Buffalo Noir Read online

  Mike leaned in and kissed Erin’s forehead. “Get some rest.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Let you sleep.” He settled the oxygen mask on Erin’s face and gave her a sad smile. She closed her eyes. “Don’t worry about anything.”

  Mike zipped his jacket up tight and headed for the elevator banks.

  * * *

  Now the winds were so fierce that it was impossible to see three feet ahead. Mike could navigate the South Buffalo streets with his eyes closed, though, and he leaned into the wind, his ears without sensation. To the south the bells of Aquinas were pealing noon. Cars crawled along at five miles an hour. The street signals were nothing but faint red and green frosted ghosts above the invisible road.

  By the time he had turned onto Downing from Abbott it was a full-blown snowstorm. Mike walked across the church parking lot and entered his house through the side door. He looked across the kitchen to the front hall. The police had been there. Between them and the ambulance drivers from last night there was all kinds of debris left on the floor mixed in with his sister’s blood. He’d clean up that mess later.

  In the middle of the kitchen table was his key and a note:

  Don’t think there’s any burglars out today so I left the door open. Don’t forget to see me tomorrow.

  Pat

  Mike crumpled the note and went upstairs, trailing wet bootprints. He stopped in front of his mother’s bedroom door, pausing with his hand on the knob. He took a deep breath and walked in.

  The room itself was simple. A plain wooden bed frame held a queen-size mattress. The matching dresser sat against the wall with a lace doily draped across it, his mother’s perfumes and lipsticks arranged along the top. His grandmother’s rocking chair sat in the far corner covered by an ancient quilt. His mother liked to keep everything hospital-neat.

  On the far wall was a framed family portrait taken the year before his father died. Mike looked happy and young next to his bear of a father. Sully’s massive hand was resting on Mike’s shoulder. Erin looked like a mini version of his mom, pixie cut and crooked teeth.

  Mike went to his mom’s closet, opened the door, and felt around the highest shelf. His fingers managed to grab the edge of a shoe box, which he carefully took down. Inside was his dad’s silver revolver. He hadn’t held it in a long time. Once when he was seventeen he sat on the bed and held it to his forehead for two hours. He wasn’t sure why, what his endgame had been at the time, but now his reason for taking it was crystal clear.

  Mike slid the gun into the waistband of his jeans and pulled his flannel shirt over the butt.

  He grabbed his black knit hat from his room and tugged it down over his ears. He zipped his coat up and threw himself out into the storm.

  Brandon Gates lived on Britt Avenue, almost directly behind the Sullivans. It occurred to Mike that if Brandon looked out one of his second-story windows he could see right into their backyard.

  Mike trudged along Downing, cut the corner, and came back up Britt. He could see the outline of the boxy beige house only when he was right on top of it. He vaguely remembered going to a keg party there when he was in high school and stumbling home in the dark. His dad had held onto his shirt as he puked in the backyard, then put him to bed. The next morning Sully had him up at the crack of dawn cleaning out the gutters for punishment.

  Mike shook off that memory and scanned the house through the blowing snow. The attached garage door was closed. He could see the flicker of a television through the front window. He walked up to the side door and pounded hard.

  After a moment a gray-haired woman wearing a flowered housecoat opened the door. “Yes?” she asked, with a mix of curiosity and politeness.

  “Is Brandon home?”

  “Are you one of Brandon’s friends?” She opened the door wide, inviting him to come in out of the cold. “His friends never come over anymore. Did you go to school with Brandon?”

  “Yes ma’am. We went to Bishop Timon together.” He stepped further into the red and white kitchen lovingly done up with apple decorations.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, I don’t remember you. Early-onset Alzheimer’s, they say.” She tapped a finger to her forehead. “But I think I’m just getting old.”

  “Is Brandon home?”

  “Mom?”

  Mike turned to see Brandon Gates standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. If Mike wasn’t in Brandon’s own house he would never have recognized him. He was slim but extremely muscular, like he spent his days down in the basement lifting weights. His dark hair, which had always been cut short and neat when he was an athlete, now hung shaggy to his shoulders and was slicked back. He wore a white T-shirt, faded jeans. He looked to Mike like some fifties greaser.

