Reed Coleman - Little Easter

“Dirty as a clamdigger’s toenails,” I assured her.

“Let’s drink on it. Pass me the Grand Marnier,” she pointed out its hiding place.

I leaned over the bed’s edge, recouped the quarter-filled bottle and took a choking swig. Kate Barnum snatched the bottle, matched my swallow and killed the bedside lamp. She moved near me and let the remainder of the bottle flow into my lap. Even in the blackness, I could see that she had moved to clean up the latest puddle. She cleaned and I let her.

Kate Barnum had gone. The sun was strong. Most of the snow had turned itself into sewer juice. And the list of John Francis MacClough’s former partners was waiting for me at Larry Feld’s office. I tried to strike up a conversation with his secretary, but she blew me off like last year’s lint. She did, however, give me a condescending scowl when she noticed that my attire hadn’t changed since yesterday. I didn’t take it too much to heart and left Mary to wither and die. Hopefuly, sooner than later.

The top four or five names were familiar to me. I’d already met some of these guys at Emerald Society functions MacClough had dragged me to. One or two of them had even graced the Rusty Scupper with their presence. They’d be easy enough to talk to. Lord knows, they seemed to have an endless stream of Johnny MacClough stories.

It was John’s early running mates that concerned me. They were old school boys from a time when patrolling a beat meant using your feet and not a steering wheel. In their day, all lunches were free, drinks were always on the house and everyone in the precinct had pockets padded by local businessmen. Their weakness for the payoff wasn’t at issue. It was accepted by everyone, except Al Pacino, and condoned at the highest levels. It’s just that old-timers didn’t believe in talking to non-cops. That was a real barrier. That and the fact that one of John’s ex-compatriots was five years with the angels and another lived in Yuma, Arizona.

Cops, all cops, are such suspicious bastards. I’d have to tread lightly, but not so lightly as to reap no results. It would be like tap dancing around a land mine. One misstep, one wrong question and they’d tip Johnny to my game. I couldn’t afford to have things blow up in my face; not yet, anyway. I decided to use the wheeze about throwing Johnny a big party and how it was a total surprise type deal and, while we’re on the subject, do you remember any of his old flames? The line hadn’t worked on Larry Feld, but nothing ever fooled Larry and I was fresh out of alternative ploys.

I started by calling on the cops I’d met and moved onto the ones I’d heard Johnny mention in stories or in passing. Some of them were still on the job. Some were in various states of retirement. By nightfall I’d been in every borough of the city, seen the insides of three precinct houses, walked the floor at Bloomingdale’s with the assistant head of security and shared overcooked shepherd’s pie with one of John’s ex-partners who ran a failing Irish pub in Greenpoint. By nightfall I’d run out of even vaguely familiar names. By nightfall I’d been almost everywhere, but gotten nowhere.

Oh, my approach seemed to go over smoothly enough. I got a warehouse full of feedback on the subject of John Francis MacClough, but nothing in the warehouse was worth my while. Everyone wanted in on the party for Johnny, Everyone offered to help. Everyone loved MacClough. Everyone had a few choice Johnny MacClough stories. Everyone told me his favorite. Everyone remembered the sergeant’s wife Johnny had porked on a dare or the Puerto Rican deli girl who went down on Johnny in a beer cooler during the ’77 Blackout or Johnny and the twin nurses. No one remembered anyone who fit the dead woman’s description. No one recalled Johnny ever having a pet name or a nickname. Certainly not Johnny Blue.

I made two more stops on my trek back to Sound Hill. One for gas and a piss in Syosset. The other detour had to do with a stranger’s name on a list in my pocket.

Terrence O’Toole was an aging, pot-bellied giant with a red veiny nose to shame Rudolph and a manner crustier than week-old French bread. He answered his front door armed with a dangling cigarette, a can of Coors and an expression as sour as a barrel full of pickles.

“I don’t know you,” he accused, blowing smoke and the sick smell of burped up beer down to me.

“That’s right. You don’t.”

“What you selling then? Nevermind,” the giant raised a meaty paw to cut off any answer I might have. “Whatever it is, I don’t want any. I don’t need any.” He stepped back and started closing the door.

“Wait a fuckin’ second, goddamit!” I blurted out in unthinking frustration.

The door reversed its direction. A beer can fell and one of those huge hands snapped out at me like a lizard’s tongue. Clamped firmly around my throat, it reeled me into the vestibule. O’Toole was one strong old man. He could easily have kicked my ass up and down the block without breaking a sweat.

“What was that, mister?” he tightened his grip about my neck. My head felt like an overfull water-balloon.

“John Mac-” I coughed, not having enough air for the last syllable.

“Who?” O’Toole loosened the lizard’s tongue a bit.

“Johnny MacClough. I’m here about Johnny MacClough.”

There was no further change in the relationship between his hand and my throat, but his sour face mellowed some and his eyes rolled back into his skull. I figured he was running over what was left of his memory. How much remained was a toss-up. Age takes it toll and noses don’t get that red and veiny from the sun.

“What about Johnny?” the old cop had finished cross-referencing.

I didn’t respond immediately, instead pointing to the proximity of his fingers and my windpipe. He made like Pharaoh and let me go. I was still a little nauseous and light headed, so O’Toole guided me-pushed me, really- into his kitchen and sat me down at the table. Something hissed like a rush of steam and an open can of beer appeared before me.

“Drink!” he ordered.

I drank.

“Now what’s this about Johnny?”

I told him about the party.

“You’re full of shit, mister,” the old cop smiled at me for the first time with evil, crooked teeth. “You could just have easily called me about this party as shown up at my door at night in the middle of winter. Come on now, you can do better than that. You couldn’t fool my dead granny with that party yarn. What gives?”

“Nothin’,” I stood up to go. “Forget it. Sorry I bothered you.”

“No ya don’t,” something quick and powerful shoved me back into my seat.

“I didn’t make detective, but don’t ever mistake that for stupidity. I just never looked good in a suit. Now spill.”

I spilled. I spilled like an open milk carton turned upside down. He heard it all. He heard all about my Christmas Eve. He heard all about the ratty mink coat, Johnny Blue, my broken pint glass and the orphaned heart.

He saw tracks in the snow and blood in the snow and death in the snow. I introduced him to Kate, Larry, Mojo, Sylvia and the pinky-ringed sapling in Dugan’s Dump. He listened without emotion, taking it in with a sip now and then. He burped like a cannon when I finished.

“She had some funny kinda name,” the giant finger-combed his thin wisps of white hair. “Something biblical. Andrella, maybe. Something like that. I don’t know. Christ, it was a fucking lifetime ago.”

“You remember the girl?” I jumped up.

“Are you deaf, boy?” he growled and pointed me back to my seat. “I had johnny straight outta the academy; greener than clover and chestier than a motherfucker. But he had the curse of instinct. A natural born cop, that one. Could smell trouble a block before I could see it and I was no slouch.”