Long Island Noir (31 page)
The morning was cold and quiet. Nothing in the harbor stirred. Way off at the breakwater, the fresh white snout of the Port Jefferson-Bridgeport ferry pushed into the calm harbor, its horn a flat
wonk
,
wonk
,
wonk
. The docks and the boats in their moorings were heavy with snow. Everything seemed dulled, arrested, killing time. Pylons looked like they were wearing chef’s hats.
From a second-story deck of Danford’s Hotel, Lonnie Lonigan swept the marina parking area with a cheap pair of field glasses, the kind that pop out of a wallet-sized packet.
“I can’t see a fucking thing with these,” he said. “This is what they give you on the force?”
His brother-in-law Jimmy, the cop, said, “Fix the focus. You gotta fix the focus.”
“I did fix the focus.”
“You can’t see the ferry?”
“Of course I can see the ferry,” Lonnie said. “Of course I can see the ferry. The ferry’s big. We’re not looking for big things, are we?”
“I’m just saying,” Jimmy said. “Let me see.”
He took the glasses from his brother-in-law. Lonnie was more like his older brother—fourteen years separated Lonnie from his sister, Jimmy’s wife. Sometimes he acted like Jimmy’s father. Lonnie had walked his sister down the aisle, and the one time Jimmy got caught cheating on her, Lonnie broke his nose. Bob Foote held his arms, and Lonnie broke his nose. “Not for cheating,” Lonnie had told him, “for getting caught.” Jimmy never forgot it.
Jimmy peered into the parking lot with little satisfaction. “They worked okay in Vegas.”
“You brought these to Vegas?”
“Fucking A, I brought ’em. I wanted to see everything up close.”
“How much closer can you get to a hand of cards?” Lonnie said.
“Not for the tables—the shows, the shows.”
“You saw shows?”
“Sure I saw shows. They got shows everywhere.”
“What kind of shows?”
“Everything, Lonnie, I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
Jimmy’s shoulders slumped. “Is this some kind of test?”
“I’m interested,” Lonnie said. “I’m just asking.”
“You’re never just asking.”
“Come on, Jimmy, tell me. I can’t stay at the skins show the whole time.”
“You will.”
“But if I don’t—what else they got?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I told you. They got tigers, white tigers … everything.”
“You’re a goddamn idiot.” Lonnie grabbed the glasses.
“You know—” Jimmy stopped himself.
Lonnie asked him what.
“Nothing.”
“No,” Lonnie said, “what? I want to hear this—are you fronting off?”
“I’m a goddamn cop, Lonnie, you know that? You could show a little respect.”
“Or what?”
Jimmy pointed to the parking area’s entrance. “There he is.”
“There’s who?”
“Your friend.”
“I don’t see shit,” Lonnie said.
Jimmy pulled the field glasses from his eyes. There, in the distance, was Bob Foote’s Monte Carlo, smoke puffing from its exhaust.
Lonnie said, “Right on time.”
“You sure he don’t know who’s calling?”
“Bob? He don’t know shit.”
“He’s smarter than he looks,” Jimmy said.
“You’re smarter than you look. What’s that tell you?”
Bob Foote rolled to a stop at the pair of orange traffic cones that reserved a parking space. The car next to the reserved space, a Plymouth Gran Fury, was just like the voice had described it: a cream-colored, four-door sedan with cardboard folded over the license plates. He put the Monte Carlo in park, got out and moved the cones, got back into the driver’s seat, and pulled alongside the Fury and cut the engine.
Bob Foote got out of his car. He went to the passenger side, opened its door wide, and stepped aside. He counted to ten, then he pulled the seat forward and stepped aside again. This, he assumed, was in order to indicate to whoever was watching that no one was in the car with him. He counted to ten again. Then he opened the trunk, stepped aside, counted. He got back inside his car, his heart pounding.
On the seat alongside him was a shoebox, wrapped in Christmas paper, a big red bow in the middle. He’d followed the instructions exactly, exactly how his “friend from the mall” told him. He’d gone to the bank, he’d withdrawn $5,000—almost every nickel in his account—and he’d stacked it in the box, using newspaper to fill up the open space. Now he waited, his eyes fixed straight ahead at the ferry. It seemed almost still in the water, but a few more loud blats on the horn and into the dockside it bumped. Moments later, its wide mouth opened slowly, slowly, slowly, down toward the algaegreen and brown concrete ramp.
Three sharp taps on the Monte Carlo’s trunk startled him. A hooded man walked briskly past. When the man had reached the docks, Bob Foote got out of his car, the box in his hands. He didn’t look anywhere but at the ground. He approached the hood of the parked Fury, placed the shoebox just behind the ornament, and returned to his car. He started up, backed out, and gave three toots on the horn.
