Walking the Perfect Square (2 page)

Marlowe’s famous isolation, which grows as the series continues, extends in large part from his sense that he is an anachronism, a knight without meaning. The world around has changed, curdled, gone to rot. But while Marlowe is a man whose moral code is at odds with his times, Moe Prager’s emerges from his, is born from it, accounts for and takes its strength from an understanding of the complexities of his culture. His sensibility, and his strength as a detective, are informed by the complexities he ponders, parses and only after great, nearly Talmudic deliberation, will dare to pass judgment on. Prager, in 1998, can recall how shocking the Son of Sam murders once were, saying, “But serial killing was a nascent industry then and its purveyors didn’t seem to grow on trees the way they do now.” But the mood is not one of hermetic retreat from a twisted world. He remains engaged, feels he has no choice. He will not abandon a world that includes his family, his child and the score of striving, essentially good people he comes across, to the looming darkness.

For all these differences, however,
Walking the Perfect Square
’s abiding theme is also deeply Chandlerian: the slipperiness of identity. The missing-person case at the heart of the novel sends Prager on nothing short of an identity quest. Slowly, through the stories shared about him, through the evidence Prager uncovers, he “builds” Patrick Maloney, the young man whose face he stares at on the posters taped to mailboxes and lamp-posts around the city. But the question of how close he can ever get lingers. Much as Marlowe habitually, obsessively returns to the decadently adorned Geiger house in Chandler’s
The Big Sleep
, Prager circles back literally to Pooty’s, the bar that marks the last place Patrick was seen, and to the image of the missing-person poster itself, which reminds him of the famous Magritte painting. “The point is,” he tells us, “It wasn’t a pipe. It was the painting of a pipe. And the poster I was looking at wasn’t Patrick Maloney”

The closer he comes, the more the photo blurs, breaks apart before his eyes. Patrick is that elusive figure we see so much of in Chandler: Velma Grayle, Orfamay Quest, Terry Lennox, that shape-shifter we seek to know even as we secretly realize we will always come up empty. It is in this illusory pursuit for meaning that the core of the private eye narrative is laid bare. The blurry fear that encompasses Prager at the climax of
Walking the Perfect Square
, that moment when he looks in the rearview mirror and cannot fathom his own eyes, is the quintessential Chandler dilemma: What if there is no there there? In Chandler, that possibility broods over the novels. It’s all phoniness. It’s all illusion. Hollywood, Los Angeles, women, friendship, connections, meaning. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

In
Walking the Perfect Square
, however, the promise of authenticity remains, if only in the far corners. Its final, ruminatory pages carry us through the varied fates of the novel’s characters (one cannot imagine this in Marlowe’s isolated world), opening up vistas of personal histories that entwine with popular culture (
Mystery Science Theater
, VH-1) and give us a longer view of these characters who play bit or minor parts in the central drama of the novel. It is a generous gesture, and it speaks to Prager’s expansive nature but also to the larger view of history he has.
Walking the Perfect Square
is built on a structure of expansion and contraction, of flight and
return. The novel circles back and forth between 1978 and 1998, with glimpses in between, demonstrating time and again that no life is solitary, that we all, for better or for worse, are linked and we’d best hold on to each other, and hold on tight.

But the more we move away from Philip Marlowe, the closer we come to him. Because, for all Moe Prager’s warmth, his efforts to understand and make meaning, to find the solid ground beneath his feet and be assured that one can fix things, make them better, this is a novel steeped in a deeply Chandlerian melancholy—a melancholy that never lifts as we move through all the Prager novels. A melancholy that haunts the reader as surely as the detective-hero. He may find authenticity, the solid root of things, the beating heart of the matter, and that is comforting. But he also realizes that if there’s anything worse than a world built on illusion and deceit it’s the understanding that while we may find real connection—the authentic self, intimacy—it will not last. It is fleeting. It breaks apart in our hands. That is when we realize that we have one up on Prager. He has no permanence, no anchor. But we do. We have him.

 

 

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award-winning author of
Die a Little
,
The Song Is You
, and
Queenpin
. She also edited Busted Flush Press’s female noir anthology,
A Hell of a Woman
. Her
Damn Near Dead
(Busted Flush Press) short story, “Policy,” was the basis for her Edgar-winning novel,
Queenpin
. She has a Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. Visit her online at
www.meganabbott.com
.

