51st and Fink, chapter 2

first chapter here.

    Old Town is the oldest part of Uptown, about 20 blocks from Downtown, and 3 or 4 stone-throws from the river, if you got a decent fastballer. My prime haunting grounds were close, close enough I coulda heard the shots myself.
    At this point, the rain no longer fell, it just sort of hung there and spread out into shards of rippling mirror that showed my own face to itself. I tried to keep my attention on the visage of 215 Nantucket Way, former residence of Margaret and Mark Lamb. Mark's pieced together dental records lay cozy in the folder, but Fats hadn't given me a thing on Maggie. What and wherever she was, she wasn't at 215 anymore. Yellow tape wrapped across the columns of the front stoop, some cut and others pasted over. When I wobbled to the side a bit, light from the next block pierced all the way through the holes in the wall, hundreds maybe thousands of them.
    I found my way past the mirrors and up the front steps under the tape. The doorknob was cold in that particular way that you get to know. No matter the season, you can feel that heat of life in a place only when it's absent. And different from folks just out for the summer. Nothing sucks that heat away like an autopsy, suits crawling through it, poking at it, chalk lines and emptied liquor cabinets.
    When the street stood as dark and quiet as it could, I flicked on my light
and slipped inside. The whole house leaned back and forth with me like we'd both drifted out into the bay. The shadows swayed too, with black curls hiding behind them. I shooed them away a bit with the light, peered up the stairs, tiptoed around the first floor in my loafers. The bedroom was a hollow cube of swiss cheese painted black and red and still with the faintest hint of gunpowder in the air. I flipped through the dresser drawers a bit and wondered what the hell I was expecting to find. A treasure map maybe, with a big X labelled Reggie Finks.
    Feathers covered the mattress where I sat, littered the floor, sometimes lifted up and drifted down the hallway on a draft, as if a ghost somewhere were assembling a chicken. I sat watching them cross through the beam of my light and listened to a Ford rolling down the wet street outside. I sat and imagined Fats jowling his way around this room two weeks ago, probably stuffing his face with a bearclaw. I sat and imagined an officer collecting Mark Lamb's teeth with a pair of tweezers. I sat and wondered if Maggie woke up after Reggie said, "Make it loud." I wondered if she'd even been there at all. The room was so torn up that it told me nothing. Just pick a story and run with it, it said.
    A thump came down the hallway where the feathers had been drifting, arm in arm with a hiss and a whisper. The floor still sloshed with the gold water in my head, but whispers were a new thing. And anyway, you gotta trust your ears in this business. I stood up carefully.
    As I floated in line with the feathers, down the hall toward the kitchen, timbre came into the whispers. Foreign voices but not real foreign. Fellas from that part of the city that kept itself cordoned off from the rest. Voices like fishy food or a minor key you never knew existed. "You gotta pool when I push, dummie."
    "I no poolin nowheres till you push!" they hissed, but softlike.
    "How can I push without a pool?" there was a thump and a curse. I floated round the corner like I belonged there. Started making a bit of noise and flicked on my flashlight. Two cats in jackets that didn't quite fit them, the sleeves wrinkled and lapels folded. Between them was a long cardboard box, half on the floor and a few slices from their claws on either side. They blinked their slitted eyes at the light and hissed at me.
    "You boys need a hand with that?" I said. Just like it was nothing.
    Another light flicked on from across the box, a skinny, twitchy fella dressed up in the blue, who'd come up the stairwell after them. "Who are you?" he said. My light made little pinions tick and shift across his badge. One of them touched his index finger alighted on a pistol grip.
    I didn't make a move to show the badge in my wallet. "Friend o' Fats down at 31st. He wanted me to take another poke at the old gal." The cats' ear hairs were all standing at attention, their backs arched under cheap suits. Those eyes never did my nerves any good.
    "Yeah? 31st, huh?"
    "That's right."
    Slim took off his cap and scratched at the exposed crew cut while his trigger finger stayed where it was. "Well, I ain't heard o' no Fats, but I'll radio down to 31."
    "That's fine." I felt cold inside. Like my whole torso was just a hunk of metal. "Mind if I have another look downstairs in the meanwhile?" We both knew there was no 31 to radio.
    His eyelid twitched. The two felines watched us with feline stairs. "Wwweeelll," the twitching moved to his nose and mouth, then off his face and down his right arm. "…lemme give a call down to the station first and sort out whatever needs to be--"
    I backed off and gave a fake glance at my watch. "You know, I got to be off shift in a bit, anyway. Not for wasting my time round this dump when dinner's on the table, you know?" Slim gave me a look that just kept on looking as I backed my way to the foyer and out the door. Neither of us asked any questions. But if you tell me that was a real flatfoot, I'll eat my dirty socks.

