Reed Coleman - Onion Street

Casey nodded yes, shaking Malone’s hand.

“Over here, kid,” Malone said, tugging me by the arm. We climbed up a low mound of churned up garbage. “He don’t look so good, your friend.”

“I know, Detective Casey warned me.”

“Look out, Phil,” Malone barked at his partner standing over the body. “The vic’s friend is here.”

Malone walked me over to where the other detective had been standing. The body was nude and the colored parts of his eyes had gone kind of milky white. His skin was a waxy gray-white in most places, but it was battered and bruised in others. There was a really nasty ring of bruises around his neck. Jagged spikes of broken bones jutted out through the skin of his left thigh and right arm.

Malone seemed to anticipate my question. “The bones stickin’ out like that probably happened after he was dead. They found him when the bulldozer was pilin’ up the garbage. We think it was the bulldozer that done the damage to him like that.”

“But not the bruises?”

“No, kid. The murderer done that.”

I was okay until a bug crawled out of one of the body’s nostrils into the other. After that things got hazy there for a second and my knees got rubbery. I felt arms holding me up.

“Easy, kid, easy.”

“It’s not him,” I said. “He’s the right height and age and everything. His hair’s the right color, but it’s not him.”

“It’s not who?” the other detective, Phil, shouted at Malone.

I shouted back. “It’s not Lids. It’s not my friend.”

“You sure about that, kid?” Malone asked. “Fifteen seconds ago you was so lightheaded I thought you was gonna take a dive. Take another look to be sure.”

Even though I knew it wasn’t Lids, I looked again. “Sorry, Detective Malone. It’s not him.”

Phil wasn’t happy. “Ah, shit! Just what we needed, another John fucking Doe.”

“Okay, kid,” Malone said. “Thanks. You done yourself proud. You can get outta here now.”

The line of uniforms stared at me in anticipation as I walked back toward them. I just shook my head. While they didn’t seem disappointed, they didn’t seem pleased either.

“It’s not him, Detective,” I said to Casey.

Casey didn’t ask me if I was sure. “Let’s split. I swear if I have to breathe this stuff in another minute, I’m gonna throw up everything I ate since I was ten years old.”

I was all for leaving. I was relieved to be getting away from the stench and away from the birds. I was relieved that the body wasn’t Lids. I was relieved, sure, but I wasn’t exactly happy, either. Whoever John Doe was, he had a family too. Somewhere they were worrying themselves sick, and someday only grief would end their worry. And then I had a sadder thought: What if his family didn’t care? What if there was no one to worry about him? I think I learned more about life in those few minutes in the Fountain Avenue dump than I had during the rest of my time on earth.

I knew I had to get in to see Bobby, but the first thing I did was go home and take a hot, soapy shower. And even though I got the film and smell off me, I couldn’t get it out of me. I brushed my teeth so long I was in danger of wearing away the enamel. I dipped a Q-tip in a Dixie cup of Aqua Velva and stuck it up my nostrils. It stung like hell and it proved to be a waste of time. The sting lasted longer than the relief and when the alcohol evaporated the stink of the dump filled up my head once again. I would’ve burned my clothes in the building’s incinerator if I could have afforded to. Instead I gave my mom my clothes to wash.

“I just washed these,” she yelled, shaking them at me. “They’re fine.” I thought she was going to puke when she put them to her nose to prove me wrong. She didn’t yell at me after that.

When it came to my Converse All-Stars and my pea coat, I didn’t have many options. Hell, they smelled even worse than the rest of my clothes. Even if I’d been willing to hold my nose and put them back on, there was no way they’d let me in to see Bobby, smelling like the Fountain Avenue dump. So I did what any red-blooded American male would’ve done in my situation — I stole from my brother.

Although he was slimmer than me, we both had monkey arms and I could usually squeeze myself into things like Aaron’s sports jackets, coats, and sweaters. We did wear the same shoe size, at least. The thing was, Aaron treated all of his possessions with the same sort of obsessive care with which he treated his car. Whereas my sneakers looked like they’d been robbed off the feet of a Bowery bum, Aaron’s looked new out of the box. In fact, he kept them in the box with the tissue paper still stuffed inside. And when it came to his coats, Aaron stored them in his closet in the cleaners’ plastic bags. I didn’t figure he would kill me for “borrowing” his sneakers. They only cost eight bucks. It was his shearling jacket that worried me. That jacket was his most prized piece of clothing, which, when it came to my brother, was really saying something. There would be no forgiving me if I somehow messed it up. Thank goodness Aaron was still at his girlfriend’s house, or I would have had to go to the hospital in a bundle of sweaters and my silly dress shoes. As it was, Miriam nearly sounded the alarm when I snuck out the front door past my mom and dad.

The steely gloom that had hung overhead earlier this morning had lifted or been burned away by the sun. Though the sky above Ocean Parkway had brightened, the weather had turned frigid. Aaron’s jacket kept most of me pretty toasty during my short walk to the hospital. I made it up to Bobby’s floor without bother. There I saw that most of the cops who’d been guarding Detective Casey’s most precious rat had gone. Now only a single uniformed cop, his head buried in a copy of Sports Illustrated , sat outside Bobby’s room. I tried to just walk past him, but he wasn’t having it.

“Where the fuck you think you’re goin’, son?”

Son? “Going to see my friend, officer.”

“No, you ain’t neither.”

“Okay, let’s get Detective Casey on the phone and see what he says.”

“Listen to me, junior. I don’t know no Detective Casey and even if I did, I don’t take orders from no little hippie freak.”

Little hippie freak! That almost made him calling me “son” and “junior” reasonable.

“That’s enough!” I growled at him. “What’s your name? Okay, your badge number is three — ”

That did it. He grabbed me by the arm and marched me toward the elevators, but the thickness of the coat sleeve made it hard for him to get a good grip on my arm. When I felt his hand relax to re-grip, I spun away and ran for Bobby’s room. When I burst through the door, I got a big surprise. There, standing over Bobby’s bed was Tony Pizza. At the foot of the bed was Tony’s muscle, Jimmy Ding Dong. Jimmy did different kinds of magic tricks than his boss. Whereas Tony P made coins disappear, Jimmy Ding Dong made whole people vanish. Only Jimmy displayed no talent for making them reappear. Once they were gone, they stayed gone. Word was that Jimmy was the guy responsible for disappearing Chicky Lazio and Petey Cha Cha, two guys from the Anello family who’d tried to muscle in on Tony P’s turf.

I didn’t know how Jimmy got the nickname Ding Dong, but it wasn’t from eating Hostess cakes. This guy from the neighborhood told me it was because “when Jimmy rang your bell, it stayed rung forever.” Who knows? I wasn’t going to ask Jimmy. Built like a big cat — lean and sinewy, always ready to pounce — Jimmy’s attitude was purely crocodilian. His eyes were cold and devoid of humanity. At least, I thought, cats play with their prey. Jimmy didn’t play. Actually, it was Jimmy who saved Tony P and his magic tricks from seeming ridiculous. He was the reason people in the neighborhood gave Tony Pizza as much respect as he got, and why no one called him Tony Pepperoni to his face. There was nothing ridiculous about Jimmy except his nickname.