The James Deans (15 page)

I SLEPT LIKE a baby. There were no ominous dreams in which Larry morphed into Rico or the cigar girl into Brightman’s wife. There were no dueling pistols in the humidor, nor was my father-in-law dressed like a jester. He did not cackle or forewarn. I don’t think I dreamed at all.

When I got up, Katy talked around Larry’s offer. Eventually we’d get around to discussing it, but there was little doubt she would tell me to follow my heart. As it had once led me to her, she knew to trust it. She also understood I needed to speak to Aaron first of all. Dealing with my big brother would be a more complicated affair. Beyond the obvious issue of our business partnership, he had never really approved of my being a cop. It was Aaron who breathed the biggest sigh of relief when I was put out to pasture. I had every reason in the world to believe he would not be so accommodating as my wife if I chose to go back.

“I’m going to—”

“I know where you’re going, Moe. Kiss your brother for me.”

I was around the corner from City on the Vine when fire engine sirens began blaring. I pulled to the right. So did the guy behind me, but instead of pressing his brake pedal he used my back bumper to slow his forward momentum. Several decades past the age when I considered cars something worth fighting over, I got out of the driver’s seat calm as could be. Besides, it had only been a hard tap. Unfortunately, the guy who hit me was in his early twenties and in no mood to deal with reality or responsibility.

“Why the fuck you stop so short? What the fuck you—”

I put my palms up. “Whoa. Take it easy.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to take it easy,” he barked, leaning over the nose of his car. “Look at this shit.”

Frankly, I didn’t see what shit he was talking about. Beyond the old dings and dents in my bumper, there didn’t seem to be any fresh damage. His bumper, though pretty well flush to mine, did not appear any the worse for wear.

“I’ll pull up a few feet,” I said, turning toward the front of my car.

He grabbed my arm. “Wait a second, motherfucker. You ain’t running on me.”

He had just taken two big steps over my patience threshold. I yanked my arm toward the point where his thumb and index finger met, easily freeing myself, grabbed my old badge out of my back pocket, and shoved it into his face.

“How’s your eyesight, asshole? Can you seen that well enough?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I—”

“This moment here is when you shut up. Like I said, I’m going to pull up a few feet so we can see if there was any real damage done.”

This time, he didn’t grab me. Even if he was so inclined, he was too busy rubbing his face to make sure my badge hadn’t left a permanent impression. I inched the car forward. When I returned to the back of my car, the other guy was on his knees now rubbing his front bumper instead of his face.

“Everything looks okay,” he said sheepishly. “Why don’t we just forget about this, okay?”

Then he mumbled some other words that seemed to run together. Something funky was going on with my ears. It was just like that day in Joe Spivack’s office. I noticed distinct sounds rising out of the din: a jackhammer, the squeal of truck brakes, a guy begging quarters and cursing people when they said no. Then it all fused together.

“Hey, hey, Officer,” he prodded, gently shaking my arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said.

“What you staring at? Your eyes look kinda weird. You bang your coconut or something? You sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

“Your license plate,” I mumbled.

“What about it?”

“The Garden State,” I read aloud.

“New Jersey, yeah. So what?”

“NJ. Do me a favor, name some towns in Jersey.”

“Look, Officer, I said I was sorry. There’s no need to fuck with me. I—”

“Do it!” I shouted.

“Paterson, Marlboro, Newark, Trenton, Camden, Cherry Hill, Hoboken, Alp—”

“Hoboken, HNJ. Thanks, buddy.” I shook his hand and gave him a business card. “You ever need a favor, you gimme a call.”

He looked at the card. “I thought you were a cop.”

“I can’t make up my mind.”

I got back in my car and found the parking lot Aaron and I kept reserved spots in.

Aaron tilted his head at me like a confused dog. “It’s your day off. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I have to make a call.”

“You feeling all right, Moe? You came all the way to the Upper West Side on your day off to make a call? Everything okay with you and Katy?”

I took the box that held NYPD detective shield 353 out of my jacket pocket and handed it to my big brother. “I came to talk to you about that, but just at the moment I need to make a call.”

“Don’t let me stop you. You own half the place.”

Instead of continuing to the office, I stopped to look around. Sure, I still came to this store once or twice a month, but in some sense I had moved on. Bordeaux in Brooklyn was my store now. I walked back up front and brushed my fingertips against the five- and ten-dollar bills from our first sales. And mounted just below the bills, a picture of our dad, his tentative smile an impossibly inadequate armor against the pain of his failures.