    I coulda lived a quieter life, sure thing. You might think I washed up on the shores of the Hudson, but truth is there was another life before this one. Anymore, I can't fathom how it worked. Something about drawing rooms, marble counter tops, and beautifully stagnant neighborhoods; saturated with 3 bedroom houses that promised a dream straight out of the box. Mail order happiness. Manicured gardens surrounded fresh coats of paint, slathered on eternally in the eternal longing for eternity.
    Dad looked at me one day through his tan wrinkles and his whiskey fog, right there in the kitchen. And there was something there in his eyes, under the mask. Anyway, whatever it was, I was gone before sunrise. How many years ago was that?
   
    Aside and atop of the disappearances, the fake cop and cohorts had me spooked. But I wanted to know what had been in that box even more. I could be a hardcase under the influence, for sure, so I headed back up mystery Maggie's way two nights later, after one solid day of greasing the wheels. Did the chemicals make the man that stood in that empty basement, was it the other way round, or some mix of both? Either way, it was true about the basement. They'd cleaned the place, scrubbed it, even shined the concrete floor till it looked like a mirror. Just like the filled in hole of 31st precinct, there was the feeling of someone up the ladder looking down on me with a smirk across his face.
    I wanted nothing more than to put the screws on floating head daddy Finks, but I didn't have the leverage. I had nothing, really. Some hopped up cats lugging boxes with a fake copper. A bedroom full of holes. A leggy bombshell, now missing, who liked to mail teeth. And Maggie. Where did Maggie go? That was starting to look like the hundred dollar question. At this point, I knew her only as the stiff's wife, so I headed to the morgue.
   
