Soul Patch

1972 Redux

As it happens, my recounting of the events at Motta’s house that day is the only thing the cops have ever had to work with. Martello made it through the night and beyond. . sort of. He went into cardiac arrest on the operating table. The OR personnel managed to revive him, but not before the lack of oxygen had resulted in a near-total loss of brain function. These days what’s left of him lies in some long-term care facility upstate. If you think there’s some kind of justice in that, you’d be wrong. But I won’t argue the point. You’ll have to excuse me because nothing about this whole thing feels like justice to me.

The cops, as directed by Fishbein, found Bento and Junior Motta’s bodies where Martello had told me they were. The bullets they pulled out of both dead men matched Kenny Burton’s 9mm. Someone with half a brain might’ve thought to use a different piece to murder people, but Caveman was never the smartest guy on the planet. Besides, when you’ve gotten away with so much for so long, you start to think you’ll never get caught. He was right, I guess, in his own way.

Detective Klein, Bento’s partner, was about as happy to see me as a CAT scan of a brain tumor. As far as he was concerned, I was no different than Burton, worse maybe. If I had been more up front with Bento and him about the events surrounding Kalisha Pardee’s death, he said, his partner wouldn’t have been curious enough to tail me and he’d be alive today.

“He saved my life, you know,” I told Klein. “Apparently, Kenny Burton was standing right behind me and your partner fired over my head to give me cover.”

“His mistake,” Klein said. “Now get the fuck away from me before I kill you myself.”

I did as he asked.

Sorry is so often a meaningless word, but there are times when it’s more meaningless than others. This was one of those times.

Fishbein and Kings County D.A. Starr held a press conference about a week after the shit hit the fan. I had told Fishbein the whole truth, as far as I knew it, on the condition that he never reveal Larry McDonald’s part in any of it. Maybe I was foolish to trust him given the depth of his ambition, especially in the light of what Larry Mac turned out to be. But Fishbein had always been good to his word and I didn’t want to give him any excuse not to hold up his end of the bargain. If he could tell me where my brother-in-law Patrick had gotten to, I needed to know.

The two D.A.s spun an interesting tale of murder, deceit, corruption, and betrayal, including the solution to the seventeen-year-old execution-style murder of one Dexter “D Rex” Mayweather. In their telling, it was Frank Motta himself along with then Patrolman Martello of the 61st Precinct and Patrolman Kenneth Burton of the 60th Precinct who had tortured and murdered Mayweather. They claimed to have solved the Red Hook Massacre and the execution murders of Malik Jabbar, a.k.a. Melvin Broadbent, and Kalisha Pardee. They went on to say they had broken up a major new drug ring headed by Frank Motta Jr. This last part was a huge exaggeration, but since all the players were dead or as good as dead, no one was around to dispute their claims.

Fishbein was most happy with the turn of events and had begun interviewing aids to help run his campaign for state attorney general. Maybe he had finally learned a little modesty and realized that he wasn’t gubernatorial material quite yet. I didn’t think this case was enough to propel him back onto the state political scene, but that wasn’t my concern. Busy as he was, I gave him a few weeks before asking him to keep his end of the bargain. When I did ask, he was more than happy to make an appointment to meet me and discuss Patrick’s long-ago disappearance. On the phone the day we talked, he even asked me if I would consider working as the chief investigator for his campaign.

Are you outta your fucking mind? “Thanks for the offer, Mr. D.A. Let me think about it. I’ll give you my answer when we get together.”

“One thing, Prager, before you hang up,” he said. “Not that I minded keeping Chief McDonald’s name out of it, but why bother? This man was a cold-blooded killer; he lied to you for almost twenty years, and he almost got you killed.”

It was a good question, one I had asked myself a thousand times in the last few weeks. Why did I care? It would be easy to say I was trying to spare Margaret more pain and embarrassment, which I was. Or maybe it was my reflexive loyalty. Maybe it was a sense of nostalgia for a time when I believed in the love of my friends. But Frankie Motta’s words still rang in my head, “Oh, I get it. This ain’t about him. It’s about you.” In the end, I suppose it was. What I told Fishbein was that I owed it to the memory of an old friend no matter what he really was. It sounded good, even if it wasn’t the truth.

We were going to meet for lunch at the Pastrami Palace on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills. Although I had neglected to tell Fishbein, I’d taken the liberty of inviting the devil along for lunch. I may have hated my father-in- law, but Katy’s dad had just as much right to know what had become of his son as I did. Besides, I wanted him there so I could see the look on his face when I told him I wasn’t going to play the game anymore, that I was done with secrets, that no matter the consequences I was going to confess my sins to his daughter once I found out what had become of Patrick.

It was a little after twelve thirty and Fishbein was more than fifteen minutes late. I didn’t like it. Robert Hiram Fishbein was a lot of things, but he had never failed to keep his word. I liked it even less because I had to sit there with Francis Maloney staring at me across the table. Though I have to confess it was almost worth it to see my father-in-law so unnerved. It was a sight one seldom got to see.

I’m not certain even now which happened first, whether I heard the sirens or felt the cold chill. Does it matter? All I know is that an old lady came through the doors, tears streaming down her face.

“What’s the matter, Sonya, for goodness sakes?” the counterman asked.

“He’s dead.”

“Who’s dead.”

“The man, oy gevalt! He was crossing the boulevard near Austin Street and he was. . The bus, he didn’t see the bus.”

I didn’t quite run out the door. Well, maybe I did. All I know is that by the time Francis Maloney caught up to me, I was already laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he wanted to know.

“It’s Fishbein. He’s dead.”

My father-in-law seemed to exhale for the first time all day. Our secrets were safe.

As we walked back toward the restaurant, he asked me again about why I was laughing.

“You know what Oscar Wilde once said?”

Francis smirked. “No, wiseass, enlighten me.”

“He said that when the gods want to punish us, they give us what we pray for.”

“And that means what?”

“Forget it,” I said. “If it was true, you’d’ve been dead a long time ago.”

Now he was laughing, that familiar all-knowing look on his face. Order had been restored to the universe.

When I got home that night from Motta’s, I still hadn’t opened the letter from Larry Mac. I just didn’t have it in me for any more revelations. I was all used up. The light on my phone machine was flashing madly. I ignored it. There were calls I should have made, needed to make. I didn’t. I showered and shaved and slept. Shaved? Yeah, I know. I’m not sure why I shaved. I guess I wanted to clean as much of me off as possible.

In the morning, I listened to the messages. They were from Katy and Sarah and Wit and Miriam and Wit and Wit and Wit and. .

I called Katy first and told her to bring Sarah home. It was time, I said, to have that talk about Nebraska. Sarah was really happy to hear my voice, but not nearly as happy as I was to hear hers. Nothing like being a few seconds away from getting shot to death to make you appreciate what you have.

Miriam had heard the news about the shootout in Mill Basin and was relieved to hear I was alive. Wisely, I asked after the kids and Ronnie before checking on what had happened to Carmella.

“She’s doing fine,” Miriam said. “There was a bullet fragment Ronnie couldn’t see or feel that they dealt with as soon as he got her to the hospital. Ronnie called in some favors at Kings County and they kept her presence quiet. It’s not like they don’t get a ton of gunshot wounds there all the time. The cops had no trouble believing they