Redemption Street (16 page)

“How long has it been?” I asked.

That confused him. “How long has it been since what?”

“Since you had your bedside manner removed. Was it a painful operation?”

“Look, Mr…. Mr. Prager, I’m a—”

“No, Doc,
you
look. I’m not in the mood for the ‘I’m a busy man’ speech you use on the
goyim
. I don’t view doctors named Cohen as the Second Coming, understand? So now take a minute and explain what you mean by a mild stroke. What’s his prognosis? Will there be any lingering effects? You know, minor stuff like that, that the family really wants to know but is too afraid to ask.”

Dr. Cohen was not used to being addressed in such a manner and almost told me so before thinking it through. Though I never once raised my voice, he got that I was dead serious and was apt to make his life unpleasant if he wasn’t forthcoming. So His Majesty deigned to give me five minutes of his time.

There wasn’t that much to tell, really. He called what my father-in-law suffered a TIA, a transient ischemic attack. The brain scan didn’t show any major damage. He would suffer some temporary weakness on his right side and aphasia, a loss of speech. Eventually, his strength and speech would return. Most of the time, he assured me, patients who suffered TIAs didn’t even require therapy. I thanked him and apologized. He didn’t exactly kiss me on the lips, but he seemed relieved to be done with me.

I relayed this information to my mother-in-law and explained that Dr. Cohen would probably be more cooperative in the future. She didn’t ask why. Maybe she assumed Dr. Cohen and I had exchanged secret tribal handshakes. I told her to go home and get some sleep, that we didn’t need her ending up in the hospital, too. She didn’t argue the point. She was exhausted, but hadn’t realized just how exhausted until she heard the positive prognosis. I promised to keep her informed if anything changed, and that either Katy or I would come pick her up later so she could visit Francis.

She gave me a strong Italian hug and held my face between her palms. “You’re a good man, Moses, a good son-in-law. We’re lucky to have you.”

I was pretty certain her husband would have a dissenting opinion, but her love and approval were important to me. “Thanks, Ma. Now get outta here. Go!” I gave her a twenty to more than cover the five-minute ride back to her house. “There’s a cab stand right out front.”

I half hoped Katy had gotten frustrated by the traffic and snow and turned back home to Brooklyn. Hoping was all I could do. Actually, I knew better. She wouldn’t let anything short of a roadblock stop her, and I guess that’s what worried me. Until she arrived I had nothing better to do than go back to the cafeteria. I left word at the nurses’ station as to where I’d be and asked to be paged when Francis was moved into his room.

Sitting alone at the orange Formica table, actually sipping my coffee this time, I tried piecing together the last week of my life in a way that made sense. What I concluded was that I’d been more bored with my life than I’d known. It took mad Arthur Rosen to jostle me enough so I could see it. It was like having your leg fall asleep while you’re watching TV. You’re sort of aware it’s asleep, but you don’t feel the pain until you stand up. My life was like that. Arthur Rosen had made me stand up, and when I did I realized more than just my leg was asleep.

Maybe R. B. Carter’s trying to buy me off
had
rubbed me the wrong way, and maybe I did feel the slightest bit guilty over how I’d treated Arthur Rosen when he came to beg my help, but when I went looking for Arthur I wasn’t looking to make amends, not really. I was looking for a purpose. If Rosen hadn’t written my name on his wall and hanged himself, I might still be looking. I doubt he could have talked me into taking the case. What case? Who was I fooling? There was no case, just a disturbed man’s grief and denial. I was making it up as I went along. Arthur’s suicide had provided a cloak of guilt under which I could freely operate. Eventually, I’d have to go back to restocking Pinot Noir, but for now I was flying.

A pleasant-faced old woman in a candy-striper uniform tapped me on the shoulder. “Mr. Prager … That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

“The last time I checked.”

“The ICU nurse asked me to come down and tell you that your father-in-law’s been moved to Room 344.”

“Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary, that’s what we’re here for. Now, when you leave the cafeteria, walk past the chapel, turn left, and take the far elevator up to the third floor. Make a left out of the elevator and a left at the lounge, and you’ll be on his hall. I hope everything turns out well.”

