Haggerty knelt beside the body, letting the other two skitter away. Carefully he cradled Eric, lifted him, ran…
Karen, the twin, sat in silence in an uncomfortable chair in the hospital corridor. She said nothing, just stared down toward the end and a window that looked like it was coming up dawn. Haggerty paced. He never felt less in control of himself, never more failed. The parents were in the room with the victim and had been for a while.
I owed the man a favor, Haggerty thought. He saved my son and I owed him and look what I did. Look what I did! He glanced at the room, then moved to the end of the corridor and stepped into the exit stairwell so he could light a Camel.
And a great kid too. Sure naive, sure insanely romantic, but he didn’t dream about making it on Wall Street and he didn’t dream about boffing everything that moved, no—he dreamed of bringing in the bad guys.
And look what you did, look what you did!
He stomped out the cigarette, looked back down toward the room—nothing. He lit another butt. How was he going to face Doctor Lorber. What could he say? Haggerty sat on the top step and smoked. Ten minutes without moving, maybe twenty, maybe he would have never moved if the hand hadn’t rested on his shoulder and there was Doctor Lorber kneeling beside him.
“It just happened,” Haggerty said, “I didn’t mean for it, I was showing him around, we were parked, it was going okay, and then this gunfight started and I had to do something and I guess he left t)ie car or I don’t know, I only do know that my God, I never meant for it to happen.” He looked at Eric’s father now.
Who was almost smiling.
“He’ll be coming to soon. No damage of a permanent type. The face will heal, the ribs are cracked and broken but that should be the worst thing that ever happens to him.”
“I’ll make it up to you, Doctor Lorber—I won’t rest till I do. You’ve got my word on that.” He stood then, and they left the. stairwell, moving back into the corridor. Karen was sitting with an older woman now, the mother.
“You don’t understand something, Frank—you did what I asked—young people today don’t meet reality soon enough—I guarantee you, when Eric comes to, he’ll have some brains.” He lowered his voice. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but the way things turned out—couldn’t be better.”
A nurse came out of Eric’s room. “Is Karen here? He’d like to see Karen.”
Karen stood, looked at her parents, started hesitantly toward the room. She reached the doorway. The nurse waited outside, gestured for Karen to enter. But it was hard. She and Eric were close, always—eerily close with their minds. They sometimes answered questions the other one hadn’t asked. Not asked out loud.
In the room now she told herself she was going to be a doctor, she could look at a wounded patient, but she wasn’t prepared. If he’d been a stranger she’d have recoiled, what with his eyes swollen totally shut and his mouth almost as bad and God knew what the rest of his body looked like beneath the sheet. He had tubes all over and what skin there was was red and blue with brushings and she managed “Hey Little,” her private name for him since he came fifteen minutes after her arrival, which meant she was the big one of the family.
“… oh…”
“Easy.” She took his hand.
“.. . oh Kawen …” he whispered, his mouth too swollen to make r’s.
She was afraid she was going to unravel then, so quickly she told him, “You sound like Elmer Fudd.”
That almost made him laugh but it also caused terrible pain.
“Oh Christ Pm sorry,” Karen said. “I am, Little, please believe me, no more jokes, it’s all going to be fine, there’s no damage, you’ll forget everything about this night.”
“…no,..”
“Believe me, you will.”
“… Kawen… ?”
“What?”
“… I wuved it…”
Karen said nothing.
“. , . I did an’… an’ you know what… ?”
“What, Little?”
“… gonn be po-weese-munnn…”
There was not widespread joy in the Lorber household when Eric’s decision was announced. Ike and Essy berated themselves, which is what parents do best, asking endlessly where they went wrong, how did such a curse come to fall on them and not some neighboring gentile. And they hoped, as Eric left for his senior year at Swarthmore, for a return of sanity.
He did wonderfully that year, no surprise, and they received more letters from him than ever, about his classes and his friends and there was no mention of the law. They were pleased with him and how his year was going, but then they didn’t know that several nights a week after his work was done, Eric took a bus into South Philly to study the one subject he felt he had to learn before graduation: night-fighting. Because yes he was quick and sure he could drop you with his right, but not at night, not when there were shadows. The beating in Harlem he tried to consider a blessing: mistakes were what you learned from. (Although he prayed more than once to have a someday opportunity to meet those two Spaniards again. And if that happened, he knew one thing: he would be ready.)
From the beginning of his life, people always attributed brilliance to Eric but he wasn’t buying. What he was willing to do was outwork anybody. Whatever it took to get something done he was more than wilting to give. And now he moved through the South Philly bars, the most dangerous ones he could find, and he nursed beers and fights weren’t hard to find and he watched them, learning not much at all, just waiting.
Then one dark night he saw an aging black bartender dispose of three construction workers in less than two minutes, and he knew he had his man. Eric approached the older man when the bar closed and said excuse me sir and then made his pitch.
Jed Randolph, for that was the bartender’s name, just stared Eric down. “What are you, some Ivy League asshole on a scavenger hunt?”
Eric assured him that was not the case.