Lonnie watched the Monte Carlo roll the length of the parking area. It followed in line behind the half-dozen cars that had disembarked the ferry, and turned right onto Main Street heading up the hill toward Setauket.
“Good boy,” Lonnie said. “And my apologies to the Missus.”
He was about to pocket the field glasses when he noticed the punk—a greasy kid with hacked-up hair, jeans painted-on tight, and an earring reflecting sunlight off his lobe.
“What the …” Lonnie muttered.
The punk lingered at the Plymouth’s hood, looking this way and that. Then he went for the box.
Lonnie burst out onto the Danford’s deck.
“Hey!” he shouted.
The punk tucked the package under his arm and ran.
He ran like a gazelle.
Lonnie ran too. He ran like a hippo. Three car lengths, he was sucking air so hard it burned. Four, he doubled over, clutching at his left arm, coughing from his throat into his colon. He tried to call out to Jimmy, but he couldn’t get enough air to squawk. The kid hit the docks, his feet flying, before Lonnie hit the pavement facedown.
The moment he heard Bob Foote honk, Jimmy started back toward the Fury from the docks. He walked slowly, the hood pulled tight around his face. He wanted this to work perfect, he wanted to pay Bob Foote back, even if it wouldn’t get him a nickel. He wasn’t sure how, but he was certain Lonnie would scam him on his cut. By the time he saw the punk with the package, the guy’s Converse sneakers were slapping the dock and coming straight for him.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Police!”
The punk threw a shoulder into Jimmy’s rib cage and sent him flying onto the deck of a moored cruiser. The snow broke Jimmy’s fall, but the thud took the wind out of his lungs. The kid swung onto the ferry, and took a staircase up to the passenger deck.
* * *
That’s when Bob Foote returned in the Monte Carlo. He took the same spot alongside the Fury and leashed up his schnauzer. He walked her over to the fallen man, Lonnie Lonigan, facedown in the snow. Several people had gathered around.
“Shouldn’t he be faceup?” Bob Foote asked.
One of the onlookers said he didn’t have a pulse.
“Oh,” Bob Foote said. “You’re a doctor?”
He continued to the dock, where he advised the dockmaster to call an EMS.
Jimmy pushed himself up from the deck. He brushed snow from the rungs that led back to the dock, and carefully pulled himself up one slow, slippery step at a time. Something had gone out in his back; it hurt him to reach, it hurt him to step, it hurt him to breathe. Probably a busted rib at least, he thought, maybe two. When he reached the top rung, his face even with the dock, he looked straight into the tips of a pair of desert boots.
“Oh, hello, officer,” Bob Foote said. “Do you need a hand?”
He snapped the right boot square into Jimmy’s teeth. The cop flew back flat on the deck. The schnauzer peered over the edge and barked at Jimmy’s prostrate form.
“You have a happy holiday,” Bob Foote said, “you hear me?”
He turned and boarded the ferry. It felt colder than he’d expected. With the successful outcome of their little prank, the idea of taking a ride on the water seemed a bit unnecessary, if not absurd. But it’s what his son had insisted—his price for helping out—and he climbed the steps to the passenger deck to find him. That might not be as easy as it seemed. Cliff wouldn’t be the only greasy little punk with hacked-up hair and the jeans painted-on tight. But he would be the only one who’d ever given him a Christmas gift worth a shit.
Q
ANTA
A
HMED
, MD
is an associate professor of medicine at Stony Brook University. Her first book,
In the Land of Invisible Women,
was a memoir of life as a doctor in Saudi Arabia. She contributes regularly to the Huffington Post, and her articles and essays have appeared in the
Jerusalem Post,
the
Christian Science Monitor,
the
Guardian,
and the
Wall Street Journal
. She is the first physician and Muslim woman to be selected as a Templeton-Cambridge Fellow at the University of Cambridge, England.
J
ANE
C
IABATTARI
is the author of the collection
Stealing the Fire
and has had stories published in the
Literarian
,
KGB Bar Lit
,
Chautauqua
,
Literary Mama
,
VerbSap
,
Ms.
, the
North American Review
,
Denver Quarterly
, and
Hampton Shorts
, among others. She has received three Pushcart Prize special mentions and fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
R
EED
F
ARREL
C
OLEMAN
, author of thirteen novels, has been called the “noir poet laureate” in the Huffington Post and a “hard-boiled poet” by NPR. He has won the Shamus Award for Best Novel three times and has been twice nominated for an Edgar Award. Coleman has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony awards. He is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and lives with his family in Suffolk County on Long Island.
