Skip Trace

SKIP TRACE

Angela Zeman

Manhattan-based author ANGELA ZEMAN is the author of an extensive series of stories featuring Mrs. Risk, which includes her most recent novel, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl (Pendulum Press). She has been published numerous times in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and has had stories included in anthologies such as Adirondack Mysteries (North Country Books), On A Raven's Wing (edited by our good friend, the late Stuart Kaminsky), A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (edited by Jeffery Deaver), Show Business is Murder (also edited by Mr. Kaminsky). and most recently in The Prosecution Rests, an MWA anthology edited by Linda Fairstein.

Skip Rose strolled down a street in the warmth of a late-spring afternoon, a street he remembered, surprised to find himself almost enjoying it. Very surprised. His home as a child. He’d sworn decades ago to never return.

Plus, Skip wasn’t a man who ‘enjoyed’ things.

Oddly, a recent trick of fate had caused a job to intersect with memory lane. After long fruitless waiting for the police to unravel the details of a woman’s murder, her family, in desperate desire to know why their daughter had died, had hired Skip to find out. Like Skip, they lived in New Mexico. To them, Gary, Indiana, was a world away, too far to contemplate for themselves.

At first he’d said no. But the woman’s grandfather pressed. Explained until Skip couldn’t look at him. No need to ‘solve’ the murder, he’d insisted. “We must know only ‘why’.”

Trouble was, he understood a need to know ‘why.’ He owned a few of those himself. So…okay. A crackerjack prize. Long as he stayed focused on the job, he told himself.

That was yesterday. Today, curiosity pricked as he rolled in his soundless heel-toe walk through one of Gary’s oldest bedroom communities. The too-narrow streets were still too narrow. Pot-holed, the curbs crumbled, the shabby buildings as undersized as he remembered. Nothing alive in sight, not even a stray cat. Forgotten and forsaken, it looked to Skip.

Gary’d been a filthy, over-crowded, dissatisfied mill-town in the sixties and seventies, when he’d lived here. Greedy for the distractions of vice. He remembered a mob—well, a small organized crew—squeezing the area lifeless.

He gazed upward, marveled at the blue skies. Brown sulphuric air from the steel mills used to blanket Gary, visible for miles. Ripped out a citizen’s lungs. Not now, with the surgeon general cracking everybody’s nuts. And the mills closed.

Home.

Whole blocks he didn’t recognize, but a few things fit eerily with his memories. St. Jerome’s RC Church, right there.

The mope heading up the local mob, uncle—whoever—had taken down a rival there in that exact gutter, the spot shadow-printed by St. Jerome’s cross every afternoon. The rival, a steel mill supervisor with ambition, had lain panting, sprawled on his back, while his blood pooled in the gutter, then dripped down through the grill into the sewer. Though the fuzz had eventually, indifferently, removed the corpse, for two weeks his blood stained the gutter black, reminding everyone how Uncle Tupe rewarded independent thinking, until the next rainstorm scrubbed it away. That was the name: fat little Uncle Tupe, mean as a snake. You could get dead for just about nothin,’ those days.

On the correct street, he looked up to check the number then suddenly ran out of oxygen. He stared at the tattered tar-paper shingles, still faintly green. Binny’s Tit. Binny’s Tit-For-Tat, really, but nobody used the whole name, it being more crib than bar back when. Beer in a bottle all you could get, cold if you were a regular. Nothing on tap, no hard stuff, no sodas. Young Binny behind the bar would toss you a bottle on your way upstairs if you held up a finger. From Skip’s own growing up, the free-standing building seemed shrunken, but otherwise looked the same. He pushed on the wood-framed screen door. It screeched as the rust ground in the hinges.

The funk hit him hard. Urine, cigarette butts soaked in beer, and that indescribable mix of body odors of those who spend hours every day in places like this. A blowtorch couldn’t clean the linoleum. While his eyes adjusted to the cavernous dark, he became ten again. Rage swept over him, a tidal wave. He shouldn’t have come back. Should’ve refused the job. Blast his stupid and now irreversible foolishness. His word was all he owned in this world, and he’d given it and now had to deliver. For a moment he closed his eyes. Mother of God.

Ten years old.

Binny did everything then, what little that got done. Old Binny should’ve long ago been shelved in a home, but spent his days tied with soft rags to a chair in the corner, drooling over a peanut butter jar half-full of beer with a straw. His son would exchange the jar for a fresh one when he thought of it. Old Binny was the only one in the joint that got anything resembling a glass.

The stairs Skip remembered in the back of the room were now concealed behind a sagging, fake wall of panel-printed fiber-board, a home-made job. Skip stared at that wall so hard he should’ve been able to see through it.

The man behind the bar now was old, bald and yellow-skinned as a plucked stewing chicken. Thin sloped shoulders, fleshless arms, and forty pounds of belly beneath his stained golf shirt. Young Binny, Skip decided, shaken at the realization. The image of his father, but some years short of being tied to a chair.

