it.” When I turned to go, he called after me, waving my card between his fingers. “I hear anything, I’ll call.”
I nodded. As I walked to my car, I heard myself laughing. My stomach
was
killing me.
I didn’t enjoy myself for very long because I got thumped in the ribs as I turned the corner to where my car was parked. The wind went out of me, my laughter transformed to gasping as I collapsed to the sidewalk. I suppose I might’ve tried to get up if I didn’t get a kick in the back.
“Not so tough without your boyfriend to protect ya, are ya, old man?” It was Hickey.
I was preoccupied with trying to get my lungs restarted, so I didn’t answer or reach for my .38. Breathing is easy to take for granted, but the rest of the machinery won’t work without it. Funny, I thought about the tumor again, how it too was probably rooting for me to catch my breath. Nothing in this world likes getting cheated out of the chance to fulfill its destiny. It’s pretty fucked up what you think about sometimes.
“Consider yourself warned, grandpa.”
Grandpa
. I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever hear that name spoken in love.
ELEVEN
I had two nasty bruises and a headache for my troubles. The hurt in my gut had diminished to the level I had grown accustomed to. The pain, which had so frightened me at first, was now just like background noise. Still, I couldn’t sleep. The possible reasons were legion, so I didn’t waste time considering them. What I did instead was read through a box full of hate mail. About halfway through, it occurred to me that people with hearts so full of hate must have no room in their brains for spelling or syntax. The drab sameness of the vulgarity and racism was mind-numbing. It was kind of like my pain; after a while it became noise. None of it made sense, really. Then again, when did reason ever have anything to do with racism or hate? It was a dumb question for a Jew to ask, even to himself. I imagined Mr. Roth showing me the number on his forearm and shaking his head at me in disapproval.
I pulled a few letters out of the pile. These were the ones that moved beyond simple expressions of hate or vague hopes for terrible fates to befall Alta and Maya and their families. They were the letters in which the writers made specific threats of violence, some alluding to stabbing and throat slitting. I wondered just how hard Detective Fuqua had worked at looking into the origin of these. As he said, many, if not most, New Yorkers felt as though Alta had gotten what she deserved. And no matter how determined Fuqua seemed, I doubted the NYPD was willing to spend the money and manpower it would take to investigate hundreds, maybe thousands of anonymous letters and emails. But things sent electronically weren’t as anonymous as people thought. Sure, there were clever computer geeks and hackers who could bury their cyber-footprints, but I somehow doubted that people who could barely spell fuck or use it in a proper sentence were likely candidates for jobs at Intel, Cisco, or the NSA.
I called Brian Doyle’s cell. Doyle was an ex-cop. When he was on the job, he had a nasty rep for taking shortcuts and dishing out uppercuts. He was a stubborn, impatient prick who liked using his knuckles more than his noggin, but what made him a bad cop helped make him a good PI. When Carm and I owned our security firm together, we took Brian on and made a damned fine investigator of him. Then in 2002, after Carm and I split and dissolved the partnership, Brian and our tech guy Devo opened up their own shop in lower Manhattan. They had helped me with the Sashi Bluntstone case and I was hoping they could help me again.
“What? It’s three in the fucking morning,” Brian answered with his usual Old World charm.
“You doing surveillance?”
“What the fuck else would I be doing answering my cell phone at three a.m.?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re just lonely.”
“Loneliness was never my problem,
I nodded. As I walked to my car, I heard myself laughing. My stomach
was
killing me.
I didn’t enjoy myself for very long because I got thumped in the ribs as I turned the corner to where my car was parked. The wind went out of me, my laughter transformed to gasping as I collapsed to the sidewalk. I suppose I might’ve tried to get up if I didn’t get a kick in the back.
“Not so tough without your boyfriend to protect ya, are ya, old man?” It was Hickey.
I was preoccupied with trying to get my lungs restarted, so I didn’t answer or reach for my .38. Breathing is easy to take for granted, but the rest of the machinery won’t work without it. Funny, I thought about the tumor again, how it too was probably rooting for me to catch my breath. Nothing in this world likes getting cheated out of the chance to fulfill its destiny. It’s pretty fucked up what you think about sometimes.
“Consider yourself warned, grandpa.”
Grandpa
. I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever hear that name spoken in love.
ELEVEN
I had two nasty bruises and a headache for my troubles. The hurt in my gut had diminished to the level I had grown accustomed to. The pain, which had so frightened me at first, was now just like background noise. Still, I couldn’t sleep. The possible reasons were legion, so I didn’t waste time considering them. What I did instead was read through a box full of hate mail. About halfway through, it occurred to me that people with hearts so full of hate must have no room in their brains for spelling or syntax. The drab sameness of the vulgarity and racism was mind-numbing. It was kind of like my pain; after a while it became noise. None of it made sense, really. Then again, when did reason ever have anything to do with racism or hate? It was a dumb question for a Jew to ask, even to himself. I imagined Mr. Roth showing me the number on his forearm and shaking his head at me in disapproval.
I pulled a few letters out of the pile. These were the ones that moved beyond simple expressions of hate or vague hopes for terrible fates to befall Alta and Maya and their families. They were the letters in which the writers made specific threats of violence, some alluding to stabbing and throat slitting. I wondered just how hard Detective Fuqua had worked at looking into the origin of these. As he said, many, if not most, New Yorkers felt as though Alta had gotten what she deserved. And no matter how determined Fuqua seemed, I doubted the NYPD was willing to spend the money and manpower it would take to investigate hundreds, maybe thousands of anonymous letters and emails. But things sent electronically weren’t as anonymous as people thought. Sure, there were clever computer geeks and hackers who could bury their cyber-footprints, but I somehow doubted that people who could barely spell fuck or use it in a proper sentence were likely candidates for jobs at Intel, Cisco, or the NSA.
I called Brian Doyle’s cell. Doyle was an ex-cop. When he was on the job, he had a nasty rep for taking shortcuts and dishing out uppercuts. He was a stubborn, impatient prick who liked using his knuckles more than his noggin, but what made him a bad cop helped make him a good PI. When Carm and I owned our security firm together, we took Brian on and made a damned fine investigator of him. Then in 2002, after Carm and I split and dissolved the partnership, Brian and our tech guy Devo opened up their own shop in lower Manhattan. They had helped me with the Sashi Bluntstone case and I was hoping they could help me again.
“What? It’s three in the fucking morning,” Brian answered with his usual Old World charm.
“You doing surveillance?”
“What the fuck else would I be doing answering my cell phone at three a.m.?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re just lonely.”
“Loneliness was never my problem,
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