Have a NYC 3 (11 page)

“And they never said what they did or didn't see.”

“They never said a word, because we didn't ask them anything. Look, I don't think she did it. The possibility didn't even occur to me until sometime later, and by then we'd closed the case, so what was the point? I never even mentioned the idea to Vince.”

“And if you had?”

“He'd have said she wasn't the type for it, and he'd have been right. But you never know. If she didn't do it, he gave her peace of mind. If she did do it, she must have wondered how the cartridge clip migrated from the gun butt to her husband's pocket.”

“She'd have realized Mahaffey put it there.”

“Uh-huh. And she'd have had twenty-five thousand reasons to thank him for it.”

“Huh?”

“The insurance,” I said.

“But you said they'd have to pay anyway.”

“Double indemnity,” I said. “They'd have had to pay the face amount of the policy, but if it's an accident they'd have had to pay double. That's if there was a double-indemnity clause in the policy, and I have no way of knowing whether or not there was. But most policies sold around then, especially relatively small policies, had the clause. The companies liked to write them that way, and the policy holders usually went for them. A fraction more in premiums and twice the payoff? Why not go for it?”

We kicked it around a little. Then she asked about the current case, the one that had started the whole thing. I'd wondered about the gun, I explained, purely out of curiosity. If it was in fact an automatic, and if the clip was in fact in his pocket and not in the gun where you'd expect to find it, surely some cop would have determined as much by now, and it would all come out in the wash.

“That's some story,” she said. “And it happened when, thirty-five years ago? And you never mentioned it before?”

“I never thought of it,” I said, “not as a story worth telling. Because it's unresolved. There's no way to know what really happened.”

“That's all right,” she said. “It's still a good story.”

The guy in Inwood, it turned out, had used a .38-calibre revolver, and he'd cleaned it and loaded it earlier that same day. No chance it was an accident.

And if I'd never told the story over the years, that's not to say it hadn't come occasionally to mind. Vince Mahaffey and I never really talked about the incident, and I've sometimes wished we had. It would have been nice to know what really happened.

Assuming that's possible, and I'm not sure it is. He had, after all, sent me out of the room before doing whatever it was he did. That suggested he hadn't wanted me to know, so why should I think he'd be quick to tell me after the fact?

No way of knowing. And, as the years pass, I find I like it better that way. I couldn't tell you why, but I do.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

LIZ AXELROD received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The New School in May of 2013. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the
Cat Oars Fiction Collective
,
Lyre Lyre
,
12th Street
,
The Rumpus
,
The Brooklyn Rail
,
Electric Literature
,
Yes Poetry
,
Nap Magazine
and the
Ginosko Literary Journal
.

LAWRENCE BLOCK has been chronicling the evolving life and times of Matthew Scudder for forty years and through seventeen novels and a dozen shorter works. LB s a devout New Yorker; when he's not walking the streets of Greenwich Village, you can find him hanging out at
www.lawrenceblock.com

GIL FAGIANI is an independent scholar, translator, short story writer and poet. His most recent book of poetry is
Serfs of Psychiatry
(Finishing Line Press, 2012). He has translated poetry written in Italian and Abruzzese dialect into English. Gil co-curates the Italian American Writers' Association's monthly reading series in Manhattan, and is an Associate Editor of
Feile-Festa
.

BONNY FINBERG has been published in
The Brooklyn Rail
,
Evergreen Review
,
Ping Pong
,
Sensitive Skin
,
A Gathering of Tribes
, and the French literary journals
Upstairs at Duroc
,
Van Gogh's Ear
and
Le Purple Journal
. She has published two chapbooks:
How the Discovery of Sugar Produced the Romantic Era
and
Déjà Vu
and a novel,
Kali's Day
, published in 2014 by Autonomedia/Unbearable Books.

MICHAEL S. GATLIN has traveled across Canada in a carnival circuit, worked for the National Park Service clearing trails in Montana, and tried his hand at several other personalities. After twelve years of owning and operating Verlaine on the Lower East Side of Manhattan he has moved his family to Portland Maine.

KIRPAL GORDON is a born-&-bred NYC writer. For a free download of an excerpt from his latest eBook fiction project on music & mysticism, visit
www.facebook.com/sullivanstpress
. For a look at his blog on artists & activists, visit
http://giantstepspress.blogspot.com
. For more on the author, visit
www.KirpalG.com
.

RON KOLM is a member of the Unbearables and an editor of several of their anthologies, most recently
The Unbearables Big Book of Sex
. He is a contributing editor of
Sensitive Skin
and the editor of the
Evergreen Review
and is a fixture in the Lower East Side Literary Scene.

PETER MARRA, a Brooklyn native, is now 3-for-3 in the
HAVE A NYC
series. His chapbook
Sins of the Go-Go Girls
was published in April 2013 by Why Vandalism? Press. A short story, “Expert Collisions will appear in “From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream,” due out in 2014 from Unbearable Books.

