Fatherhood And Other Stories Part 6

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

He placed a single, trembling finger on that final word and looked up at me quizzically, no doubt wondering, perhaps quite desperately, if I could intuit the question his eyes asked. Will you answer as the Raven does? Will you refuse to abandon me?

For my answer, I took the book from his hands and read the last stanza of Poe's great poem: And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; I looked up and saw that he understood.

"I won't leave you alone," I a.s.sured him.

Had the world been less the thing it is, and more the thing we wish it were, then my father would have recovered, and we would have had a few more years to work out the long confusion of our lives, come to graceful terms, so that by the time his death at last arrived, I would have been a truly loving son, he a loving father, the two of us at last in some accord with what he had done, and I had done, what he was and what I became. But it was too late for that, as I could see by his waning strength. And so I accepted what the Talmud teaches, that no act can be wholly undone. But then, "The Raven" teaches that, too, I thought, and so I returned to it and began to read to my father again, this time from the beginning, a land both dark and dreary rising before me as I read, that place denied all true atonement, and where, as Poe so darkly knew, each second turns Forever into Nevermore.

RAIN.

Battery Park A burst of light releases the million eyes of the rain, glimpsing the Gothic towers in dark mist, falling in glittering streams of briefly reflected light, moving inland, toward the blunt point of the island, an outbound ferry as it loads for the midnight run.

So like I said before, it ain't like she has long, you know?

Yeah, mon. She just hangin' on now.

Rain streaks down the ferry's windows where the night riders sit in yellow haze-Toby McBride only one among them, single, forty-two, the bowling alley in trouble, thinking of his invalid mother on Staten Island, money leaching away, watching her Jamaican nurse, such big black hands, how easy it would be.

I figure you could use twenty grand, right?

Twenty, huh?

The rain falls on intrigue and conspiracy, trap doors, underground escape routes, the crude implements of quick getaways. It collects the daily grime from the face of the Custom House and sends it swirling into the vast underground drains that empty into the sea. Along the sweep of Battery Park it smashes against crumpled cigarette packets, soaks a broken shoelace, flows into a half-used tube of lipstick, drives a young woman beneath a tattered awning, blond hair, shoulder-length, with a stuck umbrella, struggling to open it, a man behind her, sunk in the shadows, his voice a tremble in the air.

You live in this building?

Long, dark fingers still the umbrella, curl around its mahogany handle.

Name's Rebecca, right?

The rain sees the fickle web of chance meetings, the grid of untimely intersections, lethal fortuities from which there will be no escape. A million tiny flas.h.i.+ng screens reflect stilettos and box cutters, switchblades and ice picks, the snubnosed barrel that stares out from its nest of long dark fingers.

Don't say a word.

Off West Street the rain falls on the deserted pit of the ghostly towers, and moves on, cascading down the skeletal girders of the new construction, then further north to Duane Street, thudding against the roof of an old green van.

So, when you get here, Sammy?

Don't worry. I'll be there.

Eddie squeezes the cell phone, glances back toward the rear of the van, speakers, four DVD players, two car radios, a cashmere overcoat, a s...o...b..x of CDs, some jewelry that might be real, the bleak fruit of the hustle.

I need you here now, man.

You that hyped?

Now, man.

In the gutters, the rus.h.i.+ng rain washes cigarette b.u.t.ts and candy wrappers, a note with the number 484 in watery ink, a hat shop receipt, a prescription label for Demerol. It washes down grimy winds.h.i.+elds and as it washes, sees the pop-eyed and the drowsy, the hazy and the alert, Eddie scratching his skinny arms, Detective Boyle in the unmarked car a block away playing back the tape, grinning at his partner as he listens to the voices on the ferry.

We got McBride dead to rights, Frank.

A laugh.

That f.u.c.king Jamaican. Jeez, does he know how to work a wire.

At Police Plaza, the wind s.h.i.+fts, driving eastward, battering the building's small square windows, a thudding rumble that briefly draws Max Feldman from the photographs on his desk, Lynn Abercrombie sprawled across the floor of her Tribeca apartment, shot once with a snubnosed .38, no real clues save the fact that she lay on her back with a strand of long blond hair over the right eye, maybe done by a fan of Veronica Lake, some sick aficionado of the noir.

The rain falls upon the tangle of steel and concrete, predator and prey. It slaps the baseball cap of Jerry Brice as he waits for Hattie Jones, knowing it was payday at the all-night laundry, her purse full of cash. It mars Sammy Kaminsky's view of Dolly Baron's bedroom window and foils the late-night entertainment of a thousand midnight peepers.

On Houston Street, it falls on people drawn together by the midnight storm, huddled beneath shelters, Herman Devane crowded into a bus refuge, drunk college girls all around him, that little brunette in the red beret, her body naked beneath her clothes, so naked and so close, the touch so quick, so easy, to brush against her then step back, blame it on the rain.

Lightning, then thunder rolling northward over Bleecker Street, past clubs and taverns, faces bathed in neon light, nodding to the beat of piano, ba.s.s, drums, the late-night riff of jazz trios.

Ernie Gorsh taps his foot lightly beneath the table.

Not a bad piano.

