“I told him not to fuck with me. That’s all I was trying to say.”
“Get that crazy son of a bitch out of here.”
Two uniformed police officers guard the door. The visors of their caps shine black. The short square collars of their dark, doubled-breasted coats, the vertical lines of brass buttons, a suit of armor, the unmistakable badge, a signal of impassive authority, inscrutable investigation, deadpan interrogation in the dead of night.
A small pea-green lightbulb dangles from the ceiling of an otherwise shadowed living space.
Dickerson is clutched behind the elbows, beneath the forearms, and manhandled out of the room with just a minimal display of resistance to keep everybody honest. One of the officers can be seen replacing the suspect’s hat on his head just before he ducks, then disappears beyond the doorframe.
The older still well-built man is crouched in plain shirtsleeves and suspenders. He rocks gently on his heels above the lines of white chalk – a sloppy outline of the figure of veteran Investigator Jack Step, as he lies on his side, knocked unconscious off the side of a now toppled chair, plain and wooden like most other furnishings in the room.
The crime scene is largely intact, no obvious signs of tampering with the evidence. But the paperwork’s going to be messy. Better let Smith handle it.
The newspaper boys will be here any minute, lighting up the joint with those clumsy press cameras: flash, shutter, and the legs collapse for the whole thing to be hauled away… along with someone’s career, life, reputation.
As for the victim, he’s in a better place now, no matter how you look at it. The meat wagon got here quick enough, did everything one would expect under the circumstances, packed it all in under a neat white sheet – no toes sticking out the other end, no small cardboard I.D. dangling to one side.
*
“What the fuck are you talking about? The apartment in Podil, at this time of night? Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’m supposed to be on leave. That’s right: my newlywed wife was brutally murdered on Trukhaniv Island, and I was given time off on humanitarian grounds, psychological convalescence with pay… to mourn, recover my emotional stability.”
The heavy black receiver is held firm in John Smith’s hand, a stream of crackle-filled, incomprehensible chatter pours into his ear as he sits on the edge of his bed in a pair of green-striped pajamas and dark corduroy house slippers.
“And even if that weren’t the case, even if I were as sound as a bell, steady and ready to jump at the next assignment, do you know where I would be at this very untimely hour… You guessed it: the Hasidic Strip Bar. That’s right – front row, near the stage, surrounded by stinking women in dirty linen with holes cut out of it to display their private parts.”
Smith reaches for the drawer of the nightstand where his revolver is kept, then grabs his crotch. He needs to take a pee.
“Who said anything about revenge? I like that place. And just for the record – a record mostly miswritten, based on shoddy notes, poor surveillance, all half-baked in an easy-bake oven used by little girls playing housewife – I don’t think The Ferret butchered my wife.
“You heard me! He had no opportunity, no motivation and – most of all – no guts.”
More crackle and chatter from the other end of the line. Smith’s eyes grow big.
“He’s hiding from a teenage girl…”
And while Smith explains this and that, pitting fact against fiction, evidence against conjecture, not far away, an entirely different fish is being put on the grill, pickled, kosher…
Well, see for yourself…
*
“All right, so you run a Podil-area drycleaners that serves local commercial establishments. You’re not acquainted with the victim with the notable exception of a recent altercation during which he allegedly wrenched your arm behind your back and then tossed you face first into a stagnant pool of muck.”
“Correct.”
“You subsequently determined to visit what you thought to be the victim’s place of residence with the sole intention of ‘ironing things out,’ reestablishing interfaith harmony in your and his common neighborhood, in avoidance of the specter of anti-Semitism potentially again rearing its ugly head in Ukraine.”
“You’ve got it.”
“But upon arriving on the scene of what to all appearances was a strictly ‘goyim-related’ conflict, you ‘hesitated’, and ‘reflected’ before deciding your next course of action, all the while waiting outside an already opened door.”
“What else could I do?”
“Nothing – for at that very moment, you were seized by the beard, abused with every obscene pejorative ever encountered by someone of your religion, crashed through the door and onto your knees where you suddenly found yourself face to face with your original attacker, the man to whom you’d come to make peace, ‘reeking of alcohol,’ ‘sweating of pork fat,’ and no doubt intent on doing you further bodily harm…”
“That’s right… that’s exactly the way it happened.”
“So you girded your loins, shouted several verses from what we call the Old Testament, and launched an angry but righteous and mighty blow into the face of your persecutor, fully certain that justice would thereby be served.”
The heavyset Hasidic, fists clenched, his eyes welled up with tears, mutters something unintelligible, possibly in an ancient tongue.
“But as fate would have it – I believe that you expressed this a different way – a second attacker, the gentile who had first laid hands on you outside the door, resumed his vicious assault, followed by a gunshot, but only after the lights had gone out.”
“Yes, yes.”
“So you crawled on your belly, groping your way along the floor of this foul and sin-filled dwelling, miraculously reaching the door, the hallway and freedom at last, your enemies rendered helpless in the dark behind you.”
The Hebrew, now emotionally spent, can only nod in assent.
Not to be continued…
Unfiled, Undated