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  Although the Medical Examiner’s office has listed the death as a homicide, it has refused to release the actual cause of death. Beyond stating that Mayweather’s body had been in the sandy grave for about two weeks and that it had been positively identified through the use of dental records, the M.E. has declined further comment.

  Dexter Mayweather, the youngest of seven children, began life in a coastal South Carolina town. When his father abandoned the family shortly after his son’s birth, his mother relocated to the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.

  (See Body Identified on page 28)

  CHAPTER THREE

  I would have caught the winning touchdown pass or floated down some lazy country stream or tasted a woman for the first time. When I woke, the world would take me to its breast and I’d be able to hear myself think for the first time in my life. Not only would that voice inside my head know the right questions, but it would supply the answers for my way ahead. Unfortunately, it had been my experience that focusing on ifs and woulds and should haves was a shortcut to hell.

  “Jesus Christ, Moe!”

  I woke up, the touchdown pass glancing off my fingertips.

  “Is this how you want Sarah to find you?”

  I took inventory:

  Shirtless and in my boxers.

  Headphone cord twisted through my arms.

  Tumbler between my legs.

  Bottle of Dewars dripping scotch onto the living room carpet.

  Drool on my shoulder.

  A stiff neck.

  A sore back.

  The stereo on.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “Come on, clean yourself up. Sarah’s gonna be up in a little while and want her Sunday morning pancakes.”

  “Okay, just let me wipe this-”

  “Forget that mess. I’ll take care of it. What were you doing out here anyway?”

  “Time traveling.”

  “Can’t you give me a straight answer anymore?”

  I let it go. Katy and me, we were a million miles apart out of bed as well. Never mind that I wasn’t certain what I had been doing last night. Maybe Larry’s tape had been a way for me to escape from the bedroom, a ready excuse to deaden my senses with a few too many fingers of scotch.

  As to what was actually on the tape. . Sure, I knew who Dexter Mayweather was. Every cop who worked the Six-O in the late ’60s and early ’70s knew about D Rex, King of the Soul Patch. Shit, they found his body under the boardwalk where I used to walk my beat. But D Rex had been murdered in the spring of 1972, and what possible connection this could have with Larry was escaping me at the moment. Besides, I had other reasons for remembering that spring.

  On Easter Sunday of 1972 a little girl went missing. Seven-year-old Marina Conseco was the youngest of five brothers and a sister. Her dad, a divorced city fireman, had left Marina in the charge of her older siblings while he went to get some hot dogs and fries at Nathan’s. When he returned, he noticed Marina was missing. Three days later, she was still missing. Coney Island was never hell on earth, not even in the bad old days when I worked it, but it wasn’t a good place for little girls lost.

  By the fourth day, we’d made the unspoken transition from searching for her to searching for her remains. No one had to say a word. You could see it on the faces and in the slumped shoulders of the off-duty cops and firemen who had volunteered to look for her. We were running out of places to search. They’d even had the divers in to plumb the muddy waters of Coney Island Creek. They found a capsized submarine, but not Marina’s body. My hand to God, there’s a submarine in Coney Island Creek. You can look it up, as my sister Miriam likes to say.

  Never underestimate exhaustion. As the years pass, I become more and more convinced that my exhaustion saved Marina’s life. Between regular shifts, overtime, and my off-duty volunteering, I had barely slept in ninety-six hours. In spite of my lack of sleep, I was out searching with a couple of firemen. We were driving toward Sea Gate along Mermaid Avenue. I could feel myself drifting off, so I blasted the air conditioner, turned the radio up full bore, began shaking my head violently. The guys in the car with me must have been just as tired, because they didn’t say a word. I began forcing my eyes open, wide

  What I noticed were the old wooden water tanks on the rooftops of abandoned buildings. I slammed on the brakes and all three of us jumped out of the car. When I pointed up, they understood. We found Marina Conseco at the bottom of the fifth tank, in half a foot of filthy water, alive! She was in shock and suffering from hypothermia. She had a fractured skull and some broken bones. She’d been molested for two days before being thrown in the tank and left to die.

  That was my moment, my one moment on the job. It earned me a few medals, a nice letter in my file. Papers wrote about the rescue. Even rated some face time on local TV. What rescuing Marina Conseco didn’t get me was a gold shield. Why not?

  The city was nearly bankrupt.

  Twenty-three-year-olds didn’t get gold shields back then.

  Jews, blacks, and Hispanics needed to walk on water to get one.

  All of the above.

  Answer: (D) All of the above.

  Took me a lot of years to come to terms with not getting a gold shield. Even now, I’m not quite sure I have. For some people, for the people who’ve hired me over the years to find their missing relatives, my not getting that shield was a godsend. It’s what has driven me to prove myself for the twelve years since the NYPD put me out to pasture. And proving myself has helped me keep my sanity while I sold wealthy schmucks bottles of wine that cost more than my first two cars combined. Funny thing is, I’ve twice come closer to getting that gold shield since my retirement than I ever did for saving a little girl’s life. Life’s fucked up that way, I guess.

