Soul Patch (4 page)

“Aaron!” my father would bark.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your little brother.”

“That’s okay.”

We did a variation of this exchange each time we came. Steeplechase Park was still open back then. They had this really cool ride with wooden horses on tracks, and you could fly around the park as if you were in a real steeplechase race like the kind they had in England. But by the time I took the oath and was assigned to the 60th Precinct, Steeplechase Park had been razed and the wooden horses sent to the scrap heap. They don’t make glue out of wooden horses, just splinters.

In 1968, as today, the only thing that remained of Steeplechase Park was the rusting hulk of the Parachute Jump. I wasn’t like my dad. I hated the damned thing. It was an unfortunate vestige like the human appendix, its decay calling attention to a purpose no longer served. Sometimes I think they should have just taken a bulldozer to the whole amusement park area and put up a fucking plaque like they did at Ebbets Field. In this way, the romantic vision of the place would be all that remained. There are reasons beyond stench why we don’t let the dead rot above the ground.

I watched Larry McDonald’s approach. He came up the Stillwell Avenue stairs onto the boardwalk. Where Surf and Stillwell avenues collided was where Nathan’s Famous had stood for about seventy-five years, but the wind was strong out of the west and blew the fragrant steam of Nathan’s griddles and fryers away from me, toward Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach beyond. The sudden aging I’d noticed in Larry’s eyes and voice the previous day had begun to affect his gait. He took the measured steps of an old man who had always been sure on his feet, but had suddenly lost confidence not only in his stride but in the solidity of the ground beneath his shoes.

As usual, he was sharply dressed. Larry was the only person I’d ever met who could overdress for any occasion. He wore a finely tailored camel hair blazer over an ivory silk shirt and beige slacks with a crease so sharp it could cut diamonds. His brown alligator loafers probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

“Italian?” I wondered, pointing down.

“What? Huh?”

“The shoes, shithead.”

“Oh, yeah, they’re Italian. What else would they be? And that’s Chief of Detectives Shithead to you.”

“Sorry.” I made the sign of the cross and said, “Forgive me father for I have sinned.”

“You heathen fucking Jew. You’re gonna rot in hell for that.”

“Jews don’t believe in hell.”

“Believing’s got nothing to do with it. It exists.” He lit up and smoked away.

“So . . .”

“You know they found him over there.”

“Who?”

“Mayweather.” Larry walked to the rail along the beach side of the boardwalk, and I followed. “He was half buried in the sand right under where we’re standing. Some
alter kocker’s
dog dug his hand up like a hidden bone. Did you know he was tortured before he was killed? They broke every single finger on both hands, snapped ’em one by one. And his knees! They were smashed to bits.”

“That must’ve been unpleasant. Trust me, I know from knee pain, but what the fuck, Larry? This is all very fascinating, but I don’t really give a shit,” I said, putting my foot up on the bottom rung of the rail, resting my arms across the top, my chin on my arms. I watched the little waves roll ashore, stared at the container ships slowly moving toward the mouth of New York Harbor. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

“There were rumors . . .”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Just rumors. Rumor rumors.”

“Hey, that clears it all up, I guess.”

“Ugly rumors.”

“Yeah, well, the world is full of whispers and innuendo,” I said. “I don’t usually concern myself with that stuff and you never struck me as the kind of guy who paid them much mind.”

“There’s a chance some of our old friends maybe can get hurt by this shit getting dredged up again.”

“Then maybe you wanna tell me about those rumors, Larry.”

“The word on the wind back then was that some of our guys were on D Rex’s pad. You remember what the Soul Patch was like. No one could touch Mayweather in the day. He was like Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. And we were clowns in blue, the Sheriff of Nottingham and his deputies, with our thumbs stuck up our asses. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I can do the math. Maybe some of
our
guys are at or near twenty years on. Maybe some of them would do a little gun eating if they lost their reputations and pensions now.”

“It’s one of the things I always respected you for, Moe. You were quick on the uptake. Shit never had to be explained to you.”

“Did anybody ever look into these rumors?” I wondered.

