Dead by Any Other Name (12 page)

thirty

George and I collected
our sleeping bags and the picnic basket Abba had packed for us, and drove down to the lighthouse parking lot. We made our way to Mad John's lair and found him pacing in circles, looking worried.

“What's up, man?” George asked.

“Bad moon rising.”

“Should we go another night?”

“No! We have to go tonight. They'll come tonight, I'm sure
of it.”

“Listen,” I said, “If they do come, I don't think we should do anything rash. The important thing is to identify them, not apprehend them. That's the police's job.”

Mad John and George exchanged a look.

“I mean it, guys.”

We made our way to Mad John's mooring, a muddy little inlet in the riverbank where he tethered his raft to a gnarly old tree. He pulled the raft close to shore, George and I clambered aboard—it was a surprisingly sturdy craft, made of driftwood and other scavenged debris. Mad John untied us, leapt onboard, and pushed us off with his long oar.

We made our way down the river, close to shore, the air a hazy
bluish gray in the falling twilight, the river rippled by a gentle breeze, the raft rocking, the earthy wet smell, the September air warm but not heavy with humidity. Now that we were out on the river Mad John seemed to relax, he started to hum softly. I lay down with my hands behind my head, George joined me, we watched the sky darken above us.

“You okay, Janet?” he asked in an intimate voice.

“Yeah, just a little obsessed with Natasha.”

“Murder is weird, isn't it?”

“What is it that allows a person to go from wanting someone dead to actually planning and carrying out their murder? They have to just shut down some part of themselves, their conscience, their morality, it's an incredible act of denial, almost a form of willful insanity.”

“I think what stops a lot of people isn't right or wrong, it's fear of being caught,” George said. “If people thought they could get away with it, there would be
a lot
more murder. Where I think the denial comes in, is that people delude themselves into thinking they won't get caught.”

“Good point. So there are two denials going on at the same time.”

“Yeah. So you really think Natasha was murdered?”

“I'm sure leaning that way. A lot of people wanted her out of the picture. It's just figuring out who had that weird psychological ability—and the sheer will and drive—to take it from thought to action.”

We were quiet for a minute, Mad John was still humming softly, and in his hum I heard his love for the river. The first stars were growing visible; I wished Josie was with us.

“What was your mom like, George?” I asked.

“Oh, she was pretty great. She was pure Brooklyn Irish, tough and sentimental. After my dad died she worked two jobs—it wasn't easy. Of course she liked her whiskey, and a man now and then. There were five of us kids and Friday nights were everyone's favorite, school and work were over, she'd pour herself a glass of whiskey, put opera on the record player, and make us dinner of baked potato, Le Sueur baby peas from that silver can, and frozen fish sticks. We'd all sit around the table laughing and talking, then she'd shoo us kids out to the street to play. I think she liked being alone with her whiskey, her opera, and her memories.”

“Did you come out to her?”

“When you grow up on the streets of Bay Ridge, there are no secrets. I told her when I was thirteen.”

“What did she say?”

“‘I don't give a shit'.”

“Sweet and simple.”

“Yeah. She loved me good, Janet. You know, she lived to see us all out of house, on our own, I think she was proud of that.”

“Time to cross the river,” Mad John said.

I loved watching as he deftly oared us across the river like a gallant gondolier. There wasn't another boat in sight and in the dusky light it felt like we were rowing into a dream.

We reached Goat Island, it came to a rocky tip but otherwise looked pretty much like the rest of the shoreline. There was a low rock shelf and Mad John steered us to it. He hopped off, grabbed his rope, and pulled the raft close. George and I stepped onto the island with our gear and then Mad John hauled the raft onto land and into a thicket, out of sight.

“Follow me,” he said.

He knew the island well, we clambered up a narrow path to reach the rocky spine. We came to a large clearing pocked with holes that looked recently dug and hastily filled. Mad John stopped and looked around sadly. “This is a sacred spot.” He closed his eyes, held up his hands, and did a few rounds of gibberish chanting, no doubt invoking Native American spirits—and maybe Insane River Rat spirits, too.

After a bit, he shook himself out of his mini-trance, “Come on.” He led us a little ways through some straggly woods until we came to a large rock outcropping. He led us around the side and there was a cave. He ducked inside and we followed.

It was low-ceilinged, dark and dank, slithery and creepy and …
yuk.
Sleeping here would feel like sleeping inside a fish.

“Home sweet home,” Mad John said with his first smile of the day.

“Can't we just sleep outside?” I suggested.

“No! The thieves might spot us and retreat. This way we can hear them and surprise them!”

George, ever practical in spite of himself, had already begun to lay out our sleeping bags and make a little nest. Mad John lit a couple of candles and before I knew it there was something Huck Finny and romantic about being in the cave. Sort of.

We had a nice picnic dinner thanks to Abba, sang
Bye Bye Blackbird
and a few other standards, and by then it was pitch dark.

“Time to wait,” Mad John said, blowing out the candles.

I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to ignore the lumpy-bumpy terrain under me. No luck. I mean, isn't the whole point of evolution so that we
don't
have to sleep on the ground? The idea of doing it voluntarily just seems so … regressive. It was going to be a long night.

But we were here on a mission and these were my buds so I resigned myself to the situation. As my eyes got used to the dark, I saw that the walls of the cave were glistening and there were large bugs crawling on them. Yippee.

“Are you okay?” George whispered.

“Oh sure, I love spending the night inside Moby Dick's bile duct.”

“Zen it out. But I mean are you
okay
okay? You seem distracted
these days.”

“George, I'm cold, clammy, my hip is pulsing with pain, and this place is Bugapalooza, I'm in no mood to get all deep.”

There was a moment of silence and then he asked, “How'd it go with Josie up in Troy?”

