Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

“What is my last name?” she screamed.

It was then that B.O. decided to be a hero. He stood up, yelling, “He’s a cop! You can’t shoot a cop!”

They both looked up.

“Witness, they’re witnesses,” the naked mounted cop said.

“I’ll goddamn shoot anyone I please,” Bridget said.

“But not a cop,” B.O. insisted.

“Run for help,” Ernie K. said. “Say it’s a ten-thirteen.”

B.O. turned to run. He knew the location of all the police call boxes in the park.

“Fahey,” Lefty said. “Her name is Bridget Fahey.”

And there it was, out there for all to know. B.O. stopped cold.

“Mr. Trainor is right,” Bridget said. “And this conceited, arrogant police officer knows the Fahey name all too well, do you not? All too well.”

Bridget circled Ernie K. Dust rose from her feet as she shuffled to put her back to us. Out of modesty, or a better shooting angle. I didn’t know which.

“You shoot me and these kids will tell,” he said. “Every cop in this country will hunt you down.”

“You exaggerate your popularity,” she said.

“You can’t shoot a cop,” B.O. said.

“Even one who had sex with a sixteen-year-old?” Bridget said. She said it to us. “A sixteen-year-old who happens to be my sister.”

Bridget Fahey only had one sixteen-year-old sister: Margaret Mary. The same Margaret Mary who wore the pin of the Blessed Virgin on her school uniform. The same Margaret Mary who B.O. claimed as the love of his life. I felt my mouth go dry.

“Shoot him,” Lefty said. “She has to shoot him, B.O.”

“No,” B.O. moaned, and then he babbled something and stumbled backward, banging off Van Cortlandt tombstones. He started to run, with his hands over his face. His knee cracked into a rock and he went down. Lefty and I went after him. I picked up his glasses and yelled for him to wait, but he was gone, moving fast. Lefty and I were faster, but we couldn’t catch him. The second shot brought us off the ground again, and probably on record pace. Then we saw B.O. make a right on the cowpath and we sprinted hard. Lefty finally brought him down with an open-field tackle.

B.O. was gasping, and crying, and trying to say something about hating us. I handed him his glasses and he smacked them away. But he should have put them on to see the naked redhead galloping toward us across the open field. Bridget came right at us, her hair flying in the wind. She brought Connie to a halt, then she tossed her purse to the ground. The bag was no longer floppy, but full and round. It hit with a thud.

“She cut his head off,” B.O. said.

“Oh, stop it, all of you,” she said, as she dismounted. She hadn’t had time to dress.

Lefty pulled B.O. to his feet. We were only about fifty yards from the traffic moving on Broadway. Bridget stood in front of us, and we all stared at the ground. I focused on her painted toenails. Either dark green or black.

“I didn’t shoot him,” she said. “God knows I wanted to. But it would only make things worse.”

“If Ernie ain’t dead,” Lefty said, “he’s going to make us pay for this.”

“He’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said. “He doesn’t want anyone to know a thing about this. He’ll make up some story. Like he went in the lake to save someone, and someone stole his horse.”

“We’ll tell them the truth,” B.O. said.

“He’ll say we’re the ones who stole his horse,” Lefty said, “and we’re lying to protect ourselves.”

“My dad will believe me.”

“Your dad will never know, Brendan,” she said. “This has to remain our secret.”

“How do you know my name?” B.O. said.

“I know all of you. I know Mr. Trainor, and you, quiet man,” she said, nodding to me. “But I know you best, Brendan. For all you might think ill of me now, I’m close to my sisters. And I will do all that is necessary to protect them. Understand me?”

“He should be arrested,” B.O. said. “It’s rape. It’s statutory rape. Ask my father.”

Bridget sighed heavily. I heard the old Yonkers bus, the Bernacchia line, chugging home. I wondered if they could see us out in the open field. Or would they even believe their eyes.

“Look at me,” she said. “All of you. Look at my face.”

That wasn’t going to be easy. I knew that if I looked up my eyes would be uncontrollable, caroming around in their sockets like loose pinballs. It hurt, but I looked up, and I’d never seen so many freckles in my life. Freckles everywhere. Everywhere.

“I want you to listen carefully to me,” she said. “Especially you, Brendan.”

“He should pay for what he did,” B.O. said.

“We cannot have him arrested,” she said. “And after I leave here, none of us will ever speak of this again.” She took B.O.s hand. “I truly hate to tell you this, but Margaret Mary didn’t want to leave you this summer. She had to go away.”

In that moment I think we all realized we had just acquired the first deep secret of adulthood. We understood it was a test of what kind of men we would become.

“You know how this neighborhood is,” she said. “They’ll destroy Margaret Mary. That’s why she needs your loyalty and your unconditional love. And in a few weeks, when she returns, I want you to act like nothing happened.”

“You got it,” Lefty said. “What do we do now?”

She kept her eyes on B.O., as she handed Lefty Ernie K.’s gun belt. His revolver was back in the holster.

“Wipe this clean and reload the two bullets,” she said. “Get rid of the empty cartridges. Then deliver this horse to Hagan’s bar. Say you found him wandering in the park. I want this man humiliated.”

“We’ll do it for Margaret Mary,” B.O. said. He wiped his eyes with his shirt and put his glasses on. Then he took the gun from Lefty and reloaded. “I’ll toss the cartridges down the sewer,” he said. “Then I’ll tell my dad I found the horse in the park.”

Bridget smiled and put her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence.

“You okay, B.O.?” Lefty said.

“Fine,” he said.

“Take one last look,” Bridget said, and whirled around, a blur of red hair and freckles upon alabaster.

We helped B.O. fold Ernie K.’s uniform and tie it to Connie’s saddle. She’d even kept his underwear. Bridget dug in her purse for her clothes.

“We’ll take care of the humiliation part, Bridget,” Lefty said, but she’d already dressed and was running toward the subway.

The nuns were right: Pursuit of a worthy goal takes you mind off your problems. I felt oddly relieved, as Lefty and I walked to the phone booth near the White Castle. I grabbed the phone book and began looking up numbers. Lefty, using an accent that sounded like no ethic group I’d ever heard, called the police to report a crazy naked man threatening people near the lake in Van Cortlandt Park. We called the Fire Department, the Parks Department, the Yonkers PD, the FBI, and every newspaper we could think of. We had to go get more dimes.

In less than five minutes, a dozen emergency vehicles were searching the park. Their sirens were almost drowned out by the blare of car horns. traffic backed up at least three blocks on Broadway. They were all in a line behind Brendan O’Leary, who led Connie right square down the middle of Broadway. He actually looked even better than his happy old self. A man on a mission.

Arthur Avenue

Frank Bernardo stood ramrod straight in front of the fulllength mirror in his bedroom for his daily self-inspection. It was a ritual before he left his apartment that he had not missed for as long as he could remember. The black silk suit draped perfectly on his six-foot frame; his alligator loafers shined to a deep gloss, his white-on-white shirt starched stiff as a pizza crust. He smoothed a red-and-black patterned sevenfold silk tie and pinched a perfect dimple under its Windsor knot. A silk pocket square picked up the red in his tie, and his diamond pinky ring shone like a thousand suns.