The James Deans Part 25

"Nothing," I said, sliding the paperback her way, tucking a five spot in as a bookmark.

"The Guards," she said. "I've heard it's great."

"Yeah, well if you see a guy in the neighborhood in a cheap blue suit, keep that opinion to yourself."

The walk back to Montague Street seemed much easier without the weight of the book.

REQUIEM FOR MOE.

A Moe Prager / Jack Taylor Variation

Originally published in d.a.m.n Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (Busted Flush Press, 2006). Copyright Reed Farrel Coleman.

HE APPEARED AT the Brooklyn store one day, stepping out of a cloud of his own cigarette smoke; a tattered old genie coming out of the lamp. A genie, mind you, in a cheap blue suit and expensive brown shoes.

"Can't smoke in here," I said, not recognizing him at first.

"Moe, isn't it?"

"Do I know-"

I stopped myself and squinted through my gla.s.ses. While I didn't quite know him, we'd met once, maybe fifteen years before on the streets of Tribeca in front of the building where Pooty's had stood. Pooty's was a scruffy watering hole that had once been home to the best jukebox in the city, the place where I first fell deeply in love with my wife to be. Now Pooty's was gone and my wife to be is my wife that was. The genie was an Irishman, from Galway, as I recalled, an ex cop like myself and like myself a man who, in younger days, took on the odd private case.

"How are you?" I held my hand out to him.

Ignored it. Too busy crus.h.i.+ng his cigarette out on the hundred and fifty year old broad plank flooring we'd just had restored and resurfaced. His role as fireman complete, he took my hand.

"Ah, it's good to see you, pal."

"I never did get your name all those years ago."

"Jack," he said as if the single syllable explained the history of the world and then some.

"Just Jack?"

"Why, will it not do?"

Said "It will have to."

"Practical man, Moe. We've no use for practical men in Ireland. A country full of priests and poets. p.i.s.s on the streets of Galway and you'll catch the next five Yeats with the spray."

"I'll take your word for it."

"You'd be the first."

"So, what can I do for you, Jack? A bottle of Jameson?"

Said "For f.u.c.k's sake, is there like a neon sign on me forehead?"

"No, just guessing."

"I've given up the drink, Moe."

"Jack, not to bust your b.a.l.l.s, but this is a liquor store."

"I'm here for you, not for the drink. It's hard for me to confess, but I need your help."

"Help? How can I help you, Jack?"

"I'm looking for a cat."

"A cat?"

"Jesus, is there like an echo in here? Don't you still work cases?"

"I'm an old man."

"Bollix! It's in your blood."

"At my age the only thing in my blood is blood and thanks to the drug companies, it's not even that. Besides, lost pets was never my beat."

Said "Not that kind of cat, Moe."

"What, it escaped from the zoo? Somehow I don't picture a gimpy old Jew and crooked old Irishman chasing tigers through the streets of Brooklyn Heights."

"Not that kind of cat either."

"Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention in school. Am I missing something here or is there another kind of cat?"

Ignored the question "When does your s.h.i.+ft end?"

I checked my watch. "Two hours."

"We'll talk then."

The genie was gone. His crushed cigarette the only evidence he'd been there at all.

OLD MEN DON'T cotton to cemeteries, particularly at night. Too much like visiting the house that's being built for them. A house warming and I didn't even bring cake! But a cemetery is where Jack brought me or, more specifically, where he had me drive us. And he could pick 'em, let me tell you. This was one of the big, old cemeteries in Cyprus Hills, the one where Houdini had yet to escape from and one that played a sad role in my very first private case.

Although the place made me uncomfortable, it was hard to deny the majesty of the grounds. It was all very nineteenth century and early twentieth, when people built marble mausoleums and erected mighty headstones to please the G.o.d of Abraham. As we made our way through the narrow paths between the graves, Jack muttered and tsked.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The greatest sin in Ireland is to let a grave go unattended. Your house can fall down around your ears and look like complete s.h.i.+te, but to let a relative's grave fall into disrepair ..."

"This is an old cemetery, Jack. Most of these people's relatives are themselves dead."

He crossed himself as if it hurt to do so. Said "Here we are."

