living on the streets. From there it was only a short drop off the edge of the earth into oblivion. Like I said, there’s never any future for guys like Charlie Rolex.
I put Charlie right out of my head the minute I turned left onto Manhattan Court from East 6th Street. Carmella and Brian Doyle were probably already here. I told them to park blocks away and walk into their positions: Carmella across the way on the even side of the street and Brian Doyle atop the garages around back. There was good reason for the precautions. Martello hadn’t shown up for his shift that day-neglecting to call in sick-nor, apparently, had he returned to his house in Great River. Missing a shift without calling in meant he was getting sloppy, and sloppiness from a guy like Martello was a sure sign of desperation. To me it felt like he was preparing to cover his ass and that meant trouble for the kid.
I scanned the cars parked on both sides of the street. I had already circled the surrounding blocks a few times checking for pewter Yukons. None in sight. It was a good sign, but didn’t mean Martello hadn’t taken the same precautions as Carmella and Doyle. He was, after all, a cop and knew what we knew. At this juncture, however, I was certain he would be more concerned with being expeditious than judicious. I parked my car directly in front of number sixty-nine, collected the kid’s five grand, and got out. Traffic was streaming in both directions along Ocean Parkway as I stepped up onto the stoop. I found comfort in the din of the traffic. I felt for the bulge at the small of my back and found comfort in that too.
The heavier front door pushed right back, exposing the staircase that led up to the second floor apartment and, on my right, the door to the kid’s apartment. Ignoring the bell, I rapped my knuckles hard on the kid’s door and waited. I could hear the sound of the TV coming through the door, but no footsteps.
“Hey, kid! Patrick, it’s me. Open up.” I wasn’t shouting exactly. I tried the bell and waited a minute. Still no footsteps. I called the kid’s cell phone. I heard ringing through the door. The ringing stopped when I hung up. I dialed Carmella.
“What?” she whispered.
“Maybe trouble.”
“You want me to come across the-”
“No, stay put and keep your eyes open. I think the kid may have bolted or is ready to bolt. Call Brian and give him the heads-up.”
“Okay.”
I knocked again. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. It turned easily and the door fell back, but stopped after only a few inches. A dim shaft of light filtered through into the dark hallway. I pushed harder without completely shouldering the door and it moved a bit more, but not much. There was definitely something propped against the other side. I peeked through the four inches of space I’d managed to clear and was relieved not to see arms and legs. While I still couldn’t look around the door to see what was blocking it, I saw the kid’s cell phone on a beat-up coffee table. The sound from inside had come from a boombox stereo sitting on the bare wood floor, not from a TV.
“Kid. Patrick. Come on, it’s me, Moe,” I called, a little more urgency in my voice this time. No response. I hit the door square with my right shoulder and it gave way. I patted the wall for a light switch and found one. An overhead fixture came on and I saw the red plastic milk crate full of dumbbells and weights that had held the door shut.
I was standing in the living room. The coffee table and the boombox were the only things in there. This apartment had the same layout I remembered from Crazy Charlie’s. There was a dining room ahead and to my right, a galley kitchen off that, a hallway to the left of the dining room with a bathroom on the right, a large bedroom on the left, and a small bedroom at the end of the hall. I slid my arm around my back, under my jacket, and pulled the. 38 from its holster. I knelt down and killed the music.
“Kid. Patrick. I’ve got your five grand in my pocket.”
I took the slow, measured steps of a tightrope walker, letting my gun hand lead. The dining room and kitchen were clear. There was no furniture in the dining room and no food in the kitchen. The living room closet set beneath the stairs up to the second floor was empty. When I stepped into the hallway a little gust of wind hit me square in the face. There must have been a window open in one of the bedrooms. A thunderstorm had been brewing all day and I smelled its inevitability in the air. There was another scent in the breeze that I couldn’t quite make out.
