Little Easter

Penelope and Ulysses

Smack! A fist, a 2 X 4 or a low flying aircraft made square contact with my unsuspecting face. I went down like a sack of farm stand potatoes, blood filling my mouth even before my cut lips could kiss the floor of Johnny’s back room. Exploding tears burned my blind eyes. Streams of unrestrained mucous gushed out of my flattened nose onto the floor, over my mustache and into the wet jungle of my beard.

All at once the world was deafeningly quiet and quietly deafening. The silence was broken soon enough. Stabbing rings of pain bounced like a pendulum between my eardrums as my breakfast coffee and chunks of semidigested twelve grain toast rocketed up out of my stomach, through my bloody mouth and onto the old wood floor. The sour smell of my own guts brought up whatever was left.

I felt, more than heard, heels moving along the floor beside me. Suddenly the pain in my head moved downstairs. My ribs flexed with the kick, but whatever air had managed to stick in my lungs through the facial assault and vomiting, escaped. I tensed the parts of me that still worked, readying for a follow-up kick. None came, that I remember. Only blackness. Only blackness came.

I might have been there a week or three centuries. I don’t know. Maybe it just felt like forever. Cold water washed down over me, bits of jagged ice pinging off my sore neck. The chilly water resurrected more than simply me. The smell of my stale throw-up rose up like a rotting corpse from the New Testament to tug at my intestines. The dry retching seemed almost worse than the original attack. Almost.

Johnny MacClough, dressed in fog and holding a bucket, stood now just before me. A second freezing shower rained down, the ice pecking at my goose bumpy skin like the sharp beaks of angry birds. The empty bucket fell. I held an arm up to him that he should help me stand. Oh, he helped me stand all right. He twisted my coat and shirt collars up in his hard fingers and pulled my face to his. I could see my distorted reflection in a stainless steel counter over MacClough’s shoulder. I cringed. Even through the fog and cobwebs and distortion, I could see I was a mess. I thought it an odd time to discover vanity. The thought made me smile. The smile caused the fresh scabs on my lips to split.

“What’s so funny, Klein?” Johnny seemed unnerved by my inappropriateness.

“My face, Johnny. My face,” I gasped as my tender ribs scolded me for speaking. MacClough turned his still foggy visage away from my sour breath.

“Did you really think you could go to my ex-partners behind my back and not have me find out about it? Did you?” He tightened his grip.

“We live in hope, MacClough,” I smiled some more. “I guess one of ’em called you about our chat.”

“More than one,” he shook his head sadly. “You’re my friend, Klein. Why you snoopin’ around behind my back about things that don’t concern you?”

“If it concerns you, MacClough, it concerns me.”

“Not this, Klein. Not this time.” He loosened his hold, but not completely.

“Back in Brooklyn, friendship and loyalty had nothin’ to do with pickin’ and choosin’ your spots. I also don’t recall havin’ my friends kick the shit outta me.” That was all the heroic speech I could muster.

“Stay out of this, Klein,” MacClough looked me in the eyes and and released his grip. “You can’t help me. Stay out.”

I stepped back and walked around MacClough into the empty barroom. It was still an hour till the opening bell. My hands held what was left of my ribs together. They made a lousy patch. Most of the fog in my head had lifted, leaving only a migraine as a residue of its visit. I waited for MacClough to follow. He did not. He would not.

“I know about her, Johnny, about who Carlene Carstead wasn’t,” I shouted through the door, not certain my sparring partner was still back there to hear me. “I know who she was to you,” I paused waiting for him to stir. I might’ve waited forever. I took up again: “Ya know, MacClough,” I got conversational; loud, but conversational, “I’m no stud at crossword puzzles, but even I couldn’t trip over my own dick on this one. Down or across, it spells ‘Witness Protection Program,’” I finally gave voice to the hunch I’d been playing all morning.

Still, there was no answer. Outside, beyond the windows, brass-handled doors and neon beer signs, a winter fishing boat blew a mournful horn for some nautical reason beyond my citified comprehension or maybe just to protest the long hush of winter. But its protest had come too late. Christmas Eve gunfire had already broken that long silence.

“There’s some stuff, alotta stuff, I haven’t worked out yet,” I continued ray one-way discussion with the walls. “I don’t know who she rolled over on or when. Christ, MacClough, I don’t even know her real name. But something made her come outta hiding, something made her come looking for Johnny Blue. What was it?” I paused to give space for an answer that would not fill it.

“There’s a stiff buried in Dugan’s Dump,” I tried a new tack. “It’s wearin’ a gold and onyx pinky ring. But maybe you know about that already. I figure he’s-sorry-he was the shooter. Maybe you figured that, too. Maybe you planted him there. Why don’t we talk about it, MacClough? Come on.” Again nothing. “Listen, I’m not the only one interested in this. Soon, the whole neighborhood’ll be working on the puzzle,” I paraphrased Kate Barnum’s warning.

This time I gave him a pause pregnant enough to have two sets of twins. I was willing to wait. My ribs were not so patient. I dragged my coat sleeve across my face, smearing the cracked leather with scarlet-laced mucous, bitter tears and sweat from the pain. I poured myself a sip of stout to wash away the pasty vomit coating in my mouth. It didn’t work and the sweet, pungent flavor of the syrupy brew made me want to puke again.

I popped a lonesome quarter into the jukebox, punched up three numbers and started back toward the alley and the front seat of my car. Patsy Cline was singing the second line of “Crazy” by the time the back room door slammed behind me. MacClough hadn’t moved. He just stood there blank-faced and cold-eyed, unmoving but probably not unmoved. I wanted to say something to him, but the ripe odor of my thrown-up breakfast wouldn’t let me. I ran past him and fumbled with the exit door handle.

