Empty Ever After Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  BY REED FARREL COLEMAN

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE SPREADING THE ASHES

  AFTERWORD

  FEEDING THE CROCODILE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  PRAISE FOR REED FARREL COLEMAN AND EMPTY EVER AFTER WINNER OF THE SHAMUS AWARD

  “Reed Farrel Coleman is a terrific writer.… a hard-boiled poet … If life were fair, Coleman would be as celebrated as [George] Pelecanos and [Michael] Connelly.”

  —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

  “Among the undying conventions of detective fiction is the one that requires every retired cop to have a case that still haunts him. Reed Farrel Coleman blows the dust off that cliché in Walking the Perfect Square … with a mystery that would get under anyone’s skin.”

  —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times

  “In the dark, compelling fifth Moe Prager mystery from Anthony-winner Coleman (after 2007’s Soul Patch), the PI and former New York City cop pays a heavy price for a choice he made in the late 1970s after locating the missing Patrick Maloney. While this appears to be the end of the series, fans of well-written PI novels will hope to see more of Prager.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Moe Prager is the thinking person’s PI. And what he thinks about—love, loyalty, faith, betrayal—are complex and vital issues, and beautifully handled.”

  —S. J. Rozan, Edgar Award-winning author of On the Line

  “Whenever our customers are looking for a new series to read, they often leave with a copy of Walking the Perfect Square. It has easily been our best-selling backlist title. Thank you, Busted Flush, for bringing this classic ‘Moe’ back into print!”

  —Gary Shulze, Once Upon a Crime (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

  “The biggest mysteries in our genre are why Reed Coleman isn’t already huge, and why Moe Prager isn’t already an icon. Both are to me. Read this book and you’ll find you agree.”

  —Lee Child, best-selling author of Worth Dying For

  “Reed Farrel Coleman is one of the more original voices to emerge from the crime fiction field in the last ten years.”

  —George Pelecanos, best-selling author of The Way Home

  “Originally published in 2001 … Walking the Perfect Square has been reissued by Busted Flush Press, good news for mystery lovers, since Reed Farrel Coleman is quite a writer, and this is only the first of five books about Moe Prager. The story and the characters will hook you, and Coleman’s lightly warped take on the world will make you laugh, dark as the tale is.”

  —Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness

  One of crime fiction’s finest voices, Edgar Award-finalist Reed Coleman combines the hard-fisted detective story with a modern novel’s pounding heart and produces pure gold. Moe Prager belongs with Travis McGee and Lew Archer in the private eye pantheon. Coleman’s series is a buried treasure—dig in and hit the jackpot!”

  —Julia Spencer-Fleming, best-selling author of Once Was a Soldier

  “In a field crowded with blowhards and phony tough guys, Reed Farrel Coleman’s hero stands out for his plainspoken honesty, his straight-no-chaser humor and his essential humanity. Without a doubt, he has a right to occupy the barstool Matt Scudder left behind years ago. In fact, in his quiet unassuming way, Moe is one of the most engaging private eyes around.”

  —Peter Blauner, Edgar Award-winning author of Casino Moon and

  Slow Motion Riot

  “Reed Farrel Coleman makes claim to a unique corner of the private detective genre with Redemption Street. With great poignancy and passion he constructs a tale that fittingly underlines how we are all captives of the past.”

  —Michael Connelly, best-selling author of The Reversal

  “Moe Prager is a family man who can find the humanity in almost everyone he meets; he is a far from perfect hero, but an utterly appealing one. Let’s hope that his soft heart and lively mind continue to lure him out of his wine shop for many, many more cases.”

  —Laura Lippman, best-selling author of Life Sentences

  “Reed Farrel Coleman is a hell of a writer. Poetic, stark, moving. And one of the most daring writers around, never afraid to go that extra mile. He freely admits his love of poetry, and it resonates in his novels like the best song you’ll ever hear. Plus, he has a thread of compassion that breaks your heart … to smithereens.”

  —Ken Bruen, two-time Edgar Award-nominated author of London

  Boulevard

  “Coleman is a born writer. His books are among the best the detective genre has to offer at the moment; no, wait. Now that I think about it they’re in the top rank of any kind of fiction currently published. Pick up this bookdamn it.”

  —Scott Phillips, award-winning author of The Ice Harvest and

  Cottonwood

  “Reed Farrel Coleman goes right to the darkest corners of the human heart—to the obsessions, the tragedies, the buried secrets from the past. Through it all he maintains such a pure humanity in Moe Prager—the character is as alive to me as an old friend. I flat out loved the first Prager book, but somehow he’s made this one even better.”

  —Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of The Lock Artist

  “Coleman may be one of the mystery genre’s best-kept secrets.”

  —Sun-Sentinel

  “Moe is a character to savor. And Coleman? He’s an author to watch. Make that watch and read. For this is only the beginning, folks, and I’m hitching my wagon to this ride.”

