The Ready Garden - Mystery3
Important notice: All excerpts have been submitted by the author.
Author: Polly Whitney
Author's note: In this chapter from UNTIL THE END OF TIME (St. Martin's Press, 1995
and Worldwide Library, 1997), Ike and Abby, both broadcast journalists,
investigate how New York City's homeless dead are buried. This is their
journey on New York's Death Ferry.
Twenty-Three
Ike was stepping into a grey limo outside the Emerald City when I
caught up with her.
"If you give me a ride in your coach, Cinderella, I'll speak French to
you."
"Don't call me that. Tex called me that."
"Okay. I'll call you Grouchy. Move over."
"Why should I?"
"Because I've got as much interest in this boat ride as you do."
She moved across the cushioned seat without putting up an argument.
As soon as she got herself curled up in the corner, she was sound asleep. Snoring.
"You still going to the Bronx?" the Townline driver said.
"Yeah, and make it nice and smooth. Grouchy here needs a nap."
"Nice and smooth. In the Bronx?"
"Just do the best you can."
I glanced around at the accoutrements. TV. Bar. Stereo.
CD player. Behind one of the sliding paneled cabinet doors was a
collection of sample bottles of designer perfumes and colognes. I opened a
bottle of Jilsander's "Feeling Man" and splashed it on my cheeks. I looked
at the driver as the limo pulled away from the curb.
"Do you drive hookers at night?"
"Hookers?"
"Yeah. Hookers. Working girls. Career lovers."
"No client has ever so identified herself to me, sir."
"But, you know, you can tell."
"No, Sir. I can't tell."
"Part of the Townline service?"
He nodded. "Part of the service."
Townline's service is excellent, as I can testify because I didn't
wake up until the driver opened the door for me right beside a green
plywood shack on the East River. An NTB News truck was parked in front of
the limo.
I gave Ike a gentle shake, and she came up swinging. I grabbed her
wrists until she had time to clear out whatever monsters had rattled their
chains in her dreams.
We got out of the car. The door of the green shack opened, and a
fiftyish man, with deep cracks in the thick skin around his
eyes, came out into the bright sunshine. He was wearing a blue uniform and
a tan flyer's vest, and he smelled like bacon and fried eggs and cigarette smoke.
He offered his hand to Ike. "Ms. Goldberg-Petit? I'm Captain McKibben."
"Sally couldn't make it," Ike said. "She had to rush to a different
assignment. I'm Ike Tygart, Sally's boss."
They shook hands, and Ike introduced me.
McKibben gave me a hearty shake and said, "A TV director, huh? You're
the guy who says 'Lights, Camera, Action,' huh?"
"That's me."
"Well, your cameraman is already on board, the freight is loaded, and
we're paying these prisoners fifty cents an hour, so we'd better be on our way."
McKibben took two surgical masks from the pocket of his flyer's vest
and handed them to Ike. His own mask dangled from an elastic string around
his neck, and he pulled it in place over his face.
He turned and strode down a weathered dock onto the deck of a rusting
red boat, a double-ended, miniature version of the Staten Island Ferry,
without the seating. The boat's name, The Michael Cosgrove, was on a
plaque nailed on the side of the wheelhouse, and, in smaller letters, it
said "Bureau of Ferries and Marine Aviation."
Ike and I followed him with our eyes. The prisoners he had
mentioned were lined up along the deck, six men dressed in green fatigues
and also wearing surgical masks. Wordlessly, Ike handed me one of the masks. We looked at each other. We put the masks
on.
The dock was reassuringly steady under our feet as we crossed onto the
Cosgrove. I guess it was my stomach that was heaving. There was a funny
smell coming from the ferry.
One of the prisoners pulled the chain across the back of the boat and
locked it in place as the Cosgrove eased out into the river. "Don't want
no shake, rattle, and roll," he said through his mask. "Some of these
boxes ain't nailed all that good."