“He’d be proud, wouldn’t he? Of us, I mean.” I turned to Aaron.

“Of course he would.”

Certainly more proud than he was of my career as a cop. Like Aaron, my dad had disapproved. I always suspected the watch my parents gave me when I graduated the academy was mostly my mother’s doing.

Now Aaron was completely perplexed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“That’s a popular question today.”

“And what am I supposed to do with this?” He held up the shield.

“Hold on to it while I make that call. I’ll be in the back.”

Judith Resnick was surprised, but not at all displeased to hear my voice. If nothing else, she joked, I deserved a commendation for persistence.

“How would you like some work?” I asked.

“Work’s what we’re here for. Believe it or not, Moe, I don’t sit around here all day just waiting for your calls. What you got?”

“Finally something besides questions. I think I know what HNJ1956 stands for. H is the first letter of the name of a town and the NJ stands for New Jersey. The 1956 is self-explanatory. At least, I hope it is.”

“Now that’s information I can do something with,” she said, brightening. “How’d you figure it out?”

“A license plate.”

“But I thought you said—”

“Judith, it’s a long story not worth telling. Take my word for it.” Then I reminded her about the kid and the bicycle, how that might help narrow the search.

“There’s a lot of towns in New Jersey that start with an H, Moe: Hackensack, Hoboken, Hasbrouck Heights, Ho-ho-kus, Hillside…. Even if I were to charge you rates from ten years ago, it would still cost a lot more than a hundred and fifteen bucks. So where does that leave your theory?”

“There’s a big difference. The woman who paid for the initial search knew what town she was looking for. I don’t.”

“Good point.”

“I can send you a check right now to get the search going and pay the balance when you’re done. Does that work for you?”

“That’s fine, Moe. I’m going to get some of my people started on it immediately.”

“How much of a deposit do you want?”

“To start off, a hundred and fifteen bucks sounds about right.”

I liked Judith. She sounded almost as into this as I did, and all she had was money at stake. I didn’t even have that. All I had was curiosity. I hoped that would be worth something in the end.

There was a knock on the office door.

It was my brother. “You off the phone yet?”

“Yeah, who wants to know?”

“NYPD, Detective Prager,” Aaron burst in, holding up the shield like on TV. “Confess, punk.”

“Or what, you gonna start discussing the relative merits of varietal grapes?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” I said, “I did it.”

He sat opposite me. “So, little brother, I guess this means good-bye.” He tossed the shield onto the desk. “It’s not like I thought this day might not come, but shoving that thing in my hand wasn’t exactly the most subtle approach. Why didn’t you just pay a guy to skywrite it over Brooklyn? It would have saved you the trip.”

“Sorry about that. Besides, I haven’t made up my mind yet. Right now, it’s just an offer.”

“Don’t take me for a
yutz
, Moses. You’re going back, because you have to. It’s unfinished business for you. You wanna be like Daddy, always wondering what could have been? I won’t let you do that.”

“You won’t let me, huh?”

“That’s right. What, you think you’re the only insightful one in the family, that Miriam and me are brain-dead?”

“Not Miriam.”

“Fuck you.” He raised his hand playfully. “I know that you only got involved in the business for my sake. This was never your dream. Christ, Moe, it’s only even half mine. A lot of this is for Daddy. Your share of the business will be here when you get back. I suppose you know this means we’re gonna have to hire new help and give Her Royal Highness, Klaus, a raise.”

“I know. Thank you, big brother.” I stood, walked around the desk, and hugged Aaron. I hugged and kissed him.

“What was that for?”

“For Katy. She told me to kiss you. I guess maybe she knows you better than I thought.”

“Make us proud, Detective Prager,” he said.

AND SO IT was done. If I could still shoot straight, I was to be reinstated as of September 26, 1983. My physical exam had already been seen to, the doctor conveniently neglecting to examine my knees. I would be a detective third grade. In the interim, I’d be back at the academy a few days a week brushing up on changes in the law and procedure. To get a feel for where I might want to be assigned and to get my feet wet, I would also be doing ride-alongs with different detective units. As Larry Mac kept reminding me, this wasn’t just like getting back up on the horse. I’d grown used to regular hours and the easy life. Five years away from the street had taken the edge off.