  —Ruth Jordan, Crimespree Magazine

  BY REED FARREL COLEMAN

  Moe Prager novels

  Walking the Perfect Square (2001)

  Redemption Street (2004)

  The James Deans (2005)

  Winner of the Anthony, Barry, and Shamus Awards

  Nominated for the Edgar®, Gumshoe, and Macavity Awards

  Soul Patch (2007)

  Winner of the Shamus Award

  Nominated for the Edgar®, Barry, and Macavity Awards

  Empty Ever After (2008)

  Winner of the Shamus Award

  Innocent Monster (2010)

  Writing with Ken Bruen

  Tower (2009)

  Nominated for the Anthony, Macavity, Spinetingler, and Crimespree

  Awards

  Writing as Tony Spinosa

  Hose Monkey (2006)

  The Fourth Victim (2008)

  Dylan Klein novels

  Life Goes Sleeping (1991)

  Little Easter (1993)

  They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee (1997)

  Edited by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Hardboiled Brooklyn (2006)

  FOREWORD

  BY S.J. ROZAN

  HE
RE’S THE THING I learned right away about Reed Farrel Coleman: there’s no BS to the guy. This isn’t to say he’s nothing more than the shaved-headed, Brooklyn-accented oil-truck-driving tough guy novelist he appears to be. He is that. He’s also a poet, an editor, a work-at-home devoted dad, the cook of the house, and a hell of a loyal friend. Hell of a basketball player, too. He can also discourse at length—and will, if you give him a chance—on movies and rock music. And books, and how much weight a coat of paint adds to an airplane.

  The guy works hard. This is important. He writes fast, turning out short books with short words and short sentences, and if you don’t look closely you might think he’s just tossing it off. This idea could be reinforced when you learn he has rewriting in the needles-under-the-fingernails category. But if you’re thinking he’s just a wild man, slamming down on paper whatever comes into his head, you’re wrong. He puts in long hours and he sweats over every word. He revises as he goes, word by word and phrase by phrase. For Coleman writing is a conscious, full-throttle effort. Like playing basketball. No airy cogitating, no waiting for inspiration to strike, for the muse to waft into the room and lay a soft hand on his shoulder. The hell with that. It’s all about the heavy lifting.

  So where does the poetry come in, and where does it come from? No less an authority than NPR’s Maureen Corrigan called Coleman “a hardboiled poet.” She’s right, because in poetry every word, the sound of every word, its shape and meaning and the flow of every phrase, is critical. No slack, no fat. That’s how Coleman writes. Any word, any phrase that’s not doing two or three jobs at once: out. That’s why it’s short and that’s why it looks simple.

  Just try it.

  That’s where the poetry comes in, and that’s hard enough. But where does it come from? That’s even harder. That’s not technique. That’s the part you’ve heard about, the part where you open a vein. Coleman’s books can make you cry but they’re not tearjerkers. With him you don’t get cheap cathartic tears, have a good cry and you’ll feel better. You get the real thing and you sometimes feel like an oil truck hit you. People whose powerful love for someone isn’t enough to make them overcome their own bad ideas. People who’re lost, for whom finding each other doesn’t mean finding themselves. In Coleman’s world, love does not redeem. Good intentions buy you nothing. Small mistakes have huge effects, and good deeds backfire. History, your personal history and history written before you were born, horns in on your life throws you around and leaves you bleeding. It’s not comforting. But it’s true.

  Coleman writes about the shape of the world as it is. As it really is, and we know it. He puts it into high relief, makes it starker than it is in our everyday lives, but it’s the same stuff we’re living with and living through and we recognize it. That’s what art does, isn’t it? Not show us something new. “New” is just surprise. Fun, but not art. Art shows us what we’re deeply, intimately familiar with, blasting away everything nearby so we can really see what we’ve been looking at all along.

  That’s what you get with Reed Farrel Coleman. You get the truth.

  No BS.

  S. J. Rozan is the multiple award-winning author of On the Line. She lives in Manhattan.

  To the survivors

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the late David Thompson for this new edition. His belief in me helped Moe to live on. It’s a debt I can never repay.

  I would also like to thank Peter, Megan, Ken, and Ellen for being my first readers and listeners. And for their help with Chinese, a nod to Alice Wang and Dr. Fuh-Lin Wang. And a nod to Sara J. Henry.

  None of this would have been possible or worth it without Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan.

  “I’m trying to escape. Escape to anywhere, but I’m not. I’m not going anywhere. There isn’t any anywhere, is there?”

