Hi friends. I thought I’d share something fun with you today. The following is a short story I wrote a number of years ago that goes with my debut novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress. You could call it an epilogue, if you like. But for me, it’s simply Jude’s story. One of my early attempts in writing the novel was from his point of view and even though I quickly shifted away from that, his voice never left me. I remained deeply fond of him, however. I soon realized that he still had something to say. I hope you enjoy! And—if you’ve not yet read my debut novel—I hope he convinces you to give it a try.
“The Missingest Man In New York”
Hart Island, New York
Late July, 1977
3:00 a.m.
Afterward, I thought of ways to save her. It’s an old man’s fantasy, you see. Going back. Playing what if. A way to keep yourself sane during the long unending years that follow losing a woman like that. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t go back. You can’t do things over. There is only, ever, right now.
And at this particular moment I’m standing at the edge of a mass grave, at three in the morning, flanked by adolescent boys. I paid them to bring me here. Half up front and half when we’re back in the Bronx. If they aren’t stoned already, I’m certain they will be by lunchtime. Two hundred dollars goes a long way on Charlotte Street.
As for me, I came here to find a body. But I can’t find the body until I find the burial manifest. And that will require a number of felonious acts, not the least of which include breaking and entering, theft, and destruction of property. Thus, the boys. Two of them. Carlos and Mick. Or, Piss and Vinegar, as I came to think of them on our choppy ride across Long Island Sound.
“It’s dark as shit,” Piss says behind me.
“It’s the middle of the night, dumbass.” Vinegar is scared, and that makes him loud. Brash. It also makes him dangerous, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“Vinny,” I say, searching out his tall, arrogant form in the darkness. “I’m calling you Vinny from now on. Vinegar is a stupid name.”
“My name’s Mick,” Vinny says, and then turns to Piss. “Old man’s gone crazy.”
I’m not so old that I don’t enjoy the hint of fear in his voice—a stutter at the end of each hard consonant.
Piss shrugs beside me. “Old man has the money. Who cares?”
“Old man has a name,” I say.
Neither of them asks.
Simon. Jude Simon. Detective Jude Simon, thank-you-very-much.
Vinny turns this way and that, peering into the varying shades of blackness, and asks, “Where are we going?”
Piss adds, “Why are we here?”
“That way.” I point toward the deeper shadows. Beyond them lie a road and a church, a vacant military silo, a building filled with decaying shoes, and our destination: an abandoned insane asylum turned records depository. “And none of your business.”
Two things I required of Piss: that he secure the motorboat, and that he bring the flashlights. He passes them out now, handing mine to me rather than tossing it like he does to Vinny. I resent this, and I yank it out of his hand. Then I turn and lead the way, carefully skirting the open trench that lies to our right.
I’ve grown accustomed to death over the last five decades, but still the bodies make me nervous. A row of coffins is stacked three deep and two wide at the bottom of the hole. Names are scrawled on the side of each pine box in the off chance that someone comes to claim them. The simple pine coffins are covered, loosely, by sheets of plywood, waiting for a few more dearly departed to fill the trench so it can be covered with the loamy soil. A work detail from Riker’s Island—or the Potter’s Navy, as they call themselves—won’t fill in the trench until it can’t hold any more coffins, most likely tomorrow by the look of things.
Vinny makes the sign of the cross as he passes the coffins, and my heart clenches. Suddenly Maria is beside me. I can feel her as I navigate all this death. I can almost see her long, thin fingers flutter across her chest as she tiptoes through this eerie place, praying for the dead. God, our father, your power brings us to birth. My beautiful wife—nothing more than ghost and memory. Your providence guides our lives, by Your command we return to dust. Pronouncing blessing on the nameless dead beneath my feet. Lord, those who die still live in Your presence, their lives change but do not end. Petitioning for all the souls known to God alone. May they rejoice in Your kingdom, all our tears are washed away.
If there’s a more desolate place on earth, I’ve never seen it. A narrow spit of land, only a mile long and half that wide, Hart Island boasts a population of five hundred thousand: all of them dead. This is where New York dumps her forgotten souls. The misfits are buried here. The drug addicts and prostitutes and runaways. Unclaimed. Abandoned. Misplaced. Don’t know what it means to sign papers for a “city burial” when you’re standing in the morgue, broke and desperate and trembling from the shock of identifying your loved one? This is it. Where they send the remains. You’ll never be able to lay flowers on the grave, however. Hart Island is not open to the public. As a matter of fact, admittance is forbidden without written permission from the Department of Corrections.
