David Thayer

Here’s another excerpt from Black Forest, a work in progress.

New York City
March, 1970
She was all in black, down to the leather miniskirt that Teddy Gleason tried not to gawk at. Tall and slender, she entered his office without looking around, as though she carried no expectations beyond the perfunctory. Irritated, Teddy leaned back in his chair. When it squeaked, she hesitated, ignoring his hand offered in friendship, the hand prepared to squeeze hers, to let her know that he was in charge, that this was his domain, she was a supplicant, that he was a benevolent minion of a system gone mad. When she didn’t extend her hand, Teddy looked around, searching his décor for the flaw, the design failure that created this moment of indifference.

His office on Third Avenue had been furnished straight out of the Work Bench, Danish and Blonde, the way it should be. The address was midtown, but wrong, Third Avenue where the El used to be, gone these many decades, staining the air with brake dust and straphangers. Close to the action, affordable, yet down market, full of those coffee shops with grease stained windows, discount drug stores with angry codgers, colleges offering degrees in taxidermy and cosmetology, similar art forms, emporiums with cardboard signs in the window that Teddy felt compelled to read even when he was in a hurry.

His new client sat on the loveseat, her long legs visible through stocking. The stockings were black with some sort of design; leaves, maybe. Black leaves? From black trees? The Black Forest?
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“We’ve never met.”
“I meant my case. The rape at Musto’s.”
Teddy cleared his throat. “Of course. That was a while ago…”
Teddy allowed his voice to trail off. Her check lay on top of his legal pad, a cashiers’ check from FNCB. Teddy had mixed feelings about cashier’s checks. Legal tender, sure. He liked that. On the other hand, he preferred clients with regular checking accounts, accounts that suggested permanence if not solvency. He did not remember her case, at least not at first. Teddy preferred tax law to criminal law, though the twain often met these days. Rich crooks were ideal customers; they wouldn’t give a bum on the street a quarter, but they’d shovel money at Teddy to make the IRS go away.
She shifted her weight. Even in March the love seat claimed its victims. By June anyone who sat on the smooth leather would leave skin behind when they stood. Women in dresses, men in shorts. The women were more fun to watch; Teddy experienced a brief moment of reflexive shame. Stop looking at her legs already.
“How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a man named Dylan Farrell.”
Teddy forgot about her legs. Her statement shocked him; it came out of left field. She stared at him. “Dylan Farrell is a cop,” he said.
“I know.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Teddy fingered the check. Whenever his fellow humans got out of control, Teddy enjoyed the refuge of their money. He’d grown up in a working class neighborhood in Queens, next door to Dylan Farrell. Teddy hadn’t thought about it before, but Dylan wore the stigma of Maspeth better than Teddy. His friend didn’t see the drawbacks of a blue-collar childhood, of schoolyard fights, drunken fathers, and disillusioned mothers. Teddy had seen it his entire life; before he knew what Manhattan was all about, he dreamt about it. He planned an elegant adulthood with a woman who bore a startling resemblance to Ginger Rogers. His Ginger had bigger tits than the real Ginger, knockers that would have every guy in the city drooling.
“Mr. Gleason?”
“What’s your address?” he asked.
“General delivery, Times Square Station.”
“Are you in trouble with the cops?”
“More like the other way around,” she said.
“Is that a joke?”
Her large eyes were wide open. She wasn’t smiling. Teddy made notes on his pad. He had a date that night with a woman who wrote about the sexual revolution; he was going to take her to Paul & Jimmy’s to learn about storming the barricades of inhibition.
“I don’t think I can help you.”
“The police say that Detective Farrell is suspended. I don’t know where to reach him.”
Betrayal. The word appeared in Teddy’s mind with the glow of a Broadway marquee. The young woman whose money he wanted frightened him, not because she was threatening, not in the traditional sense, but because she knew exactly what she was asking of him, and knew how he’d respond. What else did she know?
“How old are you?”
“Twenty two.”
Old enough to bang. Teddy scratched a line through that observation. He had enough trouble with the New York State Bar Association from the last time he slept with a client. Teddy looked away from the couch. “Detective Farrell is my client. He’s also a friend.”
“I only want to speak with him.”
“About what?”
“Are you representing me?” she asked.
“All right, you have a lawyer,” he said.
She crossed her legs. The Black Forest was haunted with ghosts and monsters; Teddy had served in the army of occupation in Schwabia. His unit had gone on maneuvers, a big annual event, rolling through the countryside to simulate response to a Russian attack. Teddy had ridden a tank through a village in the forest, not much more than a dot on the map. The tank had dwarfed the handful of buildings, a wirtschaft, a post office. A girl on a bicycle had come out of nowhere, from between the buildings, a girl in a scarf, Teddy had seen the flash of color, maybe yelled a warning, maybe not. The tank crushed her, swallowing the bike and the girl like a hungry beast. No one was around; it was dawn, the fog shrouding the trees, the road, the pastel buildings of the village. Teddy and crewmates panicked. They argued, their voices dulled by the tank’s metal skin. Teddy had climbed out, his body shaking, his mind frozen on the image of the twisted bicycle, the scarf, a pale leg extruded from the tread.
They’d turned east, driving fast to rejoin the column, her death a secret for the crew to share.
“Mr. Gleason?”
She possessed a calm that unnerved him more than he’d like to admit. Her dark legs, her clothing, maybe she was a witch. He wondered why he was thinking about an incident that was years in the past. No investigation had been mounted; he’d never heard any official explanation for the death. Civilians died when armies rolled, even armies without enemies, armies on maneuvers.
“You’re not a hippie, are you?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’ve been out of the country.”
“I only represent responsible people.”
“I have plenty of cash.”
She was speaking his language. He sat back, folded his hands on what he hoped would be an enormous belly some day. “I mean that. If you’re addicted to drugs, or engaged in prostitution…”
“You don’t like prostitutes?”
“I’m not judging anyone.”
“I won’t offer you sex for services, Mr. Gleason. How much do you recall about my case?”
Teddy felt embarrassed by her directness. He adjusted his legal pad so that it was in alignment with his blotter. He ran a tight ship, with pens and calendar to his left, his beloved receipt pad to his right. He wrote her a receipt for the grand, flashing his gold and blue knock off Mont Blanc. He had a box of them, purchased from a gentleman near the Engineer’s Gate. Two bucks each. It was the greatest moment of his life.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, handing her the receipt.
“The men who raped me,” she said.
“You want them brought to justice?”
“Yes.”
Alarm bells began to chime. Teddy had been hasty, greedy. “Arrests were made,” he said. “At least, that’s my recollection.”
“They were the wrong men.”
“Career criminals…aren’t you the daughter of…”
“You think I deserved to be raped?”
He doodled ‘yes’ on his pad, scratched that out. “No.”
“The men who raped me are protected, Mr. Gleason. At least, they were. Times are changing. There’s a commission looking into police corruption.”
“The Knapp Commission.”
“Yes, that’s it. I’ve waited a long time for the right moment. This is it.”
Teddy felt the gloom associated with being in over his head. Take back her receipt, refund her retainer. This girl has mob connections; good for cash flow, bad for health. A thousand dollars. That was two months rent. Fifty dinners at decent restaurants or four new suits. The Knapp Commission was going to be huge; it was already big, destined to make a lot of people famous.
“I’m not sure I understand. What does the Knapp Commission have to do with this? Have you spoken to one of the prosecutors? Christ, you aren’t looking to jam Dylan Farrell, are you?”
“No.”
She hadn’t reacted to his lapse into neighborhood jargon. Teddy regrouped, but he felt the edge of a precipice approaching. “Why do you want to speak with Dylan?” he asked.
“He was there that night.”
“At Musto’s? What do you mean?”
“He was the responding officer.”
“First cop on the scene?”
“I think you know that.”
Teddy did not know that. “Where are you going with this?” he asked.
“I told you. I want the men who raped me brought to justice.”
“Give me the punch line,” he said.
“They were cops,” she said

