Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

Butch hit the pussy and it flew high, way over Tom’s and Colin’s heads.

“Open your eyes, Patsy.” Butch’s laugh was nasty.

Patsy ran like a greyhound. If he caught the feckin’ thing, maybe they could stop and get something to wet their throats. Nail some bloke toting the growler. Beer would taste good just about now. That’s what he was thinking on when his wiry body slipped in the slimy runoff from the rotting waste. He took a header smack into the disintegrating trunk of the tree. Still, he reached up and damn if the feckin’ pussy didn’t drop right into his hand like it was meant to.

“Hey, boyos,” Patsy yelled, brushing splinters from his hair, “I got it!”

He leaned against the scarred trunk sucking in short gasps of air full of soot and ashes. His eyes wandered to the pile of refuse on the other side of the tree, focused on something among the rubbish that caught the sunlight. Something shiny.

A silver dollar maybe!

Or maybe just a tin can.

He moved closer, then stepped back.

“Holy Mary.” The boy crossed himself, but he was not afraid. He was barely ten and not even a year off the boat from Cork. It was not the first dead body he’d ever seen.

But it was the first naked dead woman he had ever seen.

Curled up on her side she was, the ground a rusty black crust.

What may have been her dress lay in rags all around her.

“Jesus,” Colin said, peering over Patsy’s shoulder as Patsy kicked the refuse away.

They milled around jittery, not able to pull their eyes from the sight until Tom nudged her with his shoe and she slid over on her back, totally exposed. The boys jumped. Her eyes stared blankly at them.

After a moment, Patsy said, “Don’t she stink somethin’ awful?” The four edged toward the body again.

“She’s worm meat,” Butch said. He gave Patsy a powerful push aside and reached down and grabbed the shiny object that had caught Patsy’s attention in the first place.

“Hey, gimme that!” Patsy shouted. “I found it.” He tackled Butch.

Tom and Colin jumped in and they were all trading punches and yelling and raising a huge volume of dust and dirt. Colin head-butted Butch, knocking the wind out of him, making him drop the treasure. Both boys dove for it, as did Patsy and Tom.

A whistle shrieked. “All right, all right, what’s going on here?” A pudgy copper in blue came toward them swinging his stick.

The boys broke and ran.

Patrolman Mulroony grinned as the dust cleared. He made no move to go after the hooligans. He picked up the dusty stone the boys had been fighting over and wiped it on his sleeve. Well, well, well. He put it in his pocket. Hooking the strap of his stick on his badge, he lifted his hat and mopped the sweat from his head with the heavy sleeve of his uniform. Too hot. With August weather in June, the city was a stinking, rotting hell. Besides, they was just boys who had too much vinegar. Boys like that fought over nothing. He patted the object in his pocket.

Mulroony gave the lot a cursory look. Garbage everywhere. Them sheenies think nothing of throwing their refuse right out the window. He shaded his eyes from the sun. What was that odd little flutter of white in all that refuse? He poked his stick into the pile, raising a most horrid stink.

“Mother of God!”

The girl, naked except for a blue hat with a sunflower, lay on her back, arms at her side, her long black hair tangled in the garbage. Her eyes were open, glassy. The hat, which made the forsaken soul look comical, was askew, magnifying the bathos.

Mulroony reckoned the rags on the bloody ground about and under her were what remained of a blue dress and a white shift. The white was what had caught his eye. Poor lass, exposed for all the world to see.

She’d been murdered horribly. Stabbed in the belly and then ripped up to the breast bone. The blood was dried black and the maggots were having their feast. Mulroony reached down, plucked the largest patch of blue cloth, and covered the girl’s parts. Before he put his whistle to his lips, he straightened her hat too, so she wouldn’t go to Jesus looking the clown.

The organ grinder lived in a room on the top floor of a tenement on Prince Street, around the corner from St. Patrick’s.

Not the big fancy church they built for the rich on Fifth Avenue, but Old St. Patrick’s on the corner of Prince and Mott.

St. Patrick was an Irish saint, and this was an Irish church. They hated Italians here, making them go to the basement for a separate Mass. Church was for old ladies in black, not for Tony Cerasani. He hadn’t been to confession since he was twelve. He was thirty now. A man can collect a great many sins on his soul in eighteen years.

His room was small, which was good. He could see everything he owned: the hand organ against the wall, his nice suit hanging under his coat on the back of the door. At this moment, his hat shared the table with his shaving gear.

Tony opened the straight razor. It was the only thing left to him by his father. The face he saw in the small standing mirror was his father’s. He trimmed around his magnificent mustache without benefit of lather. Tony had no use for King Gillette’s safety razor or fancy soaps. When he was finished, he honed the razor on the stone and strap till it regained its perfect edge.

Madonna, he had no use for anything in this terrible country. Once he saved enough money he’d go home a wealthy man and do nothing but drink and eat, have plenty of women, and bask in Ciminna’s nurturing sun.

After filling his cup with Chianti, he plucked a straw from the bottle’s woven covering and picked his teeth. Immediately came a sharp twinge of pain. He opened his mouth wide and held up the mirror. Christo, he’d lost one of his gold teeth. The one in the back on the left. How could this have happened?

He would retrace his steps to try to find it, or if by calamity someone had already found it, get it back.

For now, he needed something stronger than wine to ease the pain and warm his bones. Winter, summer, what did it matter here? He was always cold in this country.

Grappa was comfort to Tony’s belly; it calmed his pain, restrained his anger. He sat in a dark corner of Giuseppe’s saloon for hours chewing his cigar. Drinking, thinking.

It was very late when he started home. In front of St.

Patrick’s, he paused. The rectory door opened. A Sister of Mercy spied Tony, crossed herself, and retreated inside. Tony spat at the door and the Irish bitch behind it. How long he stood there, he didn’t know. He finally decided to go into the church.

In the rear, to the left of the last row of benches, were the two confessionals. No parishioners waited on the benches.

He ran his fingers over the lattice-work screen of the nearest priest door, his nails making a clicking noise.

He was startled when someone, clearly a mick, obviously awakened from sleep, said, “Yes? Do you wish to make your confession?”

“No.” The organ grinder did not even try to keep the sneer from his voice. “Go back to your dreams of plump little boys.”

On his walk home he saw himself as a boy at confession, a wrathful crucifix poised above him. The organ grinder shook his head and the memory disappeared. He had stopped drinking too soon. Instead of going home he returned to Giuseppe’s.

The church was a jail. Worse, a rope around his neck.

Damn the church. There was money to be made. Religion was for the rich. Or the old and the helpless. He was none of these.

“A few cents so I may sup, kind sir?” The hoary man’s voice was frail as the old codger himself.

Dutch Tonneman, a detective with the Metropolitan Police, dropped several pennies into the unkempt fellow’s outstretched hat. He walked into the saloon at 20th and Sixth and sat at the last table in the back. Noisy ceiling fans moved the hot air around, but the heat didn’t budge. Flies hovered over the free eats: the hard boileds and the onions on the bar.