Redemption Street (3 page)

Quite a prodigious amount of dust had settled on my copy of the 1966 Abraham Lincoln High School edition of
Landmark
. That was the name of our yearbook. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because the school paper was called the
Lincoln Log
and all the other good “L” words were taken. When I started thumbing through the yellowing pages, it struck me that
Losers
might have been a more apt name than
Landmark
Almost everybody looks like a loser in his or her high-school yearbook, even the beautiful people.

I think the only saving grace in ‘66 was the conservative nature of everyone’s attire. The real social upheaval was just getting started, Vietnam was still far, far away from Ocean Parkway, and the Summer of Love was a year in the future. The girls’ outfits were strictly proper, and the boys wore all-white shirts, thin ties, and skinny lapels. Boys still wore their hair short and parted. There were one or two Beatle haircuts. The girls … well, the girls featured lots of bangs and hair spray. Pages and pages of black-and-white photos of future Donna Reeds and Dr. Kildares. Today, I guess you’d say the boys looked like Elvis Costello clones. But Karen Rosen was nowhere to be seen.

Katy had been right to suggest I try and exorcise Karen’s faceless ghost before going to bed. I went to bed all right, but not nearly to sleep. It was good that Katy was working late in the studio or I imagine I would have tossed and turned her to distraction. Admitting defeat, I snuck into the living room and took a few fingers’ worth of Dewar’s.

Sure, I owned a wine shop, but I wanted a real drink. The kind of stuff that didn’t need to breathe or chill, that didn’t have legs, a nose, or hints of pepper and berries. The kind of stuff that burned going down. I couldn’t lay it all at Karen Rosen’s dead feet. I suppose maybe I was a little more bored with our precious wine shop than I’d been willing to admit.

I stared at the phone like a nervous teenager. What was I going to say? To whom would I say it? Which one of my old friends was going to get the midnight call? It didn’t really matter, because I had old friends in name only. Over time I’d seemed to shed friends as a snake does skins. They tell me it’s natural. Things change. People change. They get married. They have kids. They get divorced. They stop smoking. They take up golf. Some die. I’d accelerated the shedding process by becoming a cop, not the most popular career choice for a college student in the late sixties. Though cops were no longer on the top of everyone’s shit list, friendships are hard to rekindle. Both parties need to be up for the awkwardness of it all. More often than not, it was like a one-armed man trying to light a fire with two sticks.

I picked the phone up a few times, started to dial once or twice, imagining the conversation.

Hey, Bob, it’s Moe, Moe Prager…. Sorry it’s so late. Nothin’s wrong…. Three kids, huh? Yeah, I heard you owned a bread route…. No, I’m off the job four years next month…. I fucked up my knee. Listen, anyway, what I was wondering was, do you remember Karen Rosen from Lincoln? That was Karen Bloom, Bob, and she swore to me she was a virgin. Yeah, I know, she swore that to everyone…. So do you remember—No, huh? Yeah, sounds good. We’ll have to get together. Bye
.

The thought of a few conversations along those lines rocked me right to sleep there in the living room. That, and four more fingers of scotch.

Chapter Two
November 25th

The sun was up and bright and felt warmer on my face than it had any right to feel so late in the year. Katy and Sarah had already gone by the time I hit the street. They’d left early for the trip upstate to the Maloneys’ house in Dutchess County. This way Sarah could have a long visit with her grandparents and Katy could help my mother-in-law prepare the holiday fixings. I’d head up myself after work. In the wine shop, the day before Thanksgiving is our second-busiest day of the year, so I decided to prepare for the inevitable onslaught by going to the gym to play at working out.

I felt pretty good, having last night abandoned Dr. Dewar’s sleep remedy. Twenty-four hours’ worth of perspective had let Karen Rosen recede back into the netherworld from which she had come. I figured I had enough of my own skeletons in the closet and didn’t need to borrow anyone else’s. Maybe someday at a reunion or something her name would come up and my curiosity would be satisfied. Until then …

“Mr. Prager, sir,” an unfamiliar male voice called my name as I pulled up the garage door.

It wasn’t a threatening voice. It was stiffly formal. The voice knew who I was, but didn’t want to advertise the fact.