  After breakfast, I listened to the tape once again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything obvious. The replay was no more enlightening than the first go-round. I called Larry McDonald at home. He picked up in the middle of the first ring, as if he’d been sitting at the edge of his bed by the nightstand, arm coiled. Alternately impatient and distant, he had the sound of a man who hadn’t slept much lately. I was well familiar with the symptoms.

  “You told me to listen and call. I listened, now I’m calling.”

  “You heard?” he asked.

  “I listened. I’m not sure what I heard, but I listened.”

  “What. . What’d you say? You listened to the whole thing, right?”

  “Twice.”

  “And. .”

  “Some desperate skell is trying to play let’s make a deal with a weak hand. Wouldn’t be the first time. D Rex is old news. It’s like trying to cut yourself a deal by saying you know who killed King Tut. Who gives a shit?”

  “Murder’s never old news, Moe.”

  “It is when the victim’s a fucking drug dealer.”

  “Not always. This is one of those ‘not always’ kind of situations. People can get hurt by this.”

  We were close, Larry Mac and me-as close as you can get to an ambitious bastard like Larry. It’s sort of like being friends with a mercenary; you’re only as good a friend as your market value can sustain. So when Larry said something about people getting hurt, I knew it was code for himself.

  “People, Larry, or you?”

  “People.”

  “You gonna explain this shit to me or what? This cryptic nonsense is pissing me off.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “How then, by fax, or the Pony fucking Express?”

  “Can you meet me in an hour?”

  “Where?”

  “The boardwalk, by the Parachute Jump.”

  “See you in an hour.”

  It took him a lot longer to ring off than it had to answer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My dad used to take Aaron and me to Coney Island on spring Sundays. I don’t remember him taking Miriam. My dad was a good man in an old-school sort of way. He loved Miriam, maybe more than he loved his sons, but I’m
not certain he knew how to handle a girl. He suffered from China Doll syndrome. Dad was always frightened that Miriam was somehow more breakable than his boys, that she needed to stay home and have tea parties with her stuffed animals. Sports, roller coasters, and the like weren’t for delicate little girls. Miriam, a mother lion in a previous life, needed very little protecting.

  Dad loved the Parachute Jump.

  “La Tour Eiffel du Brooklyn,” he’d say, in an accent less French than Flatbush.

  “What’s that mean, Dad?”

  “The Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn, you idiot!” Aaron would snap. “You ask that every time.”

  “Aaron!” my father would bark.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your little brother.”

  “That’s okay.”

  We did a variation of this exchange each time we came. Steeplechase Park was still open back then. They had this really cool ride with wooden horses on tracks, and you could fly around the park as if you were in a real steeplechase race like the kind they had in England. But by the time I took the oath and was assigned to the 60th Precinct, Steeplechase Park had been razed and the wooden horses sent to the scrap heap. They don’t make glue out of wooden horses, just splinters.

  In 1968, as today, the only thing that remained of Steeplechase Park was the rusting hulk of the Parachute Jump. I wasn’t like my dad. I hated the damned thing. It was an unfortunate vestige like the human appendix, its decay calling attention to a purpose no longer served. Sometimes I think they should have just taken a bulldozer to the whole amusement park area and put up a fucking plaque like they did at Ebbets Field. In this way, the romantic vision of the place would be all that remained. There are reasons beyond stench why we don’t let the dead rot above the ground.

  I watched Larry McDonald’s approach. He came up the Stillwell Avenue stairs onto the boardwalk. Where Surf and Stillwell avenues collided was where Nathan’s Famous had stood for about seventy-five years, but the wind was strong out of the west and blew the fragrant steam of Nathan’s griddles and fryers away from me, toward Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach beyond. The sudden aging I’d noticed in Larry’s eyes and voice the previous day had begun to affect his gait. He took the measured steps of an old man who had always been sure on his feet, but had suddenly lost confidence not only in his stride but in the solidity of the ground beneath his shoes.

  As usual, he was sharply dressed. Larry was the only person I’d ever met who could overdress for any occasion. He wore a finely tailored camel hair blazer over an ivory silk shirt and beige slacks with a crease so sharp it could cut diamonds. His brown alligator loafers probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

  “Italian?” I wondered, pointing down.

  “What? Huh?”

  “The shoes, shithead.”

  “Oh, yeah, they’re Italian. What else would they be? And that’s Chief of Detectives Shithead to you.”

  “Sorry.” I made the sign of the cross and said, “Forgive me father for I have sinned.”

  “You heathen fucking Jew. You’re gonna rot in hell for that.”

  “Jews don’t believe in hell.”

  “Believing’s got nothing to do with it. It exists.” He lit up and smoked away.

  “So. .”

  “You know they found him over there.”

  “Who?”

  “Mayweather.” Larry walked to the rail along the beach side of the boardwalk, and I followed. “He was half buried in the sand right under where we’re standing. Some alter kocker’s dog dug his hand up like a hidden bone. Did you know he was tortured before he was killed? They broke every single finger on both hands, snapped ’em one by one. And his knees! They were smashed to bits.”