Frankfurt am Main, May, 1970

Brenda went to Frankfurt on her last journey of preparation, taking a room near the Hauptbahnhof in a seedy pension run by a fat woman with red hair. The fat woman drank wine and counted money, believing that Brenda was in town to service the GIs staggering down the Kaiserstrasse. She understood that business and offered advice enunciated in lazy Hessian slang, so that Gueten Morgen came out sounding like Juta Morja. She greeted Brenda every morning before serving two eggs in a glass. Juta Morja. By the third day, Brenda had invented a biography for a girl called Juta Morja, a girl seeking revenge, or at least the courage to want it.

Brenda made notes as she traveled the city, riding the Strassenbahn to Am Zoo and Palmengarten, strolling past the Goethe Institute, eating in the cafeterias off the Hauptwache. Frankfurt, in its cold, precise way brought her peace of mind; Brenda considered the possibility of staying, taking a job, and becoming a guest worker of the Federal Republic. Brenda slept with a man from Belgrade, her first lover in many months. He was earnest and polite and, when he was finished and dressed, he placed a one hundred D-mark bill on the night table. Brenda lay on her bed and stared at the bank note until the whorls of color began to bleed together. She waited for a reaction, from her mind or her body, waited for sex to revisit her fear, waited for the money to pull her down into despair and self-loathing.

Instead she slept. When she awoke, Brenda put the money in her jeans. She crossed the Main on the Eisener Steg, a pedestrian in a sea of cars. Near the Ueber Main Kai she flagged a taxi. The driver was a Greek with sad eyes and curly hair. She was not afraid of him.

“Flughaven,” she said.

“Airport, lady?”

They battled through German as a third language, his version, her version. She introduced herself as Juta Morja, a refugee from a faraway land. He spoke of juntas and colonels and reprisal killings; someday he’d go home and kill his tormentors.

Near Darmstadt her story poured out, the story of Brenda Antonucci, a girl from Long Island in a Hell’s Kitchen bar. She told him about he night she had been raped, that her father had done nothing to avenge her, because he feared the men who’d violated her. Demetrius, the driver, pulled into a parking lot to listen, his face wet with tears, hands gripping the wheel. Brenda understood that he was hearing his own story, experiencing the ultimate pain of exile, the cowardice of distance, of life without a present tense. At Rhein-Main she gave him the one hundred-mark note, even though it was far too much, he folded the money and put it in the pocket of his jeans.

Juta Morja headed home.

Now in the traffic and blare and white neon of the city Brenda was frightened again. Her hotel, the St. Lucie, was far worse than the pension in Frankfurt, populated by hookers, pimps, jailbirds, drunks, and hustlers with love beads and bell-bottoms. Brenda waited in the lobby for the man Uncle Massimo had vouched for, the man he called Mr. Pins. Massimo had described the man as important , not short or tall, slim or fat, but important as though that characteristic alone would enable her to single him out. The lobby was busy, it was always busy, with girls flouncing in and others strutting out through revolving doors so filthy the sidewalk was invisible from inside. The windows facing the street were curtained and barred; a sign read ‘aviso’ and continued in Spanish to instruct guests what to do in the event of fire. Brenda read the notice, deciding that the first thing a guest should do in the event of fire was locate someone fluent in Spanish.