J. ANTHONY ROMAN is a playwright and fiction writer in New York City, where he was raised, after being a Puerto Rican volunteer refugee. Most of his plays have been produced in New York City, Los Angeles, and the UK. His fiction has been published by
gadfly.com
,
The Unboxed Voices Anthology
, and Rawboned.org. To follow his misadventures, please visit
www.janthonyroman.com

ANGELA SLOAN currently co-edits a fashion-as-art column entitled “Closet Space” with her twin sister, Katherine, for
SPACES
, an online literary magazine. She earned her MA in English and Creative Writing from Longwood University in Virginia, and is currently living in New York City.

PAUL SOHAR ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, including seven volumes of translations and his own poetry:
Homing Poems
(Iniquity, 2006) and
The Wayward Orchard
, a Wordrunner Prize winner (2011). His other awards include first prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest; second prize for a story from Writers' Circle of RI (2014).

CHERA THOMPSON is a teacher/writer living on a bluff over Lake Erie. Her story “Last Minute Pick-Up” received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train's short fiction contest. Her work has appeared in
Roadside Fiction
,
Queen City Flash
and other publications. Her website is
www.cherathompson.blogspot.com
.

RICHARD VETERE is the author of three novels, including
The Writers Afterlife
(Three Rooms Press);
Baroque
(Bordighera Press) and
The Third Miracle
(Simon & Schuster); many plays, including
Caravaggio
,
Machiavelli
,
Gangster Apparel
; and movies, including
The Third Miracle
,
The Marriage Fool
and
Vigilante
. His short story “Champagne and Cocaine” (from HAVE A NYC 2) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

NINA ZIVANCEVIC is poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator and the Paris contributing editor to NY ARTS magazine. A former assistant and secretary to Allen Ginsberg, Nina has also edited and participated in numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry.

JOANIE HIEGER FRITZ ZOSIKE makes as much mischief as is allowable in as many venues as possible. Onstage and off, she seeks the poetic grail and recycles whatever she can glean in publications including
Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art
(Three Rooms Press) and
NY Arts Magazine
. She is a member of The Living Theatre and director of DADAnewyork.

EDITORS

PETER CARLAFTES is an NYC playwright, poet, and performer. He is the author of twelve plays, including a noir treatment of Knut Hamsun's
Hunger
, and his own celebrity rehab center spoof,
Spin-Dry
. Carlaftes is the author of
A Year on Facebook
(humor),
Drunkyard Dog
and
I Fold With the Hand I Was Dealt
(poetry), and
Triumph for Rent
(3 plays). He is co-director and editor of Three Rooms Press.

KAT GEORGES is an NYC poet, playwright, performer and designer. She is the author twelve plays, including
SCUM: The Valerie Solanas Story
and
Art Was Here
, a creative look at Dada instigator Arthur Cravan. She is also author of the poetry collections
Our Lady of the Hunger
and
Punk Rock Journal
In New York since 2003, she has directed numerous Off-Broadway plays, curated poetry readings, and performed widely. She is co-director and art director of Three Rooms Press.

Recent and Forthcoming Books on Three Rooms Press

PHOTOGRAPHY-MEMOIR

Mike watt

On & Off Bass

FICTION

Ron Dakron

Hello Devilfish!

Michael T. Fournier

Hidden Wheel

Swing State

Janet Hamill

Tales from the Eternal Café

(Introduction by Patti Smith)

Eamon Loingsigh

Light of the Diddicoy

Richard Vetere

The Writers Afterlife

DADA

Maintenant:

Journal of Contemporary

Dada Art & Literature

(Annual poetry/art journal, since 2008)

SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY

Have a NYC:

New York Short Stories

Annual Short Fiction Anthology

HUMOR

Peter Carlaftes

A Year on Facebook

ESSAYS

Richard Katrovas

Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father

PLAYS

Madeline Artenberg & Karen Hildebrand

The Old In-and-Out

Peter Carlaftes

Triumph For Rent (3 Plays)

Teatrophy (3 More Plays)

MIXED MEDIA

John S. Paul

Sign Language: A Painters Notebook

TRANSLATIONS

Thomas Bernhard

On Earth and in Hell

(poems by the author in german with English translations by Peter waugh)

Patrizia gattaceca

Isula d'Anima / Soul Island

(poems by the author in Corsican with English translations)

Cesar Vallejo | gerard Malanga

Malanga Chasing Vallejo

(selected poems of Cesar Vallejo with English translations and additional notes by gerard Malanga)

George Wallace

EOS: Abductor of Men

(poems by the author in English with Greek translations)

POETRY COLLECTIONS

Hala Alyan

Atrium

Peter Carlaftes

DrunkYard Dog

I Fold with the Hand I Was Dealt

Thomas Fucaloro

It Starts from the Belly and Blooms Inheriting Craziness is Like a Soft Halo of Light

Kat Georges

Our Lady of the Hunger

Robert Gibbons

Close to the Tree

Israel Horovitz

Heaven and Other Poems

Matthew Hupert

Ism is a Retrovirus

David Lawton

Sharp Blue Stream

Jane LeCroy

Signature Play

Philip Meersman

This is Belgian Chocolate

Jane Ormerod

Recreational Vehicles on Fire

Welcome to the Museum of Cattle

Lisa Panepinto

On This Borrowed Bike

George Wallace

Poppin' Johnny

Three Rooms Press | New York, NY | Current Catalog: www.threeroomspress.com Three Rooms Press books are distributed by Pgw/Perseus: pgw.com