I am grateful for the love and support of my wife Rosanne and my kids Kaitlin and Dylan. I could not have written this book without the technical advice of Mitchell L. Schare, Ph.D. or my NYPD buddies: Billy Johnson, John Murphy, Jim Hegarty and Tom McDonald. I would also like to thank Ellen W. Schare for her editorial input.

To be is to be perceived

—Berkeley

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hold a picture up
everybody thinks it’s me
I get a thrill out of tampering
with the atmosphere
Hey baby, I’m out of favor
You can’t always be
the right flavor
Just seems that no matter
what you do
Someone somewhere
Someone’s got to punish you

 

Nobody hurts you
harder than yourself

-Graham Parker

Hofstra University
Theater Department
Acting 2.1 Professor Stroock
Dramatic Monologue

 

The Lie of Wetness
by Patrick M. Maloney

 

Setting:
Boardwalk. Nighttime. The sky—moonless, starless. Waves of an unseen ocean are heard crashing ashore. The solitary figure of a young man—his image illuminated by a lone, flickering streetlamp—leans over the sea air-ravaged railing. Contemplating a final walk into the womb of the ocean, he speaks . . .

 

You know what it’s like? (pause) I’ll tell you. You ever been to one of those fancy amusement parks like Busch Gardens or Hershey Park? (cups his ear) Oh, you have. Then you’ll know what I’m talking about. At these parks they have these huge flume rides. Now, I don’t mean the little cute ones with the fake logs. I mean they have these really big ones. They go like ten stories straight up in the air, swoop around a curve and then come flying—(gestures with his hand) I mean flyin’ down into a big basin of water. You know the ones I’m talking about? The boat slams (smacks fist into other palm) into this water and boom! This freakin’ wall of water soaks everything and everybody for like hundreds of feet around. Well, it’s like that. Not the ride, exactly, but the waiting on line.

So you’re standing there waiting your turn as this big line snakes around (gestures S shape) and you’re watching big boat after big boat go up that freakin’ ramp and come splashing down. And there’s like these signs everywhere: (points to wording on imaginary sign) “Be aware: You WILL get wet.” It’s not like you need those signs either, because everybody you see getting off the damn ride’s so wet they could wring out their sunglasses and make a puddle. But see here, this is the point I’m trying to make about how it is; even though you watch everybody getting soaked and there’s these signs that tell you you’re gonna get soaked, you tell yourself that you’re not gonna get wet. Nope, not you! (thumps
chest) Somehow, all of a sudden, you’re fucking waterproof as Jesus in plastic slipcovers.

But then it’s your turn. And you stick your foot into the boat and there’s like six inches of standing water there and you’re up to your ankles in it. Then it dawns on you: the signs weren’t lying. And unlike Jesus, the water’s gonna walk on you. So you look at the bald guy next to you and his toothless girlfriend or the mom and her frightened kids two rows up or the fat retarded guy in the tight tee shirt sitting alone behind you and you wonder how many other people getting on that ride with you told themselves the lie of wetness. Well, that’s my point, you see. It’s like that; just like that. We don’t come with slipcovers, so we lie to ourselves instead. Christ knows I wish we didn’t have to, but we do.

I have to go now.

 

Direction:
Young man moves slowly out of flickering light; his footsteps can be heard walking down wooden steps. When footsteps stop, flickering light snaps off.

THINGS THAT HAPPENED on August 6th: In 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets at the controls of a special B-29 named after his mom, Enola Gay, dropped the uranium bomb, Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima—the bomb they dropped on Nagasaki, Fat Man, was a plutonium bomb, but since both killed Japanese pretty damned well, it’s not a detail most people bother with and since the second bomb was dropped on August 9th that doesn’t really count, not here, not for our purposes. My daughter Sarah was born on August 6th. God, I can still remember watching the crown of her head appear, red curls even then, and how for once, just briefly, I understood about reasons for being. I’d have to call her later.

