Authors: Keith Gilman
Lou ordered a double Scotch to get him back on track and let a lit cigarette burn in the ashtray. He sunk into the back corner of the black vinyl booth as if he planned to stay awhile. Jennifer had changed into a pair of tight blue jeans, laced-up work boots, a gray sweatshirt, and a blue baseball hat. She’d let her blond hair down, letting it hang over her shoulders. The boys were throwing their money around and Jennifer had her hands full struggling to refuse their generosity. She was nursing a bottle of beer, but the longer she sat there, the more dire her predicament became. Pretty soon, all those second stringers would be fighting among themselves for a shot at the trophy.
Lou was hoping to find out just what it was that Jennifer Finnelli knew, about her friend’s disappearance, and, Lou suspected, about Tommy Ahearn’s extracurricular activities.
The second Scotch came and he poked at the ice with a red cocktail straw. He didn’t remember ordering the second drink but he drank it anyway. Sarah Blackwell had accused him of being drunk back at the banquet. She was wrong then, but she wouldn’t have been wrong now. He poked at the ice cubes again, stabbing them with the red straw. He didn’t like drunks. He’d spent too many nights wrestling them into submission on the cold streets of Philadelphia. He was hoping to avoid a repeat.
He called over the waitress, patted the seat next to him, and asked her to sit for just a second. She was a hustler and slid in next to him. He felt her body heat, smelled the smoke on her. He told her to deliver a message to Jennifer, after which Jennifer excused herself, climbed down off her stool, and made her way
slowly to the ladies room. She looked briefly toward Lou, as if to tell him she’d be over shortly. Lou had seen this act before and wondered whether she was coming out of that bathroom at all.
Lou counted the minutes on his watch. He decided to let the second hand take a few turns before going in after her. The door opened after two minutes and Jennifer walked out. She sat across from him with her hands folded on the table. She lit a cigarette and tapped it nervously into the ashtray. The drunken mob at the bar looked hungry, as if they wanted Jennifer for themselves. Lou thought about turning her over to them like the sacrificial virgin and sneaking out the back door. He doubted they’d be too disappointed when they discovered the awful truth.
She looked tired, as though she needed sleep and hadn’t been getting much lately.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Klein. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“What made you pick this place?”
“I used to come here when I was much younger, with my friends.”
“How much younger? You’re pretty young now. If I had to guess, too young for that beer in your hands.”
“I’ll be twenty-one in three months. Not that it matters, not in this place. It didn’t matter then. Why would it matter now? They knew we were underage. They didn’t care. They liked us. We were cute and crazy and we did wild stuff.”
Lou ordered coffee and the waitress gave him the evil eye. Jennifer looked a little disappointed.
“What kind of wild stuff?”
“Dancing on tables, stripping. It didn’t take much to get us to take our clothes off. I would dance with my girlfriends and sometimes we’d kiss and the whole place would go nuts. I guess we liked the attention.”
“That could get dangerous though.”
“It did. One night my girlfriends split with these guys and left me here alone. I was really drunk and the next thing I remember I was in a stall in the men’s room. I didn’t know how I got there and I didn’t know how many guys came through there before the cops got me out.”
“And now you feel guilty?”
“I do now. I didn’t then.”
She finished the cigarette and stubbed it out indignantly.
“What is it you wanted to see me about? It seemed urgent.”
“You don’t want to hear me talk dirty any more?”
“Maybe later.”
“Maybe I just like to be mysterious, Mr. Klein. Can I call you Lou?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Can’t a girl invite a man out for a drink without wanting something? Maybe I think you’re a nice guy. I don’t meet many nice guys.”
“I’m not such a nice guy. For instance, I only came out here tonight because I thought you had something to tell me. Information, nothing more. What does that make me?”
“Buy me another drink and I might have something to say about that.”
“We’ve both had too much already. It’s coffee or it’s nothing.”
“There’s such a thing as being too nice a guy, you know.”
She reached for his hand across the table and held it up in front of her as if she were a palm reader, running her fingers lightly over the lines on his skin.
“You have nice hands” she said. “They’re soft. Anybody ever tell you that before?”