Cheap pine boxes were stacked in two groups on the open deck. One
stack consisted of ten things that looked like coffins, about six feet long
and the correct width. But the other stack was made out of smaller pine
boxes, each about the size you'd need to package a couple dozen roses.
"Babies," our convict said.
The whole collection stank. Ike pointed to our masks and at the
boxes, raising her eyebrows at the convict.
"They ain't embalmed," he said, in the same tone of voice he might
have used to tell her it was going to be a nice, sunny day.
I looked over the side of the boat, hoping I wasn't going to need the
facilities provided by the East River.
"How'd you get this job?" Ike asked.
"I'm a minimum security man -- turnstile jumper in my
previous life. This is good duty, huh? Fresh air and you can smoke if you
don't mind taking off the mask." He leered at her through the mask and
swept his hand out over the water. "And
there's the opportunities for travel."
The passage across the strait into Long Island Sound was short and
uneventful, but I got a view of the city I'd never seen before -- the
chunky towers of the Throgs Neck Bridge; the masts and clapboard houses of
City Island, so pretty they almost looked like Nantucket; the tight channel
where the Sound dumps into the East River.
Ray Kinsey, our camerman, was getting the same view on videotape, but
he wasn't wasting his spool by making a mere travelogue. He got down on
his knees to shoot the boxes; he leaned along the rail to shoot the line of
prisoners in their surgical masks; he climbed the rusted metal steps of the
wheelhouse to shoot the captain hunched over his radar screen.
We docked at little Hart Island. The shore was littered with the same
kind of trash you can see on any New York street, but the litter was mixed
in with beds of mussels. I didn't think I'd ever eat mussels again.
The island itself was littered with a different brand of cultural
garbage for future anthropologists and archeologists: abandoned buildings
that looked like they dated from the Civil War; old bleachers from a
baseball field -- the prisoner said they'd come from Ebbets Field, but I
didn't know if he was
pulling my leg; a flaking yellow sign that said "Prison, Keep Off;" wild
house cats, howling and scurrying in and out of the abandoned buildings; a
rosebush growing out of the side of a
beached row boat.
Past the small central plain where I could see an open mass grave,
there was a hill, and on the hill was a white tower, about 30 feet high and
inscribed with the word "Peace." And standing near the plain, beside the
hill, in a waving mass of yellow flowers, was a granite cross. On the
cross it said, "He Calleth His Own by Name."
I closed my eyes and wished I could have told Tex about the cross.
The iron chain on the forward end of the ferry was pulled back. A big
green pickup truck was waiting, tailgate down. The prisoners lifted the
coffins onto the truck like they were loading crates of grapefruit.
Captain McKibben used the rails along the metal steps to slide and
drop to the deck by our side. "You going along with them?"
"Yes," Ike said.
"Keep your masks on."
Ike and Ray and I left the boat and climbed onto the back of the truck
with four prisoners and the coffins -- no guards. I hadn't seen guards
anywhere. We sat on the tailgate as the truck rocked over the stubble and
through tall weeds. Ray was shooting
tape all the way, sometimes standing on the tailgate to get the panorama.
When the truck stopped at the open grave -- about a hundred
feet by six feet, and maybe ten feet deep, obviously gouged out of the
island by a backhoe -- we got off the tailgate and stood aside as the
prisoners handed the coffins down off the truck and then down into that
massive hole. They stacked them tight, six boxes on top of each other in
each stack, like building blocks. At the rate of fifty a week, that hole
would fill up fast. The baby coffins came off last, two at a time, the
prisoners carrying them gently, one under each arm. Those were stacked at
the other end of the vast trench, along with similarly sized building blocks.
"You lookin' for anybody special?" It was our convict, standing
beside us and brushing dirt off his hands.
"How would that be possible?" Ike said, frowning. "Aren't these
people just, well, unknown?"
"Unclaimed doesn't mean unnamed. Most of em's got names. They got
that much. The grownups, anyway. The babies is sometimes just 'unknown
female infant' or 'white boy' or something like that. If they got 'em,
they names is on the boxes."
