Stuart Kaminsky: Now You See It

“Nice boy,” said Ramutka. “Nice boy. Gave him some of my pain pills that first night. His leg, you know.”

We knew.

“Raymond says Jimmy liked to be alone,” said Blackstone.

“Yes,” said Ramutka, looking at the stem of his pipe. “Liked to go up on the roof and look at the stars all by himself. Helped him to think. I got the feeling that boy did a lot more feeling than thinking.”

“The roof,” I said.

Ramutka pointed his pipe up at the ceiling high above us.

“You see him tonight?” Phil asked.

“No,” Ramutka, said shaking his head.

“Could he get to the roof without your seeing him?” asked Blackstone.

“Sure,” the old man said. “Lots of ways, if you know them. Through a window on the other side of the stage if there was one open or up the fire escape if he climbed up on something and … lots of ways, if you know them,” he repeated.

“How can we get up there?” Phil said.

Ramutka pointed with his pipe again.

“Up the stairs, round the corner, past the storage room, and up the rungs.”

He started to say something else, but we had all turned and were headed to the metal staircase in single file. Phil was first. I was second. Harry and Pete behind. We rattled past the dressing rooms into the shadows.

We turned the corner and saw the rungs to the roof jutting out of the brick wall.

“Hold it,” said Phil, turning to us. “We’re making too damn much noise. I’ll go up. You wait here.”

“I could talk to him,” Blackstone whispered.

“Harry can be very persuasive,” whispered Pete.

“So can I,” said Phil.

Even with his face in shadow, I recognized the look on my brother’s face. I didn’t argue. Neither did Blackstone or his brother.

Phil went slowly and quietly up the ladder and was quickly lost in the darkness above us. We could hear his feet touch each rung and then a square opened above us and we could see stars and then, half a beat later, the bulk of my brother’s body blocked the stars and went onto the roof.

We waited listening, looking at each other. A radio came on below us and out of sight. We waited. Nothing. And then Phil’s body filled the square of stars and started down to us. He was making no effort to be quiet.

“Not there,” he said when he got back to the landing, wiped his hands on his pants, and turned to us.

“The wrong roof.”

We turned to Harry Blackstone who said, “I think I know what roof he’s on.”

Then I remembered what Juanita had said. It was simple. We had made it complicated.

“He’s on the roof of the Farraday,” I said.

Harry Blackstone nodded.

We clattered down the steps and past Raymond Ramutka, who was listening to classical music on the radio on his little table.

“Not there?” he asked.

“Not there,” Blackstone said.

Ramutka was going to ask another question, but he was too slow. We piled into Phil’s car and he did a wild U-turn, heading back toward our office. I was in the front passenger seat. Phil ran two red lights and, amazingly, avoided a collision with a truck. His jaw was set as if it was he who now had a toothache. I considered talking about what we were going to do when we got to the Farraday, but Phil was in a don’t-mess-with-me mood so I shut up.

“If he’s there …” Pete said from the backseat.

“He’s there,” I said, or, rather, hoped.

I didn’t pray. I don’t pray, not for show, not to feel better. I don’t know if there’s a God or gods out there. I don’t think about it much or often. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe. I just thought if there was a God and he wanted to get involved, he was watching. He could do what he wanted. What could I promise him that would make a difference? Why should he do something for me just because I asked him?

That’s about the extent of what I think about religion. What I did think about now was a pretty, smiling little girl and a young man who had killed people-Japanese soldiers-about a year or two ago, and maybe three more men in the last few days.

“If he’s there,” said Blackstone behind us, “I want to talk to him.”

If Phil had driven like a lunatic on the way to the Pantages, he drove like a man possessed on the way back to the Farraday. When we got there, he didn’t bother to find a legal parking space. He just pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Manny’s Taco Shop.

We decided not to stop at Jeremy and Alice’s apartment for two reasons. First, we might be wrong and didn’t want to give them hope and then find out Jimmy and Natasha weren’t on the roof. Second, there was no way Jeremy and Alice would agree to stay behind, and, if they came with us, there was no way of knowing what they might do.

We walked up the stairs to the top floor, turned right, away from the Butler apartment, and made our way to the door to the narrow stairwell that led to the roof. I’d been up there a few times. I couldn’t remember why.

“He’s there,” Phil said, pausing at a door on our left.

The sign on the door said it was the office of The Puccini Locksmith Company. Albert Puccini, a quiet little old man, would be his own client in the morning. His door was slightly open and shorn at the level of the lock.

“He made that call to the Butler apartment from here,” said Phil. “He never left the building.”

My gun was safely in the glove compartment of my Crosley. Phil had his tucked under his jacket in a leather holster he kept oiled and clean.

The door to the stairwell was closed but no longer locked. That meant more work for Albert Puccini in the morning. Phil led the way up the narrow, dark stairs to the door at the top. His gun was in his right hand. He opened the door with his left and stepped onto the roof. We followed.

The sky was bright with stars and almost a whole moon. Maybe it was the blackout or the fact that we were on a roof, but it was lighter up there than it was inside the Farraday.

We couldn’t see Jimmy. There were four vents dotting the roof and a little wooden storage shack to our right. Then we saw him.

Jimmy was sitting on the two-foot wide concrete edge of the building. Natasha was in his arms sleeping, her chest moving slowly in and out, her mouth a peaceful pout. In his right hand, Jimmy held a gun. It was aimed at us.

“Jimmy,” Blackstone said softly. “What are you doing?”

“Right now?” Jimmy said, glancing up at the stars. “I’m remembering.”

We inched forward. Jimmy didn’t pay any special attention to Phil’s gun.

“Remembering what?” asked Blackstone calmly.

“An island,” said Jimmy. “Don’t remember which one. You think the sky is bright tonight? There wasn’t any light out there. You’d lay on your back and look up and see, I don’t know, millions of stars. Some nights it looked as if the sky was all stars and no dark. You know?”

“Yes,” said Blackstone, moving ahead of us closer to Jimmy, motioning for us to stay where we were.

“Then in the morning the sky went flashing bright with the sun and we started to get incoming mail,” said Jimmy. “Mortar fire mostly. They died around me. Mosberg, Tighe, Huang, Donald-berg. Donaldberg was from Detroit.”