Pointed at a lonely grave rimmed in very low, but neatly trimmed hedges. The headstone was an una.s.suming block of gray polished granite with the top beveled. The inscription was on the surface of the bevel beneath the Star of David.

ANNE BAUM.

BELOVED DAUGHTER, MOTHER, ANGEL.

BORN JAN 3, 1960 DIED JUNE 1, 1988.

Atop the grave itself were the windblown stems of a hundred dead roses and several grimy statuettes and plaques. One of the filthy busts was a small white, blue and black porcelain bust of Edgar Allan Poe.

"Do you know the writer K.T. Baum?"

"The mystery guy?" I asked.

"The same. This is his daughter's grave. Run down by a drunken driver."

"Jesus!" Funny how Jews from Brooklyn say Jesus all the time. "I have a daughter myself. I don't know what I would have done if-"

"Let's not think of it, Moe. Life is burden enough without the added weight of imagined sorrows."

"You're right, of course. So what are we doing here?"

"Baum is a friend. As I don't possess many, I treasure the ones I do."

"But that still doesn't explain-"

"Look at the grave."

I obliged. He lit up, lifting a heavy silver Zippo to the tip of a cigarette; the genie once again supplying his own magic smoke.

"These are the awards he's won, I take it."

Said "Fella, you take it right."

I knelt down to get a closer look at the grave, my arthritic knees creaking like an old coffin lid. Now I noticed what Jack had hoped I would see.

"Something's missing." I pointed to a clothes iron-shaped depression in the gra.s.s atop the grave. "The cat?"

"The Silver Whisker. About yea big." Jack held his bony hands eight or so inches apart. "Of equal height and near twenty pound of silver."

"Why do you suppose the thief took the cat and not the others?"

Jack said "Who can know the mind of a ghoul? Liked cats better than Poe. Wanted to melt down the silver, maybe."

"Maybe. Baum must be pretty old by now."

"Old and dying. Lung cancer's marking his days. Doctors said he should be dead going on two years now. Finally won that d.a.m.n cat. Think the chase kept him above dirt. The thing had tasked him his whole career. Every award he'd ever won he dedicated to Anne, then placed it upon her grave. Now he can have his peace."

I considered that kind of peace as I was close to experiencing it myself. How much peace was there, I wondered, in endless sleep if you never woke up to appreciate it? I wondered if these were just the kinds of ruminations that drove ancient humans to create the G.o.ds that created them. I wondered if heaven was just waking up again? Old men do a lot of wondering.

BAUM'S HOUSE WAS a big old Victorian in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, a block or two in from Beverly Road. Jack had a.s.sured me it would be fine to stop by the house to chat with the dying author.

"The jumble of medicines keep him up all hours. He'll enjoy the visit."

We were greeted at the door by an odd gray woman. What I mean to say is that she was both older and younger than her age. There was an underlying prettiness, almost girlishness beneath her sixty-ish years and silvery hair. And no amount of years could hide the burn of her green and gold-flecked eyes, but she carried herself and the weight of the world with her.

"Gilda Baum, meet Moe Prager."

Jack had told me in the car that Gilda, Anne's younger sister, had years ago appointed herself to the position of caretaker. Not only did she help manage her father's writing career, but had done nursing courses in order to help manage his medical care as well.

Her handshake was steel.

"He's upstairs waiting for you, Jack. He knew you'd come."

"I'll go have a word with him, Moe. Then you can come on up."

Gilda showed me into the library. It was an impressive thing to behold: handcrafted walnut bookshelves from the parquet floors to the twelve foot high cornice molding that rimmed the mural painted on the plaster ceiling. The mural was done in the pre-Raphaelite style. In it, a lovely woman with an imperfect nose, long white neck and cascades of red tresses floated on a raft of reeds downriver. Her arms were folded across her ample white bosom, the hint of a nipple peeking through her long delicate fingers.

"That's Annie," Gilda said matter-of-factly. "Dad had it done the year she was killed."

"Beautiful."

"That she was. Let me show you dad's other pride."

Gilda looped her arm through my crooked elbow and guided me to the other end of the library. There on display was a collection of old leather bound books and ma.n.u.scripts in Lucite cases. I could make out some of the t.i.tles.