  As soon as Brandon realized who was standing in his kitchen, all the color drained from his face. Mike walked forward, pulled the gun from his waistband, and shoved it in his gut. “Brandon, you and me need to go for a ride.”

  “But my shows are on and I don’t know how to change the channel anymore,” his mother protested. “You can’t leave when my shows are on!”

  “Change the channel for your mother,” Mike growled, and backed him into the living room.

  “Don’t do this, man,” Brandon whispered as Mike stuck the remote in his hand. “Please, man, this is all a mistake.” But Mike pressed the gun harder and Brandon began to flip through the channels.

  “I can’t leave my mother alone, Mike, you don’t understand.”

  Mike put a hand on Brandon’s shoulder and got behind him, the barrel of the gun between his shoulder blades. “You’re all set, Mrs. Gates. Me and Brandon are just going to take a little ride.”

  “But the weather is terrible! And what if the phone rings? Brandon? You can’t leave me!” she called out desperately.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be right back. I promise.” He let Mike push him toward the door to the attached garage.

  “Brandon? Brandon?” she wailed, as Mike opened the door and prodded Brandon through.

  “How come you didn’t tell her to call the police? Hmm?” Mike breathed into his ear. “You don’t want them to find out what you did?”

  “This is all a mistake, okay?”

  Mike walked him down the garage stairs. The cherry-red Mustang sat idle among various toolboxes and spare parts. It was obvious he spent a lot of time working on the car, alone in the garage. Mike guessed Brandon pumped iron all morning and then spent the rest of his day replacing spark plugs, changing channels for his mom once in a while.

  Mike pushed him to the passenger-side door, ignoring his protests. Even in the dim light he could see a dark stain on the fabric of the passenger seat. On the floor of the driver side was a small wooden handle. It was rounded, like a jump rope grip.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your sister! I just wanted to give her a ride home. I saw her and her friend walking through the park and that’s not safe . . .”

  “So you followed them?”

  “I just wanted to help her. I’ve seen her since she was a little girl!”

  Watched her, Mike thought darkly. You’ve been watching her.

  “The car was sputtering! I just wanted to check the oil and I slipped. I didn’t know I stabbed her, she ran away. When I looked at the handle the tip was gone, I thought it fell out! You have to believe me!”

  Mike grabbed onto the collar of Brandon’s crisp white tee and rammed his face into the side of the Mustang. “You always check your oil with an ice pick?”

  “I just grabbed anything!” he sputtered, blood bubbling up on his lip.

  “So why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Because I knew they’d all jump to conclusions. That’s why I made her promise not to tell. People always jump to the wrong conclusions!”

  Mike pulled him back so he could see Brandon’s face. “So this has happened before?”

  “Not like this! I never meant to hurt your sister! I didn’t mean to kill an
yone!”

  Mike slammed Brandon’s head into the passenger-side window, squashing his nose in a burst of bright red blood. Then a thought raced through his whiskey-enhanced brain. “You didn’t kill my sister. She’s still alive.”

  Brandon coughed and spit blood onto the concrete. His greasy hair was falling apart, framing his face in stringy strands.

  “You killed Amy Dunston.”

  As soon as he said it out loud, Mike knew it was a fact. As sure as he plunged an ice pick into Mike’s sister’s back, Brandon Gates had murdered Amy Dunston.

  “You don’t understand,” Brandon croaked weakly, blood pouring from his broken nose.

  “You killed Amy,” Mike repeated, and spun Brandon around, shoving the gun up under his chin.

  “No, Mike, you gotta believe me. We were friends, right? We used to hang before . . . before—”

  “Shut your mouth.” Mike pushed him hard against the car frame. With his free hand he fished his cell phone out of his back pocket. He hadn’t charged the thing since before he went to work almost twenty-four hours before. It was dead. He threw it down on the floor and grabbed Brandon’s collar again.

  He needed a phone and a little help.

  “Put your boots on. We’re going for a walk.”