  “That must’ve been unpleasant. Trust me, I know from knee pain, but what the fuck, Larry? This is all very fascinating, but I don’t really give a shit,” I said, putting my foot up on the bottom rung of the rail, resting my arms across the top, my chin on my arms. I watched the little waves roll ashore, stared at the container ships slowly moving toward the mouth of New York Harbor. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  “There were rumors. .”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Just rumors. Rumor rumors.”

  “Hey, that clears it all up, I guess.”

  “Ugly rumors.”

  “Yeah, well, the world is full of whispers and innuendo,” I said. “I don’t usually concern myself with that stuff and you never struck me as the kind of guy who paid them much mind.”

  “There’s a chance some of our old friends maybe can get hurt by this shit getting dredged up again.”

  “Then maybe you wanna tell me about those rumors, Larry.”

  “The word on the wind back then was that some of our guys were on D Rex’s pad. You remember what the Soul Patch was like. No one could touch Mayweather in the day. He was like Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. And we were clowns in blue, the Sheriff of Nottingham and his deputies, with our thumbs stuck up our asses. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I can do the math. Maybe some of our guys are at or near twenty years on. Maybe some of them would do a little gun eating if they lost their reputations and pensions now.”

  “It’s one of the things I always respected you for, Moe. You were quick on the uptake. Shit never had to be explained to you.”

  “Did anybody ever look into these rumors?” I wondered.

  “Of course. Those were the Buddy Boy days, the time of the Knapp Commission. They looked into every fucking thing. If some

  “I was around, Larry, remember? I was the one who knew Serpico a little.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Frank fucking Serpico, the only honest cop in all New York City. Fuck him! I think the guy was half a fag myself.”

  “Pity I don’t have his number anymore. We could call and ask.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Serpico really is a harmless piece of shit. He hurt whoever he was gonna hurt a long time ago. Only time people even remember him is when that bullshit movie is on cable. D Rex is something else. I don’t want him reaching out of the grave to hurt anyone.”

  “You really are worried, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that, Moe?”

  “You’re talking too much. You’re making speeches.” I stood straight up, took my foot off the railing, grabbed Larry by the sleeve, and made him face me. “So, how much were you cut in for?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, McDonald. You forget, I know you. I know who you are and I know what you are. I think sometimes maybe that’s why you trust me, because I know. So please don’t insult me.”

  “I’m not gonna make excuses to you, Moe. A lot of us earned a little on the side from D Rex. You worked the street. You know we weren’t gonna make a fucking dent. It was big business even back then.”

  “I thought you weren’t gonna make excuses.”

  “You’re right, but I think you might be surprised to find out just whose pockets D Rex’s money found its way into.”

  “Right now we’re talking about your pockets, Larry, and being on a drug dealer’s pad wouldn’t look good on your resume for beatification.”

  “I’m no saint!” He jerked his sleeve out of my grasp.

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t aspire to the job.”

  A broad, sad smile briefly forced its way onto Larry’s face. “You do know me, you prick.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but what I don’t know is what I’m doing here.”

  “I wanna hire you.”

  “To do what?”

  “To save my career and the reps of the guys we served with.”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t even-”

  “No. The answer’s no, Larry. This is a dirty business.”

  “What, you’re quoting The Godfather to me now? Talk about being a martyr. .”

  “The answer’s still no.”

  Killed me to say it. I think if
he had asked me to do almost any other job, I would have jumped at it. I was desperate to escape the boredom of the stores and to occupy my mind with something other than the growing distance between Katy and me.

  He turned to the beach again, reached into his pocket much as he had the day before, and slapped something down atop the rail ledge. Although his hand obscured my view, I felt confident it wasn’t a cassette tape. Pretty sure it was metallic, as it had made a pinging sound when he hit it against the rail. And I was also pretty sure I knew what it was. He lifted his hand and proved me right. A gold and blue enamel detective’s shield glistened in the afternoon sun.

  “Do this for me and it’s yours. Detective first: no physical, no range qualifying, no questions asked.”

  Larry McDonald and I had done this dance once before. Six years earlier, in 1983, with Larry’s help, I’d discovered what had happened to Moira Heaton. Moira, an intern for an up-and-coming politician, had been missing since Thanksgiving Eve 1981. Though there was no physical or circumstantial evidence linking the politician to her disappearance, he had been tried and convicted in the press, his once promising career placed in limbo. After we found out the truth about Moira Heaton and the politician was cleared of any wrongdoing, Larry got his big bump to deputy chief. A few years ago, he got chief of detectives.

  All of us involved with that case made out. Politicians and their wealthy backers can be a generous bunch. But a few weeks later, when I began feeling uneasy about the facts of the Heaton case and started nosing around, Larry Mac called out of the blue to offer me the one thing I yearned for: a gold shield. I took it. It was both the perfect distraction and the ultimate bribe. And if it hadn’t been for a stupid fender bender with an out-of-state car, I’d still have that gold shield in my pocket.

  Later, when the original facts unraveled and Larry stood to lose his shiny new promotion, I questioned him about his motives in offering me the shield. He claimed it wasn’t his idea, that he had no idea I’d reopened the investigation. I chose to believe him, because with Larry, faith was always a choice. I knew he trusted me. I’d earned it, but like I said before, trusting Larry was transitory and involved the equation of self-interest.