“Not really.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, I used to massage the shoulders of this nurse at Bryn
Mawr Hospital. She’d say my hands were magical. Not quite the same thing.”
She released his hand and fixed her cup of coffee with sugar and milk. She stirred wistfully, her eyes focused on the swirling liquid.
“I should have tried to help Carol Ann. Warn her, at least. I figured hooking up with Tommy was a pretty good move and I didn’t want her ruining it on me. But I never knew what he was capable of.”
“Worse than you first thought?”
“I can handle most guys, Mr. Klein. But he’s got some pretty perverted ideas about men and women.”
“Anything you’d like to elaborate on?”
“Tommy Ahearn likes to play rough. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”
“No, I don’t. But I do need to warn you. Tommy Ahearn is a suspect in a series of murders in the city. If you get in his way, it could be bad for your health. But I guess you don’t need me to tell you that.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Can you to tell me where Carol Ann Blackwell is?”
“What does it matter? You heard what Armstrong said.”
“I don’t take orders from Armstrong or from Vincent Trafficante.”
“I do know where she is, Mr. Klein. Tommy has me working as a receptionist, part-time, at a place called Fenwick House. There’s a lot that happens there. I haven’t exactly seen her but she’s there. I’d bet on it.”
“If you haven’t seen her, how do you know she’s there?”
“What I’m saying, is if she’s there, it’s not of her own free will. She’s not going anywhere until after the election.” She leaned in close and whispered. “Maybe not ever.”
“Why do you think Vince is so worried about her? Can she really hurt him that bad?”
“Weren’t you paying attention? Vince is going to be the next Mayor. Do you think he wants Carol Ann Blackwell shooting her mouth off about the family, about her father. She hates Vince and she’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. And you better watch yourself. He wants you out of the way, too.”
“Why the sudden change of heart, Jennifer? Why do you want to help me? Why are you helping Carol Ann Blackwell? Won’t that mess up your plans with Tommy Ahearn?”
“Maybe I’m not what I seem to be, Mr. Klein. Maybe I don’t like Vince or Tommy any more than you do. I just can’t stand up to him the way you do.”
“Or the way Carol Ann Blackwell does?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Lou dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. He kissed Jennifer on the cheek and tasted a salty tear.
Outside, it had started to snow, flurries driven by a light wind. Granular snowflakes had fallen onto his windshield and had frozen over into a crusty layer of ice. He fished around in the backseat for a scraper. He found an old cassette tape in a case and used it to scrape the ice off his windshield. It was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, their greatest hits. He finished clearing the windshield, dried off the case on his pant leg, and popped the tape into the deck.
He put the car in gear and pushed the pedal hard. He kept two hands on the steering wheel as it lurched into the street. He turned the corner under the squeal of screeching rubber and saw a mile of green lights ahead. He could have driven forever, forgotten this case and the web of vipers he’d fallen in with. He was driving aimlessly, listening to Valli croon, watching the snow fall through the streetlights. He followed Master Street onto Wissahickon. He wasn’t in any hurry to get home.
A group of guys in orange traffic vests, green work pants, and muddy boots had the road blocked with a big flashing yellow arrow. One of them was waving a red flag and one was holding a stop sign on a stick. They all wore dirty baseball caps. Work gloves hung from their back pockets. They were digging with jackhammers, opening up a hole in the street. It sounded like machine-gun fire, cracking over the music in the car. Lou waited for the guy to flag him on.
He drove around until the tape played through on both sides, singing to himself, falling short on the highest notes. The last song, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” stuck in his head. He thought he’d sounded ridiculous, hated to think what he looked like as he pulled the car up Meridian Avenue just as Valli’s quavering voice trailed off. He noticed a car wedged into a small space across the street from his house, a dark-colored sedan, brand-new, its nose jutting out into the traffic lane. He drove slowly past it, trying to get a look inside, peering through the tinted windows. He couldn’t see anything, other than the reflection of his own headlights in the opaque glass. The car didn’t belong to anyone in the neighborhood, of that he was sure, but he’d seen it before. His hands tightened on the wheel. The house looked dark. He thought he’d put the front porch light on before he left, but wasn’t sure. He blocked the car in with his and went the rest of the way behind the line of parked cars. His gun was already in his hand. Always the damned gun, he thought, the thing that seemed to define him, haunted him, a necessity of life because too much had happened.