  —Daniel Woodrell from Tomato Red

  PROLOGUE

  1984

  THE MOURNER’S PRAYER

  WE WALKED THROUGH the cemetery, Mr. Roth’s arm looped through mine. The cane in his left hand tapped out a mournful meter on the ice-slicked gravel paths that wound their way through endless rows of gravestones. The crunch and scrape of our footfalls were swallowed up and forgotten as easily as the heartbeats and breaths of all the dead, ever. The swirling wind demanded we move along, biting hard at our skin, blowing yesterday’s fallen snow in our faces.

  “Bernstein!” Mr. Roth defied the wind, pointing with his cane at a nearby hunk of polished granite. “You know what it means in English, Bernstein?”

  “No. I know stein means stone.”

  “Amber.”

  “Amber, like the resin with the insects in it?”

  “Amber, yes. Bernstein, like burned stone. German, such an ugly language,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But at least the words sound like what they mean.”

  We walked on.

  “A lotta dead Jews in this place, Mr. Moe.”

  “I think that’s the point.”

  “When I die, I don’t want this … this nonsense.”

  “Why tell me, Mr. Roth?”

  “And who else should I tell, my dead wife? Wait, we’re almost at Hannah’s grave. I’ll say Kaddish for her and then I’ll tell her, but I don’t think she’ll listen. I wasn’t a very good husband, so it’s only right she shouldn’t pay attention.”

  “What about your son?”

  He stopped in his tracks, turning to face me, taking a firm hold on my arm. There were very few moments like this between Israel Roth and me. He’d suffered through the unimaginable, but he very rarely let the pain show through.

  “I’m serious here, Moses.” He almost never called me that. “This is not for me, to be cold in the ground. Kaddish and ashes, that’s for me.”

  “Okay, Izzy, Kaddish and ashes.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “Come already, we’re almost there.”

  I stood away from the grave as Mr. Roth mumbled the prayer. “Yis-ga-dal v’yis-ka-dash sh’may ra-bo, B’ol-mo dee-v’ro …”

  “Amen,” I said when he finished.

  As was tradition, we both placed little stones atop Hannah Roth’s tombstone.

  I never said Kaddish for my parents. Israel Roth had tried to rekindle whatever small embers of my Jewish soul still burned. Even so, they didn’t burn brightly. I wondered if they’d burn at all when he was no longer there to stoke them.

  “Would she forgive me, do you think?” he asked, again twining his arm back through mine.

  “Would you forgive her?”

  His face brightened. “See, there’s the Jew in you, Mr. Moe. You answer my question with a question.”

  “I would forgive you, Izzy.”

  The brightness vanished as suddenly as it appeared. “You do not know my sins.”

  That wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t press.

  As we got close to my car, I slipped on the ice and landed square on my ass. Mr. Roth took great joy in my fall. His joy seemed to dissipate as we rode out of the cemetery and back to Brooklyn.

  “Poland had miserable winters,” he said, staring out at the filthy slush and snow-covered reeds along the Belt Parkway. “The camps were muddy always, then frozen. Rain and snow all the time. The ground was very slippery.”

  “I’d think that would be the last thing people in Auschwitz would worry about. Slippery ground, I mean.”

  “Really? Part of self-preservation was to busy myself with the little things. Did you ever wonder what became of the ashes?”

  “What ashes?”

  “The ashes of the dead, of the ones the Nazis gassed, then burned. They didn’t all turn to smoke.”

  “I never thought about it.”

  He cupped his hands and spread them a few inches apart. “One body is only a little pile of ashes, but burn a few hundred thousand, a million, and you got piles and piles. Mountains. In the winter, the Germans made some of us spread the ashes on the paths so they shouldn’t slip. Everyday I spread the ashes. At first, I though
t, ‘Whose ashes are these I am throwing like sawdust on the butcher shop floor? Is this a handful of my mother, of the pale boy who stood beside me in the cattle car?’ Then I stopped thinking about it. Thinking about the big things was a dangerous activity in such a place. Guilt too.”

  “But you survived.”

  “I survived, yes, by not thinking, by not feeling. But I’ve never stopped spreading the ashes.”

  We fell silent. Then, as I pulled off the exit for my house, Mr. Roth turned to me.

  “Remember what I said in the cemetery, no burial for me.”

  “I know, Izzy, Kaddish and ashes. But where should they be spread?”

  “You already know the answer to that,” he said. “And we will never speak of these things again, Mr. Moe.”

  We never did, but never is a funny word. Time makes everyone’s never a little different.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SOME THOUGHTS ARE traceable, but I don’t know why I was thinking of Israel Roth and that winter’s day in the cemetery. He was long dead now and I was all cried out. I was all cried out for the both of us. In death he was beyond the reach of my love and scorn. Even now, I am amazed at how he feared losing my affection. “You don’t know my sins,” he’d said. Hell, he didn’t know mine. It’s funny how that works. We were men of sins and secrets, Israel Roth and me. We could share love, but not sins. Too bad he died before mine were out in the open, before he could witness the bill come due.