Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [59]
“Hey, boyos,” Patsy yelled, brushing splinters from his hair, “I got it!”
He leaned against the scarred trunk sucking in short gasps of air full of soot and ashes. His eyes wandered to the pile of refuse on the other side of the tree, focused on something among the rubbish that caught the sunlight. Something shiny.
A silver dollar maybe!
Or maybe just a tin can.
He moved closer, then stepped back.
“Holy Mary.” The boy crossed himself, but he was not afraid. He was barely ten and not even a year off the boat from Cork. It was not the first dead body he’d ever seen.
But it was the first naked dead woman he had ever seen.
Curled up on her side she was, the ground a rusty black crust.
What may have been her dress lay in rags all around her.
“Jesus,” Colin said, peering over Patsy’s shoulder as Patsy kicked the refuse away.
They milled around jittery, not able to pull their eyes from the sight until Tom nudged her with his shoe and she slid over on her back, totally exposed. The boys jumped. Her eyes stared blankly at them.
After a moment, Patsy said, “Don’t she stink somethin’ awful?” The four edged toward the body again.
“She’s worm meat,” Butch said. He gave Patsy a powerful push aside and reached down and grabbed the shiny object that had caught Patsy’s attention in the first place.
“Hey, gimme that!” Patsy shouted. “I found it.” He tackled Butch.
Tom and Colin jumped in and they were all trading punches and yelling and raising a huge volume of dust and dirt. Colin head-butted Butch, knocking the wind out of him, making him drop the treasure. Both boys dove for it, as did Patsy and Tom.
A whistle shrieked. “All right, all right, what’s going on here?” A pudgy copper in blue came toward them swinging his stick.
The boys broke and ran.
Patrolman Mulroony grinned as the dust cleared. He made no move to go after the hooligans. He picked up the dusty stone the boys had been fighting over and wiped it on his sleeve. Well, well, well. He put it in his pocket. Hooking the strap of his stick on his badge, he lifted his hat and mopped the sweat from his head with the heavy sleeve of his uniform. Too hot. With August weather in June, the city was a stinking, rotting hell. Besides, they was just boys who had too much vinegar. Boys like that fought over nothing. He patted the object in his pocket.
Mulroony gave the lot a cursory look. Garbage everywhere. Them sheenies think nothing of throwing their refuse right out the window. He shaded his eyes from the sun. What was that odd little flutter of white in all that refuse? He poked his stick into the pile, raising a most horrid stink.
“Mother of God!”
The girl, naked except for a blue hat with a sunflower, lay on her back, arms at her side, her long black hair tangled in the garbage. Her eyes were open, glassy. The hat, which made the forsaken soul look comical, was askew, magnifying the bathos.
Mulroony reckoned the rags on the bloody ground about and under her were what remained of a blue dress and a white shift. The white was what had caught his eye. Poor lass, exposed for all the world to see.
She’d been murdered horribly. Stabbed in the belly and then ripped up to the breast bone. The blood was dried black and the maggots were having their feast. Mulroony reached down, plucked the largest patch of blue cloth, and covered the girl’s parts. Before he put his whistle to his lips, he straightened her hat too, so she wouldn’t go to Jesus looking the clown.
The organ grinder lived in a room on the top floor of a tenement on Prince Street, around the corner from St. Patrick’s.
Not the big fancy church they built for the rich on Fifth Avenue, but Old St. Patrick’s on the corner of Prince and Mott.
St. Patrick was an Irish saint, and this was an Irish church. They hated Italians here, making them go to the basement for a separate Mass. Church was for old ladies in black, not for Tony Cerasani. He hadn’t been to confession since he was twelve. He was thirty now. A man can collect a great many sins on his soul in