Trespassing.
Add that to my list of crimes.
Oh. Also, two counts of corruption of a minor since I brought these fools along. Old habits die hard, you see. I can’t help but keep a mental rap sheet.
Twenty-two years ago, a body was found beneath the pier at Coney Island. It was chained to a fifty-pound cinder block. Poor bastard sunk like a stone. And he might have stayed there forever—little more than bones and rotted clothing—if city planners hadn’t decided that the tourists would be better served by an aquarium than a dilapidated, rotting pier. The skeleton was intact. Male. Middle-aged. And completely unidentifiable except for a set of wooden teeth. The only thing they could determine for sure was cause of death: blunt-force trauma to the head. The body was sent here in a burlap sack marked John Doe. And I will not leave this cemetery until I learn exactly where they buried him.
You see, I believe Hart Island to be the final resting place of one New York State Supreme Court Judge, Joseph Crater. None other than the infamous ‘Missingest Man in New York’ as he came to be known in the years after he disappeared. He’s the one stuffed in that burlap sack. I’m certain of it. I know that he died in the early morning hours of August 7, 1930—less than a day after he stepped into a cab and vanished. I know the last person to see him alive—or the last person who will admit to seeing him alive: a showgirl named Sally Lou Ritz. Ritzi, they called her, and she’s been missing herself these last four and a half decades. I know his killer. No, wait. Make that his killers. There are several . . . my wife included.
Shit.
“Don’t do that!” I shout at Vinny. He’s kicking a short, white burial marker. There are no headstones in this cemetery, only steel posts stuck in the dirt like Burma Shave signs for the dead. This one reads 173 and its listing heavily to the side thanks to Vinny’s repeated attacks.
“Why do you care?” He stomps it again. In the beam from my flashlight I can see the soil around its base crumbling, showing the gnarled roots of a clump of grass.
“Have a little respect for the dead.”
“Fuck.” Kick. “The.” Kick. “Dead.” Kick. With every word Vinny smashes his boot against the post even harder.
Vinny is young and cocky, and his back is turned to me. When he lifts his foot to deliver another blow, I knock his other leg out from under him. He lands, hard, on his back, breath rushing from his lungs in a whoosh. I’m quicker than I should be, what with the age and arthritis and a general case of I-don’t-give-a-shit-anymore. I’m standing over him, before he can even roll onto his side.
“You like that?” I ask. Vinny scoots back on his elbows, and Piss just looks at me, stunned. “You like messing with the dead? Go ahead. There’s one about twelve inches beneath your skull.”
“Get away from me,” he tries to shout, but he’s wheezing and his insult loses all authority, “you . . . fucking . . . old man.”
“Stop using that word. It’s rude.”
“Fuck . . . you.” He pulls a long, rattling breath into his lungs.
I loom over him, threatening, to make sure he’s paying attention.
“Okay, I’ll stop. Shit. . . . I’ll stop.”
“Say, ‘Please.’”
“Please.”
“Say, ‘Please, Detective Simon.’”
The boys freeze. Piss takes a step backward and throws a look over my shoulder to where he dragged the boat onto the shore not long ago.
“You’re a cop?” Vinny whines. I suspect the rapid rise and fall of his chest now has more to do with fear than being winded. “You didn’t say you were a cop!”
“You didn’t ask. But since you’re curious, NYPD. Retired. Does that bother you?”
He lies. Shakes his head. “No. Not at all.”
“You want up?”
“Yes,” he pauses and then adds, “Please . . . Detective. Sir.”
“You still want the rest of your money?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t get it until we’re back in the Bronx.”
“Right,” Vinny says.
“So, no more problems?”
“None.”
I step away from him.
Vinny scrambles to his feet, shoulders squared, and turns back to the boat. He gives me the one-fingered salute and shouts over his shoulder, “Fuck you, old man! I did my part. I got you here. I’ll be in the boat. Come find me when you’re done.”
Piss found the boat and brought the flashlights, but Vinny is the one who navigated Long Island Sound in the middle of the night and brought us to the island without a single wrong turn. I don’t need him for the next part. Let him sit and pout, for all I care.
“This way,” I say to Piss and turn my flashlight toward the overgrown road that leads into the sparse forest. The trees look humanoid in the dark, with their spindly trunks and gnarled roots, as if they might stand up and start moving toward us at any moment. The air smells of brine and fish and damp soil. It smells like the sweat of a scared teenage boy.
