John Connolly - The Lovers

Animal. Amale.

Anmael.

“You’re lying. I’m going to show you what happens to faggot cops who tell lies.”

With one hand, Anmael gripped the back of Jimmy’s neck, holding his head down, while the other hand pushed the broken stem of the wineglass into the skin between his shoulder blades.

Against the apple, Jimmy began to scream.

J IMMY G ALLAGHER WAS DISCOVEREDby Esmerelda, the El Salvadoran woman who came to his house twice every week to clean. When the police arrived, they found her weeping, but otherwise calm. It turned out that she’d seen a lot of dead men back home, and her capacity for shock was limited. Nevertheless, she could not stop crying for Jimmy, who had always been gentle and kind and funny with her, and had paid her more than was necessary, with a bonus at Christmas.

It was Louis who told me. He came to the apartment shortly after 9 A.M. The story had already made the news shows on radio and TV, although the victim’s name had not been confirmed, but it hadn’t taken Louis long to find out that it was Jimmy Gallagher. I didn’t say anything for a time. I couldn’t. He had kept his secrets out of love for my father and mother and, I believe, out of a misplaced concern for me. Of all my father’s friends, it was Jimmy who had been the most loyal to him.

I contacted Santos, the detective who had taken me to Hobart Street on the night that Mickey Wallace’s body had been discovered.

“It wa ["> &„[1]‡s bad,” he replied. “Someone took his time in killing him. I tried to call you, but your phone was out of service.”

He told me that Jimmy’s body had been brought to the Brooklyn office of the chief medical examiner at Kings County Hospital on Clarkson Avenue, and I offered to meet him there.

Santos was smoking a cigarette outside when the cab pulled up to the mortuary.

“You’re a hard man to find,” he said. “You lose your cell phone?”

“Something like that.”

“We need to talk when this is done.”

He tossed the butt, and I followed him inside. He and a second detective named Travis stood at either side of the body while the attendant pulled back the sheet. I was beside Santos. He was watching the attendant. Travis was watching me.

Jimmy had been cleaned up, but there were multiple cuts to his face and upper body. One of the incisions to his left cheek was so deep that I could see his teeth through the wound.

“Turn him over,” Travis said.

“You want to help me?” said the attendant. “He’s a heavy guy.”

Travis was wearing blue plastic gloves, as was Santos. I was bare-handed. I watched as all three of them shifted Jimmy’s body, turning him first on his side and then onto his chest.

The word “FAG” had been carved into Jimmy’s back. Some of the cuts were more jagged than the rest, but all were deep. There must have been a lot of blood, and a lot of pain.

“What was used?”

It was Santos who replied. “The stem of a broken wineglass for the letters, and a blade of some kind for the rest. We didn’t find the weapon, but there were unusual wounds to the skull.”

Gently, he moved Jimmy’s head, then parted the hair at the crown of his head to reveal a pair of overlapping, square-shaped contusions to the scalp. Santos made his right hand into a fist and brought it down twice through the air.

“I’m guessing a big knife of some kind, maybe a machete or something similar. We figure the killer hit Jimmy a couple of times with the hilt to knock him out, then tied him up and went to work with the sharp edge. There were apples beside his head, with bite marks in them. That was why nobody heard him screaming.”

He did not speak casually, or with a hint of callousness. Instead, he looked tired and sad. This was an ex-cop, and one who was remembered fondly by many. The details of the killing, the word cut into his back, would have circulated by now. The sadness and anger at his death would be tempered slightly by the circumstances. A fag killing: that was how some would speak of it. Who knew that Jimmy Gallagher was queer? they would ask. After all, they’d been drunk alongside him. They’d shared comments with him about passing women. Hell, he’d even dated some. And all that time, he was hiding the truth. And some would say that they had suspected all along, and wonder what he had done to bring this upon himself. There would be whispers: he made an advance to the wrong guy; he touched a kid…

Ah, a kid.

“Are you treating this as a hate crime?” I asked.

Travis shrugged and spoke for the first time. “It might come down to that. Either way, we have to ask questions that Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted asked. We’ll need to find out if there were lovers, or casual flings, or if he was into anything extreme.”

“There won’t be any lovers,” I said.

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“I am. Jimmy was always kind of ashamed, and always frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Of someone finding out. Of his friends knowing. They were all cops, and old school. I don’t think he trusted most of them to stand by him. He thought they’d laugh, or turn their backs on him. He didn’t want to be a joke. He preferred being alone to that.”

“Well, if it’s not down to his lifestyle, then what is it?”

I thought for a moment.

“Apples,” I said.

“What?” said Travis.

“You said you found apples-more than one-beside him?”

“Three. Maybe the killer thought that Jimmy might bite through after a while.”

“Or maybe he stopped after each letter.”

“Why?”

“To ask questions.”

“About what?”

It was Santos who answered. “About him,” he said, pointing at me. “He thinks this is connected to the Wallace thing.”

“Don’t you?”

“Wallace didn’t have ‘fag’ cut into his flesh,” said Santos, but I could tell that he was playing devil’s advocate.

“They were both tortured to make them talk,” I said.

“And you knew them both,” said Santos. “Why don’t you tell us again what you’re doing down here?”

“I’m trying to find out why my father killed two teenagers in a car in 1982,” I said.

“And did Jimmy Gallagher have the answer?”

I didn’t reply. I just shook my head.

“What do you think he told his killer?” asked Travis.

I looked at the wounds that had been inflicted on him. I would have talked. It’s a myth that men can stand up to torture. Eventually, everybody breaks.

“Whatever he could to make it stop,” I said. “How did he die?”

“He choked. A wine bottle was forced into his mouth, neck first. That’s going to hang weight on the hate crime side. It was, whatchacallit, phallic, or that’s how it will play.”

It was vindictive, humiliating. An honorable man had been left, naked and bound, with a brand upon his back that would mark him among his fellow cops, casting shadows upon the memory of the individual they had known. I believed then that it wasn’t about what Jimmy Gallagher knew or did not know. He had been punished for remaining silent, and nothing that he could have said would have spared him from what was to come.

Santos nodded at the attendant. Together, they moved Jimmy onto his back and covered his face once again, then restored him to his place among the numbered dead. The door was closed on him, and we left.

Outside, Santos lit another cigarette. He offered one to Travis, who accepted.

“You know,” he said, “if you’re right, and this isn’t a hate deal, then he died because of you. What are you keeping back from us?”

What did it matter now? It was all coming to a close.