He climbed the front stairs slowly, the gun leading the way. A splash of auburn hair in the darkness told him who his visitor was. She rose from a chair on the porch, wearing the same fur coat as before. Her voice was urgent and vulnerable and still had that hint of desperation.
“Lou, thank God you’ve come.”
She ran to him as fast as a woman can run in high heels. It was Sarah Blackwell.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Not long. I unscrewed the light bulb. I didn’t want to be seen sitting here. I’m freezing, Lou. Can we go inside?”
“Sure.”
“Lou, I’m scared.”
“So are half the people in this world. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Vince, he’s crazy. He doesn’t trust anybody. He hurt me, Lou.”
“All right, let’s go inside. Tell me what happened.”
The keys rattled in his hand as he shuffled through them, finding the one that fit the front door. He turned the key, gave the door a little push, and the wind carried it the rest of the way. It rolled slowly open with an eerie squeal.
Lou turned on a lamp and faced her. She kept her head bowed, her face in shadow. He pushed the hair away from her face. He placed two fingers under her chin and gently raised her head and made her look at him. There were bruises under both of her eyes, red swollen welts, pockets of blood where something hard, like a man’s fist, had hit her. Her lips were swollen, the teeth stained with blood. She held the pose for a second, saw Lou’s reaction, though he attempted to conceal it, and turned abruptly away.
She fell onto the couch and covered her face with her hands. Lou grabbed a towel from the bathroom, turned on the water, and let it run until it was ice cold. He soaked the towel in the cold water, felt the numbing cold against his hands. He looked at himself in the mirror as the water ran from the faucet. The eyes that stared back at him were made of glass. They revealed nothing: no window to the soul. He wrung out the wet towel, twisted it with his fists until every last drop of water had dripped into the sink. He daubed the blood from her face and laid the towel across her forehead.
“I’m a meh8uss. Aren’t I?”
“Vince did this to you?”
“He said I never should have come to you. He said that if anything happens, it’ll be my fault. He was drinking pretty heavily at the party and then more when we got home. Pretty soon he’s going nuts, starts wrecking the place, throwing things around, smashing things off the walls. He called me every name in the book and that’s when he started swinging. He’s never hit me before, Lou. I swear. I’ve never seen him so mad.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“Why do you even ask that? You know the score, Lou. If I called the police, the way he was, I wouldn’t have been waiting on your porch. I’d be in the trunk of a car, on my way to Jersey. And my daughter would be right next to me.”
“What can I do?”
“You don’t have to do anything, okay. I’ll find a nice clean hotel to stay in where they’ll let me smoke cigarettes and the room service won’t look down their nose at me like I’m some kind of lowlife.” She slipped on her shoes, hooked an arm through her purse, and sauntered toward the door. She stood with her back to him, one hand on the knob. She was crying. “I don’t know why I came here. I had to get away, Lou, and I’m not going back. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“So, you figured go see your old friend, Lou. He’ll take care of you, at least until this thing blows over or Vince sobers up.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I’m not trying to take advantage of you, if that’s what you think. I tried twice to pay you for your help. You wouldn’t take the money.”
“I never said I wanted your money.”
“Then what do you want?”
She slid out of her shoes, tossed her coat onto a chair, and walked slowly toward him. She placed her arms on his shoulders and clasped her fingers behind his neck. Her eyes closed.
Her head tilted. Her lips parted and melted onto his. He tasted the blood in her mouth.
“Listen Lou,” she said, leaning away. “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, plenty of regrets. I’ve done things I wish I never had but if you think this is all an act, I’ll leave. But the next time you see me, I’ll probably be dead. When Vince sees that I’m gone, if he finds out I’m here, he’ll want to kill me and you know it. He’ll want to kill you, too.”
He pushed his fingers through her hair and pulled her head back. He leaned over and kissed her again, harder this time, harder than he’d ever kissed a woman before. His other hand reached down around her waist as their tongues intertwined. Her body writhed and curled around his. He released the hold on her hair and slid the thin straps of her dress off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.