Empty Ever After (14 page)

I was afraid. I was afraid that Joey Hogan might accuse me of fucking up Katy’s life. I was afraid that he was right. But it wasn’t Joey Hogan who accused me. Christ, I wasn’t even fully into the man’s driveway. My
own guilt accused. Guilt and me were usually strangers. Like jealousy, guilt was a cancerous waste of time. The world was only too happy to beat you up, so why do it to yourself? Anyway, I was suspicious of the eagerly guilty. They stank of martyrdom.

“Responsibility and guilt are not the same things, Mr. Moe,” Israel Roth used to say. “We all do wrong things for all kinds of reasons, mostly they’re not worth losing sleep over. Besides, what does guilt change? A real man, a
mensch
, he knows when to feel guilt. When you’ve done what I had to do to survive, you know guilt. I can see in your eyes, Moses, that you too know guilt. For this you have my pity and my respect.”

Because guilt and I were usually estranged, because it was not my first instinct, I knew when I felt it, that it was right. I felt it now and it was right. It was to laugh, no? One lie, a lie that wasn’t even mine to begin with, still impacted lives in ways I could never have anticipated. I thought of Katy lying in the blood and broken glass. I thought of her lying so still in bed and imagined Joey Hogan’s face as I tried explaining myself to him. I backed out of his driveway and drove away as quickly as I could.

Located several miles outside Janus in sort of a municipal no man’s land, Henry’s Hog was on the wrongest side of the tracks. When my tires crossed the pair of tracks on Industry Avenue, I could swear that the sun’s light became more diffuse and the air got thicker and smelled of burning oil. The dust and decay, however, were not products of my imagination. Industry Avenue, once a meaningful designation, had long since given way to irony. Even before my first and only visit here, the area factories had already been abandoned. Now the only industry around here was of the cottage variety: meth labs and warehouse marijuana farms.

Henry’s Hog, an old wood frame house that had been converted into a bar, hadn’t much changed. The joint was as welcoming as a stuffed toilet and its windows were as yellow as a smoker’s fingers. The desolate paint factory and auto body shop that had once bookended the place were now masquerading as empty lots. There weren’t any bikes parked outside, but I tried the doors anyway. Pessimistic about success, I nearly fell inside when the door swung open.

Age hadn’t much improved the interior of Henry’s Hog either. The aroma was a vintage blend of black lung and beer piss. I wondered if the lazy fly that buzzed me as I stepped in wore a nicotine patch. A broad-shouldered woman in a Harley tee and black leather vest leaned over the bar, reading the
New York Post
. Her body jiggled as if she were laughing, but I can’t say she made any sounds that I recognized as laughter. And because she had her head down, I couldn’t see much of anything but the top of her short gray hair.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for Tina Martell.”

When she raised up to face me, I knew I had found who I was looking for, but not all of her. Tina Martell had once been the girl most likely to fuck you because she felt like it. She liked sex and didn’t dose it out like saffron or gold dust the way the other girls in town had. That hadn’t won her a lot of close girlfriends back in high school, but it made her pretty popular with the boys. When I met her, she was thick-bodied and big-breasted, but she had a cute face with a friendly mouth. She was tattooed and pierced a good two decades before every suburban kid came with a nose ring and ink as standard equipment.

Now part of her neck and throat were missing and ugly scars obscured her tattoos. A flap of white material covered the front of her throat above her collar bone. She sort of resembled a Salvador Dali painting, the entire left side of her face drooping down toward the scarring. Although her shoulders were still broad, Tina’s breasts were much smaller. Seeing her this way, I understood Vandervoort’s sad smile and his confusion over Patrick and Tina. She raised a clenched right hand to her throat.

“Who is … looking?” she asked in a robot voice, pressing her other hand to the white flap of cloth.

“Throat cancer?”

“Breast cancer … too,” she said, with an unexpected smile. “I’m thinking of getting … skin cancer and going … for … the trifecta. Wait, you look … familiar.”