Skip let the door smack shut and did his silent rolling walk towards Old Binny’s table. He pulled back the chair facing the room, Old Binny’s chair, and sat. Binny curled his lip as he studied his new customer.

“Beer, Binny,” said Skip. No need to raise his voice to be heard across the empty room. “Cold,” he added. Binny’s eyes widened. He reached low, snagged a long-neck from a hidden bed of crushed ice, and pitched it. Skip grabbed it out of the air as if he’d been fielding wet beer bottles all his life. Binny nodded, a silent compliment at the neat catch.

“We met?” Binny asked.

Skip looked around. “Where’s the clientele? Religious holiday I forgot?”

Binny contemplatively moved a damp rag that used to be an undershirt across the bar’s peeling veneer. “Can’t place your face. What’s the name? You know mine.”

“Dad gone?” asked Skip.

Binny gave a black-lunged hack. “You knew Dad?” He gave a twisty crooked-neck nod. “Heart finally popped. In ’73.”

“Before or after Rosie was murdered?” Skip twisted the cap off the bottle, spraying a soft pssh of fresh beer into the funk.

“Rose—? Oh. Rosie. Right. Wan’t murdered. Killed ‘erself.”

“Murdered.”

“Whatever. Whores never live long.”

“Whores never live at all.” He took a long pull at the beer.

Binny’s eyebrows raised with his shoulders. “Just whores.”

“Still keep some upstairs?” Skip’s gaze bored straight at Binny across the room while he took another long drink.

Binny breathed faster, bringing color into his cheeks and neck. “Nah. Times are different. Too much heat.” He reached for an open pack of Marlboros, shook one loose and stuck it in his mouth. His other hand scrabbled for matches, as if moving independently.

“Old Binny went the same day as Rosie, as I remember it. In the afternoon.”

Binny froze, cigarette still unlit. “You remember, why you askin’ me?”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Look at what?”

“Upstairs.”

Binny dropped matches and cigarette. “Yeah I mind!”

Skip rose, headed for where he knew the stairs once began. Where he’d raced up and down most days as a child, running errands for the women penned upstairs like sheep. As he reached for an ill-fitting plywood door, Binny sidled from behind the bar and lurched forward. “Whoa. You can’t just walk in here and—”

Skip turned to look at Binny, which stopped Binny in the middle of the room. “Why so nervous?”

Then he listened. Dead silent. Binny’d told the truth. Nothing live up there now. Maybe even the rats had bailed. But he’d bet something was upstairs. “Stolen goods?”

Binny let out a shrill screech. Bingo, thought Skip.

Binny scurried back around behind the bar, began to fumble down low on a hidden shelf.

“Binny!”

Binny’s head snapped up.

“Put your hands up on the bar where I can see them. That’s it. Now. I don’t want to hear any funny noises, like you cocking that .38 special you used to keep under there, or maybe something newer?”

Binny didn’t move, but stared bug-eyed at Skip.

Skip turned his attention again to the door. He hesitated. This had nothing to do with his case. So it has nothing to do with me.

He walked towards Binny, pulled out a square of paper, unfolded it, laid it on the bar still wet from Binny’s rag. “I’m hunting info on a different woman, not Rosie. Feather Whitecloud, she was called. Remember her? Gunshot here in…February 1973. Same year as—as your dad.”

Binny’s voice trembled. “Christ on a crutch, the same month.”

“Same as what?”

“That Rosie—and not an hour later, my dad’s heart give… Bad month to be on the planet, I guess. Wadn’t shot here, though.”

“Feather Whitecloud. Husband named Dave.”

“Got a picture? They all lied on their names, y’know.”

“Bin, two women and your dad, same month? Think.”

“I swear! Rose and my dad was enough!” He leaned away, narrowing his shoulders protectively. Readying for a blow, although Skip hadn’t moved.

“Her folks have a police report.”

“Lissen. If I lied to you, my guess is you’d kill me.”

“Bet on it.”

Bin shuddered. “So…so a typo on the report. Different crib, I bet. Who cares by now anyway?”

Skip studied the paper as its creases relaxed from the dampness of the bar top, thinking. Her family cared. “Who’s at the precinct from the neighborhood? Age around forty.” His age.

“Lessee...uh…uh…Marvin Lip—Lipwhatever, he’s about 40.” He stared down at the bar. “An’ one named, uh, Panzer, like the tank.” He raised his hands. “Best I know.”

Skip stared one last time at the back of the room. “Shocked you’re still alive, Bin.” He dropped a dollar bill on the bar, picked up his paper and slid it back into his pocket. He walked away.

Bin cleared his throat. “Day shift rolls in at seven, you want cops.”

As Skip pushed open the screen door without answering, Bin shouted at his back, “And beer’s gone up. More’n a dollar! Next time…” Bin’s voice trailed away. He shuddered and hunted for another smoke.

* * * * *

Skip thought hard on his walk to the precinct house. Each glance at his surroundings dragged him back into his old life, into memories he’d buried after a good deal of effort. From Binny’s Tit to the precinct house was only a block downhill when he was a kid. It still was. So much, still the same.

