Townsend Walker

Sound of Silence

 

The night was dark, split only by a flash of sulfurous light. Frank died that night. It happened on the corner of Bank and 4th. He bled out, no scream, only silence. 

 

Did he deserve it? Was it his fault? It was, and wasn’t, depending on whom you choose to believe. Frank, but he’s not talking; the killer, and he’s not talking. Frank’s friends and family may have known what he was up to, and the person who hired the killer certainly did. It was over quickly, Frank didn’t suffer. 

 

Who wanted Frank dead? That’s what C.J. and Al wanted to know. The detectives had been partners for 15 years, since they demobbed in ’45, first walking the beat, then in homicide. Al, sausaged into his pants and jacket, announced himself with wide ties in puce and yellow and a cackle for a laugh. C.J. was trim, tailored, a watcher, often unseen. They made a talented team, different angles on the world, Al led with the gut, literally, C.J. with the head. After their fashion, they got the perp.

 

The medical examiner said Frank had been dead for an hour or two before someone noticed the pool of blood and figured he wasn’t sleeping it off. That passersby would leave some guy forty-ish, well dressed--Brioni, Patek, and a diamond signet--lying in the gutter for a couple hours, made Al grumble. “This neighborhood, not a place I’d wanna to live.”

 

Driver’s license said Frank lived at 113 Jane, so Al and C.J. hiked over the six blocks, pulled their collars up against a frigid wind going arctic as they wound closer to the Hudson. The Jane Hotel was at 113. Some history there, the survivors of the Titanic stayed when they were brought back to New York.

 

House security, Jimmy, might have been a Titanic survivor, thin, bent, and water-wrinkled, hobbled out of his office at the corner of reception. C.J. explained they needed to see Frank O’Keefe’s room.

 

“Why? What’s happened?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Something should’ve happened?” Al said.

 

“No.”

 

“Well,” said C.J., “Something did. Frank’s been shot, shot dead, in the street, over on 4th.”

 

“Horrible,” said Jimmy, “Horrible.” He put his hands over his face, kept them there for a minute or two, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Give me a moment, fellows.”

 

On the way up in the elevator, Jimmy explained Frank didn’t have a room, he had the top floor. Frank’s grandfather was one of the Titanic survivors, never moved out, no place to go, his whole family sunk with the ship. He started in the shoe trade, put his money in diamonds and was holding diamonds in ‘29. Frank’s dad loved to fly and in the late 1930s bought airplane company stock and rented more space at the Jane. 

 

Al opened the door. “Holy Jesus, do you believe this?”

 

By God, a funhouse. Along the left wall was a bank of shape distorting mirrors, making Al seven feet tall, Jimmy three, and C.J. twelve. They peered down a long, long hallway with red and white square tiles on the floor and ceiling. Al lumbered down toward the door. After four steps, he crashed into it. A left turn, and the three of them were into a rolling barrel. They couldn’t stand. The barrel had them on their tails to the accompaniment of cackling, spinning clowns. After a forever, they managed to crawl out on hands and knees.

 

“Stop,” Al said, “Stop, we’re being played.”

 

The detectives figured Frank must have a regular apartment somewhere up here, and the only way to discover it was to go on. They looked back at Jimmy. He waved them on. They took a step forward; the floor dropped out from under them. A step more and it rose, another step and the floor tilted right. On their butts one more time.

 

“You sure we shouldn’t go back?” Al asked.

 

“Let’s try this door.” They fell into a pit with hundreds of colored plastic balls. They tried to walk, but sunk and couldn’t find a bottom, tried to swim, dog paddle, breaststroke, finally crawled through the balls to the other side. Hung on the edge, exhausted, then heaved themselves on the deck.

 

“Sweet Jesus,” Al cried, “Where’s my gun?”

 

“You want to go back for it?”

 

“Shit no. We’ll seal this room off and let forensics have fun. Besides, I still got my ankle carry.”

 

The door on the far side opened to a large disk. Al and C.J. jumped on it, scrambled to the center post, but it spun, spun faster and spun faster until gravity flung them against the wall, padded fortunately. Then crawled into the hall and collapsed. They weren’t there long when the passage began to shrink around them. “I got a feeling Frank didn’t appreciate visitors.” Al said.

 

They staggered into a room of mirrors, only mirrors, a maze of mirrors, at all angles, floor and ceiling, with people talking, people listening, scratches, beeps and whispers. They tumbled, couldn’t tell when one wall started, another ended. Al stood, pulled C.J. up, then lost sight of him. 

 

“Where’s Jimmy?”

 

“Jimmy?”