I explained that we had met once, many years before. She remembered.

“You bought mea…beer.”

“That’s right. You told me to go fuck myself.”

She liked that, giving herself the thumbs up.

I explained about what I was doing there. The last time we’d spoken, Tina Martell hadn’t been particularly sympathetic to Patrick’s plight or mine. Not that I blamed her. Patrick had gotten her pregnant and asked her to marry him just as he had later done with Nancy Lustig. For all I knew, there were other women with whom Patrick had danced that dance.

She shook her head a little bit, eyes looking into the past. “I don’t know what to … tell you. I never wished no harm to … come to him. Wished harm on some, but not … him. Lotta tragedy in that family … lotta tragedy. Too bad about Frank Jr., he was … hot.”

“So you don’t know anything about the desecration of the graves or about—”

“I got my own … problems, mister. Don’t need to cause none for … others.”

“You know anyone else who might have it in for the Maloneys?”

“The old man … maybe. Someone might’ve had it in … for him. He was a bona fide … cocksucker.”

“Amen to that.”

“But I can’t think of no one who’d want to hurt … the daughter. Hey, you wanta…beer?”

“It’s kinda early.”

“Early’s a matter of … interpretation.”

“Sure. Fuck it!”

She put a Bud up on the bar and went back to her paper. I tried searching for some follow-up questions, but came up empty. When the bottle was likewise empty, I said my goodbyes and headed for the door. Before I got halfway there, a familiar figure came strolling on in. It was Deep Voice, the biker who’d been in the ER. The doctors had patched up his head, bandaged the nasty road burns and scrapes on his arms, washed the blood off his face and beard, but he was still wearing the shreds of the clothing he’d worn last night. He stared at me without recognition. I realized I still had trace amounts of cop vibe and that didn’t work for him.

I put my hands up in submission. “Haven’t been a cop for a long time,” I said. “Besides, I’m kinda hurt you don’t recognize me.”

The light went on behind his eyes. “Last night in the hospital. You were all up in the sheriff’s face. What was that about?”

I should have told him it was none of his business and walked out, but I didn’t. For reasons I was only vaguely conscious of, I wanted to talk to this guy. I wasn’t at all sure why. I suppose I figured the why would come to me eventually.

“Let me buy you a beer.” He was thinking about it when I made the decision for him. “Tina, two Buds over here, please.”

We sat down at a nearby table and waited for Tina.

“How you know Tina?” he asked in that low rumble of a voice.

“We’re old acquaintances is all. So,” I asked, “how are you feeling?”

“Sore as shit, but they sewed me together okay. I’ll live. It’s not the first time I’ve had to lay a bike down.”

“I don’t doubt it. You got a name?”

“Crank.”

Great, I was buying beer for a meth cooker, but I didn’t react other than to reach my hand across the table to him. “Moe.”

Tina brought the beers over and I paid her. “Hey, Crank.”

“Hey yourself, Tina.”

She walked away shaking her head at the odd pair of us.

“So what about last night?”

“My ex-wife tried to kill herself.” He stopped mid-sip, eyes wide. “That’s why I was so agitated. It’s a long story.”

“Always is. Your old lady okay now?”

“She’ll live, but she isn’t okay.”

“Here’s to her,” he said.

We clinked bottles. A question was wiggling around in the back of my head. I thought it might be about something Crank had said last night. I tried recalling what he had said to Vandervoort about his accident. Just as words started to come out of my mouth, my cell phone vibrated. The question vanished.

“Hey, I gotta take this,” I said waving the phone at him. “Feel better. Enjoy the brew.”

I walked outside in a near panic. “Hello.”

“Moe, where are you at?” It was Carmella.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Sharing a beer with a meth cooker named Crank.”

“You’re right, I think you’re fulla shit.”

“I’m up in Janus. Katy tried to kill herself last night.”

“Oh, my God! Is she—”

“She’ll live. We can talk about it later. What’s up?”