“Panzer around?” He asked the desk officer.

The deskman was blonde and blunt featured, showing his Polish roots. Thick-necked and heavily muscled. He looked up from a stack of forms. “Whom shall I say is calling?” Skip nearly smiled. Gay lib had hit the Bible belt? Hope for humanity yet. At least in this precinct.

“Say Skip Rose, Officer—” he strained to read the name tag. “Derzhy.”

“Dewey, Hon.” His voice was disconcertingly basso, deepened even more by smoke and alcohol. “Uh, don’t tell ‘em I called you ‘Hon’, y’don’t mind. I promised I wouldn’t.” He flicked one of a row of switches and growled a request for Detective Panzer. He flicked the switch back to ‘off’ without waiting for a reply.

Skip’s eyebrows raised. Dewey noticed. “Think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

A tall blonde woman in motorcycle boots, jeans, and a brown tweed blazer clattered down narrow wooden stairs that let out behind the front desk.

“Dewey, I was on the goddamned phone! I hate when you switch off before I can say no! What!”

Dewey calmly pointed his pen at Skip.

Her rich brown eyes narrowed. She examined his clipped black hair culminating in a widow’s peak, top front teeth wedged like a small prow. Eyebrows like black gashes across skin as pale as bone, eyes a startling gold-flecked turquoise. Nose thick and a little crooked, his body not tall, but too thin. Neat black pants, not denim. Black rubber sole shoes, could probably carry him up walls, the tread so deep. Black tee tucked behind a dressy belt. Black coarse weave jacket, an odd thing, sort of Asian, with pockets and folds, not fancy, but complicated. Good to hide a shoulder holster.

She whipped back the edge of his jacket. Sure enough, an elastic holster, but empty. “Where’s your weapon!”

Skip, overcome by a fast-blooming private pain, said absently, “In the car. Licensed. You Panzer?”

“We have business?” When he didn’t speak or move, she wheeled to leave. She said, ill-humored, “Dewey, one more and you’re on school crossings.”

“Skip Rose,” Skip blurted.

She peered at him over her shoulder. He admired the thick swatch of 24 karat hair pulled into a ponytail that swung with her movements. High cheekbones, heavy jaw. Big-boned and strong, this woman. Panzer. A tank, but a female tank. Suddenly an image slid into place, a sucker punch. “Patsy.”

She stared. After a long moment she blinked. “Skip Rose?”

He nodded.

She breathed out, “Blessed Mary.”

He knew his smile was tight and defensive when it should’ve been happy.

“You’re alive!”

He stood there helplessly.

She commanded Dewey, “Tell Russo to finish my call, and log me out for the day.”

Dewey reached for another lever. “The day! Russo will burn.”

She hustled Skip out, stopping at the sidewalk. She jerked him around so they were face to face. “How’d you know I was here!”

Skip paused, searching for an explanation that would leave out the painful parts. As usual, words eluded him. He stared up into that face, glowing because he was here. He knew he’d let her down. He’d practiced letting people down for a lifetime.

She pulled him into a tight embrace. “I can’t believe it’s you. I can’t believe you’re here.” Her voice throbbed with emotion. He clung, trying to return the hug.

Just as abruptly, she released him. “C’mon. You’re not saying a word. We need a drink.”

“Where.”

She gave a glum laugh. “Oh, that got you talking? Binny’s seems appropriate.”

She pulled until he followed, and they climbed the hill.

Inside, Binny gave a start at seeing them, but said only, “Beers?”

“Like you have anything else,” snarled Panzer. “Cold.”

He tossed and they both caught the slick wet bottles neatly. A neighborhood quirk the Cubs should’ve taken advantage of, thought Skip.

“So, okay. You’re alive,” said Patsy, after her first swallow. She’d calmed down.

She’s had time to think.

“Why didn’t you contact me before now?”

Skip tried to take another drink, but couldn’t swallow. “Ma dropped me at a Catholic orphanage in New Mexico the—couple days before. Didn’t occur to me anyone thought I was dead. Not much occurs to a ten year old.” Just the basics, he thought. Like, that my mom didn’t want me anymore.

“But you never came back!” Hurt swirled in her enormous eyes.

“To what? I mean—” He wanted to say he knew Patsy loved him, but the words stuck.

“You swore undying love for me, guy.”

“Ten year old passion.” He grimaced, despising himself for belittling their history.

“You didn’t come to see me even now, did you. I’m an accident.”

Always quick. “I’m a PI. On a job. It sort of collided with…with ah—”

“With your past. So sometime or other, you found out your mom died, yes?”

He looked away. The nuns had told him, tired of him hanging around the front gate, waiting, ready with his forgiveness. So sure she’d miss him, come back to say she was sorry, she’d had too much to drink, a mistake. They’d told him she was dead in exasperation, to make him quit hoping. It worked.

Patsy looked off into the distance. Sighed. “So why are you here? Just tell me.”

