Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

The parking lot in back was big for the Bronx. He pulled into a spot bounded by bushes that had no cars to either side of it. He got out, straightened his suit and went in.

A young man with a sad face and hands folded permanently in front of him dispatched him solemnly in the right direction. He walked into a crowded room. There were a lot of high school students, some weeping onto each other; the rest were adults clustered to one side in shocked groups of three or four. The casket was closed. Paine looked at the name on the white-lettered sign at the entrance and discovered that he had walked into the wrong chapel. Closed casket. Teenager, probably; car collision, through the windshield.

He found Jimmy's chapel next door, and it was what he had expected. Small room, low lighting, taped organ music. The air smelled like refrigerant. The casket was open, and even from the doorway he could see Jimmy propped unnaturally high, compensation for his shortness. The chapel was empty.

Paine walked on the red plush carpeting and listened to the organ music. Just audible, like Rachmaninoff in Barker's office. Muted weeping filtered in from the auto death next door.

There was a kneeler before the casket. Paine stood. Jimmy's eyes were paraffined closed. His head was tilted to the left; one of the slugs had caught him just above the ear on that side and the boys in the cellar had done what they could. It wasn't all that great. Jimmy looked like waxed fruit.

"So long, Jimmy," Paine said, and with the common trick of anticipation, Jimmy's resin smile seemed to widen.

Paine left the empty room. A couple in dress and suit passed him, holding each other up; they entered Jimmy's chapel, realized their mistake and backtracked to the automobile accident next door. Organ music soothed. The ventriloquist dummy with the folded hands bowed his head at Paine as he passed.

"Good evening, sir."

"Sure," Paine said, and went into the night.

There were two of them, and they had waited for him in the stand of bushes in front of his car. It was easy for them. They stepped out as he put his key in the lock; he heard them but when he looked up there was an arm in front of his face and that was the last thing he saw. One of them hit him in the face to get him to cover up, and then the other one pumped blows to his belly and groin. Paine heard a grating laugh. They worked on him methodically, and when he was finally down they kicked him toward unconsciousness. Just before he went there, he felt a burning explosion in his groin and heard one of them say, "Hit me in the hangers?"

Lights passed overhead. He thought someone was shining a light in his eyes, flashing it back and forth. He reached up his arm to push away the flashlight. His arm hurt, and he couldn't raise it up. "Stop," he tried to say, but his mouth didn't work well, either. It tasted like it was filled with bloody sponges.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the lights were still flashing. But his eyes worked better now. They focused for him. The flashing lights were streetlamps, passing overhead. He was staring through the back windshield of a car. It was clean, and had defogger wires embedded in it. He tried to look closer at the defogger wires but his eyes unfocused again, and his body told him to return to unconsciousness.

When he opened his eyes this time, they stayed focused. The streetlights were gone. Up through the windshield was crisp dark sky. He recognized a turn of diamond stars shaped vaguely like a W. The constellation Cassiopeia.

Someone opened the car door.

The night that came into the car was as cool and dark as it looked through the windshield.

He expected rough hands to pull him out of the car onto the pavement, but instead, a head stared upside down into his face, and kissed him.

"You're alive." Rebecca Meyer smiled.

"Yes," his mouth tried to say, without success.

"Can you sit up?" she asked. She put her hands under his arms and pulled, but he must have cried out because she took her hands back. He tried to sit up. The world wheeled and his eyes threatened to unfocus but he made it to a sitting position and rested his head on the back of the seat. She sat next to him.

"How did you find me?" he asked thickly.

"Bob Petty said you'd be at your friend's wake. I found you in a pool of your own blood. I thought you were dead."

"I am."

He looked into her brown turbid eyes that he already knew so well. He was very tired. She was speaking slowly, but he couldn't hear her. He looked at her mouth, and it looked like she said, "Oh, shit," and, as the blurry world of unconsciousness claimed him yet again, he was sure he fell into her arms.

His body was not young anymore. He had taken worse beatings, but this time his body did not let him heal easily. Perhaps his mind was healing, too, letting the world spin while accountings were made, checks and balances restored. He felt like a drained bottle, not only empty, but not even knowing what he had been filled with to start.

He awoke the first morning in a bed facing the largest picture window he had ever seen. The night cold he had felt had not been an illusion; there was a sprinkling of early white snow on the leveled lawns down to the tennis court and, beyond that, the Hudson River was bathed in autumn fog.

The house itself was not cold. The fireplace in the second-floor bedroom he occupied filled half of one stone wall. Above the fireplace was the proud antlered head of an elk. The opposite wall was dominated by a Turner oil flanked by the heads of a cheetah and black leopard.

Paine tried to move and nothing happened. His body felt as real as that of the elk over the fireplace. Bandages shifted under the covers.

The morning passed. He watched the fog evaporate over the Hudson, and the tenuous dusting of white snow turn back to green lawn. He watched the gardener inspect the trellises along the path to the tennis courts for frost damage.

She came to him when the sun was high over the river. She sat on the end of the bed and looked at him for a long while. Her hair looked longer, brushed back over her eyes.

"I'm in love with you," he said.

"I know," she said.

She laid her head on him, on a place where it didn't hurt. Outside, the world turned from summer to autumn.

The next day he felt better. Four of his ribs had been taped. He still felt like a punching bag after a workout, but he sat up and looked through the window as rain fell on Westchester. In the afternoon the clouds cleared out and the sun burned through. It was in the 70s by late afternoon. He watched Rebecca and Gerald play tennis. As the sun went down he brought the telephone from the nightstand onto the bed and dialed it.

"Bobby?"

"Where the hell are you, Jack?"

"Somewhere. What's going on?"

"I have a warrant for your arrest. Were you in California two days ago?"

"I was in California. I put my fingerprints all over that house and left my card. Then someone came in and hung the two of them."

"Great. Should we extradite you to California or would you rather go on trial in New York first?"

"Isn't murdering two California creeps more serious than beating up one former employer?"

"Not if your former employer is owed by the police commissioner. Barker wants your balls in a paper cup."

"Can you handle him?"

"I can try."

"Great. Anything from your friend on Steppen and the FBI? I found out that Steppen, Druckman and Paterna were all the same creep."

Bobby whistled. "It makes sense. Ray found that Steppen was a paperboy for the FBI-he could get any kind of document you wanted. He was involved in witness relocation but he was pretty much a rotten apple from the beginning. Got into a couple of jams early in his career, mixed up with loan-sharking, but he was good and they needed him, so they kept him around as a free-lance. Finally they just kicked him out in 1968."