A Dead Man Speaks Read online

  “Callie! What’dyou think? It’s new. I just got it!”

  My dad just kinda grunted the way he usually did and turned back to his newspaper.

  “C’mon Callie, say somethin’!”

  “Rebecca, you look the same’s you always do. No different.” Mama looked a little hurt, but she went over to the couch anyway and tried to snuggle up next to Dad. She put her arms around his neck and looked like she wanted to kiss him.

  He got up real fast and turned. “Not now. Okay. I’m goin’ out.” He didn’t even look at Mama, all dressed up in her new dress. He just walked out and didn’t say another word.

  Mama looked like her feelings were so hurt that I rushed in the living room and hugged her real tight. “I love you, Mama!”

  Mama started crying, but she didn’t want me to see, so she just hugged and rocked me back and forth. I don’t think I ever saw my dad kiss Mama, or hold her hand or nothin’. He’d just come home and wouldn’t say much, and then he’d go out with his buddies. So Mama, Gramma and me were alone most of the time. Maybe it was because of that that I started having the feelings. Or maybe they were there all the time. I don’t know.

  Sometimes Mama, me, and Gramma would just sit, the three of us, and we wouldn’t have to say anything out loud because we could understand what the others were thinking without talking.

  “Okay, Bobby, hold Gramma’s hand…Good. Now take my hand…That’s right, not too tight…That’s my good boy. Just tight enough to feel the beat…Do you feel the heartbeat…?”

  “Uh…I think so, Mama…” I wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to feel like, except that Gramma’s hand was soft and fleshy, almost spongy feeling, and Mama’s hand was firmer and thinner. Mama’s fingers were long and pretty, and she always wore light pink nail polish on them. It felt good to be in the middle of Mama and Gramma. It made me feel special and important.

  “Now concentrate, Bobby.”

  “Mama, what am I concentrating on?”

  “The heartbeat, the heartbeat goin’ way up and down your body.”

  I nodded and squeezed both of their hands a little tighter, determined to find that heartbeat.

  “What do you see, Bobby?”

  “Just black right now.”

  “Okay, now close your eyes a little tighter and tell me what you see now.”

  Shapes swirled around in my head. Mama, Gramma, and me had played this game before, trying to see if we’d all see the same things in our head. It’d never worked all the way for me before, but this time, I was feeling different. My head felt lighter, and for a minute I thought I was going to fall over. I think if I’d been standing up, I probably would’ve fallen down.

  “Breathe, Bobby, don’t let the light feeling take over. You’ve got to control the feelings. You can’t let them control you.”

  I took a deep breath and held it as long as I could, then I let it out real slow. It must’ve worked, ’cause something was starting to take shape in my head.

  “Triangles and circles, triangles with circles inside of them!” I shouted out.

  Mama squeezed my hand saying softly, “That’s good, Bobby, that’s the image we’re sending you. Triangles for the three of us, and circles for the unbroken circle of life. Whenever you get scared or you’re not sure of something, just concentrate on that image, and it will bring you back.”

  I was listening, but not really because now I was starting to feel panicky. The triangles and circles were gone, and I had that sick feeling in my stomach. I jumped up and ran into the bathroom. My head was wet with sweat and my knees felt like they couldn’t hold me up anymore.

  “Mama, I’m gonna be sick.”

  “No you’re not, Bobby. Just think about what I told you. C’mon, you can do it, Bobby. Don’t let the feelings control you. You’ve got to be strong.”

  I was trying as hard as I could. I grabbed the edge of the toilet seat. As I was about to be sick, I felt this wave of cold air over me. I closed my eyes and let the air brush against my face. In my head I saw Mama and Gramma standing next to me, holding me up. I opened my eyes quickly, and I could see that they were still in the other room. Neither of them had moved. I knew something had happened, something important, like I’d passed some kind of test.

  My dad wasn’t like that. Like I said, he never said much. We never told him what we were doing. Sometimes I’d try and fight it, these feelings I had, this way of knowing things before they happened. Hell, where I grew up in Brooklyn, you knew what you saw, not some mumbo jumbo kinda shit that didn’t make sense half the time, but always seemed to be right.