Piss looks back toward the boat. Vinny sits in the prow, scowling at us. “What if he leaves without us?”
“He won’t.”
“But—”
“He won’t.”
“Whatever you say, old man. Now where are we going?”
“To commit a felony.”
Piss grins for the first time since we pulled ashore. There’s a gap between his front teeth wide enough to spit through, and I think this makes him look younger somehow. Likeable. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I specialize in felonies.”
I’d be lying if I said this surprised me. He’s the sort of kid I’d have enlisted as an informant if I were still on the force. On the outside he’s all sullen anger. But on the inside there’s a clever mind and innate curiosity. Maybe . . . just maybe. . . . Piss can make something of himself.
It takes us less than five minutes to hike across the quiet, overgrown island. We can only see as far as the beam of our flashlights will reach, but the gravel road is clear enough—just the occasional patch of weeds sprouting through the rocks. After a while we pass a redbrick chapel drowning in vines. It’s an empty nest of a building, front door boarded with plywood, stained-glass windows pitted by the straight aim of vandals. No one prays there anymore.
And yet Maria would have loved it, would have insisted on stopping. Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it lovely? she would have whispered as she grabbed my hand. She’d climb through one of the low windows to inhale the scent of decaying wood and damp stone, kneel before the altar, and breathe prayers—for me, perhaps. God knows I need them. Her death hollowed me out, and I’ve not been the same in all the years since she died.
My body aches, desperate for her phantom touch, the way she’d tug my earlobe between thumb and forefinger. Her cool hand at the base of my neck. Feet tucked between my calves as she slept. Anything. Everything. I miss the entirety of her. Decades have not diminished this longing.
We move on, and the chapel is soon hidden behind a bend in the road. It’s a bit lighter now, getting closer to dawn, and the vision of my wife evaporates. Her departure is like pulling the scab from an aging wound, one I pick constantly to keep the pain fresh.
Soon we find our destination: an oddly named building called The Dynamo Room. It’s a late addition to what was once a women’s insane asylum. This room was a workhouse where the female inmates of the asylum were put to work resoling shoes. I am told that the floor is piled with hundreds of rotting shoes, that it looks like a cobbler’s nightmare inside. But I don’t care about the workhouse tonight. I’m looking for the asylum itself, a short, squat building that was repurposed into a records depository when the asylum was shuttered. The City Council decided that it was, apparently, bad form to house the mentally ill in the same location where they would most likely be buried after one too many shock treatments. I have elected not to tell Piss most of what has happened on Hart Island over the years. His courage is a flickering thing and I need as much of it as I can get.
Another bend in the road and the asylum looms before us, dark and imposing. At one point the building was blocked by heavy, wrought-iron gates, but these have come loose from their posts and hang lopsided at either side of the driveway. Weeds have choked out the lawn, and vines cover much of the building. We see this in eerie sweeps of our flashlights, getting small glimpses into the past.
Once burials became the primary function of Hart Island, the building fell into disrepair. It is with complete ignorance that Piss struts down the driveway, up the crumbling steps, and picks the single padlock barring us from the asylum.
4:00 a.m.
The doors swing open with a groan and reveal a cavernous entry hall filled with cobwebs, scattered leaves, and the smell of mildew. Beneath the clutter I can see patches of broken tile on the floor.
“There,” I say, pointing to a set of closed doors on the right. “The records room.”
The heavy doors are swollen shut, and it takes both of us yanking on them with all our strength before they wheeze outward. Inside are tables and file cabinets and crates piled high with leather-bound books. There is no apparent order, no rhyme or reason to where things are placed. Unlike most archives, you will not find a card catalog or alphabetized sections of any kind. There are only piles and piles of log books. They are stacked on tables and strewn across the floor.
“Really? You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Piss says.
“Surely you weren’t expecting the Library of Congress?”
He gives me a blank, clueless glance, then reaches toward the nearest crate. He lifts a logbook from the stack and waves it in front of me. “We came here for this? I thought we’d find something valuable.”
“It’s valuable to me. You’re welcome to wait in the boat with Vinny until it’s time to go.”
“His name is Mick,” he says, looking at me through a lank of hair that’s fallen across his eyes. “And my name is Carlos.”
“Nope,” I say. “You’re Piss, he’s Vinny.”
He shakes his head as though I’m some dumb geezer.
I glare at him. “Have you forgotten? I’m a cop.”
“So?”
“Do you really want me to remember your name?”