If Katy had any mixed feelings about my return to duty, she hid them well. Like Aaron, she understood that this was an opportunity that would not come again. She knew this wasn’t going to last forever. I was going to hit forty in a few years, and unlike Larry McDonald, I had no ambition beyond detective. Katy also got that detective work tended not to be very dangerous stuff. I think if they had offered to put me back on the street, Katy wouldn’t have been nearly so gung ho. Nor would I.

Aaron was as good in deed as in word. Maybe even a little too good. Initially, he resisted the notion that I take a cut in my share of the business. In the end, though, he saw the wisdom in doing it my way. He was taking on a huge burden and deserved to be compensated for it. A wise man once said you can’t have a fifty-fifty partnership if one of the partners does one hundred percent of the work. So he gave Klaus a raise, began interviewing new people, and elevated my old buddy Kosta to manager. Kosta, whose previous claim to fame had been managing failed punk bands, nearly fainted at the prospect of earning a substantial income.

Then the envelope came. I recognized it the moment the mailman pulled it out of his pouch. It had been ten days since I had spoken to Judith Resnick that last time. The check was mailed, and in all the fuss surrounding my return to the job, I’d nearly forgotten HNJ1956. It had receded to that place where curiosities go when left immediately unfulfilled. I remembered back to the first time I’d heard Moira Heaton’s name. Thomas Geary had spoken it to me at his daughter’s wedding. A wedding that now seemed long long ago. I had been so curious the next day, that Sunday, when I went to Pete’s place. Then the curiosity had faded. If Geary and Brightman had not elected to rekindle my interest, Moira would have been forgotten like a windblown leaf tumbling across my path.

The envelope was the shade of a paper grocery bag. I held it in my hand for what seemed like a half hour but was probably no more than twenty seconds. It was both thick and light, as one would expect an envelope stuffed with newspaper clippings to be. Walking to the office, I wondered whether I should bother opening it, or just let the past be. Moira was dead. Her murderer was behind bars. Nothing in this packet was going to change that. Looking back, I felt almost stupid for having pursued the matter with such fervor in the first place. In some ways it had all been about my ego. I thought I owed John Heaton an apology. Maybe I’d get around to it someday.

I tossed the envelope in the trash, but realized there was a balance due. If I didn’t open up the envelope … Screw that. I’d call Judith and get the tab and thank her personally.

“Hello,” a younger, unfamiliar female voice answered, “Media Search, what’s up?”

“Is Judith Resnick there?”

“She’s not in. Her dad passed away yesterday.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you have an address I can send—”

“Hold on, yeah, here it is. Twenty-four Montrose Place, Melville, New York 11747.”

“Thanks,” I said distractedly as I jotted the zip down. “If you don’t mind me asking, to whom am I speaking?”

“Janey.”

“Are you an employee, Janey?”

“Nope. They’re all at the funeral. I’m a temp, just here to answer the phones today.”

“So I guess you wouldn’t be able to help—”

“Mister, if it don’t involve picking up the phone, I can’t help you.”

“Thanks again, Janey.”

I had a basket of fruits and chocolates sent to the house at 24 Montrose Place and then fished the Media Search, Inc., package out of the trash. The least I could do was to pay the bill and get on with the newest chapter in my life.

I dumped the contents of the envelope out onto my desk. There was less inside than I had thought, about forty photocopies of newspaper stories and an invoice. Most of the girth of the envelope, as it happened, resulted from a thick layer of protective stuffing. Ignoring the clippings, I plucked out the invoice. The balance was a tidy one hundred dollars. Attached to the invoice was a note from Judith.

It turned out that 1956 was a big year for bicycle giveaways in New Jersey towns that began with the letter H. I suspect that was true in many towns across the country. Nineteen fifty-six was a prosperous year, a good year unless you were a Communist or a Brooklyn Dodger fan. In Washington, D.C., those two disparate affiliations were often seen as one.

In Hackensack, a boy named Jeffrey Bigdow won a Schwinn for his eleventh birthday by simply entering his name in a drawing. Annie Gault won a pink Huffy in Hobbs End and Calvin Brown, a bright Negro student at St. Mallory’s, as the
Hoboken Journal
described him, won a Raleigh English Racer. The saddest story, and the only one I thought might have interested Moira, was about Hildie Steen, an eight-year-old girl who was dying of an incurable childhood disease. These days we call that cancer, but back then you didn’t write the words “child” and “cancer” in the same sentence. Hildie had been given a two-wheeler by Hasbrouck Bicycles for her birthday, but died before it was delivered to the hospital. I put that story aside.