“Yes.” I turned, matching formality with formality. “What can I do for you?”

The deep voice belonged to a slight man. The first thing I noticed about him was his suit, a blue pinstriped business affair. Though not the most common attire in Sheepshead Bay, blue pinstripe usually didn’t make passersby stop and stare. It was the cut of it, I think, that got my attention, so perfectly matched to the man who wore it that it seemed a second skin.

“Mr. Prager,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My employer would like to see you.”

The suit gestured with his arm. My gaze followed the tips of his thin fingers to the point where my hedges bent around to the sidewalk. The nose of a black Lincoln limo was clearly visible. During the spring or summer I wouldn’t have been able to see another inch of the car, but the rest of the landed whale was now quite visible through the leafless hedge.

“Tell him to look out the window. If he avoids the big branches, he should be able to see me just fine.”

Blue Suit smiled. He had perfect teeth, too, and, apparently, appreciated my wit. “The car, Mr. Prager, please.”

Unconsciously, I tapped the waistband of my pants to reassure myself. Yes, my .38 was there. Old cop habits die hard. I told myself I still carried the gun because of the wine shop, which was mostly true. I also think I carried it because I could. I didn’t feel particularly threatened by the suit. It was just that the perfect tailoring, the perfect teeth, and the impeccable manners put me on edge. Perfection has that effect on me. It’s so out of place in Brooklyn.

The movement of my hand did not escape the suit’s eye. He smiled more broadly, showing off still more of his dentist’s handiwork. “I assure you this is neither
Candid Camera
nor a pantomime of
The Godfather
. The car, please.”

Blue Pinstripe opened the Lincoln’s rear passenger door for me, but did not follow me into the black limo. Instead, he closed the door behind me and placed himself half a football field ahead of me, behind the steering wheel of the Lincoln. A thick pane of dark glass rose up, blocking my view of the suit. Turning, I noticed I was seated across from a man whose head was bathed in shadow. Though it was evident I was staring directly at him, he seemed in no rush to come into the light, where I could see him.

“Thank you,” he said, still refusing to lean forward, “I appreciate you taking the time.”

“Look, can you just say what you’ve got to say?” I asked impatiently. “I’ve got to go to the gym and watch other people work out.”

He leaned forward slightly, but not quite enough to let me have a good clean look. He held his hand out to me, though not to shake. There was a picture in it. He didn’t have to tell me to take it.

It was a faded color snap, a teenage girl in pink pajamas with a Siamese cat curled in her lap. She had a disarming smile, a crooked nose, and a poofy hairdo. There was a big stack of 45s at her feet, a portable record player—the kind with a bulky tone arm that you had to put loose quarters on to keep it from skipping—to her left, and a makeup table behind her.

When I’d taken what my host considered enough time, he said, “Karen Rosen.”

I recognized her, finally, but now something else nagged me. I knew something about her. What was it? I wondered. What was it?

“Her brother came to see you the other day at your place of business,” said the man in the shadow. “Arthur Rosen, a shabby fellow with—”

“My memory’s fine,” I said. “So now I know his name, but not yours.”

“Carter, my name’s R. B. Carter. Have you ever heard of me?” he asked with genuine curiosity, now extending his right hand to me for a shake.

“No,” I answered, pulling his hand as I shook it, forcing him out into the light.

His face meant less to me than his name. It was a plain enough face. There were calm blue eyes, a straight but round-tipped nose, prominent lips, a too-pointy chin. His eyebrows were overly thick and probably required some cosmetic antitrust procedure to prevent them from merging. His ears were small and close to the skull. He had unremarkable brown hair, parted on the right. I guessed he was a little bit older than me. His palm was dry, his grip self-assured. And, like his errand boy up front, Carter wore a suit that probably cost more than the car. It didn’t, however, fit him quite so perfectly.

“I am in real estate,” he let me know.

“My house isn’t for sale.”

He had an icy-cold smile. “I am in real real estate, Mr. Prager. Your house would be worth less than loose change to me. I own the buildings that Trump, Helmsley, and Tisch don’t.”

“Somebody’s got to eat the crumbs, I guess.”

