Chapter 19

Kingston 76

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Chapter 19

“Everything okay?” Charles asked Timothy.

“Yeah.”

“Cause you seem a little down about something.”

“Nah, everything’s fine.”

Charles let it go. He didn’t like to be needled about stuff either.

They were pedaling down Broadway again, but not to the Kingston Library. This time, their destination was the Oriole Tavern.

There was no bike rack out front, who would ride a bike to the Oriole Tavern? The scraggly tree by the parking meters would have to suffice.

“Now, when we’re inside, you let me do the talking,” Charles instructed. “Your job is to keep your eyes and ears open, see what you can find out, got it?”

“Got it.”

Staying quiet suited Timothy just fine. He’d never been inside a bar before, much less the Oriole. He had to remind himself that Ken hadn’t actually died in this place, he’d gotten in a fight, but it was still enough to creep Timothy out.

Going from the afternoon sun into the bar was like entering a black hole. Aside from the neon beer signs, there barely seemed to be any light whatsoever. The smell of stale beer and cheap vodka nearly overwhelmed them, and the air was so thick with cigarette smoke it was hard to breathe.

“No kids in here,” the bartender said, when he realized they weren’t just midgets.

“We won’t take but a minute of your time,” Charles assured him, confidently slapping a brochure on the bar, “we’re here representing the Youth Center and we’re looking for sponsorships.”

There were three or four guys in various states of inebriation sitting around the bar, they all seemed to find this amusing.

“Youth Center, huh?” the bartender said.

“Yes sir, we’re going to have full-color banners going all the way around the basketball court featuring the names of all our sponsors. We’ve got commitments from over a dozen businesses already up and down Broadway.”

Charles slid his calling card a little closer so the bartender would see it.

The bartender looked down at the card, then back up at Charles.

“You Charlie Lambeau’s kid?”

“One and the same.”

The bartender nodded slowly as this sunk in.

“I was real sorry when he passed, your pop was a good man.”

“For a cop,” the guy on the stool next to Charles said out of the side of his mouth.

“Hey, I was a cop,” the bartender said to the guy. “Move over and make some room for my friends here.”

Disgruntled, the guy slid his beer down two spaces, his butt eventually caught up.

Charles sidled onto his stool no problem, for Timothy it was more of a climb.

“You boys want a soda?”

“Don’t mind if we do,” Charles said. “This here’s my friend Timothy, by the way.”

“Timothy, Charles, good to know you. My name’s Jack Flanagan.”

Jack Flanagan filled two large plastic tumblers with ice, then used the soda gun to fill each one with Coca Cola, all the way to the top. Timothy watched intently as he slid the tumbler toward him across the worn formica.

He waited for Charles to take a sip, then joined right in. This was the single biggest glass of Coke he’d ever drank in his life. It was delicious.

Looking around as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Timothy now saw that there were little tables alongside the wall with a few people sitting at them. The sole woman in the place looked strangely familiar, then he realized it was the prostitute from the Green Apartment Building. Sitting next to her at the small table was the guy he sometimes saw her walking with, the guy who yelled at her behind closed doors.

“Were you on the force with my dad?” Charles asked Jack Flanagan.

“He was coming in when I was going out, but I knew him a little...he was what we call natural police, real instinct for the job.”

“You must’ve seen a lot in your time.”

“That I did.”

“You ever miss it?”

“Yeah,” the disgruntled guy chimed in, “he misses it so much he keeps calling ’em to come visit us.”

“That’s not funny,” said another guy at the far end of the bar, weighing in.

“No offense to your brother,” the jokester said to the guy who’d snapped at him.

The offended guy had a reckless look about him beyond the fact that he was drinking. He squinted at the jokester like he had half a mind to grab him by the collar, then just shook his head like it wasn’t worth it.

“Fuck face,” he hissed.

“Easy Grafton,” Jack Flanagan said to the guy, then to Charles and Timothy said, “You’ll have to excuse us, it’s been a little tense around here lately.”

Timothy looked to Charles, who blinked once slowly to indicate he’d just heard the name Grafton too. They both listened attentively to see if more information would be forthcoming, but the room fell quiet.

Jack Flanagan took the opportunity to empty an overflowing ashtray, and do a little general clean-up with a bar rag.