  Mike kept the gun trained on the back of Brandon’s head as he pulled on a pair of Timberlands. “Can I get my coat?” The blood from his nose had soaked his T-shirt, making an exclamation point on his chest.

  “Hell no. It’s not far. We’re just going up to the church.” Mike hit the button on the wall and the garage door rose, exposing them to the storm outside. The church was only half a block up but it was slow going in the blustering wind. Brandon blubbered the whole way.

  “This is a misunderstanding! Your sister is alive! She’s fine!”

  “What about Amy?” Mike snarled, pushing him forward.

  “That was a misunderstanding too! I can see, Mike, how you would think what you do, but those were just accidents. Accidents happen.”

  “Like your nose was an accident?”

  His teeth were chattering. “Yes! Yes! Just like that, and I promise I’ll never tell anyone you did that, and it will be all right.”

  “Like you made Erin promise?”

  “Yes! Like that! And see, she is fine. She promised not to call the police and she’s okay!”

  “But Amy didn’t promise, did she? And it wasn’t okay.”

  “Amy Dunston was a fucking whore!”

  Mike spun him around and hit him in the mouth with the gun. Brandon fell back into a snowdrift at the edge of the parking lot.

  It struck Mike as odd at that moment that he could just make out his own house from where he now stood. He grabbed Brandon by the front of his shirt and pulled him out of the snow, leaving a few of his teeth behind.

  Mike continued to shove him across the lot to the rear entrance of the church. They had let his family in that way for his father’s funeral. Mike managed to get the half-frozen Brandon into the back hall where the offices were located.

  Eleven o’clock Mass was long over and Father Flynn came out of one of the back rooms when he heard the commotion. “What the devil is going on, Michael Sullivan?” he demanded.

  Mike stealthily put his gun back in his pants, then shoved Brandon down on his knees. “This man stabbed my sister and killed Amy Dunston.”

  Father Flynn’s eyes widened. “How do you know this? What happened to him?”

  “Because the fucker just told me,” Mike replied, answering both questions at once.

  The portly Irish priest bent down to get a better look at Brandon. “Son, is this true?”

  Brandon covered his face with his hands and sobbed. “It’s true. It’s true. But they were accidents. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to kill Amy.” Then, like a lightbulb flickering on in a dark room, a thought seemed to take hold in his brain. He jerked his head up. “But if I confess to you, I’m forgiven, right? If you hear my confession then I’m forgiven and everything is fine.” He smiled a sick, bloody, gap-toothed smile, “Everything will be okay.”

  “Let me take you to the bathroom, son, and clean you up.” Father Flynn reached down to help him and hissed the words “Call 911” to Mike, nodding toward the church secretary’s office.

  “I demand you hear my confession immediately,” Brandon lisped as the round little priest helped him toward the small bathroom at the end of the hall.

  Mike went for the phone. He dialed Patrick Flannery’s number. “Pat, it’s Mike. I got the guy.”

  “What guy? Where are you?”

  “The guy who stabbed Erin. The guy who killed Amy Dunston. We’re at St. Martin’s church, in the back by the offices. It’s Brandon Gates. He did it.”

  “Don’t you move. I’m coming now from the hospital. And don’t do anything stupid.”

  Too late, thought Mike. As he put the phone back on the hook he heard a loud crash from the hallway. He raced out of the office to find the priest lying flat on his back, half in the bathroom.

  “He pushed me down! He ran out the back door!”

  Mike hitched his arms under the priests’ armpits and hauled him up. “Are you okay, Father?”

  “Aren’t you going after him?”

  Mike shook his head. “In a minute. But could you do me a favor first?”

  * * *

  Detective Patrick Flannery must have skidded through every red light to get to St. Martin’s. He found the blood-spattered Mike and bruised priest waiting in the narthex. “Where is he?” Pat barked.

  “I’ll take you to him,” Mike offered.

  * * *

  The ride to Brandon’s house was short compared to the walk. The garage door was still open and Brandon was sitting behind the wheel of the Mustang, furiously scrubbing at the stain on his passenger seat with an old rag.

  Pat drew his gun and approached the car. “Drop that, son. Put your hands in the air and don’t even think of turning the car on.”

