Queens Noir (19 page)

"Pray to Saint Theresa, she'll help you," the Monaghan
voice said.

"She cured Patsy Gibney," said my father.

"It's 7 o'clock. Ye'd be doing the milkin' now," the voice
continued.

"What?"

He repeated it four times before Dad got it.

"Indeed, an' I wouldn't," Dad replied. "I'm finished with
all that now. I'm a stickler."

I tried to explain to Naima my ideas about the agricultural
metaphor outliving its context. She looked at me funny.

As we left, the two men thought they were preparing to
dose an uncooperative beast from a bottle.

"Fuck him," muttered my dad. "Throw it all over him and
let it soak in."

"We're off now, Dad," I said.

He eyed me for a moment, then he said: "The divine diarrhea of the dollar."

I recognized the words of Salvador Dali, and wondered
again just how senile my father really was, and if it might
strike me too.

But not yet, dear God, not yet. For the moment, me and
Naima were going to make a team. We'd get my dad home
and whip Sean into some kind of shape. Rectitude was on the
march again.

he little girl is playing there by herself. She's off in
a corner of the yard by the alleyway where the girls
come out of the Good Shepherd School at 3 o'clock
when the bell rings and walk through to the street. But it's
already late, getting dark, time for all little kids to be home
with their mothers. Nobody can see her there in the alley, he
knows, because he's been watching her awhile from behind
the iron picket fence. She doesn't see him, nobody sees him.
For about the hundredth time, she takes her baby out of the
carriage, fixes its clothes, talks to it, and puts it down again.
He's on the move now, out from behind the fence, walking
quick on stubby legs down the alley. She can't see him coming,
she's got her head in the carriage again.

"Be good now, baby," he hears her say just as he reaches
her and she straightens up and sees him. "Oh!" she says.

He pushes her hard and she flops down like a doll on her
behind. He's down the alley, out the gate, onto Greenpoint
Avenue almost before she starts bawlin'.

He crosses the avenue, pushing the carriage in front of
him fast as he can along the high stone wall between himself
and the dead people buried in First Calvary. He dares not look
left for fear of the Stone Saints high up on their pedestals
standing watch over the graves. Even though he knows they
can't see him because their backs are turned to the street. He knows why this is so because his Nan has told him. Saints give
fuck-all for the likes of the shanty Irish, Nan says. As he rolls
across Bradley Avenue, he sneaks a look at the front door
of the Cork Lounge, where Nan takes him and the dog on
Saturday afternoons, after the stores for a growler of Shaeffer
"to go."

The carriage is big as him but he can push it all right. He
hurtles past the people sitting on the front stoops of the houses, there like always, the mothers hanging out the windows
in their parlors, resting big folded arms on windowsills all up
and down the block, watching. He knows this, so he keeps his
head down behind the carriage, pushing it up the block fast
as he can, up and on his toes, leaning into it like the football
team he's seen practicing in the vacant lots off Review Avenue alongside the Newtown Creek.

Still, he feels the eyes on him, watching. He trips! Hits the
pavement on hands and knees. The carriage rolls forward by
itself, already two squares of sidewalk ahead, but he's up! After
it! Tears stinging his eyes, he grabs the handlebars, just missing
the cars parked at the curb. He rights his ship and sails on up
the sidewalk. His hands are dirty, right knee scraped where his
overalls ripped. They'll ask about that, he knows. He'll say: I
fell, it don't hurt. At the corner, he wheels around onto Starr
Avenue.

For the only time he can ever remember, there's nobody
on his stoop. Home free! He backs up the stoop, dragging the
carriage by its handlebars up the four stone steps and into the
vestibule of his tenement, then down the long, carpeted hallway to the door to the basement stairway, and parks it there
in the dark. No one can see him reach in and take the doll in
its frilly dress into his arms.

"Be good now, baby," he cautions, then lays it back down in the carriage, covering it, head and all, with the pink blanket so no one can see.

He climbs the four flights of stairs, holding tight to the
wooden banister worn smooth by generations of hands, all the
way to the top where he lives with Nan and Aunt May. Nan's
his grandmother and Aunt May's mother and his father's
mother. He knows this because they told him, and his home
will always be with them as long as he's a good boy, and his
mother drinks and his father's a whoremaster. He does not
remember his mother because she dropped him off when he
was eight months and didn't come back. Nan keeps house and
Aunt May goes to work at the phone company. And Aunt
May is the boss of all of them, Nan says when Aunt May can't
hear her. There's an old dog named Dinah lives with them, it's
Aunt May's dog, it won't let him walk it. He reaches up for the
doorknob and goes inside.

"Young man!" Aunt May calls from the parlor. He goes in
to her. She's in her housecoat, sitting in the arthritis chair by
the window. Nan calls it that because Aunt May has that, and
sits in it all the time. Nan's not there, she went to the store.
He sees the open window and pillow on the sill, the sheer
curtain wafting in and out on the summer breeze, before dropping his eyes to the little fox terrier sitting alongside the chair,
studying him, alert as if also waiting for him to account.

"I found it," he says, staring at the dog who stares back,
weighing his words with beady, angry eyes. Then, curling its
upper lip to show fangs, growls from deep down in its little
chest.