Starting to wiggle atop his barstool from the infusion of Coca Cola, Timothy noticed out of the corner of his eye that the man sitting with the prostitute was standing up and adjusting himself before heading to the men’s room.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to her.

As he disappeared into the back, the guy called Grafton seemed to sense an opportunity. Dismounting his barstool, he sauntered over to the prostitute. Timothy tried to watch without being obvious.

“Looking good today, Lynda,” he said to her.

He reached for her, pushing her blouse open slightly. She slapped his hand away without saying anything.

“Heh, heh,” Grafton said.

He sat down where the man had been and placed his hand on her knee. She allowed him to leave it there but didn’t seem too happy about it.

The man came back from the bathroom faster than Grafton thought he would. He stood up quickly.

“I was just keeping Lynda here company,” he said to the man.

“You got money Grafton?” the man asked quietly.

“Now, you know I don’t get paid until Friday.”

“Then keep your hands off the merchandise.”

The man opened his jacket slightly. Whatever Grafton saw inside the jacket made him sober up quickly.

“Okay, take it easy, I was just being friendly.”

The man said nothing further, waiting for Grafton to return to the bar before taking his seat again next to Lynda, the prostitute.

Timothy turned his attention back to the bar.

“So tell me again about this banner business,” Jack Flanagan was asking Charles.

“It’s $300 for a full-sized banner, 150 for a half-sized.”

“What are the other bars on Broadway getting?”

Charles referred to his notes.

“The Anchor is getting a half-sized, and...looks like Smitty’s is getting a full size.”

“Smitty’s getting a full size?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

Jack Flanagan mulled it over for a moment.

“Okay, tell you what, you can put us down for a full-size too.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Flanagan.”

As Charles got the paperwork in order, the jokester made his way over to the jukebox, dropped a dime, and in a crackly voice, Hank Williams started whining about a tear in his beer.

“Not again, Jesus!” everyone groaned, to which the guy at the box laughed, like he’d tortured the small crowd with this song many, many times before.

When Timothy and Charles emerged from the bar, the sun seemed so bright it almost knocked them over. Their bikes, luckily, were still chained to the excuse for a tree.

Timothy could smell the odor of cigarette smoke still radiating off his own clothing. He’d have to figure a way to sneak into the house and change before his mom or Cathryn caught a whiff of him.

When they’d pedaled half a block or so, Timothy said to Charles,

“Lucky coincidence that guy used to be a cop.”

“That was no coincidence. I knew before we went in there.”

“How?”

“I just know these things,” Charles said with a sly smile.

Timothy smiled too. Just when he thought Charles was the coolest guy he ever met, he got even cooler.

“What else do you know?” he said.

“Well, we know that hothead at the end of the bar is Luke Grafton’s brother,” he said. “Now we just need a way to find out a little more about him.”

Timothy thought back to the scene he watched play out at the little table.

“I think I know a way,” he said.

#  #  #

After school the next day, Timothy stopped at Terri’s Deli to pick up a newspaper and a quart of milk.

Back on Warren Street, he stood looking at the Green Apartment Building. Mr. O’Connor had warned him about going back in there. But Mr. O’Connor was currently driving in his big rig, somewhere out on the interstates of America.

The front door was closed but not locked. When Timothy let himself into the front hallway, he noticed that Ken’s mailbox was stuffed so full that the mailman had just started piling it on the floor.

He also noticed the padlock on the door to Ken’s apartment. The pile of mail and the padlock seemed to confirm Timothy’s feeling that, even if no one was talking about what had happened to Ken, there was still a lot left unresolved.

Tentatively, Timothy knocked on the prostitute’s door. Maybe she wouldn’t be home. He almost turned away, this was probably another bad idea anyway.

Then he heard footsteps padding across the floor on the other side of the door.

“Who is it?”

He thought about this, would she even know him by name?

“Timothy,” he said.

She opened the door a crack and looked out.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, flatly. “What do you want?”

Her hair was in rollers, she was in the same dressing gown and appeared to be halfway through doing her make-up.

“I brought your milk and newspaper.”

“Did I need milk and a newspaper?”

“You did that one morning.”

“So I did...”

She stared at him a moment.

“You’re a little young to be showing up at my door with gifts, don’t you think?” she said.

“I just want to talk.”

“Talk, huh.”

She considered the proposition for a moment, then walked away but left the door swinging open slightly.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she called as she headed back to the dressing table in her bedroom.