“February, the same month my ma—,” he flicked a glance over at Binny. “Same month Old Binny died…a woman was shot to death, a Feather Whitecloud, married to Dave something.”

“Gunshot?”

“Supposedly here, in the Tit.”

Patsy raised her voice. “Binny—”

“Already asked. Bin says it didn’t happen here, some mistake in paperwork. I have a copy of the police report with me.”

Patsy held out a palm. He pulled the paper from his pocket. She looked at it, squinting at places where the print had faded. “Well, that’s what it says. Maybe Binny’s right, somebody recorded an error.” She raised her shoulders. “I can check. Meet you here around seven, I’ll give you what I find.”

They left.

* * * * *

In half an hour, Skip was at the Bureau of Records, thumbing his way through tattered paper files in boxes, records not yet entered into the new computer system. The clerk explained that they were going backward from the present. Hadn’t hit the seventies yet.

He burrowed. Purchase or sale of property, utility bills, marriage, birth or death certificates.

While digging, one corner of his mind mulled over Jake Ransom, the man who’d hired him. One of the People, he’d called himself. Meaning, Skip knew from his life in the Four Corners, a Shoshone. Ransom had shown up one day in Fairville, New Mexico, a flyspeck on the map where Skip had landed some years ago.

The ancient Shoshone had approached him in the diner, appearing out of nowhere. Somehow, this apparition knew who Skip was and what he did for a living, but Skip didn’t ask how. Discretion was a requirement for citizenship in the ironically named Fairville.

She’d left the rez in 1959, age sixteen, he said. She’d met a man named Dave and announced she would travel to Gary, Indiana, to be his wife. Mr. Ransom felt certain from his knowledge of Feather’s unshakeable honor, she would have married the man or come back. And she had not come back. And then she had died. At the place of the address printed on an old, much-worn paper Ransom had held out to Skip.

A daughter of the People, Feather Whitecloud ‘of’ the Snake clan and ‘for’ the Eagle clan. Meaning her maternal and paternal clans, respectively. No photograph, but he’d described her as having mixed blood in her ancestry, therefore her skin was not as dark as most Shoshone, and she’d grown up taller and slimmer. He had extended his old, sun-withered hand, showing his pale fleshless palm to demonstrate her skin color, and had stood to exhibit to Skip how tall she’d been in comparison.

In thirty years no police had clarified many unanswered questions and, in the tribe’s opinion, never would. Now her mother was ill. Many of the People were aging, dying. Soon, all who remembered Feather as a girl would be dead. Something had to be done. They wanted—needed—to know why their daughter had had to die.

“She must not vanish from our hearts. We need the peace of understanding to complete our clan-memory of her.” And, although as her grandfather, Jake Ransom felt the responsibility heavy upon himself, he was very old. He’d decided to appeal to Skip.

* * * * *

Skip eventually found a marriage license filed for a Daven Rossinsky and Feather Whitecloud. Daven, he noticed. Mr. Ransom’s Dave. So they had married. The grandfather was right, he thought, and wondered just exactly what ‘unshakeable honor’ meant. He moved to death certificates, and found hers easily. But no matter where he searched, nothing appeared about the husband. Alive or dead, Rossinsky seemed to have left Gary, Indiana.

He drove his rental car to the library, settled in front of a computer and typed in a public information search for Daven Rossinsky, limiting himself to Indiana. It bombed.

On a hunch, he asked for a search of Illinois, since Gary was basically parked on the Illinois border. A Daven Rossinsky had owned a house in Evanston, a town near Chicago. He’d moved twice after that, staying in the general Chicago area. Mr. Rossinsky was not an adventurous guy.

The last address was a tiny berg called Oakland. South of Evanston, not far. He searched for a phone number, utilities. Nothing. No phone?

Skip considered whether he should still search other states. The guy had hung out in the Gary/Chicago area most of his life. He could still be in Oakland. If this was his Daven Rossinsky. How many could there be?

It was only two pm. According to his map, Oakland would be only an hour’s drive, depending on traffic.

He easily located Daven Rossinsky’s address in Oakland—a modest seven story condo. The manager there directed Skip to another address in Oakland. A place where no one had private phones.

Minutes later, Skip found Daven Rossinsky. Feather’s husband. Daven, Skip concluded, had either lived too well or too hard. He was sixty eight. An oxygen bottle stood ready on a stand in a corner, its rubber hose attached to a face mask—a still life tribute to emphysema. Daven, in plaid shorts and a yellow tee shirt, sat in a grey bicycle-wheeled wheel chair, although from the way he twitched and jiggled his stick-thin legs, he obviously still had some ability to use them.

“Exertion stresses his lungs, Mr. Rose,” Miss Caroline had explained as she led him down the hall. “And his arthritis acts up. Also, his arteries have hardened something fierce, so he might drift off. Just a warning. Give him a minute, he comes back.”

“Back?”