“And you want me to beat the shit out of you? And you’ll pay me?”
Eric admitted it wasn’t your everyday request.
Randolph wanted no part of it until Eric suggested a fee of fifteen dollars per session.
Class began the following Saturday.
Randolph had been a fighter and in the merchant marine and he knew many things, how to hurt with your fingertips, how to banish, momentarily, pain, how to make an ally of darkness. And if in the beginning, he pulled his blows somewhat, that didn’t mean Eric wasn’t badly whipped when he went back to school And after a month, the whippings became less severe and Mr. Randolph was able to swing more freely and he was pleased, because Eric was a quick study, and he intuitively almost picked up when to run and when to fall, when to take pain and how, most especially, to give it
Eric invited Mr. Randolph to his graduation, introduced him to his parents as his phys. ed. teacher where Mr. Randolph spoke warmly of the boy even though he had to admit, he said, there were some who might consider Eric to be very very strange.
“Your kid’s in the Academy,” Cooney said one autumn day. Cooney, at Gallagher’s, had called Eric a “co-ed.” He was Haggerty’s partner at the 19th now, hanging on till retirement, and he knew how much the beating in Harlem had taken out of Haggerty.
Haggerty had his own contacts so he knew where Eric was and that he was doing exceptionally well. “How’s he doing I wonder?” he asked.
“My word is ‘fair,’” Cooney said.
Haggerty went back to reading Dick Young in the News. “Fair” was good coming from Cooney, who not only gave away ice in the winter, he also hated Jews…
“Your kid’s heading for the 28th,” Cooney said one morning when they were getting coffee.
“Harlem, huh; tough beat. Wonder why he picked it?”
“Obvious why—he’s a kike, he’s a pusher, he wants to make a record, get ahead, that’s why they own the world, y’know, they push harder.”
“He only did fair at the Academy.”
“—who said that??
??”
“—you said that—”
“—he didn’t do fair, he did tops, but he’s rich, he had a lot of contacts, his old man knows a lot of people in the Commissioner’s office—”
“—it was pull got him to the top, that what you’re saying?”
Cooney nodded. “How else?” he said with total confidence…
“Your ‘kid’ lucked into a drug bust, first fucking week on patrol,” Cooney said. He seemed sour. His stomach was off.
“His father probably set it up for him to score,” Haggerty said.
Cooney belched and looked at him. “Whaaat?”
“His old man’s got a lot of contacts,” Haggerty said, “I heard that someplace…”
“He stopped a bloodbath,” Cooney said some weeks later.
“Who?” Haggerty said, sharpening a pencil. Eric had called to tell him as soon as he was off duty. They were meeting now irregularly, when their schedules permitted, for coffee and shop-talk. Eric always had a lot of questions.
“Your ‘kid’—up at Earl’s. Big rumble. Half a dozen people involved.”
“Did he talk them into being reasonable? Jews are good at talking.”
“He cold-cocked a couple, the rest got the message.”
Haggerty was silent for a moment “Couldn’t have been his old man, helping him, do you think?”
“I’m tired hearing about his old man,” Cooney said as he stormed off to the water cooler …
“I don’t believe this,” Cooney said one spring morning.
Haggerty looked casually over from his desk. “Hmm?”
“He got a murderer. Your kid. I never got a fuckin’ murderer in thirty years.”
“Probably lucked into it,” Haggerty consoled.
Cooney exploded—”It wasn’t luck—it wasn’t luck—he deduced it—” He looked at Haggerty now bewildered. “What’s going on up there?”
It was becoming increasingly clear, even to the Cooneys, that a bomb had exploded at the 28th Precinct.
To move on up from patrolman, to get the detective’s gold shield, takes time. Sometimes you can fall into it—if you collar Jack the Ripper they’ll advance you on the spot—and it helps to have a rabbi in a position of import, a precinct captain or a headquarters man. But usually you advance only with time. Three years is fast.
Interest in Eric began before he was into his second year. But he stayed where he was. He liked the 28th, he explained, he didn’t know enough to move on yet. And nothing would change his mind. And nothing did.
Till Cooney retired.
Then it helped to have a rabbi, especially one named Haggerty, and it took some maneuvering, sure, but what doesn’t when you’re dealing with the police department. Bottom line: he was just short of twenty-seven when he became Haggerty’s partner. He achieved the same kind of record at the 19th as he’d had in Harlem, remarkable considering the opportunities are less when your precinct house is on East 67th Street than up north. He played things the way Haggerty always did, very low key. But one way or another, Eric’s reputation grew. He wasn’t famous like Popeye Doyle in fiction or Serpico in fact. But no one denied he was certainly a presence.
And when E. F. Lorber talked, people listened…
5
Edith
Edith was tempted to take a cab, it was that February bitter. As she left the “Beekman Place placed—Sally insisted on referring to the house as that—a taxi cruised by and she went so far as to raise her hand, and when it stopped, she was suddenly embarrassed. “It’s better for me if I walk,” she explained. “That’s what you hailed me for?—to tell me that?” He shook his head. “Even in Beekman Place they got meshuganas.” Edith broke out laughing and quickly got out a dollar bill, handed it over. The driver, gnarled and permanently suspicious, eyed the green paper a mo’ ment before pocketing it “If that’s what you tip for not riding, lady, I sure the hell wish you’d got in.”