The remainder of the clippings referred to the story Judith had mentioned in her note. It had nothing to do with promotional giveaways or little girls with incurable diseases. It had to do with homicide. The stories were in chronological order. The first one, dated October 17, 1956, was from the
Hallworth Herald.

Other, more detailed stories, from bigger area newspapers, appeared with headlines like
STIPE’S SON SUFFOCATED BY STICKS, STOLEN BIKE STILL MISSING, STATE POLICE STUMPED. DRIFTER PICKED-UP, DRIFTER RELEASED, STIPE DRIFTER DROWNS.

Even couched in the less graphic language of the day, the papers detailed a rather gruesome murder. The police theorized that Carl Stipe had been attacked while taking a popular shortcut home from a friend’s house. His attacker had knocked Carl off his bicycle and had tried to molest the boy. The cops pointed to the boy’s torn clothes as proof of this. But the boy must have struggled and started to scream. In order to keep his victim quiet or to satisfy some deviant fetish, the attacker grabbed a stick and shoved it down the boy’s throat. That first stick snapped and the attacker shoved in another stick, then another. The sticks blocked his trachea, and the Stipe boy quickly suffocated.

The attacker panicked and, using the boy’s bicycle, fled. Unfortunately, the leaves and pine needles that covered the ground near the crime scene and the windy weather made it impossible for the police to retrieve any tread or footprint evidence. The only lead the cops had concerned a “drifter” two town kids had spotted leaving the vicinity on a bicycle. The boys, acquaintances of the victim, could not say for sure if the bicycle was Carl Stipe’s.

About a week later, a man named Andrew Martz was picked up for questioning in the nearby town of Closter. Martz, with no current address and a history of psychiatric problems, seemed like a good fit to the state police. However, the town’s boys could not positively identify him, nor did the state police have any physical evidence tying Martz to the victim or the crime scene. They were forced to release him. Some weeks later, Martz’s body washed up on the New York side of the Hudson. He had drowned, but whether it was homicide, suicide, or an accident, no one could say.

After Martz had turned up dead, the interest in the story faded. Most folks in the area simply accepted that Martz had been the guilty party and got on with their lives. The following October an article appeared in the
Hallworth Herald
marking the one-year anniversary of the as yet unsolved murder of Carl Stipe. Articles just like it appeared every year until 1968. By then, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the assassinations, the space program, the Beatles, and free love had squeezed out the memory of a murdered little boy.

Then in 1974, articles of a completely different nature began appearing. Carl Stipe’s murder had apparently given rise to a peculiar Halloween ritual. Teenagers, most not yet born when Carl Stipe had been murdered, would dress like either Carl Stipe or Andrew Martz, meet in the woods by the reservoir, and reenact the murder. They’d light a bonfire and hold a séance, trying to contact the dead boy’s spirit. By ‘76, the local cops had put an end to the macabre ceremony. The last mention of the murder came in a 1980 obit for the former mayor of Hallworth, Michael James Stipe.

It was all very interesting and terribly sad, but not any more connected to Moira Heaton than Annie Gault or Calvin Brown or Hildie Steen. Maybe John Heaton, drunk as a skunk most of the time, had gotten it wrong about the kid and the bicycle. Maybe he was just fucking with me. Whatever HNJ1956 might have been, it was no longer of concern to me. I wrote out a check to Media Search, Inc., for the balance, attached a note of condolence, and stuffed it into an envelope for tomorrow’s mail. And if I had any lingering doubts, they were put to rest by Sandra Sotomayor when she rang me up later that afternoon.

“Hey, Sandra, what can I do for you?”

“It bothered me for a long time after you called about Moira and that file, so I went back to look over all of Moira’s work. I found a file where she was helping a woman try and locate a man she had immigrated with in the fifties. I see here that the man’s name was Hernando N. Javier” —enunciated with the perfection of a native speaker—“and Moira made a notation, HNJ1956. There are copies of notes from Moira to the INS and from the INS saying they needed more information to locate the man. I think Moira was doing this thing for the woman on her own.”

“You’re probably right, Sandra. Thank you very much.”

So I had been sent on a wild goose chase by John Heaton and spent two hundred bucks to read sad, old newspaper clippings. My maternal grandmother, Bubbeh, we called her, never read a newspaper or listened to the news a day in her life. Aaron once asked her about it.

“Jews, ve got tsuris enough of our own. Ve don’t need to borrow from strangers.”

She had a point.