“To reality. He thinks he’s a character in those gangster movies he loves to watch. Oh, he loves his gangster movies!” In the next moment she peeked into a room off the hallway. “Mr. Rossinsky? You have a visitor, dear!”

And Skip found himself face to face with Daven Rossinsky, who sat clutching a mug of lukewarm tea and a half-eaten cookie to his bony chest. Miss Caroline bustled away and returned holding a cup of tea and a cookie that looked like oatmeal, placing it all on a saucer on a chest of drawers within reach. Skip shook his head. She left it anyway.

Skip noted that Daven didn’t mind his presence. Daven sank yellowed too-perfect teeth into the cookie and sighed in bliss. Skip winced. For a man who loved cookies, the skin that draped Daven’s bones looked alarmingly empty of flesh. His bald, brown-spotted head had shrunk to a skull, and his eyes had kept only a suggestion of blue.

Daven’s room was roomy and private, painted in saccharin pastels. Despite its obvious cleanliness, his room smelled of old man, unflushed toilet, and earlier meals.

Skip cleared his mind. “Mr. Rossinsky.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t look at Skip, his whole attention focused on the cookie.

“You had a wife. Pretty Indian girl named Feather. Remember Feather?”

Daven grimaced at him slyly, his lips stretching open on one side of his mouth. The masticated cookie was still unswallowed. Skip glanced away in revulsion.

Daven asked, mouth loaded, “Who’re you?”

“Nobody to worry about.”

“Nobody,” repeated Daven. He nodded in agreement, then swallowed.

“You remember Feather?”

Daven shrugged. “A cutie.” More cookie.

“You married her. Why?”

“Couldn’t get her in the sack, otherwise. Too—straight arrow.” He laughed, mouth wide, loving his own joke. “Indian, get it?”

“Divorce?”

Silence. Daven gulped down the last of his cookie. “Caroooowline! More cookies, damnit!”

“Did she die, Daven? How’d she die?”

Daven suddenly focused on Skip, eyes narrowed. “Morrie send you?”

“Who’s Morrie?”

“Greatest man in the world,” said Daven. “Morrie Jersey. I was his top gun.”

Skip sat back. Daven had evidently disconnected. He waited, following Miss Caroline’s orders, who evidently had no intention of bringing Daven another cookie. His eyes wandered to the window. He glimpsed flashes of blue, a lake, not far away, between tree trunks.

“So, what’d you do for Morrie?” asked Skip, deciding to play Daven’s game until he returned to the present.

Daven perked up. “Never got nailed, not for anything! Not many can say that, my job. Kills people.” He began to giggle. “My job kills people, get it? Never nailed?”

Skip shook his head. “Hey, Dave.”

Daven looked Skip lucidly in the eyes. “Yeah?”

“Feather.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you love her?”

“Why?”

Skip sighed, then gestured towards his uneaten cookie. Daven snatched it and began devouring it. Suddenly he stopped chewing and said eagerly, spraying cookie crumbs, “Cigarettes?”

After an incredulous glance at the oxygen tank, Skip shook his head no.

Daven flapped a hand at Skip, dismissing him.

* * * * *

Skip flagged down Miss Caroline in the hall. “Does he get any other visitors?”

She eyed him shrewdly. “He went off about Morrie Jersey, didn’t he. And said he used to kill people?”

Skip shrugged.

Miss Caroline’s lips puckered. “Anyway...only one friend, till you showed up. Father Frank. They were neighbors. He comes once a week or so.”

“I’m no friend. Only looking for information about his deceased wife. He ever mention her? A woman named Feather?”

“Ooooh, I’d remember a wife named Feather!”

Skip gave her his card, circled his cell phone number on it, handed it to her. “If he says anything about her, call me? I’m not here to make trouble, her family would just like to put her memory to rest.”

“Well…”

Skip saw what was needed. He pushed his lips into a smile, patted her hand. “Her name was Feather,” he repeated. “You’re an angel. Thanks.”

She beamed and tucked the card into a pocket.

Smiles work but money costs less.

He headed back to the condos.

* * * * *

Father Frank Passaic pulled Skip inside and led him through sliding glass doors to the ledge which served his apartment as a terrace. Soon they flanked a glass table, each teetering on the bowed legs of a white molded plastic chair. Only a rusted railing kept them from plummeting to the flowers and shrubbery seven floors below. The fragility of railing and chair worried Skip but he forced himself to sprawl, and made his face take on an expression of riveted interest. A portrait of someone with hours to spend listening to an old man’s stories. He sipped the cold beer fetched for him. Father Frank didn’t drink—“today,” he added with a chuckle, a drunk’s jibe revealing AA affiliation. He chain-smoked, flicking ashes and live butts over the railing. Skip imagined the garden below stunted and scorched from a steady rain of smoldering butts.

Father Frank was in his seventies, a tall gaunt man with leathery raddled skin. Skip wasn’t surprised when the Father began unreeling his story to him, a total stranger. Long time AA alcoholics lose discretion after relating their stories at hundreds of meetings. One more telling makes no difference.