“Can you get into the office? We got something.”

“I got something too,” I said. “Let me check in with Sarah and then I’ll be down. Make sure Devo’s around.”

“Okay.”

“How are you and…I mean—”

“I’m still pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is.”

“Don’t let’s start that now. I need to keep things together when I’m here.”

“Fair enough.”

I got in my car, crossed back over the tracks and out of un-Wonderland, but fragments of that question I had for Crank were still scratching around the back of my head. By the time I hit the interstate, they were gone.

It seemed to me that this was one case being played out in two worlds: one up here and one back in the city. The weird thing was that in spite of it all playing out with my family and me at center stage, I felt more like a spectator than a participant. I sensed Katy slipping completely out of my life and I was helpless to prevent it. Maybe that was best for both of us, but I couldn’t let her slip out of my life and straight into hell. No, I owed her to make this right.

CARMELLA WAS OUT
of the office when I got back into Brooklyn.

“Is she taking a late lunch or what?” I asked Brian.

“She don’t report to me, boss. She just ran outta here”—he checked his watch—“like forty minutes ago.”

Brian Doyle was a project of ours. He was NYPD for about fifteen years. That he lasted so long was proof of God. Rough around the edges and a bit too quick with his fists, he was an old school cop three generations of cops too late. But Brian was perfect for us or would be, once he learned to listen. He knew the street and had a knack for getting information out of the most reluctant people. Brian had never had to rough anyone up while in our employ, at least not that we knew of. People could see the potential for violence in his eyes and that was enough. The whiff of violence usually is.

“How did she seem to you?”

“She seemed like the hottest fuckin’ detective I ever seen.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“How the hell should I know how she seemed?”

“
Oy vey iz mir
. Forget it,” I said, rubbing my eyes in frustration. “Carmella said she had something for me.”

“She did?”

“Oh, for chrissakes! Doesn’t anybody in this fucking place—”

Doyle was laughing so hard, he started gasping for air. Even Devo came out of his office with a wide grin on his face.

“Okay, gentlemen, you got me. Now can someone around here tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Brian and Devo looked at each other.

“You first, Devo,” Brian said, still wiping tears from his eyes.

Devo’s office looked like a cross between a recording studio and the cockpit of a B2 bomber. I had been wise enough never to ask who paid for all the equipment.

“Before we get started, take these.” I handed him the surveillance tape from the PrimeOil station and the little cassette from Katy’s answering machine. “Once you’ve had a look and a listen, you’ll know what I want from you.”

He took the tapes, laid them down on a shelf, and asked me to take a seat in front of a computer monitor.

“Here,” he said, a newspaper ad flashing up on the screen, “is a notice for an audition that appeared in the
New York Minute
six months ago.”

“The
New York Minute
? Never heard of it.”

“It is one of those free weeklies you can pick up in newspaper boxes on corners around the city. Very popular for advertising bands, selling cars, subletting apartments, promoting clubs and such.”

“Yeah, okay, but what’s the big deal about this ad? I don’t know shit about casting calls, but there’s got to be notices like this all the time.”

“Look at the screen.” He clicked the mouse. “This is that same notice in the
LA Freeway
. He clicked again. “In the
Second City Loop
. I found this notice in about twenty places in publications of this type dating back six to eight months. Only the location of the auditions is different.”

“Someone was casting a wide net, so what?”

“Yes, a wide net, but a shallow one. One notice in
Variety
would get more turnout than one hundred of these type ads in smaller free presses. My supposition is that they were looking for a non-union, inexperienced actor. In fact, they weren’t necessarily even looking for an actor. If one reads carefully between the lines, one might conclude they were looking for someone they might be able to manipulate.”

“One might. Good points.”

He bowed slightly. “Also, I did some checking. I found someone who went for the audition at LaGuardia.”

“How’d you manage that?”

Devo smiled slyly. “Come now, Moe, need you ask?”