  I remember the first time I decided to try and use the feelings for somethin’ good. To help somebody. I was about seventeen. I was gonna help Mrs. Moynihan. Her husband had been one of my dad’s drinking buddies. Well, one day he just disappeared. Nobody knew where. The police looked around the neighborhood and asked everybody a load of questions. But no Mr. Moynihan. Every night, Mrs. Moynihan cried and walked up and down her apartment. I knew because she lived on top of us, and her bedroom was right on top of mine. The people in the neighborhood said that he’d run off with another woman. I felt sorry for Mrs. Moynihan because all the talk only made it harder for her.

  Now I liked Mrs. M., as I used to call her. She was one of the only people in the neighborhood who was nice to me. When I was a little kid, she’d make me vanilla pudding and give me a big bowl every day after school. Now that I was seventeen, she’d be the one I’d talk to when I couldn’t take Dad’s yelling no more. She was the one who always understood. So I think because of all of that, I decided I wanted to help her. I don’t know how I got it in my head that I could, but somehow I knew I could use these feelings I had. I knew about things that other people didn’t to find Mr. Moynihan.

  I started every night just before I went to sleep to try and see Mr. Moynihan in my head. I didn’t tell nobody what I was doing, not even Mama or Gramma. I wanted to see if I could do it on my own without any help from nobody. First, I’d try and remember exactly the way he looked. Then when I got a clear picture of him, I’d concentrate real hard and try to see what was around him, where he mighta gone. Anything—maybe a sign in the background or some buildings, something that would tell me where he might be. So far all I was gettin’ was his face, didn’t look happy, almost scared. But that’s all I got ’til that one night.

  “Bobby!”

  I jumped up. It was late, still dark outside. No sounds, but I could swear I heard somebody call my name. I listened hard. Nothin’ but the sound of my dad snoring like a frickin’ steam engine. Always made me mad to hear him at night. Thinkin’ about Mama and what she had to put up with, no wonder the dark circles under her eyes seemed to get darker and deeper every year.

  “Bobby, over here!”

  Now I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I swear the little hairs on the back of my neck were standin’ straight up. The sounds in the room seemed to get louder and clearer, as if there were a giant microphone magnifying everything. I couldn’t move. I was too damn scared. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it, or him. I wasn’t sure what. But there was a shadowy figure sitting in the chair next to my window. I tried to say somethin,’ but nothin’ would come out. Sweat poured down my body. The sheets were soaked. The first thing that popped in my head was one of them ghost movies that I liked to watch on Saturday afternoons. I half expected the thing, whatever it was, to start moaning and groanin’ and glasses and shit to start breaking.

  Instead, it just hovered over there in the corner. Then I caught it. A feeling of sadness, depression, confusion, all that shit rolled up together, coming from the thing. I wasn’t as scared now, so I called out, “Who the hell are you?”

  In my head I heard the words, “Petie.”

  “Petie? I don’t know a Petie!” Then I remembered. Shit. Yes I did. Petie was Mr. Moynihan. Hardly anybody called him that, but his mother, one day she was visiting and I heard her call him Petie.

  “Mr…uh…Moynihan?” I
wasn’t quite sure whether to call him that or Petie, but I figured that wherever he was or whatever he was, it was probably better not to get too familiar.

  No sounds were coming in my head. But I felt like he was calling me over to him, even though I couldn’t hear him saying that. I got up slowly and walked over to the window. I was covered in this feeling of depression and blackness. I couldn’t see the rest of my room. It was covered over in this kinda cloudy gauzy thing. The only thing that was clear was the window, almost like a big screen. I looked out and saw Mr. Moynihan walking unsteadily. He was right near the abandoned piers on the lower west side, over near the meat packing companies. Drunk. Drunker than I think I ever seen ’em. He fell down on the ground. I could almost smell the water. The strong fishy briny smell. Then I heard the low rumbling of a truck. Getting louder and louder.