At the story’s ignoble end, Skip asked him about Rossinsky.

Frank replied through exhaled smoke, “You know he was an enforcer?”

“Nurse said that came from the movies, and lack of oxygen to his brain.”

Frank stared at him.

“Delusions,” added Skip.

Frank slowly shook his head, dropping his eyes to the garden below. “Nope. Morrie Jersey was a hood, East Chicago. Morris Zherzincsky. Dave ran off from an orphanage, least that’s what he says. Said Jersey took him off the streets, got to be a real father-son thing. Dave grew up to be the most trusted guy in Morrie’s mob. Not that that’s saying much.”

Skip frowned, digging through those old memories again. Morris Jersey. East Chicago?

“You and Dave friends a long time?”

Father Frank shrugged. “I been here…since ‘78. Diocese retired me.” He grimaced. “Firmly retired, you could say. Installed here instead of a retirement home. They got their reasons.”

Skip patiently pulled his attention back to Daven. “And you met Dave when?”

“Dave?” As if they hadn’t mentioned him before. “He moved in right after me. Riddled with bullets. No kidding.” Short laugh. “Like a gangster in Miss Caroline’s movies.”

“Gunshot wounds?”

“Holed up to give himself time to recover. Only he didn’t. Too much damage.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Never asked.”

Skip considered Father Frank. A man of God, life dedicated to serve the lambs, his Father’s flock. Too self-involved to inquire about wounds suffered by a man who seemed to be his only friend.

“Ever talk about his past?”

“All the time.”

“His wife, Feather?”

Frank tried to laugh, inciting a cough that wracked him hard. He clung to the railing, which shook alarmingly, flakes of rusted iron dislodged by the tremors. Skip wondered whether he should pull them both back inside to safety, but then the cough morphed into a controlled choking.

He lit another cigarette. “Said he never met anyone like her. She had ‘honor.’ That’s what he called it. ‘Honor.’ ”

“Meaning what?”

Frank dragged deeply on the current cigarette. “Didn’t ask.”

Skip shook his head in annoyance. “You two take an interest in each other at all? Or you just take turns talking out loud?”

Frank gazed down over the railing again. “Too many ghosts. Too many debts, and nothin’ we could fix.” He rubbed his nicotine-stained lips. “So yeah, neither of us wants to hear, but we talk. Hell is here and now, guys like us.”

Skip stood up, mouth twisted.

“Okay, we’re soulless bastards.” Frank glanced up at him, eyes dull. “But we know it.”

Skip let himself out. What do I know? My mother gave me away… He recognized his awful similarity to Frank and Daven. ‘Nothin’ we can fix. Hell is here and now for guys like us.’

* * * * *

He drove too fast back to Gary. He glanced at his watch. Not quite five, library was still open. He swung north.

Settled in again in front of the computer at the library, he typed in Morris—then froze over the spelling of the last name. Google picked it up third try. Morris Zherzincsky aka Morrie Jersey.

He scrolled articles pulled from the Chicago Times, magazines, and a website dedicated to Chicago mob history. He limited the search to the 50’s through the 70’s, since Feather had died in ’73. Not knowing if he’d find a tie-in, he doggedly read everything. Some of the website articles made him shudder, the sycophantic descriptions of the mob, as if ruthlessness, gore, and greed were admirable manly traits. Morris had been a busy guy, flashy and often in the news. Keeping to chronological order as he read, Skip noticed a trail of growing complacency. The more Morris got away with things, the more careless he grew. And finally, the grand shootout with the Chicago police aided by the FBI. Morris and some of his lieutenants had been killed, some indicted and convicted, and a few disappeared. Like Daven Rossinsky.

He leaned back in his chair. Clearly Daven had worked for Morris, but must not have fallen into the trap of complacency with him. While Morris and many of his lieutenants became media stars, Daven avoided publicity. Maybe Daven told the truth about his history. He certainly hadn’t been captured in the final bloodbath. Skip executed a different search and found no indictments, no outstanding warrants for Daven Rossinsky.

Suddenly the date of the final showdown leaped to his attention. The summer of 1978. Exactly when Daven had limped into Oakland with multiple bullet wounds. Going at the numbers a different way, Skip found that although Morrie Jersey’s career could be traced back to 1964, he’d become a focus of police action beginning in 1972. And in 1973 Feather had died.

Had Feather become a threat to Morris? To Daven, her husband? Unshakeable honor. What did that mean?

In his car, Skip dialed on his cell the phone number given to him by Jake Ransom. A man answered. “Yes?”

“Mr. Ransom?” asked Skip, confused.

“This is Elliot Spotted Horse. You calling Elliot’s Drugs and Sundries?”

“Um, Jake Ransom gave me this number—”

“That’s probably right. Jake uses my number if it’s important. Is this Skip?”

Startled, Skip said, “Yeah.”

“I’ll find him and have him call you back. He doesn’t have a phone of his own.”

“Thanks. But just tell him I have more questions, would you? Don’t let him get excited. I haven’t finished the job.”