There he was, his thick, short body laid out like a cadaver. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. He didn’t realize it was me, and his eyes lit up when I came into the room. The light went out soon enough. It wasn’t pronounced, but the right side of his face drooped like a wax mask that had gotten a little too close to a hot lamp.

“You had a stroke,” I said, pulling a chair around to face him. “The doctor says you’ll probably have a full recovery. The weakness on your right side will go away, and you should regain your speech. I sent Ma home to get some rest, and Katy’ll be here in a little while.”

Oddly, I felt myself smiling at him. I don’t know, maybe for the first time since I met him, I was the cat and not the prey. It didn’t last. Droopy face and all, he smiled back. I went out to call my mother-in-law. When I got back he was still giving me the Mona Lisa. I think I was fantasizing about his funeral when he tried speaking.

“‘atch hout ‘ut ‘ou ‘sh ‘or,” he gurgled, almost laughing. “‘atch hout ‘ut ‘ou ‘sh ‘or.”

I tugged my ear. “Sounds like … Charades, what fun.”

But instead of getting frustrated, he just kept repeating those six nonsense syllables over and over and getting quite a kick out of them. I went out into the hallway, for, as usual, my father-in-law had squeezed all the breathable air out of the room.

I got out to the hall just in time to see Katy coming my way. Corny as it was, she started running as soon as she spotted me. We kissed long and hard, but we hugged longer and harder. Being apart had been hell for both of us. When I gave her the rundown on her dad’s prognosis, she began crying with joy. I wanted to ask her about Sarah, about how her trip up had been, but first she needed to see her father.

“You go in and visit. I’ve been in there with him already. I’ll be around when you need me. Go on. I might go down to the gift shop.”

I strolled—hobbled was more like it—down to the newsstand in the gift shop. Not having read anything but the
Catskill Tribune
for the last several days, I was in dire need of a tabloid fix. The
Post
let me down. There were no catchy headlines, just the usual body counts, drug busts, and gloomy predictions of the impending Japanese conquest of the world economy. The
Daily News
wasn’t much better. The body counts weren’t as high, the street value of the drugs was a little less, and Japan would take a little longer to crush the sluggish Western economies under its mighty thumb.

When I walked out of the gift shop, a familiar and unwelcome voice called after me: “Katy told me you’d probably be here.”

“Hello, Rico.”

Rico Tripoli was the third member of the 60th Precinct’s Three Stooges. He lived up here. His wife, Rose, was Katy’s cousin on her mom’s side. I hadn’t laid eyes on Rico since 1978 and was better for it. We’d once been close as brothers, closer in some ways. Now, as far as I was concerned, we were still as close as brothers: Cain and Abel. It was Rico who’d gotten me mixed up with the Maloneys in the first place. But he hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart. He’d tried to use me, to play me like a fool.

“I’m here with Rose to see the old man,” he said.

“So go see him.”

“After three years, that’s all you got to say to me?”

“All right, how about ‘fuck you’?”

He wagged an angry finger in my face. “I did what I had to do for me and mine.”

“Who you trying to convince? If it’s me, don’t waste your breath.”

Rico’s once-lush black hair was turning decidedly gray, and even under the muted light of the hospital lobby I could see the young buds of gin blossoms creeping along the sides of his nose. He could always hold his liquor, but I wondered if it wasn’t beginning to hold him.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t’a met your wife.”

“Look back at things however you want, Rico. You’re the one that’s got to live with what you did.”

“I thought after all this time you could gimme a break.”

“You want forgiveness, the chapel’s over that way.”

“Fuck you, Moe.”

“That’s better. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

Walking away, I heard him call out to me. “Get your shield yet?” he taunted loudly enough for the entire lobby to hear. “That’s right, you got a cane instead. How’s the wine business and that asshole brother of yours?”

I kept walking, but he wasn’t finished.

“I made my big case. I got my name in the papers. I got my gold shield.”

I turned around. “Good. Now when you get to hell you and Judas will have something to compare. I told you three years ago, Rico, table scraps are table scraps.”

When I got back upstairs, Rico’s wife, Rose, was just coming out of Francis’ room. Even before the falling out between her husband and me, Rose hadn’t much use for me. I think she saw me as a threat. She was his second wife and viewed every aspect of Rico’s earlier life with suspicion.