  I put my hands over my ears. I couldn’t take the noise. It sounded like it was rolling right on top of me. I looked up and saw what he saw—a huge crane hovering right over him. The claw was filled with rocks, trash and dirt. As the claw opened, it dumped the rocks, dirt and trash on him, hitting him in the face and the chest. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t. Dirt, garbage, rotten fruit, and spoiled meat pelted him in the face, plugging up his eyes and filling his mouth. Nauseous, I closed my eyes and covered my ears, trying to make the sights and sounds go away.

  “Bobby, bring me back home!!!!!”

  I heard the words in my head. But when I opened my eyes, he was gone. My room was empty. And quiet. Like nothing had ever happened. I managed to crawl back in my bed. It was a few days before I got the guts to tell anybody. I didn’t want ’em to think I was crazy, so I just told them I’d had a dream and that they should look for Mr. Moynihan by the west side piers.

  They found his body right where I’d told ’em under a mound of garbage. They figured out that the garbage truck dumped everything in the early morning when it was still dark outside, so the driver never saw him. Mr. Moynihan must’ve been unconscious, dead drunk when it happened. After that people in the neighborhood were scared of me. They thought I had some kind of powers or something.

  Then one day Mrs. M. came down to our apartment looking for me. For a minute she didn’t say nothin’. I felt weird and stupid. I started thinkin’ that maybe I shoulda just kept my big trap shut, like Dad was always tellin’ me, and stay outta other people’s business. I was thinkin’ all that and feeling weirder and weirder when she walked over to me, takin’ my hand and kissing me on the cheek.

  “You’re a good boy, Bobby, don’t listen to what the rest of them is sayin’. You’re a good boy. You found him for me, and now I can go on…lay his soul to rest.” She hugged me tight, and then whispered, so only I could hear, “You keep on helpin’ people like that. Don’t mind what other folks say. They’s stupid and ignorant. So you don’t listen to them. Listen to yourself. What you know is right. ’cause that’s the only thing that counts in the end.” She hugged me again, and then left. She moved out a few months later, and I never heard any more about her.

  But what she said stuck with me. Maybe it was ’cause it was the only time that I didn’t feel like I was a total fuck up. Dad had a way of makin’ me feel like whatever I did was stupid and that I was just a dumb-ass SOB who could never do nothin’ right. But Mrs. M. made me feel like I had done the right thing and that maybe I wasn’t so stupid like Dad was always tellin’ me. I felt good after that. I was still feeling good when Dad took me aside for one of his talks, or really him yellin’ and me listenin’. Only this time he didn’t yell. It was almost like he was scared of me or somethin.’

  He sat down on the edge of my bed. His hair was almost white now and still sticky and greasy, wound in a few strands at the back of his head. His cheeks, which used to be pink only on Saturday night after one of his binges, were red and veiny now with age.

  “Bobby, folks are talking.”

  I tried to sound nonchalant, even though I knew damn well what he was talking about. “’Bout what?”

  He scrunched his bluish red eyes up and looked like he was about to yell, but he stopped himself, and instead said slowly, “About you bein’ some type of fortune teller or somethin’!”

  I shrugged. “It’s not true. It was a lucky guess, about Mr. Moynihan, that’s all.”

  Dad snorted. “You think I’m stupid? You think we’s all stupid? Nobody has a lucky guess like that. That just happened to be the exact pier, exactly like you said, in the exact spot…shit. There ain’t that many lucky guesses in the world.”

  Dad leaned forward and looked me up and down. “I didn’t raise no circus freak, you hear? So if you have anymore of them ‘lucky guesses,’ you just keep ’em to yourself.”

  I was mad, madder than I think I’d ever been. I wanted to get up and sock Dad in the mouth. I was bigger than him now, I coulda flattened him. But I didn’t. I just held it in. Only because of Mama. It woulda hurt her if I’d hit him. Even though he never gave a damn about her, but I did and I wouldn’t do anything that would cause her any more pain than she’d already had. So I just swallowed hard and tried to push the pissed off feelings as deep down as I could.

  “Sure. Whatever,” I said.

  “Good.”