Timothy entered the apartment. The fake velvet wallpaper made it kind of dark in the living room, particularly with the shades drawn, it wasn’t like Ken’s modern-looking apartment at all.

There was an old, itchy looking couch. There was a pile of tabloid magazines and a box of tissues on the coffee table.

“You can put the milk in the fridge,” she called.

The kitchenette had an old 50s refrigerator that you had to pull like a car door to get open. There wasn’t much food inside, just a few stale take-out containers and a couple of big bottles of cheap beer. This explained why she was so skinny, it didn’t look like she ate much.

Timothy followed her voice back to her bedroom where she sat in front of the mirror, applying mascara.

“Have a seat,” she said.

She was sitting on the only chair in the room. The idea of sitting on a prostitute’s unmade bed was scrambling his brain, but there was no place else to sit. He perched birdlike on the absolute corner of the bed.

He was maybe three feet away from the back of her head, but from this angle they could see each other’s faces plainly in the mirror.

“Is your name Lynda?” he asked. He didn’t want to keep calling her the prostitute in his mind.

“It is. And who might you be?”

“Timothy?”

“Right,” she said, “you’d said that.”

The tone of her voice remained flat, as if she dared not get emotionally involved, even in conversation.

“I saw you in the bar yesterday,” Timothy said.

“I saw you too.”

“You did?”

“I have eyes, don’t I?”

She made eye contact with him in the mirror, to prove her point.

“So,” she continued, “what are you and your little black friend up to?”

“We were looking for sponsorship for the Youth Center.”

“Please,” she said, “you couldn’t call the Rotary Club?”

Unlike many other adults, this woman seemed to have the most stone-cold bullshit detector Timothy had yet encountered. His instincts told him it would be best just to level with her.

“Okay...we’re sort of doing an investigation.”

“An investigation?” she almost laughed, “of what?”

“We’re trying to find out what really happened to Ken, next door.”

The slight smile dropped from her face. She looked in the mirror at Timothy again. When she saw he was sincere, she looked back at herself sadly, and let out a long, audible breath.

“What happened to Kenny was an absolute crime, an absolute crime,” she said twice, like it was still echoing in her head.

“Were you there that night?”

“No, thank God. And you shouldn’t be going in there either. Bad things happen in that place.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Things that someone your age shouldn’t be concerned with.”

This last statement seemed definitive, like the conversation was closed.

Timothy thought about how measured Charles had been in the bar, careful not to ask too many direct questions. If Charles were here, he never would’ve painted himself into a corner like this. But this was likely Timothy’s only chance, he had to risk prying the door open a little further.

“The guy who...approached you in the bar,” Timothy said cautiously, “is that Luke Grafton’s brother?”

“What do you want to know about him for?”

“I don’t know...just looking for clues, you know?”

“Look,” Lynda said, turning around to face Timothy directly to drive the point home, “you stay away from Kurt Grafton, he’s a bad one, do you understand?”

Timothy nodded, like he understood, even if he didn’t, exactly.

She turned back to face herself in the mirror and finish putting on her make-up.

“Some people have no morals,” she said, as much to herself as to Timothy.

She carefully put lipstick on her lower lip, the puckered up lips with a smwacking sound to finish the job. She took one last look at herself then turned from the mirror to face Timothy again.

“So, how do I look?” she asked.

Her painted face was almost unreal, but there was something about her eyes, they were usually so cold and distant, but she seemed to turn them on for a moment as she looked at him directly, and he suddenly understood why men were attracted to her.

“You look...very nice,” he said, perhaps too politely, which seemed to make her eyes turn a little sad.

Timothy couldn’t help but imagine this sadness was connected with the way the man was always yelling at her, with how Grafton’s brother had put his hand on her leg and she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

“Can I...help you?” he asked innocently.

Lynda smiled wistfully at this. She shook her head like Timothy would never be able to understand.

“You’re a silly boy,” she said.

She leaned over and gave him a kiss on his forehead.

“Now go...I have to finish getting dressed, and I’m not about to give you a free show,” she swept her hand toward the door. “Go on, scram.”

Timothy smiled at her as he left, as if she’d let him in on a little secret, even if he wasn’t exactly sure if she’d told him anything specific that would help the case.

Closing the front door of the Green Apartment Building, he luckily caught his own reflection in the window. He wiped the lipstick kiss from his forehead before anyone else could see it.

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