Ike took a deep breath, denting her mask, and gazed down into the
yawning wholesale grave, half-filled with pine coffins, some of them much
more weathered than the fresh white pine boxes
that had just been unloaded.
"You're not going down in there, Ike," I said.
She looked at the prisoner. She pointed into the grave.
"Is that the only place where there are names?"
"Captain's got the manifest."
The coffins were left there in their stacks in the great hole,
uncovered, open to the brilliant sunlight, the circling gulls, the
scrambling cats, the wind. No words were said, no earth was thrown over
the boxes, nobody cried.
The green truck took us back across the plain to the dock. We boarded
the boat, on our way to the wheelhouse, but we spun around when a sharp
odor suddenly poured into the air around us. Prisoners were spraying down
the green truck with hydrochlorine from drums stacked against the pilings.
Ray didn't need any prompting to get that shot.
The return crossing to the Bronx was filled with macabre jokes from
the prisoners about what they were going to have for lunch, terrible
descriptions of macaroni and spaghetti and Chinese food, punctuated behind
the surgical masks with lip smacking and sucking sounds and congenial
laughter. The prisoners sounded like macho boys from a frat house,
enjoying a gross-out party.
When we had docked, and the prisoners were locked inside a truck that
would take them back to their mimimum security hoosegow, Ike asked Captain
McKibben for the manifest.
He laughed. "Cargo report, you mean. 'Manifest' is what the prison
details like to call it. It's this little nautical game they play,
pretending they're sailors. They even call
themselves 'Potter's Navy.'" He laughed again. "Or 'The Ghost Guard.'"
Ike swallowed, her cheeks red. "Okay, the cargo report."
"Come into the shack and I'll show you the cargo reports for the last
year. We got 'em going back into the last century, but I expect a news
lady like you is after current events. That right?"
His cargo reports were stiffly-bound ledgers, just lists of dates and
names -- or lack of names. Ike flipped through the pages of the one
McKibben had handed her until she had the section starting in June.
"Can I take this out in the sun?" she said to McKibben.
"Don't see why not. Those books don't have any secrets. I guess
they're public records."
Ike carried the book outside. McKibben and I stood back, keeping our
shadows away from the pages, as Ike put the ledger on the ground and held
it open. Ray knelt beside her and panned the camera down the handwritten
entries. She turned the pages for him as he finished each one, and they
shot videotape until the last entry, the load that had gone over to Hart
Island with us.
She picked the ledger up and dusted it off. She handed it to McKibben.
"You want to stay for lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks," she said, too emphatically.
"Better stick to crackers and soda water for a few hours,"
he said, laughing. He returned to the green shack, not exactly whistling,
but doing something with his mouth that involved blowing air and producing
an occasional chirp. I guess he liked his job.
Beside us in the sunshine, the limo was waiting.
Ray opened his camera and handed Ike the tape.
"Where are you headed now?" she asked him.
"Kennedy Airport. I'm on my way to Pakistan."
"Jesus," she said. "Don't you ever get to cover rock stars or anything?"
"I did Steinbrenner this morning. All in all, the boat ride was more interesting."
"When you get back from Pakistan, I'll make a point of seeing you get
some cushy assignments."
"Thanks, Ike, but I volunteered for the earthquake."
"You're a good guy, Ray."
"I didn't get into this business to shoot weddings and birthday parties."
He patted her shoulder and hurried to the NTB truck, which took off
across the gravel.
The Townline driver opened the limo's door.
Ike hesitated, tapping the video cassette against her thigh
and shaking her head at the long grey car. "This stinks. It's the most
hideous irony of my life, Abby."
"Yeah, I know. Riding away from the paupers' cemetery in a
limo." I looked at her sad eyes. "If it makes you feel any better, we can
leave these masks on."©1995 and 1997
***
*About the author:
Polly Whitney's third mystery novel, UNTIL IT HURTS, due out from St.