He didn’t like that, but resisted taking the bait. “I do not enjoy the spotlight. Having my name pop up in the
Post
increases neither my holdings nor my ego. Did you know, I own the building that houses City on the Vine?” Carter offered it as a boast, but it sounded like a threat. “That is your wine shop, if I am not mistaken.”

“If you want to raise the rent, talk to my brother. And what has this got to do with Karen Rosen?”

He looked almost relieved. “You don’t remember her, do you?”

“Now that I’ve seen this picture, I remember her face, yeah. But do I remember anything about her or her brother? No, I guess you’re right, I don’t.”

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you would recall Andrea Cotter.”

“Oh my God!” I was light-headed. “The fire.”

Yes, the fire. When I closed my eyes I could still see the headlines of the Sunday papers:

SEVENTEEN DEAD IN CATSKILLS INFERNO

August of ‘65, I think, a Saturday night. Three girls from my high school were up waitressing at a run-down Borscht Belt hotel. Some drunken asshole fell asleep smoking a cigarette, and the workers’ quarters went up like a Roman candle. The building was already collapsing by the time the volunteer fire departments arrived on the scene. There was nothing to be done but watch and help treat the people that got out alive. Unfortunately, most of the dead, the Lincoln girls included, got the worst and least accessible accommodations. It was a right of passage, I remembered the hotel manager saying. The new staff suffered their first year. For them there would be no better beds the second year. No second year at all. Nor would there be yearbook pictures. The dead girls were Karen Rosen and Andrea Cotter. I couldn’t remember the third girl at all.

Suddenly, it was stiffling in the rear of that limo. “But what’s this got to do with you?”

“Maybe I
should
let Arthur Rosen hire you,” Carter sneered. “You seem not to be able to put two and two together.”

“That’s not a fuckin’ answer.”

“My sister Andrea died in that fire, too, Mr. Prager.”

To label what I felt for Andrea Cotter a crush is both inadequate and inaccurate, but there is no single word to describe what my teenage heart went through. I was as much in awe of as in love with her. She was no goddess. Her hair was dirty-blond, straight. She was round-faced with unremarkable blue eyes. As I think back, Andrea did have a rich mouth. Her lips were lush and pillowy. That’s it, though. You know how some people aren’t beautiful to look at or anything, yet there’s this energy, an aura about them. There was this magical way Andrea carried herself that drew people to her.

She was a little stocky, her legs were too thick, her shoulders too broad, but she moved gracefully as a tree in the wind. She danced, was a cheerleader, acted in the school play, sang. In spite of her effortless popularity, Andrea never lorded it over anyone. She was perfectly approachable, though I never dared. I guess I imagined she would be. What I think I was most awed by was her poetry. Her words seemed to bypass my eyes, seeping into my skin. Hers were the only words unaccompanied by music that moved me. Andrea Cotter did more for my understanding of poetry than any of my English teachers.

So moved by her, by her words, I wrote a poem. Editor of the school literary magazine, Andrea published my one foray into the world of verse. The poem was about her, of course. At least she inspired it. In my teenage formulations of the universe, I prayed she would recognize my longings for her in my words. On the other hand, I was panicked that she might indeed recognize those longings. I got my answer shortly after the magazine was published. I was sitting on the Coney Island boardwalk—the same boardwalk I would later patrol as a cop—watching the waves roll onto the beach.

“Excuse me.” Andrea Cotter’s voice was eerily tentative. “You’re Moses Prager, aren’t you? I love your poem. I wish I could inspire someone to write like that.”

She took a copy of the magazine out of her bag and asked me to autograph my poem. When I finished, she just smiled and walked away. I think it was the last time I ever saw her.

“Carter … Cotter.” I was incredulous, drifting back to the present. “You’re Rudy Cotter!”

“Was,” he corrected, “Mr. Prager, was. The name’s R. B. Carter now.”

“I had a terrible crush on your sister,” I said, feeling immediately embarrassed. “She had me autograph her literary magazine.”

He yawned with excitement.

“What’s this all about?” I repeated. “The girls have been dead for fifteen years already.”

“Sixteen, to be precise. They have been dead these many years, but the Rosens have never been able to accept it, especially that crazy Arthur. The parents, at least, are dead, but that lunatic is obsessed.”

“Obsessed with what?” I wondered. “Dead is dead.”