Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

“Guppy the red herring. Great title for a children’s book, you think?”

“If they could put the girl next to you, they could just as easily dig up a clown to talk some shit to you, confuse you, throw you off the scent.”

“About the girl. .” I was almost glad MacClough had broached the subject. “I don’t think I can play my part much longer. And tonight, when you saw us down in the lobby, I think she might have suspected something was different.”

“I know it’s hard when you’re that angry at someone,” he empathized.

I laughed at him for that. “It’s not the anger that makes it hard, John. It’s the lack of it.”

“She’s that convincing, that good?”

“She’s better. She’s opaque. When I kiss her, when I look into her eyes, I can’t believe she’s acting. God, I’ll be glad to be away from this place.”

“Okay, one more performance.” MacClough rubbed my shoulder. “We’ll feed her a little misinformation to take back to her masters. Two can play these games.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you, John? You and my brother Jeff.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

I did not want to believe the words that next came out of my mouth:

“You killed Hernandez and Jeff helped you cover it up.”

“No, Klein, that’s what you think you know.”

“It’s what I know!”

“Who told you so?” he sneered.

“You did, John.”

I reached under my coat and produced the copy of Coney Island Burning I had stolen from the public library on my way back to the Old Watermill. I handed the book to MacClough.

It was his turn to laugh. “If it was that simple, I wouldn’t hate myself so much.”

“Then explain it to me. Make me understand.”

“You’ll understand soon enough,” he repeated the words he had said to me at the rest stop.

Soon enough could not come soon enough for me.

He left a note for me. He had to get back downstate to take care of some personal business and to check on the Rusty Scupper. I did not pretend to myself that I wasn’t relieved. He wrote that he had stayed up all night doing the reading I had suggested. He had nothing to say on the subject of my brother or of their mutual involvement with Boatswain-Hernandez. Parroting my review in Publishers Weekly, however, MacClough commented that he found Coney Island Burning a captivating character study featuring crisp, staccato dialogue, but that the plot was rather too arcane and my attempt to bridge the gap between the hard-boiled genre and today’s suspense thriller was only sporadically successful. I marveled at the man. I marveled at his ability to remember that review and how it had seemed to hurt him more than me. I marveled at his ability to hang onto his sense of humor. I was not at all certain that I would be able to.

I had met killers before; some on my own, some with Johnny’s help. I had shared food and drinks with, told dirty jokes to, and played poker with murderers. I had even listened to some describe with cold precision every detail of their crimes. Had it bothered me? Yeah, I guess, a little, but their crimes were as remote to me as the crimes I wrote about in my fiction. The killers themselves were two-dimensional cartoon characters; evil somehow, but unreal.

Well, I was a hypocrite, because it was different with MacClough. None of those other men were my best friend. John was. None had risked his life to save mine. John had. I barely remembered those mens’ faces. I knew John’s face better than my own. He was as close to me as a brother. No, closer. We understood one another better than brothers do. I used to think so. I wasn’t quite as sure now. Maybe it was a measure of the world’s unending barrage of cruelty that murder only mattered when it hit close to home. More likely, it was a measure of my own weakness. If what I thought was true, that John had killed Hernandez in cold blood, I knew I would never be able to look at him in the same way again. And I would have two men to mourn after this mess was over.

It was with this black heart that I set out for breakfast.

The coffee shop was crowded with students and I had to wait about ten minutes to be seated. I used the down time to thumb through the Gazette. Steven Markum was already old news. Mention of his “accidental” death was nowhere to be found. The Valencia Jones trial, on the other hand, remained a hot topic. The headline at the top of the third page let me know that Ms. Jones and her lawyer had taken our advice to heart:

JONES FALLS ILL-TRIAL ON HOLD

The article went on to explain that the judge agreed to interrupt the trial to allow Ms. Jones sufficient time to recover from what a leery prosecutor, Robert W. Smart termed: “Her sudden and convenient ailment.” The trial judge also noted that the time off would allow him to deal with the flurry of motions Ms. Jones’ attorney had filed in recent days. It was clear from the story that neither judge nor prosecutor was very pleased with these obvious delaying tactics. And, though neither stated it for the record, it was equally clear that Valencia Jones would pay a price for stalling. I hoped we would be able to make it worth the gamble.

By the time I had finished off a pot of coffee and one cholesterol special-two scrambled eggs, cheese and bacon on a buttered roll-the place had cleared out. My waitress was the chatty woman who had gossiped about the death up at Cyclone Ridge to Kira and me. She hadn’t been so talkative this morning; not enough blood in the morning paper to suit her purposes. But I was as wrong about her as I was about most everything else.

“Where’s your girlfriend, honey?” she asked me right out. And when I hesitated, she prompted: “You know, that cute oriental number you was in with the other morning?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” was the best I could manage.

“Too bad.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, she’s in here a lot, usually solo.” The gossip shook her head in dismay. “And the few times I seen her in here with a fella, it’s most a the time some dorky college kid. It’s a pity, a cute girl like that.”

“She’s a regular?” I wondered.

“Twice a week since her freshman year.”

Freshman year, my ass. I bit my lip not to say it. Kira probably came into the coffee shop after hard nights turning tricks on campus for a little mad money. And for an extra twenty bucks, she’d let you take her to breakfast. I felt the corners of my mouth curl into a nasty smile.

When my eyes refocused on the waitress, she was staring hard at me.

“Something the matter?”

Wagging her finger at me: “You look real familiar to me. I thought so the other day, too, but I couldn’t place you. Where the hell do I know you from?”

“Read any detective novels?”

“Never. I’m a Harlequin romance gal myself.”

“Go to Brooklyn College?”

“Honey, the closest I ever want to get to Brooklyn is watching reruns of Welcome Back Kotter on TV.”

“You ever get down to Long-”

“That’s it!” she snapped her fingers. “You look just like one of the boys that oriental girl used to come in here with. You his father?”

I shut the busybody out before she finished her question. What she said about the boy who looked like me didn’t make any sense, if that boy was Zak. Even if Kira really did turn tricks on campus, her new employers would never have risked using her to get close to me; too many variables. They could never be sure Zak hadn’t discussed her with me over a beer or in the locker room. A kid might not talk to his father about going to a hooker, but you couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tell a favorite uncle. And if they were willing to wager Zak hadn’t told me, they couldn’t take the chance of some other customer recognizing her as she walked around Riversborough at my side.