 

They didn’t see him, they saw blood in the corner of the room, tilted now so blood reflected off and, on the mirrors, making the room glow and glimmer crimson, deep bubbly sparkly scarlet.

 

“Mother of God, C.J., what the hell are we going to do?”

 

“You’re even asking? We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

 

“I’m shooting my way out.” Al said.

 

C.J. shouted, “Are you kidding? Do not fire. I repeat, do not fire. I do not know where you are. You don’t know where I am.”

 

“Don’t panic.” C.J. was quiet now. “You ever see “Lady of Shanghai?” “Three people in a mirror maze, two guns shoot at reflections, one guy walks out, the one the dead ones were aiming at.”

 

They smashed glass and smashed glass and smashed glass with the butts of their guns. Ten minutes, sweating, stinking sweat dripped down. Quiet now, they listened, a sound, a hollow sound, a breakthrough. No. Another maze, a goddamn maze painted Easter egg pink, yellow, blue, and green.

 

“C.J., I’m gonna to be sick.”

 

“Calm, stay calm, and if you’re going to be sick, turn the other way.”

 

“Okay, so how we gonna get out of here?” Al asked.

 

“Tremaux’s Algorithm. I’d explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand, so just follow me.”

 

C.J. marked each path they took, then with a couple of simple rules when they came to a marked path, they wriggled through the maze and arrived in a room. Not a room from anywhere, but according to C.J. one that could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with furniture, drapes, and rugs in asymmetrical geometric patterns of cool woods, green tiles, and gold upholstery. In the far corner, a bed. On the bed, Frank, embalmed, cleaned up, in a new suit, and on his chest, a pan flute with colored strings attached. A flute that might create a song, but a song he would never share, a song people would never hear. Exhausted, the detectives sat down, settled into the calm of the room, undisturbed by a body. They’d seen a few. 

 

They nearly nodded off, and were about to leave when: “Behind you C.J.!”

 

C.J. turned to the left. As he stood, a sword ripped through his right sleeve. “Where did that come from?” He hit the floor.

 

“The painting behind you.”

 

“The painting of the conquistador?” C.J. looked up. “I don’t see a sword.”

 

“That’s because he hurled it at you. Look, the wall behind the bed; it’s sticking out.”

 

“We’re truly out of here. This isn’t fun anymore.”

 

They searched for a door. Couldn’t be found. Tore at curtains, broke windows, opened shutters, to find below a FDNY ladder truck. 

 

When Al and C.J. got to the bottom of the ladder, their lieutenant was livid, his face the color of the truck. “Where the hell have you been the last four hours?”

 

“That long? Oh my God, that damn funhouse.”

 

“Be delighted to take you through, Lieutenant, in fact, you gotta come up.” Al said. “We got Frank all laid out, and house security, Jimmy, all bled out. Not a pretty sight.”

 

“So, I send you two out to discover why this guy Frank is dead, and you end up with another corpse.”

 

“Actually, we lost him in the pit of balls.” 

 

“In the what?”

 

“An enormous hole full of ping pong balls, like in a funhouse.”

 

“That’s where Al lost his gun,” C.J. said.

 

“Tell me there’s no connection to Jimmy,” said the lieutenant.

 

“Gun never went off.”

 

“We’d a heard it,” said Al.

 

“Well, we probably would have heard it.” C.J. shrugged.

 

The lieutenant, as the crowd now inched closer, assumed command posture and tenor. “Officers, we are going back up this ladder immediately. Move!”

 

“Wait, if it’s been four hours, what did the M.E. say about the body?” C.J. asked. “He beat us to the scene. And how did Frank get out of the M.E.’s hands and into that bed up there?” 

 

The lieutenant went to his car and got on his phone, listened for a long while. He turned to C.J. and Al. “M.E. says no mystery. Frank died of a gunshot to the head, at close range. 9mm, silencer striations on the bullet. They released him to his brother, Sean O’Keefe.”

 

“You guys, find the killer.”

 

Al piped up, “Don’t forget to look for Jimmy, and my gun.” Then he turned to C.J. “What say we start our search for the killer in that coffee shop across the street, strategize over coffee and danish.” 

 

They sank into a booth at the Starlite diner. A pot of coffee arrived immediately. Al ordered three cheese and three cherry danish; C.J., one of each.

 

“You realize Jimmy deliberately led us through the fun house. There’s gotta be another way into the place, he knows it, and we know it since Frank’s body got in that room and didn’t go by us.”

 

“Remember Jimmy waved us on, and we never saw him after the spinning wheel, did we?”

