Father's Day (2 page)

He’d moved slowly through the narrow corridor to the kitchen as if he’d been afraid to wake someone sleeping on the couch. He’d stood for a long time at the sink and looked out the window at the overgrown backyard, fenced in with chain-link—at a clothesline still strung across the yard, a stone miniature of the Virgin against the fence, the white paint peeling off it, a frozen puddle at its feet. Sunlight was streaming through the window but the house was still cold. He’d opened a few cupboards, saw stacks of dusty plates and glasses. He’d been surprised to see them and then remembered he’d left them there, after putting everything in boxes, his mother’s old clothes, her knickknacks, Chinese dolls, books, his father’s watch collection
and chess set. It had all been packed away, except the dishes.

He’d pulled open the drawers, the silverware rattling inside. He’d reached in and pulled out a knife, held it up in front of his eyes, gleaming, reflecting the light coming through the window. He’d dropped it back in the drawer. It landed with a dull clank.

He’d opened a small broom closet. There had been a mop and bucket inside, a collection of cleansers lined on a shelf. There was a tan nylon jacket hanging from a wire hanger,
MERION GOLF CLUB
stenciled on the breast. It had been his father’s jacket. He’d picked it up working a security detail at a golf tournament. His father had never played golf in his life. His mother had worn the jacket while she worked in the thin strip of dirt along the side of the house, where she’d planted tomatoes and rosebushes. He’d eased the jacket off the hanger as if it was made of silk and tried it on, slipping in one arm at a time and zippering it up the front. He’d run his hand over the raised letters with two golf clubs crossed underneath before taking the jacket off, hanging it up, and closing the door.

He’d tread slowly up the stairs, testing his weight on each step. The banister had felt smooth in his hand, the stairwell dark, as he’d remembered it, as it had been his whole life. The light at the top of the stairs had always seemed to be burned out—his mother was always coaxing his father to fix it, begging him, as if it had been too much to ask, to just change a light bulb.

His father had ignored her pleading for weeks, Lou remembered. Lou had decided to wait for him to leave for work and do it himself. He’d set up a chair under the light and had removed the glass cover. He’d reached for the bulb and had begun to unscrew it when the chair shifted underneath him. He’d suddenly lost his balance, falling from the chair, and tumbling down the stairs. He hadn’t been hurt, just a few bruises. He’d waited to hear about it from his father, waited for him to come upstairs
and lecture him, maybe even apologize for not handling it himself. But he never came. His mother had never told his father what had happened. Lou hadn’t told him either. It had been their little secret.

“How long you off the job now?”

“Long time.”

“You miss it?”

Lou shook his head, watched his eyes turn in the mirror. He abruptly looked away.

“What brings you back, Lou? After everything that happened, you’re the last person I expected to see walk through the door.”

“Some old business to take care of.”

“Is there any other kind?”

Lou pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, dropped it on the counter. Charlie snatched it up, grabbed Lou by the wrist, and slapped it back into his flattened palm.

“I guess I should be saying, ‘welcome home,’ but whatever you’re looking for, Lou, you’re not going to find it around here.”

“See ya, Chahlie, and thanks.”

Lou slipped the crumpled bill back into his pocket and walked out the door. Haverford Avenue was already mired in the evening rush, exhaust fumes rising in the hazy darkness of an early night, coming earlier as late fall pushed toward winter. Long lines of shimmering headlights stabbed his eyes.

He lit a cigarette, started the car, and waited for an opportunity to jump into the congested stream of bumper to bumper traffic. He waited for someone to let him in. No one did. He hit the gas and the car spun wildly in a mad U-turn, rubber screeching against the pavement as he raced toward City Avenue.

He could see the gas station at the corner—the pumps full, people out of their cars, pumping gas, talking into cell phones. Three men stood near the side of the building. They were
dressed in dark baggy jeans down over their hips, checkered boxers protruding. They wore black hooded sweatshirts, their faces hidden in shadow. One had a black Sixers cap angled on his head and a pair of headphones in his ears. One held a tan and white pit bull on a short leash attached to a thick spiked collar. The shortest of the three kicked a soda machine, each successive kick becoming more violent, as if the force of his black boots would make the machine spit out a can of soda from its wounded gut.

