A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best story books to read .txt) 📗

Tommy grabbed the greasy rag again and wiped his eyes and face. Then he fixed me with his stare.

“Did you say you were a reporter?”

“Yes.”

“Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because you want to know what happened to Vivian,” I said, figuring that an assertive answer was my best bet.

He seemed skeptical, but the urge to share his story was too strong. He cast his gaze to the tiled floor and continued.

“She didn’t love me. At least not for long. That wasn’t her way. She was always looking to trade up for something better. Like she was standing on your back and lifting her head a little higher to see something else above the clouds. Then she wanted that. Nothing was ever good enough. She frittered away every dime I managed to scrounge on clothes and hair and shoes. Always saving up Green Stamps for some new outfit or cosmetics. Never on anything for me.” He was vexed, and not with me. “Nothing was ever enough for that girl. Suppers out, dancing, drinking. She didn’t get it that I had to be rested for work.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And she never had enough of telling me I was no good. Loved making me feel small. Even when she was arrested for solicitation. One year after we were married. Can you beat that?”

I clasped my hands behind my back and buttoned my lip. Our conversation had jumped the rails and fast. I wanted to get him back to answering questions, not pouring out his heart. I asked him if Vivian had pierced ears.

“Pierced ears? Yeah, sure. Her and a friend did it to each other one night with a sewing needle. But that was a long time ago. Why do you ask?”

“The woman in the barn,” I said simply.

He glanced away. “I see.”

“There was a second body. A man. Looks like it was a jockey named Johnny Dornan. Does that name mean anything to you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t play the horses. As a matter of fact, I quit gambling altogether. Didn’t have the stomach or the pocketbook for it.”

“What about Robinson? Know anyone by that name?”

“Jackie Robinson. Brooks Robinson. Frank Robinson.”

“Baseball fan, are you?”

He shrugged.

“Sorry. Not them,” I said. “So how did it end between you and Vivian?”

“She was always hatching some new scheme to make money. I went along with a lot of her ideas, and got myself into all kinds of trouble. A swindle, a little robbery, maybe flexing some muscle for a guy who could help us later on. She had all the bases covered. And it was always me doing the dirty work. I got picked up a couple of times and even spent a couple of months in jail. All for some job she thought would set us up for keeps.”

“Was it while you were away that she left?”

“No. She didn’t leave me. She got sent away.”

“Then it was you who broke it off?”

He hesitated a brief moment before he answered. And then he sneered bitterly. “My mother put an end to it. She came to our place the day before Viv got out of jail and threw out all of her stuff. Right out the window into the alley. Then a friend of Pop’s came to change the locks on the door, all before Viv got out.”

“What happened after that? Do you have any idea what she’s been up to for the past eight years?”

“Not since she left. When she figured out her key didn’t work, she took up with some guy and ran off to Virginia or Maryland; I don’t recall exactly. Somewhere with a gambler by the name of Ledoux. I heard he played the horses and was bad news. But I figured Viv probably stuck with him just long enough to get out of town.”

“And you never saw her again after that?”

“Just once for about five minutes. She came to see me about three years ago. Maybe she was going through a rough spell, but that fresh face and gorgeous figure were gone.”

“What did she want?”

“Said she was in trouble, could I help her out of a jam? I didn’t wait to find out what it was. I threw her out.”

“Good for you.”

“Sometimes I think I could kill her. Strangle her,” he said as a matter of fact. “For all the pain she put me through. So many times I wanted to cry. Like a baby, you know.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “But when she used to say my name all sweet-like, I turned to putty in her hands.”

“Sounds like you had it bad.”

“Things are good now,” he said. “I found a group that helps me. I’m off the sauce, out of trouble, quit gambling, and I’m making a life for myself.”

“Does that mean you’ve forgiven Vivian?”

He rubbed the oily rag on his hands again, as if to wash them of her memory. “I’ll never forgive her.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The South End of Albany had received its death sentence and was awaiting the bulldozers and wrecking balls to carry out the execution. Forty city blocks, nearly one hundred acres of urban habitat, were to be razed to make way for the South Mall project in the next three years. Some of the working-class row houses had already been pulled down, and this was only the beginning for the area Rocky had dubbed “a slum.”

I wound a roll of Kodachrome into my Leica and wandered through the streets for the next two hours, snapping photographs of the barber shops, tailors’ windows, pawnbroker emporia, shoe repairs, groceries, and pizzerias. I wasn’t exactly Cartier-Bresson, but I thought a series of storefronts and their signs made for an interesting thematic strain to follow. It would have been rude to take pictures of people, so I contented myself with the dark-brick tenements and swinging signs hanging above the doomed businesses.

By the time I’d finished off five rolls of film,