The Killing Kind

I waited. I wasn't sure where the conversation was going but the turn that it suddenly took surprised me.

“Or maybe it's something else,” he continued, and the tone of his voice changed. It now sounded a little querulous. It was an old man's voice. Al Z turned away from the window and walked over to the sofa, seating himself only a few feet away from me. His eyes, I thought, were haunted.

“You think one good action can make up for a lifetime of evil acts?” he asked.

“That's not for me to judge,” I replied.

“A diplomatic answer, but not the truth. You judge, Parker. That's what you do, and I respect you because you act on your judgment, just like me. We're two of a kind, you and I. Try again.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, if it's an act of genuine repentence, but I don't know how the scales of judgment are weighted.”

“You believe in salvation?”

“I hope for it.”

“Then you believe in reparation too. Reparation is the shadow cast by salvation.”

He folded his hands in his lap. They were very white and very clean, as if he spent hours each day scraping the dirt from the wrinkles and cracks on his skin.

“I'm getting old. I looked around at the graveside this morning and I saw dead men and women. Between them all, they had maybe a couple of years to live. Pretty soon, we're all going to be judged, and we'll all be found wanting. The best we have to hope for is mercy, and I don't believe you get mercy in the next life if you haven't shown it in this one.

“And I'm not a merciful man,” he concluded. “I have never been a merciful man.”

I waited, watching as he twisted the wedding ring on his finger. His wife had died three years before, and he had no children. I wondered if he had hopes of meeting her again, in some other life.

“Everybody deserves a chance to make amends for his life,” he said softly. “Nobody has the right to take that away.”

His eyes flicked back to the window, drawn by the light. “I know something of the Fellowship, and of the man it sends to do its business,” he said.

“Mr. Pudd.”

“You've met him?” There was surprise in Al Z's voice.

“I've met him.”

“Then your days may be numbered,” he said simply. “I know about him because it's my business to know. I don't like unpredictability, unless I figure that it's worth gambling on it to use for my own ends. That's why you're still alive. That's why I didn't kill you when you came looking for Tony Clean, and that's why I didn't kill you even after you and your friends took out most of Tony's crew in that snow-hole town two winters ago. What you wanted and what I wanted-” He moved his right hand, palm down, in a balancing motion. “Plus, you found the money, and that bought you your life.

“Now, maybe I figure that we could have another meeting of minds on Pudd. I don't care if he kills you, Parker. I'd miss you, sure. You brighten things up, you and your friends, but that's as far as it goes. Still, if you kill him, then that would be a good thing for everybody.”

“Why don't you kill him yourself?”

“Because he hasn't done anything to bring himself to my attention or that of my associates.” He leaned forward. “But that's like noticing a black widow in the corner of the room and figuring that you'll leave it alone because it hasn't bitten you yet.”

The spider analogy, I knew, was deliberate. Al Z was an interesting man.

“And there's more to this than Pudd. There are other people, people-in the shadows. They need to be flushed out too, but if I go against Pudd for no reason other than the fact that I think he's evil and dangerous-and that assumes that I could find him and that the people I sent after him could kill him, which I doubt-then the others in the background would move against me, and I'd be dead. I don't doubt it for one second. In fact, I think that the moment I made a move against Pudd, he'd kill me. That's how dangerous he is.”

“So you'll use me to flush him out.”

Al Z actually laughed. “Nobody uses you, I think, unless you want it. You're going after Pudd for your own reasons, and nobody in my organization will stand in your way. I've even tried to point you in the right direction with our pornographer friend. If you corner this man, and we can assist you in finishing him off without drawing any attention to ourselves, then we will. But my advice to you is to move everybody you care about out of his reach, because he will kill them, and then he will try to kill you.”

He smiled conspiratorially.

“But I also hear that you may have some competition in trying to finish off Pudd. It seems that some old Jews have got tired of torchings and killings, and that the death of the rabbi in New York this week was the last straw. I tell you, don't mess with the fucking Jews. Maybe it ain't like the days of Bugsy Siegel no more but those people, they know how to bear a grudge. You think the fucking Sicilians are bad? The Jews, they've had thousands of years of experience of bearing grudges. They are to grudges what the Chinese are to gunpowder. These fucking people invented the grudge, excuse my language.”

“They've hired someone?” I asked.

Al Z shook his head. “Money isn't the prime motivator where this man is concerned. He calls himself the Golem. He's Eastern European-Jewish, naturally. Never met him, which is probably a good thing. Way I understand it, anyone who meets him winds up dead. The day I see him, I'm go

He twisted at his wedding ring again, the light from the window reflecting on it and sending tiny golden spears shooting across the wall.

“The guy you want to talk to is Mickey Shine, Michael Sheinberg. We called him Mickey the Jew. He's retired now, but he used to be part of Joey Barboza's crew until Joey started ratting people out. I heard that maybe he was the one killed Joey in San Francisco in seventy-six. He ended up working for Action Jackson for a time, then got tired of the whole racket and bought a flower shop in Cambridge.” He took a pen and scribbled an address on a piece of paper, tore it from the pad, and handed it to me.

“Mickey Shine,” he said. His eyes were distant and there was a sepia tint of nostalgia to his voice. “You know, we went drinking, summer of sixty-eight, started out in Alphabet City, and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in this Turkish bath wearing only a towel. I was lying on a slab, surrounded by tiles. I swear, I thought I was in the fucking morgue. Mickey Shine. When you talk to him, you tell him I remember that night.”

“I will,” I said.

“I'll ask someone to call ahead,” said Al Z. “Barboza was hit four times with a shotgun. You go waltzing in there with a gun at your shoulder asking about Mickey Shine's past, you're likely to find out how Barboza felt, if you get my meaning.”

I thanked him, then stood up to leave. By the time I reached the door, he had resumed his seat at his desk, his hand still toying with the gold band.

“We're two of a kind, you and I,” he repeated as I paused at the door.

“What kind is that?”

“You know what kind,” he replied.

“One good act,” I said gently, but I wasn't sure that would be enough. Al Z's business was based on drugs and whores, porn and theft, intimidation and wasted, blighted lives. If you believe in karma, then those things add up. If you believe in God, then maybe you shouldn't be doing those things in the first place.

I, too, had done things that I regretted. I had taken lives. I had killed an unarmed man with my bare hands. Maybe Al Z was right: perhaps we were two of a kind, he and I.

Al Z smiled. “As you say, one good act. I will help you, in this small way, to find Mr. Pudd and put an end to him and those around him. You step lightly, Charlie Parker. There are still people listening for you.”