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“And you think that’s what he did?”
“It’s certainly possible. But suppose you’re Mahaffey, and you check the gun and the clip’s still in it, and you do what we just said. Would you stand there with the clip in your hand waiting to tell the widow and your partner what you learned?”
“Why not?” she said, and then answered her own question. “No, of course not,” she said. “If I’m going to make a discovery like that I’m going to do so in the presence of witnesses. What I do, I get the clip, I take it out, I slip it in his pocket, I put the gun back in his hand, and then I wait for the two of you to come back. And then I get a bright idea, and we examine the gun and find the clip missing, and one of us finds it in his pocket, where I know it is because that’s where I stashed it a minute ago.”
“A lot more convincing than his word on what he found when no one was around to see him find it.”
“On the other hand,” she said, “wouldn’t he do that either way? Say I look at the gun and see the clip’s missing. Why don’t I wait until you come back before I even look for the clip?”
“Your curiosity’s too great.”
“So I can’t wait a minute? But even so, suppose I look and I find the clip in his pocket. Why take it out?”
“To make sure it’s what you think it is.”
“And why not put it back?”
“Maybe it never occurs to you that anybody would doubt your word,” I suggested. “Or maybe, wherever Mahaffey found the clip, in the gun or in Conway’s pocket where he said he found it, maybe he would have put it back if he’d had enough time. But we came back in, and there he was with the clip in his hand.”
“In his handkerchief, you said. On account of fingerprints?”
“Sure. You don’t want to disturb existing prints or leave prints of your own. Not that the lab would have spent any time on this one. They might nowadays, but back in the early sixties? A man shoots himself in front of witnesses?”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “So what happened?”
“What happened?”
“Yeah, your best guess. What really happened?”
“No reason it couldn’t have been just the way he reconstructed it. Accidental death. A dumb accident, but an accident all the same.”
“But?”
“But Vince had a soft heart,” I said. “Houseful of holy pictures like that, he’s got to figure it’s important to the woman that her husband’s got a shot at heaven. If he could fix that up, he wouldn’t care a lot about the objective reality of it all.”
“And he wouldn’t mind tampering with evidence?”
“He wouldn’t lose sleep over it. God knows I never did.”
“Anybody you ever framed,” she said, “was guilty.”
“Of something,” I agreed. “You want my best guess, it’s that there’s no way of telling. As soon as the gimmick occurred to Vince, that the clip might be missing, the whole scenario was set. Either Conway had removed the clip and we were going to find it, or he hadn’t and we were going to remove it for him, and then find it.”
“‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ Except not really, because either way it comes out the same. It goes in the books as an accident, whether that’s what it was or not.”
“That’s the idea.”
“So it doesn’t make any difference one way or the other.”
“I suppose not,” I said, “but I always hoped it was the way Mahaffey said it was.”
“Because you wouldn’t want to think ill of him? No, that’s not it. You already said he was capable of tampering with evidence, and you wouldn’t think ill of him for it, anyway. I give up. Why? Because you don’t want Mr. Conway to be in hell?”
“I never met the man,” I said, “and it would be presumptuous of me to care where he winds up. But I’d prefer it if the clip was in his pocket where Mahaffey said it was, because of what it would prove.”
“That he hadn’t meant to kill himself? I thought we just said. . .”
I shook my head. “That she didn’t do it.”
“Who? The wife?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That she didn’t do what? Kill him? You think she killed him?”
“It’s possible.”
“But he shot himself,” she said. “In front of witnesses. Or did I miss something?”
“That’s almost certainly what happened,” I said, “but she was one of the witnesses, and the kids were the other witnesses, and who knows what they saw, or if they saw anything at all? Say he’s on the couch, and they’re all watching TV, and she takes his old war souvenir and puts one in his head, and she starts screaming. ‘Ohmigod, look what your father has done! Oh, Jesus Mary and Joseph, Daddy has killed himself!’ They were looking at the set, they didn’t see dick, but they’ll think they did by the time she stops carrying on.”
“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
Davi
d 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
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