Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

I was almost ready to give in, but not yet. “What about this mysterious guy who drove the kid around, Martello’s friend with the eye patch? You haven’t been able to find him.”

“Frankly, we haven’t been lookin’ real hard. Maybe he exists, maybe he doesn’t. Bottom line, the people who matter in this case are dead,” Feeney said, running out of patience.

“And the bloody shoe print… Why was there only one? Martello had to cross almost the entire length of the room to get out the back window, but he only left one print.”

“’Cause Martello was part kangaroo and hopped to the window. Remember, I don’t have to know why. There was only one print because there was only one print. Drive me back to the Six-One now, okay? You can keep a set of the autopsy photos as a memento of our date, but playtime is officially over.”

When I dropped him back at the precinct, he thanked me again for lunch and warned me not to call him about the case. I promised I wouldn’t, but I had my fingers crossed.

During my ride into Brooklyn Heights, I went over everything Detective Feeney had said. The thing of it was, he was right. With Ray Martello and the kid dead, I could research the hell out of their histories, interview everyone who ever knew them, put their lives under the world’s most powerful microscope, and I would still be asking why. It dawned on me, that the real question of why didn’t have to do with the kid lying to me about his name, but about why I cared. I thought about what the late Israel Roth would have said vis-a-vis my state of mind.

“Mr. Moe,” he’d say, “you are hanging onto the case because you don’t want to let Katy go. Patrick bound the two of you together as powerfully, more powerfully maybe than wedding vows or gold rings. When in the hospital you told her about the fake Patrick and she got so angry, it was the same. It’s like this number on my forearm, even if you could scrub it away, I would still be bound, for good or bad, to my past. If you said to me, come Izzy, I could get that thing removed, I’m not sure I would go.”

It’s funny, even when I imagined the words Mr. Roth might say, I heard his voice in my head. I put my hand to my mouth. I was smiling. By the time I got into the office, the weight of the whys had lifted. I walked directly into Devo’s command center and released him from wasting any more time on my preoccupation.

“Devo, forget working on any of that stuff related to Katy’s brother and tackle the backlog. We have to make some money around here with paying customers.”

“Are you quite sure, Moe? I have sharpened some of the-”

“Forget it, I’m moving on. Just bag the stuff up and I’ll return it.”

“Okay.”

Carmella was in her office and was standing by a file cabinet when she told me to come in. I couldn’t help but stare. She followed my eyes.

“You’re showing a little,” I said.

“You’re grinning like an idiot, Moe.”

I didn’t say anything, but walked up to her and reached out my hand to feel her little belly. I stopped myself. People often don’t realize what an incredibly intimate and loaded gesture it is to place your hand on a pregnant woman’s abdomen. It’s reaffirming, connective, even sexual. I remembered complete strangers touching Katy without a thought of asking permission when she was pregnant with Sarah. It’s almost instinctive, tribal, at least.

“It’s okay for you to touch me.”

And I did. She placed her hand on top of mine. “You’re keeping it,” I said.

“I am. It’s a pretty amazing thing to have someone growing inside you.”

“Now you’re grinning like an idiot.”

“Am I?” She blushed.

“We are going to have to rearrange things around here, if this little girl’s go-”

“-boy. Little boy. I know it.”

“If this little boy’s going to get a healthy start.”

She removed her hand from mine. “We’ll talk about it when the time comes.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Her grin faded as suddenly as it had appeared and her mood darkened. “Moe, I guess I should tell you that the baby is-”

“-Dukelsky’s. I know. I knew the minute he showed up at the Six-One. It was a guilty favor he was doing. It all fit together. I think he tried to talk to me about you two, but I stopped him.”

“Some of the things I said about him, they were… not fair. He just doesn’t want a baby now or to get married. He’s been married and divorced and has two kids. I don’t want to marry him anyway. This was my fault. I chased him, Moe. I have for years.”

“Why?” There was that question again. “You could have any man you want.”

She brushed the back of her hand against my cheek. “No, I can’t.”

“Come on, Carmella, let’s not do this again.”

“That’s right.” Her eyes burned. “We can’t be together because it makes too much sense. We can’t be together because of your rules. Because some man raped me as a little girl, because it was you who saved my life, because my parents changed my name, because I lied to you about who I was, because I got my shield and you didn’t, because your wife tossed you to the curb, be-”

“Stop it!”

“Get out of my office!” she hissed. “Get out of here. At least Paul was honest with himself and me. Get out!”

Down on Court Street, the air was thick enough to swim through. Truck fumes coagulated around bits of dust, falling to the asphalt like volcanic ash. People on the sidewalk were defeated. A city bus stopped in front of me. A pair of brown eyes much like Carmella’s stared out at me from an ad on the side of the bus. The eyes were set in the face of a watch. The copy read: Timing isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Harmony Watches.

“Kiss my ass,” I heard myself mutter. So too, apparently, did the woman standing next to me. She just shook her head no.

The heat broke while I slept, massive thunderstorms washing away the haze and defeat. I bought a cup of coffee, walked across the street, and watched the fishing boats set out for blues or porgies or whatever else was foolish enough to bite at the thousands of tangled lines dropped into the Atlantic off the coast of New Jersey or Montauk. The decks were packed with beer-for-breakfast buddies full of good cheer and anticipation. A little chop on the water would wipe away those smiles in an instant, but for now the world was perfect. The boats’ throaty motors revved up and one by one they headed directly into the rising sun. One hour down, the rest of my life to go.

As tired of the wine business as I was, I didn’t do well with spare time. I’d made sure to never really have a lot of it. Between the wine stores and the agency and Katy and Sarah, I managed to keep myself pretty much occupied. But now with Sarah staying in Ann Arbor most of the year and with my more recent exile from Katy-ville, spare time seemed like it was going to be a bigger part of my life. I had at least the next two weeks off and I was bored silly an hour into my day. In the short term, my date with Connie couldn’t get here soon enough. In the long term, Carmella getting fat with child would mean more work for me at the agency. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

I bought every newspaper I could find, another cup of coffee, and headed back upstairs to read myself blind. The phone machine came to my rescue. I was halfway hoping it was Aaron or Klaus needing me to fill in at one of the stores, but it was a confused and impatient Marlon Rhodes wondering why I hadn’t taken him up on his offer. This time I called him back. I got his machine.

“Mr. Rhodes, this is Moe Prager returning your-”

“Yo, yo, yo! Marlon here, man.” He referred to himself in the third person.