Soul Patch

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.