The bathroom was the size of a closet and nothing much larger than a water bug could have hidden in there. The small bedroom was even more empty than the other rooms. It was totally barren except for cobwebs and the window was shut tight. No one had set foot in the room for weeks. The uncorrupted layer of dust on the floor told me as much. Stepping back toward the last unexplored room in the house, I caught another rush of air. Now I knew what that other scent was hiding behind the humid musk of the storm: blood.
“I’m coming in there, motherfucker!” I screamed like a madman and kicked the door above the knob. The door flew away and I ran in blind, fueled by fear and weeks of frustration. Crazy Charlie would have been proud of me. Not five feet through the door I tripped over something and crashed to the floor. Looking back, I saw what had taken my feet out from under me. This time, it wasn’t a fawn.
When I crawled over to the kid, my hand slid in a pool of what I supposed was his blood. It wasn’t warm, exactly, but it was fresh. I held my bloody palm up near my face. In the dimness, the blood almost looked like chocolate syrup. I put my other hand over the kid’s heart and got nothing. He was still warm, as warm as he would ever again be. I found his neck. There was no pulse to feel. As I stood up, lightning flashed and I caught a glimpse of the kid. I didn’t have to see him clearly to know he was dead. I found the light switch.
The kid’s shirtless body lay so that his open eyes seemed to be looking straight through the ceiling, through the roof, into infinity. How’s the view, kid? There wasn’t a lot of blood anywhere except around his body, but the only visible wound was a long, diagonal gash across his liver. The blood that had seeped out of it was thick and dark. Yet as grisly as the gash was, I couldn’t believe it could account for all the blood puddled on the floor. My bet was the detectives would find some nasty wounds in his back when they rolled him over. I dialed 911 and listened to myself talk to the operator as if from another room.
I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I was frozen, as incapable of movement as the kid. He did indeed resemble Patrick, but from here, in the stark light, it was clear he was no twin. He even looked a little different from that morning. I suppose getting murdered will do that to you. I knew he wasn’t Patrick, not my Patrick, but his death dredged it all up again and the past twenty-two years-the lies, the secrets, and deceptions-came crashing down around me. Only this time it came down all at once. I tried distracting myself, gazing around the room at anything but the body.
There was an unfurled sleeping bag, a few pairs of jeans, some rock t-shirts from bands I never heard of, and two pair of those stupid Shinjo Olympians. The window was wide open and I thought I could already hear sirens, an army of sirens, coming my way. The wail of the sirens unfroze me and I stepped into the living room to wait. Living room. The phrase took on new meaning. Outside rain fell in solid sheets.
I must have been hallucinating about the sirens, because it took ten minutes for the first unit to arrive. The two uniforms were named Kurtz and Fong. Kurtz was nearly as old as me, too old to still be in a uniform without stripes, and Fong was a fresh-faced Asian kid trying hard to act blase. By the time they came in, I had sufficiently recovered my wits and had since called Carmella and Brian and filled them in. I told them to stay away as the situation was going to get complicated enough without involving them. I did ask Carmella to give one of our lawyer contacts a heads-up.
I had my old badge out to show the uniforms. Neither Kurtz nor Fong were much impressed. After they patted me down, removing my. 38 from its holster, checking out my wallet and credentials, we got to know each other a little. I didn’t bother going into great detail about the reasons for my being at 69 Manhattan Court. I was a licensed PI working a case. Blah, blah, blah… They seemed satisfied I hadn’t killed the kid. Yeah, Prager, whatever… Besides, making the case wasn’t their headache.
“Hey,” I said, “what took you guys so long to get here? I thought I heard sirens almost immediately after I called.”
Both uniforms turned to each other and laughed. I must have missed the joke.
“Aren’t there any fucking chairs in this place for a man to sit down?” Kurtz whined, rubbing his lower back.
“Nope.”
“You did hear sirens,” he said, still unhappy about the lack of chairs.
“We were right around the corner. You notice how wet we are?” Fong asked.
