he would talk about the photo. He turned his face to the ceiling and opened his mouth like a child catching rain, and he poured the booze smoothly down his throat.

“You gotta remember,” he continued, “Crown Heights was still mostly white back then, white civilians, white skells. The drunk is just another mick with a skinfull. But what an obnoxious cocksucker. And loud.

“Man who brought him in is another uniform, almost new as me. He throws him in the cage and takes the desk next to mine to type his report. Only this guy can’t type, you can see he’s gonna be there all day. Takes him ten minutes to get the paper straight in the damn machine. And all this time the goddamn drunk is yelling at the top of his lungs down the length of the squad room. You can see the bulls are gettin’ annoyed. Everybody tells him to shut up, but he keeps on, mostly just abusing the poor fuck that brought him in, who’s still struggling with the report, his fingers all smudged with ink from the ribbons.

“On and on he goes: ‘Your mother blows sailors… Your wife fucks dogs… You’re all queers, every one of you.’ Like that. But I mean, really, it don’t end, it’s like he never gets tired.

“So the guy who locked him up gets him outa the cage and walks him across the room. Over in the corner they got one of these steam pipes, just a vertical pipe, no radiator or nothing. Hot as a motherfucker. So he cuffs the drunk’s hands around the pipe, so now the drunk’s gotta stand like this”—Frank formed a huge circle with his arms, as if he were hugging an invisible fat woman—“or else he gets burned. And just bein’ that close to the heat, I mean, it’s fuckin’ awful. So the uniform walks away, figuring that’ll shut the scumbag up, but it gets worse.

“Now, the bulls are all pissed at the uniform for not beatin’ the drunk senseless before he brought him in, like any guy with a year on the street would know to do. The poor fuck is still typing the paperwork at about a word an hour, and the asshole is still at it, ‘Your daughter fucks niggers. When I get out I’ll look your wife up—again.’ Then he looks straight at the uniform, and the uniform looks up. Their eyes lock for a minute. And the drunk says this: ‘What’s it feel like to know that every man in this room thinks you’re an asshole?’ Then the drunk is quiet and he smiles.”

Marty returned then, and though I felt I was barely hanging on, I didn’t dare speak to refuse the drink. Frank sat silently while Marty poured, and when he was done Frank stared at him until he walked away.

“After that,” he continued in a low voice, “it was like slow motion. Like everything was happening underwater. The uniform stands up, takes his gun out, and points it at the drunk. The drunk never stops smiling. And then the uniform pulls the trigger, shoots him right in the face. The drunk’s head like explodes, and he spins around the steam pipe—all the way—once, before he drops.

“For a second everything stops. It’s just the echo and the smoke and blood on the wall and back window. Then, time speeds up again. The sergeant of detectives, a little leprechaun from the other side—must’ve bribed his way past the height requirement—jumps over his desk and grabs up a billy club. He lands next to the uniform, who’s still holding the gun straight out, and he clubs him five or six times on the forearm, hard and fast,
whap-whap-whap
. The gun drops with the first hit but the leprechaun don’t stop till the bone breaks. We all hear it snap.

“The uniform pulls his arm in and howls, and the sergeant throws the billy club down and screams at him: ‘The next time… the next time, it’ll be your head that he breaks before you were able to shoot him. Now get him off the pipe before there’s burns on his body.’ And he storms out of the room.”

Frank drank the shot in front of him and finished his beer. I didn’t move. He looked at me and smiled. “The whole squad room,” he said, “jumped into action. Some guys uncuffed the drunk; I helped the uniform out. Got him to a hospital. Coupla guys got rags and a pail and started cleaning up.

“Now, think about that,” Frank said, leaning in toward me and lowering his voice yet again. “I’m the only spic there. The only other uniform. There had to be ten bulls. But the sergeant, he didn’t have to tell anybody what the plan was, or to keep their mouth shut, or any fucking thing. And there was no moment where anybody worried about me seeing it, being a spic. We all knew that coulda been any one of us. That’s the most on-the-inside I ever felt. Department now, it’s a fucking joke. Affirmative action, cultural-diversity training. And what’ve you got? Nobody trusts anybody. Guys afraid to trust their own partners.” He was whispering, and starting to slur his words.

I began to feel nauseated. It’s a joke, I thought. A cop’s made-up war story. “Frank, did the guy die?”

“Who?”

“The drunk. The man that got shot.”

Frank looked confused, and a bit annoyed. “Of course he died.”

“Did he die right away?”

“How the fuck should I know? They dragged him outa the room in like a minute.”

“To a hospital?”

“Was a better world’s all I’m saying. A better world. And you always gotta stay on the inside, don’t drift, Danny. If you drift, nobody’ll stick up for you.”

Jesus, did he have a brogue? He certainly had picked up that lilt to his voice that my father’s generation possessed. That half-accent that the children of immigrants acquire in a ghetto. I had to get out of there. A few more minutes and I feared I’d start sounding like one of these tura-lura-lura motherfuckers myself.

I stood, probably too quickly, and took hold of the bar to steady myself. “What about the picture, Frank?”

He handed it to me. “Martin is right,” he said slowly, “let it lie. Why do you care who she was?”

“Who she
was?
I asked who she
is
Is she dead, Frank? Is that what Marty meant by letting the dead rest?”

“Martin… Marty meant…”

“I’m right here, Francis,” Marty said, “and I can speak for myself.” He turned to me. “Francis has overindulged in a few jars,” he said. “He’ll nap in the back booth for a while and be right as rain for the ride home.”

“Is that the way it happened, Frank? Exactly that way?”

Frank was smiling at his drink, looking dreamily at his better world. “Who owns memory?” he said.

“Goodnight, Daniel,” Marty said. “It was good of you to stop in.”

I didn’t respond, just turned and slowly walked out. One or two guys gestured at me as I left, the rest seemed not to notice or care.

I removed the picture from my pocket again when I was outside, an action that had taken on a ritualistic feel, like making the sign of the cross. I did not look at it this time, but began tearing it in strips, lengthwise. Then I walked, and bent down at street corners, depositing each strip in a separate sewer along Fourth Avenue.

He’d told me that he’d broken his arm in a car accident, pursuing two black kids who had robbed a jewelry store.

As I released the strips of paper through the sewer gratings, I thought of the hand in the subway tunnel, and my father’s assertion that there were many body parts undoubtedly littering the less frequently traveled parts of the city. Arms, legs, heads, torsos; and perhaps all these bits of photo would find their way into disembodied hands. A dozen or more hands, each gripping a strip of photograph down in the wet slime under the street. Regaining a history, a past, that they lost when they were dismembered, making a connection that I never would.