"Where did you find it?" Aunt May snaps.

"In the schoolyard."

"Liar!"

"She gave it to me."

Aunt May makes him push it all the way back. As he runs
the gauntlet, he again keeps his head down, eyes to the pavement. The little girl is still there, bawlin', with her mother and
a bunch of little girls. The other little girls are bawlin' too; he
has no idea why. When the little girl sees him, she stops, runs
to the carriage, snatches up her doll and hugs it. But when
Aunt May holds him by the scruff of the neck in front of the
little girl and tells her to give him a good slap right across his
face, she starts bawlin' again. Staked out by bloodthirsty hostiles, his face burns under their piteous stares. In sight of the
Stone Saints across the street giving him the ass, he prays with
all his might that all the windows in all the houses on every
block be nailed shut.

laster dust fell lazily through the air. He watched it idly,
betting on which finger it would land. His right hand
was dominating his field of vision at the moment. His
right hand, and the dust that drifted down from the crappy
plasterboard someone had once used to patch up the ceiling,
so old and crumbled that a loud noise could loosen it.

Like, say, a gunshot.

The dust fell on his ring and middle fingers, which
twitched slightly when it hit them. That was a good thing, he
decided. He moved the other three fingers, then rotated his
hand on the floor where it rested. Even better. He was falling very much in love with the plaster dust, with his working
fingers, with the hand and the wrist that turned it. He did a
quick inventory of the rest of his body. Everything seemed accounted for, or at least attached. Something hurt around the
right side of his rib cage.

Let's try breathing, he thought. Haven't done that for a
while.

He sucked in air, and started to cough violently. The thing
that hurt in his rib cage, which apparently had only been kidding before, began to throb badly. He used the right hand that
he still liked so much to poke cautiously at the spot. It was
tender and painful. But it wasn't bleeding. Protruding slightly
from the inside of the vest was the mashed tip of a bullet.

Michaels pushed himself up from the floor, pointing his
gun unsteadily in front of him.

"You okay?" asked Carter, who was getting to his feet.

"Basically, yeah," said Michaels. "Might have cracked a
rib."

Carter looked at Michaels's vest, which had a neat entry
hole on the front.

"Damn, those things actually work," he said. "Who
knew?"

"Not that guy," said Michaels, pointing in front of him.

The man lying on the floor was groaning weakly, two bullet holes in his back and a pool of blood seeping out from
under him.

"Shot his own man in the back," observed Carter. "Just
because he got in the way. That's cold."

A pile of blue uniforms burst through the door, guns
drawn.

"Oh good, now you're here," wheezed Michaels. "Tell me
you got him."

"Got who?" asked one of the uniforms.

"Wasn't someone supposed to be covering the fire escape?"

"Yeah. Merck. He's still out there. He didn't see anything."

Michaels and Carter looked at each other.

"Two-bedroom apartment," said Michaels. "There's the
door, which was us, and the fire escape, which is Merck.
Where is the fucker?"

One of the uniforms called for EMS. The two detectives
and the other three fanned out across the living room. Carter
took a deep breath, then kicked open a bedroom door. He
waited two beats. Nothing happened.

"Portillo, if you're in there, you know you ain't getting
away," he called. "Make this easy. No one got hurt."

"Wait a second," protested Michaels.

"Shut up, I'm working," said Carter. He barged through
the door, a uniform close behind.

"Clear!" they called a second later.

Carter came out and looked at the second bedroom.

"Portillo, I am not playing!" he shouted. "Don't get any
stupider on me!"

There was no response. Carter sighed, then kicked the
door in.

"Fuck me, it's empty," he said, peering inside. "Guy did a
Houdini. Where'd he go?"

"Hey, detective," called a uniform from the first bedroom.
"Take a look at this."

They all crowded in. There was a floorboard that wasn't
quite flush with the rest. The uniform pulled, and a section
of floor came up. The hole underneath was ringed by a dozen
brick-sized packages wrapped in layers of plastic.

"Crawl space," said Carter, shining a flashlight into it.
"Looks like it goes all the way to the elevator shaft. He's probably gotten to the basement by now."

"Not one of our finer days," said Michaels.

The EMS crew came in and went to work on the wounded
man. Michaels took his first deep breath, regretting it immediately. He pried the bullet out of his vest and tossed it to one
of the uniforms.

"Bag this," he ordered. "Bag the coke. Get Evidence Retrieval in here for prints. I'm gonna ride along with the Swiss
guy."

"I thought he was Latino," said the uniform. "How do you
figure he's Swiss?"

"'Cause of all the holes in him," said Michaels.

The ambulance screeched up the ramp to the emergency room at Queens General, with Carter's Corvette pulling up
right behind them, his bubble light flashing on top. Two RMPs
brought up the rear.

"I want him guarded 24/7," said Carter to the uniforms.
"Two men at all times, and heads up. If this guy wants to finish
the job, he'll come in blasting."

They followed the gurney inside. There was a flurry of
green scrubs and shouting, then the doors to the OR hissed
shut, leaving the two detectives standing with a surgeon.

"How long for the operation?" asked Michaels.

"To take the bullets out, not long," said the surgeon. "But
we got to get Neuro down to take a look at the spine. I don't
think the guy walks again."