  He walked around to the driver-side door and yanked it open. He spotted what Mike had seen: the blood, the handle. Brandon sat like a statue with his hands above his head, staring straight ahead. Pat pulled him out roughly and walked him back to his unmarked gray sedan that was blocking the entrance to the garage. Mike could hear him babbling as Pat snapped a pair of cuffs on him.

  “Amy led me on. I used to see her working nights at the gas station. She would smile at me. I know she liked me. Then she wouldn’t ride in my car. I had to make her. Then she wouldn’t promise not to tell. That was all she had to do. So I stabbed her with my Eagle Scout knife. I cut off all her hair, because it was so pretty, and then I put it under my pillow . . .”

  Mike slid out of the front passenger seat and Pat threw Brandon in the back of the car.

  “I can’t listen to him,” Mike muttered, and walked deeper into the garage. Pat trailed after him, talking into his hand-held radio, calling for homicide, evidence, and photography to respond to the scene. When he was finished he ducked his head back into his car and talked to Brandon briefly while Mike lit a cigarette. Mike wondered what Brandon’s mother was doing and then realized he didn’t care.

  “He says you have a gun on you,” Pat said, clipping his radio back to his belt, coming toward Mike.

  Mike lifted up his jacket and shirt and turned around slowly. “No gun. Want to pat me down? Ask his mother if she saw a gun.”

  “How’d you get him down to the church?”

  “I confronted him. He wanted to confess. Ask Father Flynn.” Mike bent down, scooped up his dead cell phone, and tucked it away.

  Brandon was now howling louder than the wind.

  “What happened to his face?” Pat asked.

  “It was an accident,” Mike said. “He fell on the ice.”

  Pat stood silently. “You did a good thing today,” he said at last. “Your father would be proud.”

  “I gotta go, Pat.” Mike flicked his cigarette butt against the wall and walked toward th
e street.

  “Don’t forget to see me tomorrow,” Pat called after him. “Get some sleep, Sully.”

  Mike paused for a second and then disappeared into the storm.

  Parkside

  BY S.J. ROZAN

  North Park

  Frankie was watching through the window when the police came to the Wisnewski’s. He spent a lot of time at that window anyway, making scary monster faces and claws, growling, snarling, pretending he was about to jump across the air shaft, sometimes pulling his pants down and mooning until Petey Wisnewski finally had a tantrum. Then Petey’s mom would come wallop him. By that time Frankie was out of sight, and old lady Wisnewski never knew what set Petey off.

  It wasn’t the first time he saw the cops come to the Wisnewski’s. The dad was always beating on the mom, and both of them smacked the kids around, and sometimes the yelling and screaming was so loud the neighbors called the cops. They’d come and pretend to be reasonable, but you could see from their shoulders and the way they were kind of twitchy that they were really saying without using words that they’d throw the mom and dad in jail and take the kids away if they didn’t cool it. So the parents would cool it for a while, and then something would happen, and everyone was thumping on everyone else again.

  Eddie O’Brien said Frankie should let up on Petey. He said it wasn’t Petey’s fault that Frankie’s mom made him let Petey tag along wherever he went just because they were some stupid kind of cousins, and it wasn’t Petey’s fault anyway that he was only five. Eddie had like twenty brothers and sisters, or maybe just ten, but whatever, he didn’t give a shit if little kids were climbing all over him all the time. But for Frankie, since his dad left it was just his mom and him, and his mom worked all day out at Wegmans. He liked to do what he liked to do and it pissed him off to have Petey stuck to him everywhere. And he wasn’t so sure it wasn’t Petey’s fault. Petey had that mean kind of smile, like his dad’s, when Frankie told his mom no but his mom said yes and made him go to the Wisnewski’s and take Petey someplace. Frankie figured going to school and doing his homework was enough, and his mom should’ve been happy with that. Eddie didn’t even always do that. What Frankie did, him and Eddie and the guys, after school or weekends when there wasn’t Little League or Pop Warner, that should’ve been his business. Shit, he even went to church with her most Sundays, why couldn’t she leave him alone after that?