“Did he find you?” she asked without bothering to say hello.

“He found me.”

“I wish you two would kiss and make up already. He’s driving me crazy.”

“Till death do you part, Rose.”

“Yeah, and if he keeps drinkin’ the way he’s been drinkin’, that’ll be about a year from now. What he do to you that’s eatin’ at him?”

“You’d have to ask him about that,” I said. “Besides, the way I remember things, you never much cared for me, anyway.”

“That was then.”

“It’s too late. If it means anything, I miss him, too, sometimes. But you can’t go backward. You can’t make yourself forget. And even if I could, he wouldn’t forget. He would know. Have a good life, Rose.”

She shook her head in disdain. “You’re a cold-hearted son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, maybe. Maybe.”

I put a halt to further discussion by stepping into Francis’ room. Katy was holding his hand, recounting how much she loved their trips to Coney Island when she was a kid. He was transfixed by her. He did love her so. When he caught sight of me, he screwed up his face into that waxy half-smile. I imagine if Katy wasn’t there he would have started with the syllables again. I signaled for Katy to come talk with me outside.

“Did Rico find you?”

“No,” I lied. “I must’ve missed him.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I saw Rose, though, and gave her my best. Listen, I’m gonna go back to the house and get your mom. When we get back here, you and I can talk. Okay?”

“Okay, but first you’ve gotta pay the price.”

We kissed, and the rest of the world fell away, if only for a few seconds.

Chapter Ten
December 3rd

I had one more week to go tilting at windmills. That was it, Katy I and agreed. My wife was an intelligent, sometimes annoyingly perceptive woman. She noticed the damage to my car almost immediately and could see I was itching to get back to whatever it was I was playing at up in Old Rotterdam. She saved her questions, because she trusted me and, given her dad’s stroke, probably didn’t want to hear the answers.

Her dad was already improving, having regained most of his strength and some of his speech. He’d be coming home in a day or two, and she said I’d just get in the way. I didn’t argue the point. Though she never broached the subject, Katy knew Francis and I weren’t ever going to be fishing buddies.

She had already left for Brooklyn to fetch Sarah when I got out of the shower. I could have left last night, but I wasn’t
that
anxious to get up to Old Rotterdam. Sam and Mr. Roth were entertaining enough, but my wife had it all over them. Besides, there was a stop I wanted to make on the way to the Catskills that wouldn’t have been possible the previous evening. Too many people milling about.

“Hello, you son of a bitch,” I whispered to my father-in-law as I walked into his room.

He was silent.

“What’s the matter? Nothing to say? You were pretty talkative the other morning.”

He gave me that cruel smile, though fuller, less waxy, now that he’d regained his strength. He pointed to his mouth and shrugged.

“Don’t gimme that bullshit. I was here yesterday. I heard you talking to Ma and Katy. So what was it you wanted to say to me the other day?”

He shrugged his shoulders again. “I ‘orget.”

I just walked out. I thought I heard him laughing, but that might have been my imagination.

Sam fairly did a jig when I loped through the lobby of the Swan Song Hotel and Resort. Oddly, I nearly danced one myself. I actually hugged the old bastard when he came around the counter.

“Thank God! My best full-price guest returns.”

“Your only full-price guest, you mean. I’m happy to see you, too, Sam.”

“Don’t mince words. So—how’s your father-in—”

“Still breathing, unfortunately.”

“A real romance between you two, huh?” As was his habit, Sam wagged his finger at me. “Be careful,
boychik
, you should watch out what you wish for. You might get—”

I grabbed the old comic’s shoulders. “What did you just say?”

“What?”

“What you just said.”

“What?”

“
Oy
, Sam. No, what’s on second. Who’s on first.”

“I don’t know.”

“Third base!” we exclaimed simultaneously.

“Good,” I said, still laughing, “now that we got Abbott and Costello out of the way, what did you say about watching—”

“Watch out what you wish for—”

“—you might get it,” I finished. “That’s what he was saying. ‘Watch out what you wish for.’ But why would he say that to me?” I mumbled.