“Of course. Those were the Buddy Boy days, the time of the Knapp Commission. They looked into every fucking thing. If some
dick complained that a cop farted in his direction, they looked into it. But I.A. was bullshit back then. They assigned every eager schmo to the bureau, even the ones who couldn’t make a case with a road map.”

“I was around, Larry, remember? I was the one who knew Serpico a little.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Frank fucking Serpico, the only honest cop in all New York City. Fuck him! I think the guy was half a fag myself.”

“Pity I don’t have his number anymore. We could call and ask.”

“Doesn’t matter. Serpico really is a harmless piece of shit. He hurt whoever he was gonna hurt a long time ago. Only time people even remember him is when that bullshit movie is on cable. D Rex is something else. I don’t want him reaching out of the grave to hurt anyone.”

“You really are worried, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that, Moe?”

“You’re talking too much. You’re making speeches.” I stood straight up, took my foot off the railing, grabbed Larry by the sleeve, and made him face me. “So, how much were you cut in for?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, McDonald. You forget, I know you. I know who you are and I know what you are. I think sometimes maybe that’s why you trust me, because I know. So please don’t insult me.”

“I’m not gonna make excuses to you, Moe. A lot of us earned a little on the side from D Rex. You worked the street. You know we weren’t gonna make a fucking dent. It was big business even back then.”

“I thought you weren’t gonna make excuses.”

“You’re right, but I think you might be surprised to find out just whose pockets D Rex’s money found its way into.”

“Right now we’re talking about your pockets, Larry, and being on a drug dealer’s pad wouldn’t look good on your résumé for beatification.”

“I’m no saint!” He jerked his sleeve out of my grasp.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t aspire to the job.”

A broad, sad smile briefly forced its way onto Larry’s face. “You
do
know me, you prick.”

“Yeah, maybe, but what I don’t know is what I’m doing here.”

“I wanna hire you.”

“To do what?”

“To save my career and the reps of the guys we served with.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even—”

“No. The answer’s no, Larry. This is a dirty business.”

“What, you’re quoting
The Godfather
to me now? Talk about being a martyr . . .”

“The answer’s still no.”

Killed me to say it. I think if he had asked me to do almost any other job, I would have jumped at it. I was desperate to escape the boredom of the stores and to occupy my mind with something other than the growing distance between Katy and me.

He turned to the beach again, reached into his pocket much as he had the day before, and slapped something down atop the rail ledge. Although his hand obscured my view, I felt confident it wasn’t a cassette tape. Pretty sure it was metallic, as it had made a pinging sound when he hit it against the rail. And I was also pretty sure I knew what it was. He lifted his hand and proved me right. A gold and blue enamel detective’s shield glistened in the afternoon sun.

“Do this for me and it’s yours. Detective first: no physical, no range qualifying, no questions asked.”

Larry McDonald and I had done this dance once before. Six years earlier, in 1983, with Larry’s help, I’d discovered what had happened to Moira Heaton. Moira, an intern for an up-and-coming politician, had been missing since Thanksgiving Eve 1981. Though there was no physical or circumstantial evidence linking the politician to her disappearance, he had been tried and convicted in the press, his once promising career placed in limbo. After we found out the truth about Moira Heaton and the politician was cleared of any wrongdoing, Larry got his big bump to deputy chief. A few years ago, he got chief of detectives.

All of us involved with that case made out. Politicians and their wealthy backers can be a generous bunch. But a few weeks later, when I began feeling uneasy about the facts of the Heaton case and started nosing around, Larry Mac called out of the blue to offer me the one thing I yearned for: a gold shield. I took it. It was both the perfect distraction and the ultimate bribe. And if it hadn’t been for a stupid fender bender with an out-of-state car, I’d still have that gold shield in my pocket.

Later, when the original facts unraveled and Larry stood to lose his shiny new promotion, I questioned him about his motives in offering me the shield. He claimed it wasn’t his idea, that he had no idea I’d reopened the investigation. I chose to believe him, because with Larry, faith was always a choice. I knew he trusted me. I’d earned it, but like I said before, trusting Larry was transitory and involved the equation of self-interest.