“Gotcha.” Click.

Skip slid back behind the wheel of the rental car.

* * * * *

By the time he pushed open the door to the Tit, he felt tired all the way to his bones. Just inside the room he paused, wondering what his problem was. Normally nothing could wear him down to this. The room swirled with smells and noise. Bodies filled the tables and stools, with a few hanging two deep waiting for a place to land. Young Binny—Skip caught himself thinking the name and grimaced. Old Binny now. Binny was hustling, striding between the bar and the standup refrigerator at a speed Skip would never have believed possible.

“Skip Rose!” A sharp male voice pierced the din. Faces turned Skip’s way.

An arm from the back waved, and Skip pushed through, ignoring curious looks. But when he saw who’d shouted, his heart banged to a stop. “Boland.” He didn’t even know if he’d spoken the name aloud.

Dark hair had been replaced by white, the trim waist and bulky shoulders had reversed conditions. But the sapphire eyes seemed untouched by time or burdens, and Skip, when he looked, saw bottomless pools of compassion. Forgotten until now.

Although still big enough to scoop up Skip bodily, Boland only grabbed Skip’s right hand with both of his and pumped. Skip let him. Behind Boland, Panzer stood, eyes glittering. Whether from anger or sorrow, Skip was beyond knowing. Too many emotions crowded in on him as suddenly a whole sheaf of those snapshots from the past sharpened into focus. He’d remembered both Binnys, but not Boland. Not Patsy. What was wrong with him that he’d done that?

Sargeant Boland, GPD, had adored Rosie and Skip. He’d mentioned adoption once, shyly, but Skip had bolted. Boland had had to entice him back with a joke. Skip never could handle deep emotions. Even back then, thought Skip.

Boland had done what he could to make things easier for both mother and boy. A task impossible even for him, under the conditions of life then.

What conditions! Skip froze between present and past in Boland’s grasp. Boland himself couldn’t seem to let go. And then he did.

Skip let his arm drop limply. For the third time that day he forced an upward curve upon his mouth, despising his inadequacies.

Boland spoke, his voice gruff. “Panzer says you’re here on a case?”

Skip could only nod. Patsy edged forward. “He’s looking into the death of a Feather Rossinsky,” she said.

Skip stared at Patsy. “I never mentioned her last name. I just found that out myself.”

Patsy darted a look at Boland. “The name was in the file.”

“So there’s more than the form I had?”

Boland said, “Get a beer, Skip. Tell us your life story.” Boland’s eyes reminded Skip of the lake in Oakland. Clear blue. Brimming with understanding. He stopped looking at them.

“Sure.”

Patsy rousted the occupants to vacate Old Binny’s table and they sat.

Desperate to avoid discussing history, Skip came immediately to the point. “What else did you learn?”

“Feather had a child,” blurted Patsy.

Skip drew back. “Her folks know?”

Patsy’s eyebrows raised. “They didn’t mention it?”

Boland twisted off the cap of his beer and swallowed deep. Skip couldn’t think, too distracted by half-memories and newly resurrected pain. A child?

“Kid dead, too?” he finally asked.

Suddenly Binny loomed at his shoulder. “Pay up. Nobody on the arm, even you, tough guy.”

Skip stared at Binny. “Name’s Skip. Skip Rose.”

Binny’s face twisted in shock. “Wha—by God. The whore Rosie’s little bastard?”

Skip didn’t respond.

“ ‘Aa-at’s not what I meant to say,” squeaked Binny, palms up. “I uh, meant, the whore Rosie’s little boy.”

“Wanna talk over old times, Bin? Like how you made me scrub urinals to buy my mother’s lunch?”

“Hey. We all worked to get by. Little Skippy. If God don’t make miracles!” Binny grabbed up Skip’s left hand and folded it between his own dirt-creased clammy ones, his face betraying a sly disappointment that Skip not only allowed the touch, but let Binny keep holding the hand. “Your mom was a angel, that pretty gal. We all loved her.”

“Yeah, love. Twenty minutes per, and seventy-five percent to the house.” Skip’s stare held Binny captive.

Sweating despite the dank coolness of the room, Binny flung away Skip’s hand. He scrubbed his palms against his thighs. “So. Where’d you disappear to? Prayed on you at church, you know.”

“I bet.”

“Friggin’ odd. You and Rosie do a flit. Then she’s back. But then school let out and you din’t show. Next thing, bang, she’s—she...left us. We thought, well, you musta run off and her heart was set so hard on you—maybe she coun’t take you bein’ gone. No blame t’you,” he added hastily.

Skip’s face swelled and purpled with rage. Patsy let out a ragged squeal, then snatched a handful of Boland’s shirt to pull him back into his chair. “Let it happen,” she said. She turned to the rest of the room, which was frozen with tension. “Let it happen! He deserves this!”