 

“We made it through the fun house by sheer grit…”

 

“Not to mention “The Lady from Shanghai” and Tremaux’s Algorithm.”

 

“Not to mention my sharp eye on the sword.”

 

“For which I thank you.”

 

The detectives decided they needed to revisit the Jane. Al and C.J. strode across the street, up the stairs into the lobby. This time through the detectives noticed the looks of the place. Shabby bohemian is what C.J. called it, for its collection of a worn red mohair sofa in one corner, a gold tapestry wing chair in another, Moroccan woodwork framing the reception counter and a worn Persian rug trying to cover the floor. A hotel for guests with more dash than cash. (Except for the late Frank O’Keefe.) They heard a rattling cough and from around the corner the wraith-like figure of Jimmy stepped toward them. “What are you doing here, you were dead?”

 

“Nah, the blood’s part of the funhouse. Anyhow, I fell, and you two made such a racket hacking the mirrors, you couldn’t hear me.”

 

C.J. put his arm around Jimmy. “Need to talk.” 

 

They retired to Café Gitane. “Alberto, a couple of your specials for me and my friends,” Jimmy called.

 

The drinks arrived and disappeared in a gulp. Jimmy started, “To lay it out for you guys. Our late Frank had a doctorate in archaeology from Yale and free lanced to uncover and bring back artifacts for collectors and museums. Trips all over Egypt and Syria and the Andes looking for stuff. One day I asked him, ‘Find anything?’ He looks at me, a broad grin spreading out to his ears. ‘Oooh, yeah.’ ‘Like what?’ I say. ‘This music out of Peru, songs that can’t be shared. Try as we will, we can’t decipher the musical notation, it’s on strings, even though we have the flutes they played.’”

 

“That’s a real help,” Al said.

 

“Listen,” Jimmy said, “Listen, a couple of shady types were hovering around the front of the hotel the other day, looked Incan, and I think Peruvian.”

 

“And you know this how?”

 

“Because they spoke Spanish with a Peruvian accent.”

 

“And you would know that, how?” Al said.

 

Jimmy straightened up. “By living in Pisac, near Cusco, for nearly 20 years. I taught English and Spanish and arranged for Incan blankets to be sold in the states—New York, Frisco, Dallas.”

 

“So now you want us to believe you know nothing about our Frank, only met in the hall?” said Al. 

 

C.J. explained, “Jimmy, what Al is saying is that you’re coming down to the station with us. In official terms, ‘you are a person of interest.’”

 

“Me? I don’t own a gun.”

 

“But you know a lot more than you’re telling us and you left us to work our way through the funhouse.”

 

“Was that a gambit to get the body in the room, thinking maybe we’d never get there?” Al said.

 

The detectives had the doorman call a cab. They stuffed Jimmy between them, carted him down to the station, shoved him into an open Interrogation Room.

 

The desk officer announced, “Boys, the lieutenant wants a word.”

 

The lieutenant leaned across his desk. “You’ll want to know what we found on the corpse.”

 

Al popped up, “Let me guess, a flute and strings with knots in them.”

 

The lieutenant jumped. “You boys mind readers, or something?”

 

“Our dead house security man is very much alive, lived in Peru, knows our victim was an archeologist researching Incan music. He’s in the Interrogation Room B as we speak,” C.J. said.

 

“I guarantee they did not kill this guy for an old flute and string with knots, unless . . .”

 

“There is a tune that means something,” C.J. added

 

“Very good, detective, and we’re sure Sean O’Keefe put them with the corpse, to be retrieved later.” The lieutenant stood to his full five-foot two command presence. “Find Sean O’Keefe!”

 

Al and C.J. sometimes felt they lived half their lives in the Interrogation Rooms. They were so all the same. Eight-by-ten-by-ten, grey walls, a small two-way mirror, a wooden table five-by-four, grey, three wooden chairs, two on one side, one on the other, grey. “Jimmy, tell us about Sean O’Keefe,” said Al.

 

“I don’t know where he is. All I know is he and Frank were concocting a scheme in Peru.”

 

“That much we figured,” C.J. said.

 

“I overheard them one night in Café Gitane. Frank said that the music is the key to a fortune in gold the Incas buried when the Spanish invaded. Somewhere in the mountains between Cusco and Manchu Pichu, where no one would suspect. Supposedly, Pizzaro found only about half of the treasure the Spaniard’s native allies said was there.” 

 

“So, now we have Esau killing Abel over a mess of bullion?” C.J. said.

