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Authors: Thomas Adcock
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the forensics cops, who both stood now, staring at me with my hand across the head of the ole man lying on the pew.
“Never mind,” I said. I asked Glick, “What happened here? Tell me—in English.”
Glick waggled a thin hand over his throat. I knelt, so he could whisper into my ear. His voice was a dead man’s cough. “Reb Paznik’s face... Och, his face! His face! Thanks be to God, you’ve come to slay the beast.”
Seven
T he night before, King Kong Kowalski had driven his candy-apple red ’71 Buick Roadmaster (a bulky and problematical car, though one with ample front-seat gut room) from his house in Queens over to Jersey. There he attended a strictly word-of-mouth sporting event in the warehouse district of Newark.
Now he was sitting in a storefront basement on West Thirteenth Street in Manhattan, haunches straddled over two folding chairs, tilting perilously into the ear of a corrections officer by the name of Harry Darcy. He was telling Darcy about Newark and last evening’s card of “ultimate fighting,” a type of blood struggle where ex-jocks and bar bouncers and kick-boxing refugees take the place of pit bull dogs, a sporting event where a mere ring will not do. Ultimate fight-mg, Kowalski was explaining confidentially, was performed in a thirty-foot octagonal span of chain-link fencing—without benefit of referee.
Harry Darcy—big, middle-aged, close-cropped blond hair, a red face shot full of booze—was likewise a rabid public servant of the city of New York. Likewise, he had been induced by his superior—in this case, the warden of Rikers Island—to enroll in a sensitivity training course sanctioned by the city and state of New York. He was drinking creamed coffee from a paper cup and seemed about half-interested in what Kowalski was saying out of the side of his mouth.
“The thing you got to love about it—” Kowalski, too, was having coffee. Also a waxed-paper bag full of custard-packed crullers. He interrupted himself to tongue sticky sugar off his fingers. “They don’t pay attention to the rules of that dead fop over in Scotland. Know what I’m saying?”
“Marquess of Queensberry?”
“Him, yeah.”
Darcy’s eyes blinked heavily. He was headachy with the walking flu and queasy from last night’s whisky. All the way in from Parkchester in the Bronx, where he lived, he had had to stand up in the subway car. The only thing he had to read was The Chief, a newspaper for civil service employees. An irritating little guy had got on the train at Tremont station, pulled out a plastic saxophone-piano thing and started playing for handouts, right next to hung-over Harry Darcy. Darcy had considered killing him—he had an off-duty revolver concealed in a belt clip, after all—but thought better of it. Instead, he had said to Little Guy, “Shut up, you runt fuck, I don’t want to deal with that shit noise.” Little Guy was terrified. With a squeak, he stopped playing and said, hopefully, “I know some other tunes.” Harry Darcy had leaned his back against the door of the subway car, closed his eyes, sighed deeply.
Now again, Darcy sighed a deep sigh. He wondered if anybody in the world felt lousier than he felt. And further, for what grim reason had he freely chosen a seat right next to King Kong Kowalski? To invite increased discomfort on himself, in the theory that agony would have its way with him all the more swiftly? Even in the worst of times at Rikers—when rioting mentals were flinging their feces all over the place—Harry Darcy had not in many years thought so perversely. For perversity, there was the nostalgia of Holy Cross School back in Hell’s Kitchen, which he had escaped so many years back...
... Now today sat Corrections Officer Darcy, in charm school, his rabid ears filled with the scraw of a long-ago nun: There was once a wicked little boy in the grip of the devil. When he went to Communion, he did not swallow the Host, but deliberately concealed it in
“Never mind,” I said. I asked Glick, “What happened here? Tell me—in English.”
Glick waggled a thin hand over his throat. I knelt, so he could whisper into my ear. His voice was a dead man’s cough. “Reb Paznik’s face... Och, his face! His face! Thanks be to God, you’ve come to slay the beast.”
Seven
T he night before, King Kong Kowalski had driven his candy-apple red ’71 Buick Roadmaster (a bulky and problematical car, though one with ample front-seat gut room) from his house in Queens over to Jersey. There he attended a strictly word-of-mouth sporting event in the warehouse district of Newark.
Now he was sitting in a storefront basement on West Thirteenth Street in Manhattan, haunches straddled over two folding chairs, tilting perilously into the ear of a corrections officer by the name of Harry Darcy. He was telling Darcy about Newark and last evening’s card of “ultimate fighting,” a type of blood struggle where ex-jocks and bar bouncers and kick-boxing refugees take the place of pit bull dogs, a sporting event where a mere ring will not do. Ultimate fight-mg, Kowalski was explaining confidentially, was performed in a thirty-foot octagonal span of chain-link fencing—without benefit of referee.
Harry Darcy—big, middle-aged, close-cropped blond hair, a red face shot full of booze—was likewise a rabid public servant of the city of New York. Likewise, he had been induced by his superior—in this case, the warden of Rikers Island—to enroll in a sensitivity training course sanctioned by the city and state of New York. He was drinking creamed coffee from a paper cup and seemed about half-interested in what Kowalski was saying out of the side of his mouth.
“The thing you got to love about it—” Kowalski, too, was having coffee. Also a waxed-paper bag full of custard-packed crullers. He interrupted himself to tongue sticky sugar off his fingers. “They don’t pay attention to the rules of that dead fop over in Scotland. Know what I’m saying?”
“Marquess of Queensberry?”
“Him, yeah.”
Darcy’s eyes blinked heavily. He was headachy with the walking flu and queasy from last night’s whisky. All the way in from Parkchester in the Bronx, where he lived, he had had to stand up in the subway car. The only thing he had to read was The Chief, a newspaper for civil service employees. An irritating little guy had got on the train at Tremont station, pulled out a plastic saxophone-piano thing and started playing for handouts, right next to hung-over Harry Darcy. Darcy had considered killing him—he had an off-duty revolver concealed in a belt clip, after all—but thought better of it. Instead, he had said to Little Guy, “Shut up, you runt fuck, I don’t want to deal with that shit noise.” Little Guy was terrified. With a squeak, he stopped playing and said, hopefully, “I know some other tunes.” Harry Darcy had leaned his back against the door of the subway car, closed his eyes, sighed deeply.
Now again, Darcy sighed a deep sigh. He wondered if anybody in the world felt lousier than he felt. And further, for what grim reason had he freely chosen a seat right next to King Kong Kowalski? To invite increased discomfort on himself, in the theory that agony would have its way with him all the more swiftly? Even in the worst of times at Rikers—when rioting mentals were flinging their feces all over the place—Harry Darcy had not in many years thought so perversely. For perversity, there was the nostalgia of Holy Cross School back in Hell’s Kitchen, which he had escaped so many years back...
... Now today sat Corrections Officer Darcy, in charm school, his rabid ears filled with the scraw of a long-ago nun: There was once a wicked little boy in the grip of the devil. When he went to Communion, he did not swallow the Host, but deliberately concealed it in
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