Skip grabbed Binny by the neck and threw him to the ground. His fists pounded the bloated body like blunt hammers, the dull thuds loud in the silent room. Binny howled, “No, no!” He rolled to avoid the fists, only to receive blows to his face. Blood spurted from his nose, landing in a red lattice across the brown floor. Finally Bin curled up into a fetal position. Skip kicked at Binny’s kidneys twice, then backed away, panting. He blotted the perspiration from his eyes with a forearm.

Binny whinnied with terror. “I’m an old man, you’ll kill me!”

“I’d kill you even if you were young, you piss-stinking turd. You killed my mother. You killed those poor young girls, slaves, filling that cash register with their bodies. Dues to pay, Bin!”

“Jesus you growed strong. I don’t know ‘bout owin’ no dues, though—”

Skip’s short jab snapped Binny’s chin back hard, sweat, saliva, and blood splattering shoes of the nearby watchers. Binny went limp on the linoleum.

Suddenly Binny began a backwards crab-scramble towards the bar. Patsy sighed. “Can’t allow guns, Bin.” She stepped over and pop-punched him on the mouth without exerting herself.

Binny sprawled flat and stayed there.

Patsy sat back down at the table. She and Boland sucked at their beers as if nothing unusual had happened. Skip scanned the crowd, many of the cops still in uniform. Nobody seemed inclined to move. Skip raised his eyebrows at Patsy, impressed by her evident power over her peers. She flashed him a sad smile that mysteriously enabled him to breathe easier.

Now able to meet Boland’s eyes, Skip said, “I didn’t run off.”

“I know,” said Boland.

Skip crouched by Binny and shook him until his eyes opened. “Sit up.” Skip walked over and, reaching over the bar, snagged two fresh beers from the ice. He swung an empty chair around and straddled it. When Binny managed to sit up, Skip held out a bottle. “Feather Rossinsky.”

Binny twisted off the cap, took a short swig. “Ow!” He fingered his teeth where Patsy had punched him. He dabbed at a cut on his chin, whimpering each time he touched himself.

“Bin.”

Binny shuddered. “Feather, she hid out here. She, uh, had run off from her husband. He was a—a strange one. Like no feelings about anyone or anything except his boss.”

“Morrie Jersey.”

Bin nodded. “Morrie was East Chicago, but Dave made collection runs in this area for Morrie, pickups from Tupe. Anybody run across Feather, they clammed tight. If Dave’d found out she was hooking for a living, he’d a killed us for just knowing it. Jesus. ‘Specially me. He’d a killed me for hiding her, even though she was kind of hiding in plain sight.”

“I talked to Dave, Bin.”

Binny jerked back. “You didn’t!”

“He can’t hurt anybody now.” Skip sat still for a minute. “Why’d Feather run off?”

“She was—everybody did love her. I wasn’t makin’ nice… Way I heard it, when she found out what Dave did for a living, she ran.”

“Why didn’t she go home? She had a huge family. Why’d she—hide—here?”

For the first time Patsy spoke up. Tears shimmered unshed. “He was a raging paranoid. Wherever she was, anybody close to her would be killed, too. She knew it. She was a hero, Skip. She knew he’d find her eventually, so she stayed away from her family to keep them alive.”

Skip gazed at her for a long minute. “Why do you know that?”

Boland and Patsy and Binny all looked at Skip. He blinked, disconcerted, around him at the silent room. What was wrong here? What…

“Tell me!” he demanded.

Bin shrugged. “He found her.”

“And…?”

Nobody spoke.

Boland had tears rolling down one cheek. “She made a deal with him.”

Skip stared at him.

“She had this—integrity. Wouldn’t let me marry her ‘cause she was already married, even though it was a farce. Wouldn’t even accept my help, ‘cause it mighta put me in danger. Except she let me be a friend to you. She knew you needed more than just her. You were her world.”

Skip felt the blood leave his face.

Patsy said, “She convinced Dave you knew nothing, not even his name. So he gave her time to stash you somewhere. Not with her folks. She worried Dave might change his mind later, hunt you down. Dangerous for both you and them. But where her family could watch over you from a distance. And where Rossinsky wouldn’t think to look for you. None of us knew where you were.”

Patsy swallowed hard, then continued. “He knew her word was gold. We all knew. That’s how she traded her life for yours.”

Boland said, “Bin let uh, Dave…wait for her here, in her room, until she got back.”

Bin, eyes huge, watched Skip nervously. “He gave me no choice, Skippie!”

Patsy continued. “Then she allowed Dave to shoot her. Have to hand it to the freak. One bullet. She didn’t suffer.”

When Skip didn’t move, Boland finished, “She was a loose end. Rossinsky never left loose ends.”

Skip’s cell phone began to ring. Automatically, he pulled it from his pocket, flipped it open, but didn’t speak. In the silent room, however, all could hear the old man’s voice. “Elliot says you have questions?”

Skip’s voice came out hoarsely. “Why now?”

“Aaahhh, you have solved it. Why now? Because all these years later, your wounds still bleed. Just watching over you has not been enough. Come home, grandson. We need you. And you need us.”

END