 

Al explained it for Jimmy. “C.J. tries to be fancy sometimes. The question was: did Sean kill Frank because they figured out where the gold was, and the only step left was digging it up? But Sean didn’t want to share?”

 

They decided to let Jimmy go back to the hotel but warned him to stay close. And as added precaution, alerted the beat cop to check in on the hour.

 

#

 

Finding Sean was not hard. He lay beneath the halo of a neon sign in a gutter in front of a bistro at West Broadway and Moore. Sean took a bullet to the head from a 9mm, like his brother Frank, silenced. The autopsy revealed his last meal was duck confit and an ile flottant.

 

Sean had moved uptown while Frank had stayed down and had a floor in a high-rise at Riverside and 91st, a building from the 1920s that kept its dark gloomy original wood molding in the lobby. No one had touched the decor since they built it. According to Sean’s wife, Rosa, some 15 years younger and a head turner, he had gone downtown to meet a business associate to prepare for a trip to Peru.

 

“You wouldn’t have the name of the person he was meeting?” Al asked.

 

“Jaime, I think he said, an old friend and an old friend of Frank, poor Frank, he was a good man. Sean, not so much. I think I married the wrong brother. Now, they are gone.” She sat down, dabbed her eyes.

 

“Where might we find this Jaime?”

 

Rosa said he was at the hotel where the boys grew up. “He took care of Sean and Frank when they were little, while their parents jetted around the world.”

 

“Have you ever met Jaime?”

 

“He’s a little man, old, not well. Sean said something about cancer when he came to our wedding in Cusco three years ago.”

 

“What was he like?”

 

“Quiet, words like raindrops when he spoke Spanish.”

 

C.J. and Al got up and walked to the door. “One last question, if you don’t mind, Mrs. O’Keefe,” C.J. said. “Have you ever been to Frank’s apartment in the Jane Hotel?”

 

“Only once, Sean has . . . had terrible memories in the hotel.”

 

“Anything unusual about Frank’s apartment?”

 

“It had class, I liked it. Not like here, all old and dark. Now perhaps, I will remodel this one.”

 

#

 

In their car, on the way back to the precinct. “You don’t think our Jimmy was protecting someone, do you?” Al asked.

 

“Why would you think that? Taking us into the apartment by way of the funhouse?”

 

They decided they needed Jimmy back right away. According to Rosa he didn’t just overhear the deal, as he claimed, he was up to his eyeballs in it. And they needed to figure out how to break the code of the flute and the strings. C.J. had an idea. After the war, he had taken night courses at CUNY and remembered they had a department that specialized in music of out of the way places. It wasn’t the department he remembered as much as Ginny Baker, who was studying the music of Cambodia. Ginny Baker, yes, Ginny Baker. The department, something like ethnomusicology, it was called.

 

Back at the precinct, the lieutenant was taking a break, tie loosened, feet up, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, Al and C.J. barged through his door, “Urgent request. We need Jimmy back here now. We need an ethnomusicologist, pronto!”

 

C.J. related how Jimmy had practically raised Frank and Sean. Now, while they lived in style, Jimmy schlepped around the hotel. Jealousy? Or more than?

 

The lieutenant said he’d send a couple of blues to pick up Jimmy. He’d retrieve the pan flute and strings from forensics. They’d taken them off Frank’s corpse.

 

C.J. called the ethnomusicology department at CCNY and found Mary Beth Giles. He explained he was investigating two murders somehow linked to Incan music.

 

“How’s that again?” the professor said.

 

“Well, we have two dead men, an ancient pan flute and some knotted strings. One of the dead men was an archaeologist, the other, his brother, a civil engineer.”

 

Al cut in, “Jimmy’s gone, can’t be found.”

 

C.J.: “Shit, oh, sorry ma’am. Our prime suspect has skipped. Can you come down to the Sixth Precinct, 233 West 10th, in the morning?”

 

“I have a class, it’s that important?”

 

“Yes, ma’am. Look, we’ll pick you up at nine. Where do you live? Look for a black Chevy.”

 

Next morning, at the precinct, they lay the pan flute and strings out on the table. “I’ve seen these before. But I’m not sure how long it will take to figure out what they mean.”

 

The two left her alone and went about searching for Jimmy. No one resembling Jimmy in the last 48 hours out of New York airports. No one out of Philly or Boston or Chicago. Then, bingo, a Delta flight from Washington National to Jorge Chavez the day before at three.

 

C.J. couldn’t wait any longer and barged in on Mary Beth.

 

“I called some colleagues at Harvard to help me interpret these strings. They’re called khipus,” she said.

 

“So, what do the strings say?” C.J. asked.