“You made me laugh,” Edith told him. “I haven’t done that enough lately.” He waved, drove off; Edith began to walk, thinking about what she’d said. It was true—she hadn’t been laughing enough lately. The painting had started to become obsessive. And probably the children were complaining to themselves about her inattentiveness, and perhaps Phillip was worrying that die was entering some kind of life crise, but it just wasn’t so. She was painting better. Week by week. She could fed it in her fingers. And more than that, Sally told her it was true.
Pulling her navy blue coat tight around her, Edith set out for First Avenue and started uptown. It was after four so she didn’t window-shop at all, but in an antique store she caught sight of herself in an old mirror and her reddish hair, long and loose, was much too schoolgirlish Edith decided. And more than that, with this weather, she was silly not to have worn a scarf. Maybe PDbiiy myself one at Blomningdale’s, she thought Something in cashmere perhaps. Extra long for extra cold days. She felt good about that actually; the idea of actually buying something for herself and not Phillip or the girls proved a pleasing novelty.
In the middle 50’s she ran over the list in her mind. Phillip: a new red silk tie. The one he had was his favorite, and it was valiant, but nothing could survive the dollop of vinaigrette sauce Phillip accidentally fed it the evening earlier at Le Veau d’Or. “You poor dear,” Edith said, looking at his suddenly stricken Lincolnesque face. “It’s like you’ve lost an old friend.”
So a new red silk tie was first on the agenda. And an extra long cashmere scarf, that came next. And then, oh then the girls.
Never terribly religious, Edith still believed that Up There Someone was on the lookout for those less fortunate. But when it came to the subject of Kate, Abigail, and Caroline, she was sometimes not all that sure. It wasn’t their growth spurts, which rendered all new clothes instantly, it seemed, obsolete. If children stayed the same size, grownups wouldn’t be able to say “my how you’ve grown” and then where would the art of intergenerational conversation be? And it wasn’t their incessant competitiveness— being young, they all three naturally were subscribers to the “chocolate cake” theory of love, i.e., love was a cake, the more that were around to share the smaller each portion became. The idea of there being a cake for each was beyond them yet. So they competed over everything, and Edith didn’t mind so much that the loser always wept, and she even survived the odd fact that the winner seemed also to be in tears.
What was truly hard to face was that she had three beloveds, aged fourteen, thirteen, and twelve, and all three were hurtling into puberty at precisely the same time, Kate, the fourteen-year-old, was a little late; Caroline, the baby, a bit precocious, Abby in the middle right on the button.
It was not easy.
A cross glance from either parent of course produced hysteria. Fine. What child likes cross looks? But a sweet look had the same effect. Or a puzzled one. Everything produced hysteria. “How was school today?” Hysteria. “What was the name of that cute boy from Collegiate?” Quick tears. “Shall we send out for Chinese food?” “Chinese food, when I’m dieting! Wahhh.” And it did no good later to try and explain that the reason for the suggestion of Chinese food was because it was common knowledge that it was thinning. “Common knowledge? You mean you talk to everybody about how fat I am? WAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
As she cut across 57th to Second Avenue, Edith wondered could she, when she was Edith Mazursky, have been the same to her mother as her brood was tormenting her now? Doubtful. Not because her mother disallowed tears—on the contrary, weeping was always part of Myrtle’s own arsenal. But she was also of the generation and temperament that didn’t just ignore a thing like puberty, she absolutely denied its existence. It was at most, a rumor, like menopause, and no more a fit subject for serious conversation than flying saucers.
Edith moved quickly up Second Avenue now, wondering if she shouldn’t have tried the same tack as Myrtle, total unswerving blind ignorance—her girls found her that way anyway, ignorant, unswerving, and blind—so probably it would ha
ve been worth the gamble. Curse Benjamin Speck anyway, Edith thought. Him and his “You know more than you think you know” approach to upbringing.
She was still moving uptown now, quickly in the increasing cold, when she saw a man running diagonally across Second in her direction, and instinctively she took a firmer grip on her purse, this in spite of the fact that the approaching figure might just have been —though it was hard to tell detail in this light—the handsomest man she had ever seen. He was running now, dead at her, and Edith looked quickly behind to see who his target was. But then he was on her, lifting her up in the air, trying to kiss her as she struggled. “Edith, Edith Mazursky Jesus son of a bitch.”
When she at last realized it was Doyle Ackerman who held her in his arms, Edith stopped struggling.
He put her down, took her hand, led her quickly into the coffee shop on the corner, sat down across from her in the empty back booth. He was tanned, and wore a camel’s hair topcoat. Or perhaps it was vicuna, Edith never was much on that kind of thing. But she knew enough to see it was expensive. As was the dark gray suit he wore beneath.