  That’s when I decided I wouldn’t tell nobody anymore. I’d just keep it all in. It was about that time that I stopped having a lot of friends. You know, buddies you’d hang out with, shoot the shit, knock down a couple of beers. But me, everybody thought I was a little crazy, so I stopped trying to convince ’em I wasn’t. I just started hangin’ by myself. ’Till I met Margie. She was different. She understood. She didn’t laugh or call me crazy or nothin’. She just understood.

  “Can I buy you a beer?” I’d noticed her the minute I walked into the bar. Hell, you couldn’t not notice her. The only chick in there that seemed to have some class, long dark brown hair, wavy and thick, olive skin. She had on this reddish-orange colored knit dress. Not a kind of red that said hey, look at me. Naw, a more subtle color that stayed with you.

  I remember the day I took her hands into mine and said, “You’re gonna fall in love with me.” I don’t know why I said that. It just came out. That was ten years ago. She was eighteen and I was twenty-eight. Now I’m damn near forty. She did fall in love with me. Hell, I fell in love with her. But after ten years, she fell out of love with me. I still don’t know exactly what happened. Must be the Bob Greene curse. Anybody I get close to ends up leaving at some point. Or dying, like Mama.

  Before my mother died, she called me in her room. I still remember the smell in there—death was just around the corner hovering, just waiting. She could hardly talk, but she held my hand real tight.

  “You’ve got a gift, Bobby.” That’s what she called me. “Use it for good. Use it to help people. Remember our family,” she said. “We help people. That’s the most important thing.” I knew what she was talking about, but all I could do was just nod.

  Maybe that’s why I joined the force. I was eighteen, right outta high school. Figgered maybe I could find out things that other cops couldn’t. Maybe I could help find out who killed the poor slobs that nobody gave a damn about. The ones who ended up in the unsolved pile. ’Cause if I didn’t, sure as hell nobody else would. Then they’d never have any peace, like Mr. Moynihan. They’d always be haunting us, crying out for somebody to help ’em, somebody to care.

  When I joined the force, I’d know things that weren’t in the file or know things that there was no way I coulda known, unless I’d been there when it happened. I had a second set of eyes, eyes that saw what nobody else did. The other cops started calling me Super Cop ’cause I never missed a case, cracked every one of ’em wide open.

  ’Till that shit with internal affairs blew everything to hell and back. I’d lost my second pair of eyes. All I could see was the black hole of my life. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to crawl out. Then Margie left. I guess she’d had enough of my shit. Now this case. Clive January. It could bring
me back or push me over the edge. I knew I had to crack this one. I had to get my eyes back.

  This time I relaxed right away. Had to be the sound of the waves that did it to me. Rocking and gentle. Right away, I felt a power from somewhere flow through me. I wasn’t quite me no more. Something was invading my body, taking over my soul, my thoughts, every bit of who I was. Nausea churned my stomach.

  Shit. I’d been doing this for more than ten years now. I was in control. I knew how to make it work for me. That is until now. ’Cause this was different. Whoever this guy was had this will that was stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. It was pushing me aside and taking over. I wanted to run to the bathroom and puke, but it wouldn’t let me. This will, this force, that was taking over. I tried to remember what my mother had said years ago.

  “Relax,” she’d say. “Relax, Bobby. Let it flow through you. Not over you.”

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t control it. I was afraid, but there was nothing I could do. I was feeling things that weren’t a part of me, that were his feelings, his thoughts.

  Fear. Desperation. I was drowning. Literally. I couldn’t breathe. I could feel the water filling my lungs. Images were coming at me now. I was him. I was Clive. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I fought to keep myself, but he was taking over.

  I saw black water, swells of waves. It was dark, and I was going under. I saw a hand being held out to me. I tried to grab it, but I started choking. I woke up. I was sitting on his couch again. Looking at the ocean. I touched my brow. It was wet, and my hand was shaking so hard I had to lay it on the table.

  Drowning? This guy was shot. I felt myself slowly settling back into my body. Weak kneed. Stomach still churning. I’d probably sweated off about five pounds. Weird as shit. It had never seemed that real before. I knew this case was different. ’Cause in spite of what I’d just been through, I felt a little thrill. I was still scared, but I knew I was onto something.

  * * *

  “Yo, Greene, Haven’s here”