Now I was on my way to Mary the Divine Hospice of New Haven to meet Tyrone Bryson. Until today I’d never heard of Tyrone Bryson and from what the sister told me, we wouldn’t have much time to cultivate a relationship. Mr. Bryson, it seemed, had taken to heart the mission of Mary the Divine and was doing his level best to make his bed available for the next poor soul to die in peace. Apparently, the “in peace” part of the equation is where I came in.

I assured the sister several times that I knew Tyrone Bryson only slightly less well than I had known Chairman Mao. At least I had seen Mao on TV. I said I couldn’t ever quite recall seeing Mr. Bryson on the tube. That was, unless he had starred in a summer replacement or a short-lived sitcom. Sister was not amused, explaining that Mr. Bryson had already said we had never met. I asked if we could just clear this all up over the phone, but the sister said that was a no-go on two counts; it took a monumental effort for Bryson to speak above a whisper and, she was afraid,
even if he could belt out a tune like Pavarotti in the shower, Bryson had insisted upon seeing me in the flesh.

When I expressed to sister that relatives, let alone people who didn’t know me, were in no position to insist, she bit into me, hard: “Lord, Mr. Prager, he is a dying man. Haven’t you some sense of charity?” She paused long enough for the guilt to start working on me. “And there is the magazine clipping and an old slip of paper with your name and a disconnected phone—”

“What clipping?”

“It’s quite brittle, so I imagine it’s rather old. He only showed it to me after I explained you might be unwilling to come visit a total—”

“Yes, sister,” I cut her off. “The clipping, what’s it about?”

“A missing man, a Patrick—”

“—Maloney.”

“Yes, that’s right!” Sister was impressed.

“Late this afternoon is the best I can do,” I heard a voice that sounded like mine tell the nun. I think she offered me directions. I’m not sure what I said to that. I do recall hanging up.

 

THE ONLY THING is, I don’t remember what inning it was. Maybe it was the fifth, for some reason the fifth sounds right. Whatever inning it was, it had to be the bottom half, because Ray Burris was on the mound for the Cubs and Lenny Randle—who was more famous for beating the shit out of his one-time manager Frank Luchesi than he was for his ball playing—was at the plate for the Mets. I remember Jerry Koosman was pitching for the Mets, but that’s neither here nor there, because he didn’t get to pitch the top half of the next inning that night.

It was the summer of 1977, July 13th, I think, and I’m sitting with my buddy Stevie in the upper mezzanine at Shea on the third base side. As Randle steps into the batter’s box, I notice whole chunks of Flushing and Whitestone going dark over the outfield fence. All the Number 7 trains pulling in and out of the station across the street from the stadium stop dead. The buzz in the crowd is starting to build. Not because Randle got a hit or cold-cocked the third base coach, but because a lot of other fans are beginning to see what I’m seeing; the city going black one neighborhood at a time beyond the 410 sign in centerfield.

Meanwhile, the players and the umps are totally oblivious. There’s a three and two count on Randle and . . . Snap! The lights go out in the stadium. There’s an immediate announcement:
Everyone stay calm. We’re working to correct the problem. Please stay in your seats. Blah, blah, blah . . .
Next thing you know, Jane Jarvis, queen of the Shea Stadium keyboards, starts playing Christmas songs on the organ and people are singing and I’m singing and we’re all happy. Then, boom, these red auxiliary lights come up.

I look down on the field and the players are still at their positions, but Lenny Randle’s not in the batter’s box. He’s standing on first base. The fucking guy had run to first in the dark. He was still one ball away from earning a walk, yet there he was, trying to steal first base. Even Frank Luchesi, I thought, would have appreciated Lenny Randle’s ingenuity at that moment. I’ll never forget the night Lenny Randle tried stealing first base in the dark.

My other memories of that year, as I imagine they are for many New Yorkers who lived through it, are bleak. Though they are as vivid to me as the sight of Randle on first, they are more akin to the reminiscences of an amputee reliving his last few steps before his right leg was crushed beneath the wheels of a city bus. I could have told you about the record snowfall that year and how on February 17th me and my partner found an old black couple frozen to death, huddled in their bed. My partner thought it was funny that they’d have to thaw the bodies out to untangle them. Somehow, I didn’t see the humor in it.