I can see his mind work, all those little flashes of electricity in his brain. “Like you said, Detective. My name’s Piss.”
I grin. “You have two choices. Wait with Vinny at the boat. Or help me find something.”
“There are hundreds of bodies out there,” he says.
“Hundreds of thousands,” I correct.
He offers a poor attempt at a nonchalant shrug. “I’ll stay with you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“So, what are we looking for?”
“An entry in one of these books. The year is 1955. The name is ‘John Doe.’ And it will state that the body was found beneath the pier at Coney Island. If you find it before I do, I’ll give you an extra hundred bucks. And you can rub that in Vinny’s face when we get back to the boat.”
“Deal,” he says, and sweeps the beam of his flashlight across the room.
This is it, then. I wait until the crashing in my chest slows and I’ve caught my breath. I wait until I can almost feel Maria’s phantom breath on the back of my neck, urging me on. She would want me to do this, I think. Her choice wasn’t so different in the end. But God, I wish she could see me finish it on her behalf. She was the reason for it then, and she’s the reason for it now. At least that’s what I tell myself. Because if I don’t finish this, Joseph Crater will eventually be found. John Doe will be identified. Dots will be connected . . . and they will lead straight back to Maria. I can’t let that happen. Not after all this time.
Trouble is, it would be hard to find the burial manifest even if I knew what I was looking for. But this . . . this is a rat’s nest. Yet there has to be some sort of order. So, I step back and set my flashlight on end so that the beam is pointing up at the ceiling. Light reflects down from the plaster, illuminating the room. Dozens of file cabinets are shoved up against the wall. Each cabinet has the year stamped on a metal plaque at the top. But they aren’t in numerical order after 1940, and they stop altogether after 1961.
I can tell from the occasional open drawer that each cabinet is stuffed with book after book of burial manifests. A quick glance at the nearest one shows that each logbook has one hundred pages and there are five names per page, listing occupant, age, relatives, plot number, and any other pertinent information. So, math. That’s what this will take. Math and a reason and patience. All things I possess in abundance. It’s clear that the boxes and crates stacked on the tables are the newest arrivals to Hart Island, which means the file cabinets hold the earlier residents. 1955 is shoved into a far corner.
6:00 a.m.
I find Joseph Crater first—just as the sun threatens to rise—and give a shout of triumph. He’s in the third drawer down, fifth book in. John Doe. Remains found beneath the pier at Coney Island. Buried under plot marker 185. Brought to Hart Island on August 6, 1955.
If that’s not a damned bit of irony I don’t know what is! While his bag of bones was being shuttled across Long Island Sound on the ever-faithful Michael Cosgrove, his wife was sitting in a bar in Greenwich Village toasting his disappearance. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of his disappearance. Stella was consistent. I’ll give her that. She never missed an anniversary. Thirty-nine years she kept up that tradition, finally losing her own battle with cancer three months after summoning me to Club Abbey that last time.
“Got him!” I say, and Piss mutters a curse. He’s probably spent the last two hours imagining how he’d spend that hundred dollars.
I tap Crater’s entry—“John Doe” handwritten in a blockish script—and then rip the page from the book. It’s impulse, really. I could fold the paper and take it with me, a memento. But instead I wad it in my hand, overcome by sudden, raging anger. If not for this bastard, my wife wouldn’t have died with the terrible weight of secrets crushing her chest.
I crush the paper in my fist, and I clutch it like I’m squeezing the life out of Crater’s very heart. And damn if it doesn’t feel good.
I draw the lighter that Maria gave me from my pocket. I’m not even sure if it works anymore. I’ve not tried since the last time I saw Stella Crater, at Club Abbey, when I burned Ritzi’s letter. The striker is worn smooth and there’s little but fumes inside the chamber. But Maria will give me this last gift. I know she will. So, I strike it with my thumb. Yes. There. Just a spark. A tiny curve of flame. But it’s all I need. I hover Crater’s burial record over the lighter with my trembling hand. And it catches, like the most glorious kindling. A bright, lazy flame licks its way up the edge of the paper, and I’m so mesmerized by this moment of triumph that I don’t turn my hand in time to shift the fire away from my wrist. It only takes one searing bite before I drop the paper. I watch it fall as though in slow motion. Turning, tumbling toward the nearest table and its pile of teetering logbooks. It collapses in a shower of sparks.
At first, I think the flame goes out. But a dozen tiny embers burrow deep within the dry, brittle pages on the table. A dozen little fires erupt. It only takes a few seconds of beating at them with my coat before I realize I’m standing in a tinderbox.
