Jillian Abbott's - Queens Noir

Once she finally got to the garage, all the chairs and cushions she’d paid the grandkids to stack at the end of the summer had been tossed across the dirty floor, and still the officers were going at it, knocking over beach umbrellas, tossing paint cans. What would they do if they actually found a person? Her father had come over just like this, on a boat from Sicily. And Vin had arrived in an Armani suit on a plane. But the ways they’d been harassed would be nothing compared to what they’d do to a poor Asian soul stuffed on a freighter, for months it had to be, now half-drowned and frozen from kicking for his life in the frosty June chop. Just thinking about it made her sure she heard the croup again, that someone was there.

“Someone’s here,” Kevin or Kieran said, but he meant Rose. “Hey. Hi. Ma’am. Ya really shouldn’t be out.”

“At my age?”

“At this hour. With that cough.” One of his green eyes was lazy, drifting. Rose thought to cough again to cover for the stranger. She wondered if the wok she’d long ago ruined had wound up here in the garage. She’d cleaned it wrong and it had rusted or—

“Let me take you back inside,” Kevin or Kieran insisted, grasping her elbow. Ow. “Mrs.—”

“Don’t you even remember me?” The way it came out sounded like begging. “Paulie’s mom?” Of course, it had been years since she was even that in any meaningful way. She touched the bulge in her sweatshirt. It had been years since she’d been in her own garage, let alone had a car, driven a car, ridden a bike, fired a gun. The beachy gas smell pulled her back to all those sticky cousins of Vin’s, of endlessly boiling pots, gritty towels, crumbs, bones, and water rings that slowly led her down to the sand dragging those two heavy planks that signified: Company. Two leaves, two meats, the vegetable side—

Kevin or Kieran claimed to not have grown up around here. But too bad, he’d kill for a house like this, on the beach. At the door, he gave her a card. In case she saw anything unusual. Then O’Donnell was beckoning him away, to the neighbor’s, setting Blacky off all over again.

“Fires on the beach are illegal; you should know that,” said the policemen when they arrived, that first time. “We could give you a ticket. Burnin’ some good wood there too, looks like oak. We could haul your crazy ass in.” When they’d finally gone, it took Rose a long time to bury the rest of the charred leaves beneath the sand. And still, a dog had it partially dug up by daylight. Vin saw it and said, “So?” If Rose wanted a buffet, well, he’d just invite more company. Then he drag raced his moped into a Green Line bus.

The kids on the beach used to always say they were digging a hole all the way to China. And once, for a few months somewhere in the ’70s, she’d fashioned a hair ornament out of chopsticks like she’d seen on that actress, what’s her name, in that film, whatsitcalled?

“Other than that, I gotta admit, when it comes to things Oriental, I’m one big dummy.”

Li starts to nod but an involuntary shiver overtakes him. His eyes close. He slumps against the table’s pedestal. Rose imagines his mother teaching him to swim. A river it must have been, not a curly, raging ocean. A nice, manageable river.

At first, he looked like some kind of sea monster soaked through and wrapped in the moldy shower curtain. You could see his chest go in and out, but close up that rusty, tentative sound it made scared her. Every now and then he’d erupt with the cough. The shower house itself was a dank lair, reeking of vomit and adorned with wet leaves, cobwebs, and the butts of cigarettes she’d long suspected her teenage grandson of smoking.

“I can help you,” Rose said. “My daughter-in-law is a doctor.”

The stranger bowed, moaning himself up onto his hands and knees, but then he heaved up saltwater and collapsed again.

“You come into my house,” she insisted. “I have a nice house.”

“Ma! Ma! You okay? Did ya trip? What are you doin’ down here under the table? The traffic, ohmygod. That Golden Adven — Why don’t you have the TV on?”

“I’m sleeping?” Rose opens her sticky eyes to see a short, wide man with a graying goatee wheeling several bulging Samsonites. “What are those for?” She pushes up on to her forearms, blinking.

“Thought I’d start the process. Since I was comin’ anyways.” Paulie crosses his furry arms.

According to the window it’s now morning. Low tide. Soon enough he’s eying the empty bottle of Sambuca near her foot and swearing.

“You know you’re not allowed—”

“I thought she was decaying. I thought they were closing the beach!”

“You’re still talking about a damn whale? MA ! A dozen or two people drowned right out there last night—”

Her confusion clears, leaving panic. “Where is he? What did you — Oh!” Li’s beside her, his chest moving up and down, kind of. “Call Maureen!”

But Paulie’s too busy hating her to notice. “They got some cement trucks to bury the big ugly fish, all right? The beach is safe. NOW CALM THE FUCK — Oh god, not again!”

Now he’s spotted his father’s shirt — the ivory cowboy number.

“You keep tellin’ me you don’t need takin’ care of, so how come every time you get blicked, you gotta carry this shit around?” Grabbing for the sleeve, he — “Aah!” — discovers there’s an arm inside it, and there’s a man under the dining room table attached to the arm.

Rose can’t help but giggle. She was waiting for that. “You should see your face, Paulie!”

“What the hell—”

And it just keeps getting funnier. “SHHHH,” Rose has to gasp between laugh spurts. “This is Li. He’s not well.”

“Have you gone fuckin’ nuts? Where did you — why—”

“I was hoping Maureen—”

“What? You can’t ask her to do that.”

“Why not?” With effort, Rose pulls Li’s dented too-still skull onto her lap. “He’s a Christian.”

“You mean criminal !” Paul yells, patting his khakis. “And she’s a vet.”

“Then call a priest.”

“I’m callin’ the cops is who I’m callin’!” Paul starts rifling through his suitcases. “If you’d please shut your trap.” Sounding exactly like Vin.

“When you find your weapon, let me know,” Rose says, reaching into her sweatshirt pocket to cock the gun. “Then you can just kill me and get my house.”

“What? Where’s my phone. I just had—”

The kick of the gun knocks Rose down where Paulie is also heading with a sashay — low twist combination that leaves him slumped right over his bulbous luggage. The movements seem so foreign that she actually finds herself wondering, Did he just get a bad haircut or something? Then she remembers to thrust the gun into Li’s dead-cold hands, their life about drained from them. Fingerprints, right? Rose didn’t endure years of Columbo for nothing.

She is waiting for Li to die before crossing herself, a reflex, and calling the number on the detective’s card. Not Kevin or Kieran but Andrew — her new friend. He’ll be the one to do her the favor. Andrew Volishskya . Not from around here.

Shea Stadium

I followed him to the platform for the 7 train at Grand Central, a place so far down below the street that I expected to meet devils with pitchforks on their way up from Hell. The tail was easy. After a couple of days on the job, I saw that he always wore the same kind of clothes, like a uniform or that crazy detective on cable. White Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, beige khaki pants, and brown loafers. But today he added a cap — navy-blue with an antique capital B on the front and little red socks at the back. A brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.