Martin's Press in April, is already the talk of the basketball world. The
"voice" of the New York Knicks, Mike Breen of WFAN radio in New York City,
says that UNTIL IT HURTS is "alternately a book of terrifying suspense and
irresistible hilarity." Breen says Whitney writes the best dialogue he's
ever read.
Another well-known basketball fan (and the most listened-to man on
American radio), Charles Osgood of THE OSGOOD FILES, also has high praise
for UNTIL IT HURTS:
"If Robin Williams and Michael Jordan teamed up to
write a book, this is the one they would write.
Polly Whitney is hot -- she writes funny and she
writes TALL."
This third outing in the "UNTIL" series, which was nominated for the
prestigious Agatha Award, tells the story of murder and racism and both
fair and foul play in the NBA. Anthony Award winning mystery writer Harlan
Coben calls the book "a stylish slam dunk."
The "UNTIL" series of mystery novels began with UNTIL DEATH (Agatha
Award nominee, 1994) and continued through UNTIL THE END OF TIME (1995).
Whitney also writes critically acclaimed short stories, and magazine
columns related to writing and researching the novel. Before she entered
the mystery community, Whitney worked as a journalist, so it was natural
for her to turn to other journalists for public comments on the UNTIL series:
Charles Kuralt: "Rattling good mystery."
Diane Sawyer: "Bravo."
Whitney hangs out in cyberspace, where she commits humor on DOROTHYL
and on the PRODIGY MYSTERY BULLETIN BOARD. Whitney has gathered an international following for her work as an internet humorist.
AUSTRALIAN LITERARY JOURNAL, for example, the premier voice of the arts
Down Under, has labelled Whitney "the resident wit and luminary of
DorothyL." The WASHINGTON POST has written features on Whitney's
pioneering "cyberbook," which is located on the WEB at http://members.aol.com/Mystfield/Kitchen/polly.html.
That Whitney has an extremely serious side, too, is evident from her
many hours spent working with homeless people, from the underlying social
concerns of her novels, and by the publication in scholarly magazines of
her articles on American and English literature. "We've all got a shot at
helping to conserve the whole of our precious heritage," Whitney said, "no
matter how small. If we don't take that shot, we are personally and
finally responsible for the nightmares we'll bequeath to our children and
the planet."
Whitney's special concern is for teenagers. She is writing for
EMPOWERED, a new magazine for teenagers that is designed as an alternative
to SEVENTEEN. "This magazine," she said, "wants kids to know that self
esteem does not come from the right hairdo or the right boyfriend. It
comes from the bigger choices."
Whitney lectures widely to high school and college audiences (she
gently but firmly insists on co-ed attendance) on the topic of date rape.
She has appeared on CBS THIS MORNING, as well as on local television
programs across the United States.
Her background for writing novels, she says, is "lots of writing."
She has written for television and radio broadcast news outlets, as well as
for newspapers. She holds an M.A. from Yale University in English Language
and Literature, and a B.A. in English from the State University of New
York, where she won the Chancellor's Award for Academic Excellence and
graduated summa cum laude.
Whitney is married to Michael R. Whitney, Senior Broadcast Producer of
the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER. The couple has
two children.
Whitney is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
Publication information
UNTIL IT HURTS
April 1997; St. Martin's, $21.95, ISBN 0-312-15237-X
Who killed the seven-foot basketball star in a crowd
of witnesses? "Whitney's hot -- she writes funny and
she writes TALL." -- Charles Osgood, CBS Radio Network.
UNTIL THE END OF TIME
August 1995, St. Martin's, $21.95, ISBN 0-312-13199-2 (HARDCOVER)
April 1997; Worldwide Library, $4.99, ISBN 0-373-26233-7 (PPB)
UNTIL DEATH
August, '94, St. Martin's, $21.95; ISBN 0-312-11089-8 (HARDCOVER)
Worldwide Library, 1996, $4.99; ISBN 0-373-26219-1 (PPB)
1994 Agatha Award nominee, Best First Novel
Write to Polly Whitney. Visit Polly Whitney
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