DIRTY SALLY
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1
Monday
A
Mobster's Lackey
September 12, 1988. 8:00 A.M.
I
zero in on the three-on-the-tree gearshift on the
steering column of Joey Velez's narco-white Chevy
Caprice. I'm riding shotgun as Joey tears north- west
on the mountain stretch of Route 2222 in the dark,
the road twisting roller-coaster right and left, up
a hundred feet in the air and straight back down,
the car hanging on by a hair with Joey cackling at
the wheel.
"Joey.
" I try to focus my eyes. "I thought you
were dead."
"No,
man," he laughs, throwing a wink in my direction.
"Pretty near. Wake up, pally, we gotta see someone."
I
remember he drove off a cliff on a dark night in March.
Then I re- member it's March now. The Caprice streaks
off the road, arcs into the air weightless as my stomach
leaps and the car noses down.
-
- -
I
jolted awake, kicking my feet, wheezing from another
rerun of the Joey dream that's punctuated my half-sleep
for the last six months. Wake up, it's just a dream.
What difference would it make if I'd been with him
that night? He would've flown off the cliff anyway
and we'd both be dead. Or I could have woken him up.
Or we would've taken a different road. I threw my
arm over my eyes against the sunlight streaking through
the venetians.
- - -
"I'm
leaving your father, I'm not leaving you. You understand
that, don't you, honey?"
I'm
ten years old, standing in the doorway of my parents'
bedroom in our apartment in Elmira, New York, watching
her pack.
"Don't
you, honey?" My mother was a glamour gal in the
early 1950s, a beautiful WASP with long, silky black
hair, sparkling blue bedroom eyes, and at five-eight,
a full two inches on my father. With heels and her
hair up like a half-raunchy Audrey Hepbum, she towered
over him in what I took to be the wedding picture,
Dad a skinny immigrant's son, a scrappy street Yid
in a borrowed suit. But with her on his arm he felt
like Lucky Luciano, feeding her lies about his "connections"
and showing her off at nightclubs he couldn't afford.
By daylight he was just an ex-boxer who did favors,
like the time I was eight and he went to prison for
a deuce for one of the big boys. A mobster's lackey,
she said. A nobody. The day they paroled him, she
packed a suitcase and called a cab.
"Where
we goin', Ma?"
I
watched her at her makeup table, brushing mascara
on her long eyelashes, framed in the mirror with me
in the background, a dwarf stage-door johnny. When
the taxi honked she kissed me on the cheek and walked
out.
In
my dream, I'm always sitting alone at the bare kitchen
table, trembling, waiting for him to come back from
the big house with his forty dollars and his new suit.
The doorknob turns. I have to tell him she's gone,
and I don't know what he'll do. Maybe he'll kill me.
I
can still feel her kiss on my cheek, still hear her
voice echo. "I'm leaving your father, I'm not
leaving you."
Watching
from the window as the blue and white taxi drove off,
I knew for the first time that I was completely alone.
And that I always would be.
- - -
Ring.
Ring.
Click. Tape rolling. "This is Dan. Go ahead." Beep.
"Hello,
Sergeant Reles? This is Martha Nell from Dispatch." Her voice twanged with tour-guide cheer. "Pick
up, please."
I
killed the machine and worked up the spit to speak. "Yeah."
"Did
we wake you?" she said with a sympathy I
save for widows and orphans. "Have I told
you how good it is to have you back? You know you're
on call."
"No.
Waller," I muttered. "I'm not even next."
"Sergeant
Waller got a call on Saturday, one o' those murder-suicides?
Filled out the forms and got home by lunch. And I
guess they changed the rotation with you back in action,
because you're next on the list."
Miles
must have rigged it so I'd come up soon and win some
points fast, coming off suspension. I opened my eyes.
Sunlight hit my retinas and bummed back to my ears.
"No."
"New
case today. City bus knocked down a boy and dragged
him down East Twelfth."
"Vehicular
deaths. Traffic Department."
"Isn't
that funny? That's just what Lieutenant Niederwald
said you'd say!"
I
coughed something dead from the back of my throat.
"Look, Martha NeIl-"
"He
said to tell you Capital Metro anticipates a lawsuit,
so they're claiming it was suicide."
"Christ.
Where is it?"
"The
ravine that cuts under the 700 block of East Twelfth,
just west of Casa Rosa Apartments."
"Any
I.D. on the remains?" I sat up heavily and scratched.
She'd
already hung up.
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