Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

“Never seen nothin’ like it.” The old Italian cop still stands dazed and stuporous above the place, shaking his head incomprehensibly back and forth. “Thirty years on the force—never seen nothin’ like it.”

“Okay.” Konig snaps his note pad closed and takes a final glance at the long, neat row of carefully tagged parcels. “Soon as you finish here, wrap it all up and get it to me.” He turns and starts to limp toward his waiting car.

“Hey, Chief,” Flynn cries out behind him. Konig turns to see the detective waving at him the plastic bag containing the hand with the purple-lacquered fingernails. “Say bye-bye to the little lady.”

“Never mind the hands, Flynn. Get me the goddamned heads.” Konig scowls and ducks into the car.

“Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

Konig sits in a steamy little trattoria —white trelliswork about the doors, artificial flowers woven into the lattice-work, and on the walls cheap views of Pompeii and the Bay of Naples.

There is an open garden in the back with a splashing fountain and an arbor hung with paper lanterns, where young couples full of earnest talk lean heads toward one another and dine in the mild spring evening.

Konig sits by himself at a corner table, ruminative, and sequestered from the noise outside. A plate of cooling, untouched food sits before him while, elbows on table, he muses over a glass of white wine.

“Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

Twilight on a long strip of deserted beach. The lone figure of a fisherman in shorts and skivvy, hip-high in boiling spume, leans forward into a gusty breeze casting a surf pole with lead lures far out over the breaker line. Behind him sits a pensively pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteen, watching intently the high, arching trajectory of plug and line paying out over the onrushing waves, then reeled in slowly, then repeated. Suddenly the line shudders and goes taut.

“Postcards. Pictures. Pencils. Pretty views.”

“ Hurry, Lolly. Fast. I’ve got him. ”

The girl scrambles to her feet. Stumbles forward.

“ Tension. More tension, damnit .”

“ Daddy, I can’t. I can’t. ”

“ Tension—more tension, for God’s sake. You’re losing him. You’re —”

“Wanna buy a postcard?”

Konig glances upward over the rim of his wineglass. “Beg pardon?”

“Wanna buy a postcard or a picture?”

“A picture?”

“Pictures—views of Greenwich Village. New York City.”

Konig stares idiotically into the face of a young girl.

“Got some real pretty views. Washington Square. The Arch. The Mews.”

“No,” Konig mumbles and turns back to the solace of his wineglass.

“Empire State Building. George Washington Bridge. Grant’s Tomb.”

“No—no thank you.”

“How about some pencils?”

“No. I think not.” He turns away, a curt dismissive movement, but still she stands there hovering above him. “Food’s gettin’ cold.”

“Beg pardon.”

“I said your food’s gettin’ cold.”

“Oh.” Konig grumbles, stubs out his cigar, takes up his fork and makes ready to eat. But then, the next moment, slightly flustered, he puts the fork down. “I’m not quite ready to eat.”

“Mind if I sit?”

Stunned, Konig glances up to see the girl smiling rather impudently down upon him. “You mean here? Sit here?”

“Isn’t that a veal cutlet?” the girl murmurs, slipping into the seat opposite him.

“Hey, wait a min—”

“Gonna be ice-cold if you don’t eat it soon. And that salad—”

“Would you please mind hauling yourself right back up and—”

“Lettuce startin’ to wilt right there in the bowl. It’s a shame.”

“Look here, you weren’t invited to—”

“Just lemme freshen that salad up with some of this oil and vinegar.”

Konig stares around helplessly for the head waiter. Though the room is full of laughing, chattering people, no one seems to notice his predicament.

“Hey—wait a minute.” Konig snatches a flask of vinegar from the girl but she has already irrigated his salad with a thick oily dressing. “Now what the hell did you do that for? You’ve flooded the goddamned thing.”

“Sorry. Just tryin’ to perk it up a bit.”

“Well, who asked you to? If I’d wanted it perked up, I would’ve perked it up myself. And I don’t want any pencils or postcards. Now will you please—”

“Wouldn’t you like”—once again the impudent, rather provocative little smile—“a twist of lemon on that veal and—”

“Would you leave here?” Konig’s voice grows louder. He searches about desperately for the head waiter.

“If you don’t want that veal—”

He spies the maître d’, starts to stand and gesture toward him.

“—I’d be glad to eat it for you.”

For the first time, Konig turns and peers squarely into the girl’s face. It is a small gaminelike “face, haggardly pretty. She can be no more than fifteen or sixteen but there is already something blatantly sexual in her mocking glance, in the tightness of her faded jeans and sweater. It is all a kind of bold, unabashed self-proclaiming. Still, beyond the playful impudence in the eyes, the little flashes of defiance, the frank sexuality, there is also a note of fright and quite possibly desperation. The desperation becomes more discernible as the peppery little Neapolitan maître d’ comes, puffing and sputtering, quickly toward them.

Konig sees a small note of pleading in the girl’s eyes and in the next moment he observes in those same eyes a set of blue-gray pupils that are unmistakably constricted.

As the maître d’ marches up to them, her voice rises. She laughs and chatters with a kind of desperate cheer. “So I told this silly little—”

“All right, get out,” the little Neapolitan with the large mustaches fumes down at her. “Go on. Get the hell out.”

The girl peers dismally down at the plate of cold cutlets.

“I’m awful sorry, sir.” He snatches the girl’s arm. “How many times I tell you I don’t want you here? This ain’t that kind of place. Now I’m gonna call a cop.” He starts to tug the girl to her feet. “Awful sorry, sir.”

There’s great confusion while the tugging goes on. Plates and silver clatter. The wineglass nearly topples. Konig makes a desperate lunge and catches it. “That’s all right.” He is painfully aware that everyone in the room has stopped eating and is watching them. “Perfectly all right. Let her stay.”

“Stay?” The Italian gapes at him. “You want her to stay?”

“Yes—it’s okay.” Mortified by the scene they’ve created, Konig hears his voice coming at him from great distances. The Italian’s expression bristles with disapproval. “It’s all right,” Konig goes on a little frantically. “She’s with me. I’ll have another glass of wine, please.” He makes a gesture, dismissing the man.

Baffled and muttering, the Italian moves off, and suddenly Konig and the girl are all alone. Sighing and flustered, he watches her cut and fork pieces of the cutlet into her mouth.

“Nothin’ wrong with this cutlet,” she says.

“Good. I hope you enjoy it.”

“Thanks,” the girl replies, staring dismally down at her plate.

“Forget it. Just finish up and go.”

There’s something famished, almost savage, about the way the girl screws her eyes downward to the plate and chews, her fork darting quickly between cutlet and salad. She chews quickly, too, swallowing large, unmasticated chunks of food, hunched over her plate protectively, like a hungry dog, fearing that she must get it all down fast before someone whisks it away.