    As these things happen, 215 Nantucket wasn't far from the precinct's remains, so the folder led me straight down memory lane to the old morgue where I'd spent so many restless hours. By this time, I'd had enough of new faces, so I brought an old one with me. Barney knew his stuff and always had. Coroner, chemist, forensicist, alchemist, general miracle worker. I smuggled him right through the back door, and we got to work.
    "I don't need to tell you how I feel about this, do I?" he said.
    I lit a cigarette to keep the stench away. "You parked your sorry butt under the old train station to get away from places like this. Your days of fondling the dead were behind you, you'd hoped. What's more, you ain't keen on breaking the rules in public."
    He gave me a look through his bird-eyed glasses. "That's it exactly. More colorful than I might've put it."
    "I'm tellin ya, Barney. I'm a lonely old gumshoe with no friends that ain't disappeared neath a hundred tons of concrete. Much less ones with your powers of perception and accredited credentials." Flattery'd always gone a long way with Barney. He was reedy and weak-willed in both body and soul.
    "Let's get to work, shall we?" He snapped on his gloves and took a stool by the slab. I wheeled Mark Lamb from his coffin fridge to have a chat with us.
    "Cause of death, professor?"
    "Well, his head looks to have been shattered by gunfire."
    "I figured that part. Caught him on the shoulder, too." Mark, or the stiff rather, had blood like glass now, he was so cold. It coated the remains of his head and shoulder like growths of red crystal, but flaking off in little bits onto the sheet we'd laid out.
    Barney tapped with his fingers here and there, feeling, groping. "Pretty fresh needle mark on the arm there. And Jack?"
    I turned back around. "Yeah?" Hadn't seen a body like this in a while. Too much soft P.I. work, taking photos of cheating husbands, finding lost puppies.
    "Two of his toes are missing." He gave the remaining ones a flick.
    "I see that. Shot off?"
    He shook his head. "There are teeth marks at the base."
    "Scavenger? Maybe they had pets."
    "Doesn't look it to me. Too wide and flat."
    "What're you tellin me? People teeth?" He tapped his nose. I pulled the little tin I kept from my pocket and popped it open. Still two teeth in there.
    "I can't match it up with no instruments. But somebody bit this guy's toes off. Somebody with big teeth, too."
    "Gotchya." Smoking does wonders for your gag reflex. I exhaled up at the fluorescent light above me, a vision of moonlit chompers in the smoke. "Needle marks, Barn. Somebody drugged him?"
    "Or drew his blood. But he could've drugged himself for all I know."
    "Was he dead or alive at the time?" I was starting to get a narrative in my head, but it held together as well as a pile of bones.
    "It's about as fresh as the others. That's all I've got short of spiriting him away to my lab." I gave him a look at that, and he stared. "No. Oh no."
    "Oh yes. We're stealing a corpse. You got a home for him in your cave?"
    "I mean the freezer should work, but I'd have to find a way to hook back into the power grid."
    "You'll find a way, Barn. You always do." I leaned down and smoothed the stiff's hair. "Ya hear that? We're bustin' you outta here. Where's Maggie, Mark? She stick that needle in your arm? Maybe bite off your toe?" I put my ear down close to what was left of his mouth, but he didn't say anything. "Cool as a cucumber, this one."
    Barney was rubbing his temples. "You need help, Jack."
    "That's what I have you for. Gimme a hand, will ya? This sucker's heavy."

    We hailed the next cabby who looked trustworthy (my car had disappeared a week prior, along with a couple of days) and stuffed the body bag in the trunk, then took the scenic route to Barney's abandoned train station. It didn't make sense yet, but I had the makings of the thing every gumshoe wants: a trail to follow. I'd already nabbed Mark. Now just find Maggie, and somehow she'd lead me to Reggie, who could hopefully tell me why Ms. Paycheck had stopped answering my phone calls. Like I was collecting the lost cards from an old deck.

    Just like I said, Barn found a way. I left those prize teeth with him and hit the streets. It was time to step up my game shadowing Reggie Sr. Fat old bastard had given me nothing so far. In fact, It was time for some B & E. I had the hots for that rolodex on the 10th floor of 51st and Fink, and whatever else I could wrap my grubby fingers around. A drowning man'll grab anything. Which was good, cause I was gonna need to do some climbing. This late, every door on the street was clapped in iron.
    I tugged my hat low against the water in the air folding like silver ribbons and took a stroll over to the next block to duck down an alley. Patted my coat to make sure Knife was still in his pocket. No fire escape, but a dumpster and a drainpipe. A wet drainpipe. I'm not a light guy, but I got desperate fingers. I slip off my loafers and climb onto the dumpster. Deep breaths. A few of them. I can feel my stomach weighing me down. Every six feet or so there's a crack and some screws in the pipe I could latch onto, but who has arms that long? Ah well, let's get to it.
    I got a few feet in the air before falling. I'm not constructed for this. Probably no one is. Amber fuzz in my skull doesn't help. The dumpster rang hollow and let out a mongrel whine. I respond. "Oooohhhhh. My back." The whine got louder. "Hang on, gimme a sec."
    When I got the lid open I was greeted by a writhing, moaning trash bag. A pair of lips materialized against the plastic and began to speak. "Would you be so kind as to help me out of this receptacle?"
    "Sure thing, bud." I had nothin better to do.
    I recognized Hank from the late Fats's case file, even if he looked a bit worse for wear.
    "It's Henry, actually."
    He was waning in distinct phases, so close to nothing that he was almost invisible there in the alley with a banana peel in his shirt pocket, tufts of hair held together by gum wrappers. "So.." I said. "What are you doing in the trash?"
    "Not my choice, I assure you." He made some useless attempts to right his hair and tuck in his shirt. "I was thrown out. I don't suppose you're able to remove handcuffs?"
    "Not here, but if you tag along I'll bet I could work something out. How much do you know about Finks Waste?" I might not be able to climb a ten story building, but now I had a living(?) rolodex, with a literal chip on his shoulder.   

