Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

"You yelled, ‘Uncle Martin!’ when you fired, Jack, " Dannon said, unsmiling. Later, at the inquest, unsmiling, Dannon said the same thing.

For a while, at twenty-five thousand feet in the air, Paine imagined the jet engine’s screams were his own.

Paine's call to Bobby Petty went right through this time. No one told him Petty was out; no one put him on hold and made him listen to bad music.

"Kicked some ass, Bobby?" Paine asked. He noticed that Petty had taken his call in the quiet place again. No typewriters, no voices.

Petty grunted.

"Dannon been bothering you?"

"Dannon can fuck himself."

"I'm sure he couldn't get it right."

"That's a cheery thought, Jack. I got you something on Lucas Druckman."

"Tell me about Druckman."

Petty hesitated. "Okay, I'll tell you about Druckman." Paine could tell there was something else Bobby had to tell him, something that he was waiting for the right moment to say.

"Is Druckman dead?" Paine asked.

"Yes, Druckman's dead. Someone found him in the trunk of a car in L.A. seven years ago with his face blown off. Somebody must have been very mad at him. LAPD figured he had sharked the wrong guy, maybe borrowed a little too much himself. Maybe he wasn't very good with records. That's not the weirdest thing about this guy, though. Looks like he was another wash job."

"Jeez. ."

"Nobody named Lucas Druckman existed before 1970. No birth records, nothing."

"Morris Grumbach was involved with two wash jobs? Was he some sort of broker for the FBI?"

"It's possible."

"But why? And if he was, why did the FBI let the scumbags they gave him run all over him?"

"I hit a wall on that, just like with Paterna."

Paine had a sudden thought about the third photo that had been grouped with Paterna and Druckman. "Think your person in L.A. would be willing to take a look at a picture, try to make an ID?"

"Sure, drop it off," Bobby said. "He owes me a couple of favors. Listen, Jack," Bobby continued, "there's something else I've got to tell you."

"Something with Ginny? She call you or Terry?"

"Nothing like that. It's that friend of yours at the Barker Agency. Jimmy Carnaseca."

"What did Jimmy do?"

"He got killed."

"Oh, Christ Jesus."

"He was taking money from some guy to check on his wife, and messing with her himself. The guy killed Jimmy, winged the wife." Bobby continued sarcastically, "The guy forgave the wife, says they're going to save their marriage."

"Christ," Paine said.

"I know you liked him, Jack. I'm sorry. They're going to wake him tomorrow night at Thompson's in the Bronx."

"Sure, Bobby. Listen, I've got to go."

"You'll be all right?"

Tonelessly, Paine said, "Sure."

"Like I said-"

"I'll call you if I need you, Bobby."

He let the phone fall into its cradle.

"Oh, Jesus," he said.

The night man recognized him this time and nodded briefly over the top of his Daily News as Paine signed in. The elevator up to the agency was noisier than usual. Paine thought of Gloria Fulman's elevator, the smooth, regularly oiled mechanism that pulled it gracefully up, the sour look that would cross Gloria Fulman's face if it dared make a noise ("Barbara, have someone look at that").

The elevator jarred to a stop and Paine yanked the rusting, lopsided gate back and pushed his way out into the lobby of the Barker Agency. The carpet was old. There was a flattened, shoe-worn tread in it that wound past Margie's reception desk and down the hall. Paine followed it to Jimmy Carnaseca's office.

"Hey, Jack, you should do what I do," he almost heard Jimmy say.

Sure, Jimmy.

The door to Jimmy's office was locked. Paine tried to push it open, and then he took off his jacket and balled it around his right fist and put it through the glass. The cheap stenciled name on the door shattered, the J in Jimmy falling off into darkness.

He reached in and unlocked the door. The police had been here. Nothing had been removed, but he felt like a man whose house has been entered by a stranger in his absence and, though nothing is stolen, the atmosphere itself feels violated. Everything was almost in Jimmy's place for it-Paine knew that each item had been lifted, looked over and then put back. Soon someone would come and take everything away. Whatever the police didn't want would get thrown out. Jimmy had no family. He had run away from the circus at the age of thirty to become a private eye.

Paine flipped on the light switch.

The thing Jimmy had been building was on his desk. The cops must have puzzled over that one. It was a mass of odd angles. It still looked as though it might be some sort of bridge when finished. Paine decided that that was his final guess.

Paine picked up the box. It was empty of pieces. Maybe the police had taken them. He turned the box over. There was no picture on the cover; stenciled across the blank cardboard were the words "Contents: 500 wood sticks." The box had been filled with little sticks of wood that Jimmy had randomly glued together. A practical joke.

Paine put the box down and went to Jimmy's filing cabinet. He pulled open the middle drawer. There, in the back, was the blue folder. Paine took it out and put it on the desk and sat down in front of it.

Inside the folder was a marble composition book, the kind kids buy for school. On the front cover, in the white rectangular section devoid of marbling, in florid script, was a large letter J.

Paine opened the book.

Pasted in the upper right-hand corner of the first page was a wallet photo. It showed a plain, middle-aged woman with a lot of wear on her face. She was smiling sadly. She looked like the kind of woman who went to mass every day and sat in the back, then went to work for someone who didn't like her very much, then went home to cook and clean for a husband who didn't like her much, either. She looked like the kind of woman who wore a kerchief when she went out.

Below the photo, in a fastidiously neat hand, was written:

At dinnertime last night Anna's husband called from Syracuse. I knew why he was in Syracuse because I followed him there on Thursday and caught him with the camera. Blonde, dumb-looking, maybe thirty-four or thirty-five. Just a little overweight. Anna didn't want to believe it but when her husband called while I was there, after I had told her, after the way he talked to her on the phone, the excuses he gave, she knew. She began to cry when she hung up the phone, and I was embarrassed, but she let me hold her.

It was still early after that, and I took her to Rye Playland and we went on some rides and I made her have her picture taken. No one had ever taken her to Rye Playland before. Her husband never takes her anywhere. I can't understand that. I finally got her to smile on the third picture in the booth and I threw the other two out. The look on her face made me want to cry.

She let me sleep with her, and I know that it was mostly for revenge against her husband, but I don't care. I think I made her feel wanted. That made me feel good.

Under that, a couple of lines down, as if it had been added later or after much thought: "For a little while I didn't feel so alone."

Paine turned the page. The next one was blank, but his thumb felt the raised imprint of another picture on the following page. He turned, and there was another sad-eyed woman, a bleached blonde with enormous amounts of eye shadow on her booze-bloated face. This one, too, was smiling, but it looked as though it was not a natural thing for her to do and might collapse at any time.

Under the picture was a similar story to the first.

Paine went slowly through the rest of the notebook. Some entries were longer than others. Some were without photographs but this meant nothing because Paine could see them in his mind's eye. They were all the same woman, really.