“You can get me a shield?” I asked. “Even now, even at my age? You can get all that shit waived?”

“You’d be amazed.”

“Sorry, Larry, no. I guess I don’t want the shield that bad anymore.”

He didn’t argue. Instead, he scooped the shield up and placed it back in his pocket.

“That’s a pity, Moe.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dirt’s a funny thing, pal. It rubs off all over the place, on lots of people too.”

“You’re getting cryptic again.”

“Maybe so. Let me tell you a story about my late Uncle Finn. Uncle Finn lived with the guineas near Arthur Avenue up in the Bronx, and he loved to sit out on his stoop at night, having a beer or three, watching the world pass by. One night there was a helluva car crash in the gutter out in front of Finn’s house. A bumper flew off one of the cars right up onto Uncle Finn’s stoop. Nearly decapitated him.”

“Is there a moral to this story?”

“I’m getting to it.”

My sense of humor was at low ebb. “Get to it!”

“In this world, the greatest injustices are done to the innocent. No?”

“You’re threatening me now, Larry? That’s what we’ve come to?”

“It’s not what we’ve come to. It’s where we’ve always been.”

“I guess I didn’t know you as well as I thought.”

“Yes, you did. Don’t act so surprised. We’ve both used each other over the years,” he said, lighting up another cigarette.

“I never threatened you.”

“That’s because you never had to. People who eat three squares a day don’t pick through the garbage, but take those three meals away for a week or two and . . .”

I shook my head at him. “Jesus, and I thought boredom was rotting
my
soul. Is this what ambition did to yours?”

“This isn’t about ambition anymore. It’s about survival. Yours and mine.”

“You’d hurt me, Katy, and Sarah just to save your own ass?”

“It’s a start.”

“You know what, Larry, go fuck yourself! You think you can hurt me, go ahead. There’s some stuff related to the Moira Heaton business you don’t know about that will make you look pretty fucking bad. I can spin it so that it looks like you got your bump on the strength of covering up a murder. So be my guest, start spreading the dirt. We’ll see who comes out looking cleaner.”

“See how easy it is to make threats, old buddy. You’re a natural.”

“Fuck you!”

“Yeah, Moe, you said that already.”

I took the cassette tape of the interrogation out of my pocket, thought about tossing it onto the sand below. “I don’t know how you got this tape and I don’t care. What’d you expect me to do, anyway, wave a magic wand and wash away your old sins? If I had that kinda power, I’d wash away my own.” I slid the tape back into my pocket.

I turned to go.

“Moe!”

“What?”

“You know I couldn’t hurt you or your family. I just didn’t know who else I could go to with this. For some reason, you’re the only person I’ve ever really trusted. And when you said no, I . . . I guess I panicked. I’m sorry, Moe. But please, can’t you do this thing for me, for old times’ sake?”

“Our old times’ sake ran out about two minutes ago, right around the time you threatened my family.”

I started walking along the boardwalk into the heart of Coney Island. I’m not sure whether I was more upset at him or at myself. He was right, after all. We had used each other over the years. Maybe I was just jealous that he had used me to better effect than I had him. And I had always known what Larry was at his core. But his threat—
there was no getting over that for me. No amount of backpedalling, rationalizing, or apologizing was going to make that right. There are things said and done in this world from which there can be no retreat.

When my legs stopped moving, I turned back to look. Either Larry had gone or I was just too far away to make him out. On the other hand, the Parachute Jump seemed just as big as if I were still standing directly beneath it. Fucking thing seemed to follow you like the full moon on a clear night—or your own guilt. I think maybe that’s why I hated it so.

A RUINED MARRIAGE is a peculiar thing. After the dust settles, I think you can look back and see that both parties had a fair amount to do with the collapse. At first blush, it’s easy to point the finger at one party or the other, especially when there’s cheating involved. And even though that wasn’t the case with Katy and me, I’d have to confess to having known a few people who would have cheated regardless of what their spouses did or did not do. But a lot of the time, cheating is as much a reaction as an action. I guess it’s not only cheating that works that way.