Jack Plato, fidgeting, toying with the napkin beneath his drink, a lot on his mind, time like a blade swinging over his head.

f.u.c.k the piano. You hear me, Ern? 484 Duane. A little jewelry store. Easy. I cased it this afternoon.

Ernie Gosch listens to the piano.

Jack Plato, slick black hair, sipping whiskey, c.o.c.ksure about the plans, the schedule, where the cameras are.

Paulie Cerrellos is backing the operation. A safe man is all we need. Christ, it's a sure thing, Ern.

Ernie Gorsh, gray hair peeping from beneath his gray felt hat, just out of the slammer, not ready to go back.

Nothing's ever sure, Jack.

It is if you got the b.a.l.l.s.

It can't if you don't got the brains.

Plato, offended, squirming, a deal going south, Paulie will be p.i.s.sed. No choice now but to play the bluff.

Take it or leave it, old man.

Ernie, thinking of his garden, the seeds he's already bought for spring, seeds in packets nestled in his jacket pocket, thinking of the slammer too, how weird it is now, gangs, Aryans, Muslims, f.a.g cons raping kids in the shower, deciding not to go back.

Sorry, Jack. Rising. I got a bus to catch.

The eyes of the rain see the value of experience, the final stop of crooked roads. It falls on weariness and dread, the iron bars of circ.u.mstance, the way out that looks easy, comes with folded money, gla.s.sine bags of weed, tinfoil cylinders stuffed with white powder, floor plans of small jewelry stores, with Xs where the cameras are.

At 8th Street and Sixth Avenue, Tracey Olson leaves a cardboard box on the steps of Jefferson Market. Angelo and Luis watch her rush away from inside a red BMW boosted on Avenue A, the rain thudding hard on its roof.

You see that?

Wha?

That f.u.c.king girl.

What about her?

She left a box on the steps there.

What about it?

That all you can say, whatabout.i.twhatabout.i.t?

Luis steps out into the rain, toward the box, the tiny cries he hears now.

Jesus. Jesus Christ.

On 23rd, the rain slams against the windows of pizza parlors and Mexican restaurants, Chinese joints open all night.

Sal and Frankie. Sweet and sour pork. Moo goo gai pan.

So, the guy, what'd he do?

What they always do.

He ask how old?

I told him eighteen.

Sal and Frankie giggling about the suits from the suburbs, straight guys who dole out cash for their sweet a.s.ses then take the PATH home to their pretty little wives.

Where was he from?

Who cares? He's a dead man now.

That plum sauce, you eatin' that?

At Broadway and 34th, the million eyes of the rain smash against the dusty windows of the rag trade, Lennie Mack at his desk, ledgers open, refiguring the numbers, wiping his moist brow with the rolled sleeves of his s.h.i.+rt, wondering how Old Man Siegelman got suspicious, threatening to call in outside auditors, what he has to do before that call is made ... do for Rachel, and the two kids in college, do because it was just a little at the beginning. Jesus, two hundred fifty thousand now. Too much to hide. He closes the ledger, sits back in his squeaky chair, thinks it through again ... what he has to do.

From Times Square, the gusts drive northward, slanting lines of rain falling like bullets, exploding against the black pavement, the cars and buses still on Midtown streets, Jaime Rourke on the uptown 104, worrying about Tracy, what she might do with the baby, seated next to an old guy in a gray felt hat fingering packets of garden seed.

So I guess you got a garden.

My building has little plots. A smile. My daughter thinks I should plant a garden.

Eddie Gorsh sits back, relaxed, content in his decision, grateful to his daughter, how, because of her, there'll be no more sure things.

Daughters are like that, you know. They make you have a little sense.

Near 59th and Fifth, a gust lifts the awning of the San Domenico. Dim light in the bar. Bartender in a black bolero jacket.

Amanda Graham. Martini, very dry, four olives. Black dress, sleeveless, Mikimoto pearls. Deidre across the small marble table. Manhattan. Straight up.

Paulie's going to find out, Mandy.

Amanda sips her drink. How?

He has ways.

A dismissive wave. He's not Nostradamus.

Close enough. And for what? Some n.o.body.

He's not a n.o.body. He plays piano. A nice gig. On Bleecker Street.

My point exactly.

Amanda nibbles the first olive. What do you really think Paulie would do?

Deidre sips her drink.

Kill you.

Amanda's olive drops into the crystal gla.s.s, ripples the vodka and vermouth. The smooth riffs of Bleecker Street grow dissonant and fearful.

You really think he would?

Over the nightbound city, the rain falls upon uncertainty and fear, the nervous tick of unsettled outcomes, things in the air, motions not yet completed. At 72nd and Broadway, it sweeps along windows coiled in neon, decorated with bottles of ale and pasted with green shamrocks.

Captain Beals. Single malt scotch. Glenfiddich. Detective Burke with Johnny Walker Black. A stack of photographs on the bar between them. Fat man. Bald. 3849382092.

This the last one?

Yeah. Feldman thinks it's a long shot, but the guy lives in Tribeca, and it seems pretty clear the killer lives there too.

A quick nod.

His name is Harry Devane. Lives in Windsor Apartments. Just a couple buildings down from Lynn Abercrombie. Four blocks from Tiana Matthews. Been out four years.

What's his story?