“Stay out of it, Klein,” MacClough muttered over my shoulder, reaching around me and pulling the door open to the fresh, freezing air. “By the time anyone else puts things together, my business will be done.”

Business! What’s he talking, business? Murder wasn’t business. Murder was murder no matter how you dressed it up. I’d worry about that later. For now, I was preoccupied with folding myself into the driver’s seat and cursing the day I met John Francis MacClough. After the drive began, the target of my disdain switched to manual transmissions. On the journey to the hospital, my ribs made certain to point out every bump, pothole and road hazard. Every fucking one!

A great feature of eastern Long Island is the less tainted attitude of its health care professionals. Unlike the “if it’s not a gunshot wound above waist, sit down, shut up and wait your turn” attitude which prevails at city hospitals, local trauma units will treat the non-terminal without a notarized letter from a clergyman certifying you have valid health insurance, and you won’t even have to wait half as long as Penelope did for Ulysses to see a physician.

I had mixed feelings about my doctor. He was male. That was good because I didn’t feel obliged to suck in my gut, which might have killed me, or to flirt. On the other hand, flirting in my current state would’ve been a real challenge. The doctor was young. That meant his education was still fresh and his techniques current. Unfortunately, his only application of those techniques might have involved lab cadavers that tended not to complain or litigate.

His nameplate indicated he was Jewish. That was, unless Steven Cohen had suddenly become a popular moniker in the Christian world. Oh, did I mention, he was wearing a yarmulke? I could be so observant. Normally, a doctor’s religion didn’t move me, but today I had a question.

“That was some nasty fall you took, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen muttered sarcastically, reaching around my back to grab the roll of tape. “Lucky they’re only bruised. There!” he patted down the edge of the tape with equal amounts pride and aplomb. “In a few weeks they’ll be like new. As for your nose. .” he referred back to the X-ray, “it’s fine, but you may wake up tomorrow with a black eye or two.”

“Assuming I ever get to sleep,” I slapped the binding about my ribs and immediately regretted the gesture.

“I see your point.”

“Hey Doc,” my smile surprised him, “I got kinda an odd question for you.”

“Ask away, Mr. Klein,” Dr. Cohen liked questions.

“How good are you with the Torah?”

“That is the oddist question I’ve been asked today,” he smiled back, self-conscously adjusting his skullcap. “I’m fair. Why?”

“I’m a freelance writer and I’m researching a story on the flight of European Jews to Palestine after the war.” Hey, it wasn’t a total lie. I was a writer and I figured my approach would hook him. “Anyway, two sources of mine have mentioned a little girl who escaped from Auschwitz and made it to Palestine entirely on her own. Unfortunately, they can’t remember her name exactly and I can’t print the story without confirmation.”

“It sounds quite amazing,” Cohen admitted, his eyes as wide as silver dollars, “but what does my familiarity with the Torah have to do with any of this?”

“Patience, Doc. Patience.” We both laughed at my inadvertent pun. “I’m getting to that. One of my sources swears she had a strange name, something biblical, something like Andrella. I don’t know. I guess I’m just grasping at straws now.”

Cohen started pacing, scratching at his hairless chin and rubbing the back of his neck. “Andrella, Andrella,” he mouthed over and over, “Andrella.” He stopped pacing: “Sorry, Mr. Klein. I’m drawing a blank, but I can check up on it and get back to you.”

“Thanks, Doc, I’d really appreciate that.” We shook hands. “And thanks for patching me up.”

He told me it was no trouble at all, suggested that I come see him in a week and gave me something for the pain we both knew I was going to have. He warned me to take it easy and apologized for his coming up with zero on the girl’s name. He assured me he’d get my number off the hospital report and that he’d call if his sources could deliver a name. He shook my hand and shook his head. Dr. Cohen didn’t like not knowing answers. This was going to eat at him.

A butterball of a nurse in old-fashioned whites, a silly hat and elastic hose with enough tensile strength to support a small office building cleaned me up a bit, helped put me back together and gave me half a roll of Certs for my breath. I winked at her. She liked that. She escorted me to the exit at no extra charge. From here to the car I would have to fly solo.

“Mr. Klein!” Dr. Cohen came sprinting after me, one hand holding his yarmulke against the wind. “Mr. Klein!” I stopped to let him catch me and to catch my breath. “I don’t know if it’s the name you’re looking for,” he was gasping for air himself. “Too much time trying to keep everyone else in shape,” the young doctor held his heart.

“The name, Doc,” I put him back on course.

“Could it have been Azrael?” he wondered sheepishly, as if regretting the speaking of those words aloud.

“I guess it could’ve been. It’s odd. It’s biblical-sounding,” I was non-committal and just this side of unenthusiastic. The fact was, I didn’t know.

“No,” he kicked disappointedly at the ground, “it wouldn’t be that. I don’t even know why I suggested it.”

“Educate me, Doc. Why wouldn’t it have been her name?”

“Azrael, Mr. Klein, is the angel of death. Would any parent name his or her child after the angel of death?”

“In this world, who knows?” I threw up my hands and almost collapsed in pain. “But I suppose you’re right, Doc. Nice try, anyway. Thanks.”

He left me without a farewell, walking back to the hospital like the Mighty Casey walking back to the dugout after the third strike. Doctor Cohen was a little less familiar with failure than myself. That was good for him.

Once folded in, I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes thinking about the angel of death. I thought about the angel’s trail I’d been following lately, about the stiff in the dump and the little drowned girl with the stolen name. I thought about the dead woman in orange make-up and mink. And, I thought, if her name wasn’t Azrael, God, it should have been.