 

Mary Beth explained it was the Incan form of writing—numbers, words, notes. The color of the string, the way the string is twisted, right or left, and the type of knot, all mean something. “See, a white string, two simple knots dividing the string in thirds, this other one, dark brown, one large knot, and three small ones, then the string on the end, red and white twisted together with only one knot. Do you have any ideas what might be here?”

 

“Here’s what we’re thinking,” C.J. said. “Musical notes that might give someone a clue about where the Incas hid some of their gold from the Spanish.” And C.J. added that it was probably somewhere in the Valle Sagrado.

 

“Aha!” Mary Beth said and got on the phone to her colleagues.

 

Three hours later, C.J. and Al heard flute music. They ran to the sound.

 

“Our best guess is gold is under the Maras salt ponds in the Valle Sagrado. You can spell words using musical notes and the notes on the strings spell out ‘salt’ and ‘valley’ and ‘gold’.”

 

“You’re sure?” C.J. asked.

 

“Well, the notes could spell out other things, but nothing that works for what you’ve told me.”

 

“By the way,” Al said, “One of the guys is the archaeologist, Frank O’Keefe.”

 

“Oh my God,” the professors exclaimed. “Not him.”

 

“And his brother,” said Al.

 

“This sounds like a gold rush gone bad,” C.J. said. “Thank you, professors, agradiseyki.”

 

“Wha?” Al said.

 

“Good accent,” Mary Beth said.

 

“You think I spend all my time on the sports page, I’ve been learning Quechan.”

 

The lieutenant walked in. “Get Jimmy!”

 

#

 

After a flight from New York to Lima, C.J. and Al took the train to Cusco and found themselves in the Plaza de Armas, an open space lined with honey colored Spanish colonial buildings, fortunately in an earthquake prone area, built on Incan foundations. Sunning himself on a bench they found Jimmy, struggling to breathe. His cancer growing. Al sat on one side, C.J. on the other. “A lot you didn’t tell us, Jimmy.

 

Jimmy launched into a long tale of how he’d raised two good men who as time went on became greedy, silent men, especially Sean who was the ringleader. The latest was to dig up the hidden Incan gold and cart it away. Sean had a herd of llamas lined up to move the gold into the Amazon. “They figured it out from the pan flute and the khipus.”

 

“And that’s what you overheard in the Café Gitane?” C.J. asked.

 

“Yup.”

 

“So,” Al said. “Who offed them?”

 

Jimmy coughed and coughed and coughed. “I’m not sure who ordered Frank’s death, could be any number of people. He was all over Syria, Burma, and Peru on archaeologic treks. Lots of treasure to be found in the ancient temples. I’m not sure who he offended.”

 

“That’s very nice, Jimmy,” Al said, “But hardly helpful.”

 

“This will be more helpful,” Jimmy said. “The guy who actually did Frank was local. I knew him from around. I had him take out Sean.”

 

“You what!!” the detectives barked.

 

“I could not let Sean go ahead with his plan. I have too many friends in the Valle Sagrado. Better no one found the gold. It would only bring trouble.”

 

“You’re right,” C.J. said. “But Jimmy, we got a problem. You. You had a man killed.”

 

“True. You can take me back, we can go to trial, but of course you’ll have to find the guy who pulled the trigger to rat on me, and that would take some time, no? Or, you couldn’t find me. And in six months, no one will find anything but my grave, and then only if you know where to look.”

 

Al looked at C.J. “You excuse us a minute, Jimmy?”

 

“Before you go,” Jimmy said, “I’m curious, what did you think of our funhouse?”

 

“Your funhouse???” chorused Al and C.J.

 

“Something the boys and I built while their folks were away. They traveled so often, they told me to do whatever it took. I made it elaborate so’s to fill the hearts of kids who had no mother. It worked, I thought, for a time. In any event, it gave them professions. Frank was the scavenger, found the stuff we needed. Sean was the engineer, put it together. We were a team.” 

 

Al and C.J. walked toward the cathedral, turned and waved to Jimmy, and left the plaza.

 

“I say we never found him,” said Al.

 

“Who?” said C.J.

  

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Longtime friend of the Macabre, Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence, and strong women. A collection of short stories, 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies & other stories was published by Deeds Publishing in 2018. The book won a Book Excellence Award, a Silver Feathered Quill Award and a Pinnacle Award. A novella, La Ronde was published by Truth Serum Press in 2015. Over one hundred short stories and poems have been published in literary journals and included in thirteen anthologies. He received two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award. He reviews short story collections for the New York Journal of Books. His website is www.townsendwalker.com

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