The light changed and Lou made a sharp right into a deserted parking lot, behind a long-abandoned bowling alley, its pale concrete wall covered in graffiti, distorted, oversize letters in black and red. A train zipped by on the 100 line behind that. Lou twisted up his head, squinted his eyes, trying to decipher the handwriting on the wall. He couldn’t. He parked in front of the Regal Deli, dropped the cigarette on the ground, and crushed it under his foot.

Sarah Blackwell was supposed to meet him. She’d sounded scared over the phone. She’d called the day before, a Thursday, with a bright sun shining and a cold breeze coming down the street. The birds had decided to stay an extra week, looking haggard and starved, picking among the pebbles for a crumb out of a pizza box or a scrap from a torn garbage bag. They didn’t find much, but they were still singing, the sun still strong enough in the afternoon to keep them hanging around. Lou had decided to take a walk, pick up groceries, get some exercise, have a smoke. The phone was ringing when he got back. He’d heard it from the street through the open window, and stumbled running up the steps, thinking it was his daughter.

Sarah’s voice was low and remote, as he’d remembered it, with a lurking hint of drama always present just below the surface, something untold, something always left unsaid. He hadn’t heard her voice in a lot of years, hadn’t seen her since
her husband’s funeral. He’d tried to picture her, building an image from the fragments he remembered and from some he wished he could forget. He’d barely made out her face that day, behind a black veil as she sat beside her husband’s coffin, her hands folded delicately on her lap. The casket was ornate, solid oak polished to a warm shade of honey, with matching gold handles, each like a knocker on the front door of some Main Line mansion. It was draped in an American flag, surrounded by men in uniform, highly decorated men, the big brass of the Philadelphia Police Department, standing at attention, their heads bowed in mourning, their faces stoic. It was Sam Blackwell in that box, Lou’s old friend and partner in the early days. They’d managed to suppress the news of his suicide and give him a hero’s farewell.

Suicide had grown to epidemic proportions among the ranks of police officers, especially in major metropolitan areas like Philadelphia. But it was bad publicity, bad for the department, bad for the city. It made the public uncomfortable, made them start asking questions, like why a cop with a family and good job and a house in a section of the city where the trash got picked up on schedule would want to put a gun against his head and pull the trigger. It was a good question, Lou had thought, a question he’d asked himself many times.

He’d watched from a hill overlooking the ceremony, jumping at the crack of rifles across a clear blue November sky, thinking how sick he was of attending the funerals of dead cops. It reminded him too much of his father’s funeral—another dead cop who was given a hero’s farewell. But his father had not committed suicide. He’d been killed in the line of duty and deserved every salute from every white-gloved police captain there. If there had been even a hint of resentment left in him, Lou’d kept it hidden, suppressed. He’d buried it with his friend, dropped it into the ground under two tons of black dirt and a
granite headstone with the name of Sergeant Sam Blackwell engraved in block letters.

The Blackwells did have a child, though, a girl named Carol Ann, and now she’d run away. Sarah had asked him for his help and he couldn’t say no. He owed it to her, owed it to Sam really, more than her. He and Sam had spoken about it often, in Farley’s Pub over pints of Guinness and in the gym in the basement of the Nineteenth Precinct. They both had daughters and they both put the uniform on every day knowing it could be their last. There were so many expressions cops used to describe the ways they died. If one of them “bit the dust,” Sam would say, the other one would keep the girls safe. They’d made a promise to each other, like the oath they’d taken to the City of Philadelphia, and if nothing else, Lou was as good as his word.

The lights were blazing
inside the Regal Deli as he pushed through the front door. A line of old men in gray and blue sweaters were perched on revolving chrome stools at the counter. They spun toward the door in unison. Lou immediately recognized one of them, Joe Giordano, Philly P.D. retired, a captain. Giordano had married the daughter of a South Philly party boss, Petey Santi, a real rising star in the political ranks. The daughter was a spoiled brat though, with the hair, the nails, the clothes, and the car. Once Joey had crossed her, there’d never be another promotion in his future. Last Lou heard, Joey had been forced out of the department after his wife had divorced him, had him tailed to the apartment of a high-priced prostitute, Candy Bell. He’d be lucky to stay alive long enough to collect his pension.