    The overgrown conservatory crammed into Barney's empty train station was starting to feel like home. The bars had closed by the time we made it back, but Barney was still bent over his lab table, the stiff laid out across the room. Now that the power was hooked up a few electric lamps buzzed at intervals. "Barney, this is Hank."
    "It's Henry, actually." They looked like two of a pair.
    "Yesyes. Sit over there, won't you?" Barney waved at a dark precipice towards the South end of the station while dialed into the jeweller's glass over his eye. Still in his handcuffs, Hank shuffled over to the cliff's edge and dangled his feet off of it. I wondered for a moment if he might jump, or even stumble into the fissure by accident. But he just sat there.
    I turned back to what Barney held in his tweezers, my prize tooth with the tiny ribbon removed. "Whadda we got professor?"
    "It's not easy with just a lone tooth to go on, but I think I can say that neither of these mystery mouths bit off Mr. Lamb's toes."
    "Anything else?"
    He looked up at me, still through the jeweller's lens. "Yes. Mark had a significant dose of heroin in his system at time of death. Hence the needle mark." A pause for me to process the words. "Did you capture a suspect?"
    My brain was getting slow. The buzz wearing off. "Oh, you mean Hank. Nah, I found 'im in the trash. You got a saw around here? I told him we'd cut off the handcuffs. Hank, get over here!" He did without crossing the intervening space. I set to with the hacksaw. "So I've been meaning to ask you--"
    "-why I was laying in the dumpster?"
    "Bullseye, Hank."
    "Henry. Not by choice, as I indicated. I believe they did poison me several hours prior to your fortuitous discovery."
    "Poisoned? They?"
    "For whatever reason, it did not take, did it?" From behind I couldn't see his mouth move, made him look like a wax sculpture perched on the table. Except he was swinging his legs. "I awoke in the trash to your knock."
    "My knock, yes. Of course."
    "I could not help but notice your associate's possession of the remnants of Mr. Lamb, there on the table."
    Barney took an interest for the first time. "You know him?"
    "Of course. I know all employees of Finks Waste, at least professionally. We had never spoken in person. He is somewhat less recognizable without his face."
    I'll be the first to admit I couldn't remember much of the past however many months, but enough to know I was overdue for something to go my way. I cut through the last scrap of metal. "I been turning somersaults trying to figure how Mark fits into this. And where his wife was when her husband bought it."
    "Margaret? Why don't you ask her? She'll be down at Scarponi's tomorrow night at 8 with Mr. Finks."
    I grabbed him by the cheeks and gave them a little tug. "God bless the devil that brought you here, Sir! Let's get that trash out of your hair and go have a drink, on Doris."

