Fiction Short Story

Judy Ealy

"Tony"

Tony stood on the steps of his large brownstone townhouse. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys as he surveyed the neighborhood. "Upper middleclass" he thought, "not so bad for a poor kid from the streets."

He was still pretty hyped up from the job he just finished, so as he entered the house he made a beeline for the bar. He tripped over Perkins, his slant eyed Siamese cat, who came bounding down the stairs at the sound of his keys rustling and he almost fell on his ass. The cat slithered around Tony's legs and mewed plaintively.

"Hey Perkins, watch out. I almost fell." Tony reached down and picked the cat up and looked in its face. "Whatsa matter boy? You hungry?"

The cat continued mewing as Tony set him back down.

"Let ol' Pop get a drink here and then I'll get you some dinner."

He poured himself a large snifter of the brandy Don Bennedetto had brought him from his last trip to Italy. As he drank, he closed his eyes and savored the smooth velvety feel of the amber liquor in his mouth.

Perkins continued making figure eights around his legs and his mewing turned into an incessant yowl.

Tony carried the cat into the kitchen and reached into a cupboard for a can of SophistaCat gourmet cat food. He hugged the cat. "Nothin' but the best for daddy's baby." He opened the can and scooped the contents into a bowl he had retrieved from another cabinet. He set the cat down on the counter in front of this delicacy but Perkins just glanced at it, arched his back and leaped to the floor.

"Hmmm, whatsa matter with you, boy? You sure are actin' funny today.

He took his drink into his comfortable den and sank into the recliner. He set the brandy on table next to him and picked up the remote that controlled his stereo. He chose "Opera's Greatest Duets" and his deep brown eyes lit up as the music began with "Gia Nella Notte."

Perkins jumped into his lap and groomed his front paws while he warily glanced towards the staircase. Tony turned up the music, although he knew his neighbor, Mr. Trouche, who was a retired professor of French Literature would undoubtedly soon complain. Mr. Trouche hated Italians and anything Italian. It had something to do with World War Two but Tony had no idea what.

The music and the brandy were doing their jobs soothing his nerves. It seemed each hit became harder than the last one. When he was a kid it was a kick doing someone, but now he got no enjoyment out of it at all. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel. Maybe he should start thinking of retirement. "That's the ticket! I'll be like the old guy next door. Putz around in the garden all day and hang out at the deli with the other old farts."

He jerked his head towards the stairs; he heard a creaking noise. Perkins hissed, his hair stood up all over his body. Tony listened and there it was, he heard it again.

"Who's there?" he shouted. He waited a moment and heard nothing. He chuckled to himself, "Just the house settling. Boy my nerves are bad." He closed his eyes and nodded his head in cadence with the music.

"Tony," a voice whispered.

Tony opened his eyes. "Holy Christ," he sputtered. "Lefty Vincenzo! What the hell's goin' on here? You been dead for ten years. Look at you, you're drippin' slime all over my carpet!"

Before him stood a rotting corpse. The gray skin was sliding from the visible parts of his body, his face and hands. His neck had a ghastly black ligature mark all the way around it where the garrote had cut through the skin and choked the life from him.

"Tony." The scratchy whisper again, moaning in the background. "You gotta pay for what you done to us. We can't have no peace until you pay."

He clutched the cat close to his chest and slowly opened his eyes, which quickly filled with fear. The whole room was full of them! Bodies in all states of decomposition filled the den. He saw Slats Wingo, and Benny the Turk, and many other of his past jobs. Their eyeless orbs stared in his direction.

Most of them were so far gone he didn't recognize them. He smelled the putrid odor of death emanating from the disintegrating corpses. He started gagging. He noticed bullet holes and stab wounds he had inflicted on these pallid creatures. There in the back he saw Jimmy the Blade, with his head bent over to the side in the same position as when it broke after he had kicked the stool from under his feet and the rope around his neck jerked tight.

He continued to grip Perkins tightly against his chest, so frightened he never noticed the cat's bulging eyes and its final suffocated breath.

*****

Butch and Darla were parked across the street from the deli arguing, as usual, over which of them would run in for the coffee. They were working the four-to-midnight shift, had eaten dinner at Orlando's Tacos and now wanted a cup of coffee. Dispatch came on and put out a noise disturbance call. Butch rolled his eyes and asked, "Didn't we ignore that same call last night?"

"What was the address?"

"One-twenty-one Prospect Avenue."

"Yeah, that's the one. Guess everybody else ignored it too." Darla pulled away from the curb and headed for Prospect.

"Darla, you're not actually answering this?"

"Well, somebody's got to. Might as well be us. Call it in."

"C'mon, let's at least get the coffee first."

"Butch, call it in." She was getting angry at him now.

He sighed and picked up the mic. "294, we got the noise at 121 Prospect."

Darla parked the squad car in front of the nicely landscaped brownstone. As soon as they got out of the car, a tall, elderly gentleman came out onto the stoop.

"It's about time you people got here! What took you so long? I've been calling 911 for the last three days." He was waving his arms in the air and stomped his foot when he said last three days. "I have not been able to sleep a wink with that terrible Italian music blaring. The same disgusting pieces over and over."

Butch muttered, "Gee, maybe we had something more important than noisy neighbors..."

"We're here now, sir, so just calm down and give us your name." Darla shot Butch a dirty look.

"I'm Durand Trouche."

"OK, Mr. Trouche, we'll check it out." Butch started up the steps of house with the offending music.

"It won't do any good. He doesn't answer."

Darla said, "Maybe he went off somewhere and forgot to turn the stereo off."

"No, when he takes a trip he has Mrs. Perlman on the other side over there feed his cat. She's not doing that."

"How come she hasn't complained about the music?" Butch asked.

"She's hard of hearing. Now get on with it. Get that damn noise turned off!"

Darla rang Tony's doorbell. "Who lives here?"

"A terrible man named Anthony Copello. I think he works for the mob."

"What makes you think that?" Butch wanted to know.

"He's Italian, they are all mobsters."

"Butch, I'll go around back and see if I can get someone to answer the back door."

As Darla left, Butch asked Mr. Trouche, "How do you know, Mrs. what's-her-name, Perlman, isn't watching the cat."

Mr. Trouche arched his ample white eyebrows and icily told Butch, "Because you fool, she told me."

"Oh." Butch rapped on the door with his nightstick. Still no answer. As he stood there waiting for Darla, he noticed an all-too-familiar fetid smell originating from the house.

Darla came running from the back. She told Mr. Trouche to wait on his stoop. When he left, she asked Butch, "Do you smell what I do?"

"Yep. I'll call Fire and a bus. There's gotta be a body in there."

*****

Inside the house Butch and Darla stood over the corpse of Tony sitting in his recliner. Perkins, the cat, lay in his lap. Tony's throat was slit and a butcher knife was clutched in his right hand, which hung over the arm of the chair. Blood that was now clotted and caked, spilled down the front of him covering the cat. Tony's mouth was frozen open as if in a scream.

The ME, Linda Darnell, and her crew of forensic people arrived and were swarming all over the house.

Butch said to Linda, "Seems like an awful lot of people here for just a suicide."

"Yeah, it would be if it were just a suicide, Butch. But look, he's holding the knife in his right hand and his throat was cut by a left-handed person. Looks like murder to me."

Back out on the street Darla looked Butch in the eye and said, "See, even the most mundane calls can be important to us."

He looked back at her like she was a nut case. "Oh, shut up and get in the car. We still gotta go get our coffee!"

© Copyright 2002 Judy Ealy