“What are you doing?” Piss screams, backing toward the door.
I’ll have to repent for a dozen things when I leave this place. Father Donnegal died years ago but his replacement will accommodate me. He always does. However, it’s the sin of arson, and how I’ll phrase those words in the confessional, that I’m pondering as I watch the fire spread.
“It was an accident,” I tell Piss, then add, “run!”
He does.
I am struck by a brief remorse for what I’ve done as I see the names of strangers—men, women, and children—blacken before my eyes. I have ruined any chance of them ever being found. But, as I stumble backward toward the door myself, I realize what an idiot I am. No one is fool enough to come here, looking for the lost. No one but me.
I turn and jog from the asylum. I am too old to run. My joints are little more than dust and gravel. The entire records room is an inferno by the time I stumble, breathless, to the gates. Piss is long gone—waiting for me, hopefully—at the boat. The fire is beautiful and horrible at once, giving the dilapidated building its first semblance of warmth in decades. It almost looks as if the lights are on in that room, as if a merry fire is burning in a fireplace. And then the windows explode and the flames rush outward with a greedy scream, sucking up the air, licking the exterior walls, engulfing all the tangled, climbing vines. It is mesmerizing, it is horrible, and I stand, transfixed, watching it burn.
The Potter’s Navy will arrive soon with their daily delivery of the dead. We only have a short time to get away. I turn off my flashlight and walk away from the asylum, her secrets, and this all-consuming blaze behind me.
I find Piss and Vinny at the boat. They don’t see me at first. Their eyes are on the billowing smoke and climbing flames that now stretch well above the tree line.
“He burned it down,” Piss says. “I didn’t know he was going to burn it down.”
Vinny’s eyes are huge, and his hands shake. “Like I said, he’s crazy.”
“We gotta get out of here.”
“Can’t,” Vinny says. “Old man has the boat keys.”
“Well, I’m not stupid,” I say from the shadows as I draw the keys from my pocket and jingle them for effect. They startle so badly, I’m worried Piss might live up to his moniker. I climb into the boat and hand Vinny the keys. “Stop staring. Let’s go.”
He wastes no time pushing the boat into the water, and then the outboard motor roars to life and we’re off, back the way we came, across the Sound.
I watch the malevolent, hellish glow of the fire until we round the point of City Island and enter the shipping lane. But even then, the acrid scent lingers. It is the smell of charred memory. Names, dates, lives all turning to ash.
“Another hundred bucks when we reach the marina,” Vinny shouts over the roar of the motor. “Don’t forget!”
I am many things, but forgetful is not one of them. It is the curse I live with. A clear and perfect memory. For decades—even as my body has crumbled—I’ve prayed that I will lose this gift, that the edges of my mind will blur and crumble. They don’t. My punishment is to remember. Maria, mostly. The high, soft curve of her breasts. The deep black of her hair. The sweet lilt of her laugh. The elegant arch of her hands as they work the beads on her rosary. The smell of her lemon peel and lavender soap. I remember everything.
And I remember the night I came home from a double shift to find her, splayed out on the floor, unconscious. The cancer had worked its course, gone too far. She was taken to the hospital that night and only lived another ten days. When she died, generations died with her. Children. Grandchildren. An entire legacy.
Afterward—after her funeral and burial and the dark days that followed, days spent at the bottom of a whiskey bottle—I thought of ways to save her. Doctors to see. Medicines to try. Even surgery. I would have willingly let another man splay her on a table and cut into her perfect, beautiful body if I thought for a moment it would have saved her. But it was too late. Maria is gone, but I am the one who has ceased to live. I’ve been wandering, aimless, through the years. Until Stella Crater summoned me back to Club Abbey. Until she showed me Ritzi’s letter and I learned the truth about Judge Crater’s death. For eight years I’ve been laying awake at night, wondering who else knows. Wondering if there is a way, still, after all this time, that I can protect my wife. I think, perhaps, tonight, I might have finally done it.
Maria is dead. Stella is dead. Crater is dead. His life cemented in history. People gather to discuss their theories on where he’s gone. Books have been written about him. He’s a ghost. A legend. And, thanks to Johnny Carson, a punch line. Joseph Crater is here to stay.
Now I am the Missingest Man in New York.
© Copyright Ariel Lawhon. All rights reserved.
WOW! Totally captivating. Do I have to read the whole book to make the connection between Marie and the Judge?
I read this shortly after meeting you at PWQ GFW! So great!