    Tomorrow night at 8 I was giving off a golden aura that funhouse-mirrored in the shine of the red and white tablecloths. The maitre d' waddled over to the podium and groped at the top edges for his pen. Saying things like 'Very good Sir' and 'Well then'. "May I take your coat?"
    "D'you have extra jackets somewheres? I forgot mine." I took off my overcoat for proof.
    "Jackets are not required, Sir. But I will be pleased to take your coat from you." He gave it a little tug.
    "Even so, Mac, you got any in the back? I got a hot date tonight."
    His eyes popped over the podium top and drilled a stare at my forehead. "But of course you do." A sigh. "Right this way, Sir."
    I kept my hat low as he took me through the dining room, scoping things out under the brim. The place was packed fortunately, plenty of background noise for me to hide behind. Patrons cropped up all around, with their forks stuck as flagpoles in big wads of spaghetti, marinara flying everywhere. Right in the middle was my quarry. Fathead Finks the Sr. and his beaux, I wouldn't doubt, Maggie Lamb, both looking happy as clams. I massaged the pliers in my pocket and wondered why I'd brought them.
    A closet of lost jackets languished by the kitchen door. The host made his excuses and faded away. I grabbed a jacket that was too small and hung it off my shoulders. Loosened my tie a bit, took one last pull from Doris's flask. Then marched out to the table, saucerous green lamps hovering halfway between the ceiling and floor. "Fathead, Margaret," I said. "Glad to see you both."
    "Excuse me?" said Maggie. Reggie Sr. squeezed his eyelids together a bit and searched my face and his memory.
    I whipped out the pliers. "Not at all. Excuse ME, Madam. This will only take a moment." Then I grabbed her cheeks and jammed the pliers in her mouth.
    "WWWaaaaaaaaaaa!!" She screamed. The sound fanned out and filled the restaurant and returned as a low-grade whine like the buzzing of a kicked beehive.
    "I just need a sample for the lab, Miss. Won't take a moment!" I gave a couple tugs, but the blasted thing was really in there. Maybe switch to a molar. The wait staff were piled on my shoulders dragging me to the ground while I held Maggie by the face and yanked. Meanwhile Reggie flapped his cheeks together in astonishment. "Just one!" I said. "Ya bit off Mark's toes, right? Just one. Just ONE!" There was a sharp crack and a slaughterhouse shriek and some blood, then the waiters had me out the front door to a waiting squad car on the wrong side of the glass.

    "When you said you were going, I figured maybe you had a plan?" Barney hugged his rib cage on the other side of the cell bars and couldn't stop shaking his head. "Something more subtle than what you came up with, at least..."
    "I figured something would come to me on the way."

    Thanks to the remainder of Barney's savings, I was back on the streets in a day and change. Wasn't my first night in the lockup but it may have been one of the strangest. It came to me that I hadn't really slept in a while. The one bench in the group cell was comfy enough. I conked out for a bit, months and years filtering in and out through the halflight. Visions. Nothing that stuck in my memory. Except Teeth. I kept one hand over my right coat pocket to keep the thieves out, left on Knife's handle, deterrence for a couple of scruffs who'd wound up in there with me looking like they were headed for sentencing. Me though, I was in and out, charges pending, nothing I had to worry about right now. Long as Maggie didn't want her tooth back, that is.
    Anyway, there was a subway waiting to take me back to the old filing cabinet of Vance Investigations. Me and Barney climbed the stairs and sauntered down the hall. "I got a tooth you know."
    "No kidding, Can't say I approve of your methods, but I'll give it a look..... Hope it'll be worth the lawsuit. This your place?"
    It was in the right spot, but that was all. Thick boards lay across my door frame, and under them a solid wall of concrete. Just like 31st Precinct, my foundation still there somewhere but lost to the ages. I raised a hand and its fingers. "Yep. Welcome. Step into my office." Barney wrung his hands. "I'm gonna have a look in the window."
    "How do you plan to do that?"
    I kicked the pane of glass out of the end of the hall and squeezed through the opening to the ledge beyond. Barney popped his bald head out: "You know you probably could have opened that?"
    I hugged the side of the building and watched the traffic on the street below stutter and shift. "Now ya tell me."
    Somehow he cranked his head all the way around to look up at me. "Also, should I not point out that your recent record of successfully climbing buildings doesn't breed confidence."
    "I'd be obliged if you didn't. I'm sober this time. Ish..."
    "Don't die. I just bailed you out. A risky investment, I admit."
    I crept around the corner without answering. My late office was the second to last of the hall, not a far creep. But the rain hadn't let up for the whole story, and everything was soaked in a sheen of neon that seemed to jink sideways around my shoe soles.
    Clutching a well-placed gargoyle near my head, I drew back my left foot and kicked in the window. A raincoat and hat were pretty good at keeping the shards of glass off when I toppled inside. I stood and walked to the center of the room just where the shaft of moon and streetlight cut off and the dark began. Turn in a circle. Barn's muffled voice just audible through the concrete blocks. "Anything in there?"
    "No," I said. "Nothing."