“Will you and Abba back the fuck off about Josie, please?”

“
Shhhhh!
” Mad John hissed in a fury.

George smiled at me like a third grader admonished in class, I had to smile back. If Mad John had been my homeroom teacher, I probably would have done better in third grade.

Then we heard it—a scraping sound, a boat being pulled out of the water, onto the island's rocky shore. Mad John motioned us up to the front of the cave and started up a series of birdcalls; some avian amigos answered him. I quickly realized what he was doing—making noise to cover our movements.

Peering out from the mouth of the cave, I made out—through the brush and trees—the dim beam of a flashlight moving up from the river toward the clearing.

Mad John led us slowly out of the cave, all the while carrying on his birdcalls. We inched closer to the clearing from one direction as the beam of the flashlight approached from another. When we were about ten feet from the edge of the clearing Mad John motioned us to stop and crouch, hidden in the brush. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding so loudly in my chest I was afraid the thief would hear it. I took out my phone to take pictures.

The beam appeared at the edge of the clearing. It was impossible to make out the person holding it. Then the flashlight was placed in the crook of a tree branch, its beam shining down on the clearing. It was a man, a tall young man dressed all in black, his face hard to distinguish. He was carrying a shovel and he began to pace around the clearing, looking for a place to dig.

Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized who it was.

He stuck his shovel in the ground.

Mad John cocked his head: time to make our move. I shook my head “no,” an adamant desperate “no.” I had bigger fish to fry than the theft of artifacts. Mad John looked at me, uncomprehending. I raised my camera and took a shot. The flash lit up the clearing, the thief looked up in shock, I took another picture. He fled, crashing through the brush.

“
Let him go!
”

“No!” Mad John said, taking off in pursuit. I lunged and tackled him, we rolled around on the ground, he managed to get out of my grasp, but it was too late to catch the thief, we heard oars splashing in the river.

“What the fuck!!” an enraged Mad John demanded.

“I'm sorry but I had to do that. That kid won't be back after that
scare, he knows we're on to him. And these pictures are going to help me catch Natasha's killer.”

“How?” George asked.

“Trust me.”

Mad John and George gathered around as I pulled up the pictures of Collier Denton's “handyman,” Graham.

thirty-one

The next morning I
went over to Chow for breakfast and hung out in the kitchen while Abba cooked, I always got a kick out of watching her, she was like an athlete or a dancer. The place was even more crowded than usual.

“Is there something going on in town?” I asked.

“Not that I know of.”

I filled her in on what had happened on Goat Island and how I planned on using the photographs to force a little more information out of Collier Denton, who I was going to visit later in the day.

George rushed into the restaurant clutching a copy of the day's
New York Times
. He stopped in the middle of the place and let out a deafening, “
Hallelujah!
”

Abba smiled at me and said, “Somebody got laid last night.” Then she stuck her head through the pass-through, “Take it down a notch, George, it's too early in the day.”

“So you haven't seen it?” he asked.

“Seen what?”

He headed into the kitchen and folded opened the paper. “There's an article on the Hudson Valley in today's
Times
. Listen to this: ‘In one of those serendipitous finds that makes travel writing so rewarding, I happened upon Chow, an unpretentious eatery in the village of Sawyerville. The setting and ambience are down home with a dose of quirk, and the food is nothing less than a revelation. My BLT redefined the classic with fresh-grated horseradish and herb-crusted local bacon on rye toast that could barely contain its multitude of caraway seeds. My lunchmate went into raptures over her sage-flecked chicken potpie, and as for the coconut-pecan-blackberry cake, well, heaven can wait.'”

Abba burst into a grin. Now Abba is not the grinning sort so when they do come, well, the world lights up.

“This calls for a party,” she said. “Saturday night. Here.”

“You are definitely going to need more help around the place,”
I said.

“I'm counting on
you
for that,” she answered with a sly grin.

“We'll see.”

“I gotta run, chicklets. Antonio is putting me on a real
full-size
horse this morning!” George said.

“That's great, where?” I asked.

“Stop condescending to me.”

“All I said was ‘where'.”

“As soon as I bring up the love of my life, you reduce me to some drooling obsessive.”

“Well, George, this isn't the first time I've seen you in this infatuated state.”

“Infatuated state?
You're reducing my passion to an
infatuated state
?
Abba, will you please inform Janet that our friendship is officially over, and that I never want to see or speak to her again.”

Abba nodded.

George puffed himself up and added, “Now I'm going to go and mount Bingo.”

“Wait a minute, isn't Bingo the thirty-two-year-old horse that lives at the Catskill Farm Animal Sanctuary?” Abba asked. “The one that's blind, deaf, and barely ambulatory?”

Pearl appeared at the pass-through to pick up an order.

“Pearl, will you please inform Abba that I am no longer speaking to her,” George said. With that he turned and marched out the door.

Abba and I smiled at each other. A young couple came in, clutching the
Times
.

“Get ready for the deluge.”

“Remember: I need your help.”

“Yeah-yeah.”

“And do you still want to work the Clark Van Wyck fundraiser tonight?”

“I do. What do you think of him?”

“You know, he seems on the up-and-up to me. He's from an old Valley family with not much money left, but his wife, Alice, has
serious bucks. So he's too rich to be a hack, he really loves the Valley,
and his green mania seems sincere. That wife is another story.”

“Oh?”

“She's the power behind that carbon footprint. She's one of these
noblesse oblige
liberal types—it's her family money that's bankrolling him and she's
very
tough and savvy. She's the one who hired the fancy downstate talent that came up with the
New
New York thing. Hey, I kinda like the old New York. I don't trust her as far as I can asana.”

I took all this in. “Yeah, I
definitely
want to work that fundraiser.”