“Shut the god-damn door! It’s fucking freezing in here.”

“You got no right to complain, Giordano. You ain’t paying for the heat, or the sandwich for that matter.”

They stared at each other across the dingy linoleum floor,
waiting to see who’d crack a smile first. The place had gone instantly silent. Lou slammed the door behind him and they both broke into laughter. The old men went back to their newspapers and their lemon tea.

In the Overbrook section of the city, the Regal Deli was still a place where a cop could get a free sandwich, hot or cold, a bowl of soup, and a cup of coffee. There always seemed to be a uniform at the counter, warming his hands on a fresh refill, and a couple of detectives in a booth, well into their third meal of the day. There was a week’s worth of newspapers arranged in chronological order by the register. The place was decorated with glossy pictures of old hot rods, race cars, and convertibles—the fluorescent lights reflected against the glowing chrome bumpers and polished glass frames. Pictures of dead movie stars from the fifties posed against a wall of cheap paneling, a posterboard with Marilyn Monroe bent way over, showing a lot of cleavage, her skirt blowing up over her knees. James Dean hung next to her, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes shrouded in smoke. Dead bugs gathered on the windowsill, casualties under a layer of grease.

Lou took a seat alongside Joey Giordano, ordered a corn beef sandwich and a Coke. He fingered a wrinkled newspaper while he waited. Heshy Rigalski was behind the counter, yelling into the phone in a language that sounded Russian, his glasses sliding down his wide nose, a layer of white foam forming on his thick lips. The stains on his apron looked like dried blood. He fixed a curious gaze on his latest customer as he laid the phone gently into its cradle.

“You still carry that piece of iron on your hip like you’re the god-damn Lone Ranger.”

“It’s like an anchor, Hesh. Keeps my feet on the ground.”

“You do look lighter, without the uniform.”

“I eat a lot less corned beef.”

“A man’s got to eat. You don’t eat, you die.”

“I’ll try to stay alive, Hesh, long enough for a last meal.”

“You joke, Louis, but I remember a time when a man lived to eat. He didn’t just eat. Food was something special, something to be savored, like a woman.”

Lou’s sandwich arrived. It was thick with red meat, spilling out onto the plate. He could barely get his mouth around it. He chewed and Heshy watched in satisfaction, like a grandmother spoiling a child. He washed it down with a cold glass of Coke with plenty of ice. Heshy refilled his glass.

“We miss you around here, Lou. You back for good?”

“My mind’s not made up yet.”

A middle-aged waitress, wearing a pair of black stretch pants that looked like they were swelled to the breaking point placed a handwritten bill on the counter. Her graying hair was pulled back tight over her head and her hands were permanently wrinkled as though she’d kept them soaking in a sink full of soapy water. Heshy grabbed the check, crunched it in his hand, and threw it in the garbage. Lou never looked up. Nobody seemed to want his money. He pulled the same crumpled twenty out of his pocket and dropped it next to the empty glass of soda.

“I’m a paying customer, Hesh.”

“Since when?”

“Since I became a private citizen. I pay like everybody else.”

“Want to see how the other half lives?”

“Why not? Who’s the other half, anyway? The drunk behind your building, sleeping in a puddle of his own piss? The two guys getting ready to rip off the gas station at the corner? Those brown bags they’re holding ain’t milk for your mother’s cereal.”

“My mother’s dead, Lou, in a concentration camp, probably weighed sixty pounds when she died. No milk there.”

Heshy’s thick Russian accent had grown heavier. He lifted his dirty apron to his face, wiped his mouth, wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Sorry, Hesh.”

“I know. While we’re on the subject, still no suspect in your mom’s murder?”

“I think they stopped looking. The case has been dead almost as long as she has.”

“Why do you suppose that is? I mean, you being a cop, you should get special attention.”

“If the Philadelphia police don’t make an arrest within the first seventy-two hours after the crime, the odds are cut in half that they’ll ever make an arrest at all.”

“You’re giving odds now?”