    At least the old Franklin station hadn't been filled in yet. It was as dank and homely as ever, Barney's tools and equipment scattered about, the brand new corpse fridge humming softly, and Hank scribbling furiously in a ledger while his legs dangled from a stool. They hadn't gotten to it yet, whoever They were.
    Hank looked up briefly from his notes. "Mr. Vance, I'd like to express my most sincerest regrets that information provided to you by me has resulted in your albeit temporary incarceration at the hands of the authorities. It was not of course my intention for such events to have befallen you, especially in light of your recent kindness in delivering me from such unfortunate circumstances the other night."
    "No worries, Hank." He sighed for some reason. "It was my own doing really."
    As it turned out Maggie's fresh tooth wasn't much help in Barn matching up the grooves in Mark's frozen footflesh. Anyway, I'd had a vision of moonlit chompers that tickled a memory or a dream that struck me as the true culprit's, if only I could see who they belonged to. I could only see them grinning in the dark, stained with red.
    On top of an old cabinet stood a bunsen burner next to the be-ribboned canine I'd received in the mail what seemed like ages ago, and now my one real possession left in the world. Barney stood next to me staring at it, or maybe just waiting for me to move so he could get in the drawer. "It's gotta be hers," I said.
    "Whose?"
    "Who else's? Hers. A slate-black bombshell."
    Barn gave his noggin a good scratch. "Maaayybe I shouldn't've gone so long without bringing this up, but..... you don't make sense anymore."
    I wasn't listening. "C'mon Hank, how do you cross-reference a phone number in this day and age?"
    "You're looking for a name?"
    "I got a name that I made up, what I want is an address for this number that I got no name for."
    Hank shared a pointless look with Barney. "It should be relatively trivial, Mr. Vance to locate an address for your phone number. I must admit to being somewhat puzzled that you have not attempted this on your own given your speciality?"
    "My normal avenue of research is buried under several tons of concrete right now. And I can't trust the rest." I mined around in a drawer till I hit some liquid gold.
    "Ah yes," he said. "You're referring to 31st precinct." He said it and then he just clammed up tight. My fingers froze.
    "....Brilliant. Then I've got the golden ticket right here in my pocket." I deposited that special tooth right in next to the phone number she'd given me but never answered and dragged my two accomplices back to the surface with me.

    "Where's my flash flask, Jack?" Doris was her usual self, but resembling moreso a mummy wrapped up in cigarette smoke.
    "You'll get it back when I find my silver bullet." Her irises bugged out like a handful of razor blades. "I mean, it's not like that, really. Truth is the fuzz nabbed it yesterday."
    The razors receded and she started to fade again. "You're the one fading. You used to be that fuzz, Officer Vance."
    The joe was extra bitter today. "Right on the city's nose, I know. A brighter dumber man than I am now." She had subsumed into her own wrinkles before I could finish my reverie.
    "Mr. Vance," included Hank, "'twas as trivial as indicated to locate the Ms. Paycheck of whom you spoke, though a less incorrect moniker might have eased my search considerably."
    "What's that Hank?"
    He let a bit of steam out from under his eyelids deflating ever so slightly. I couldn't get the image of his hair full of trash out of my head. "In short, your mystery woman rents at this uptown address." He slid it across the table to me with a look. Who was this little guy? A question for later maybe. Right now I was going to see the Tooth Lady.
    "Maybe we should tag along," said Barney with a mouthful of home fries. "...to talk you out of assaulting any more women."