Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery Read Online Free Page B

beat the shit out of a parked car. Big overhand swings. The windshield exploded. Cords in his neck straining, the guy screamed, “You’ll never get away with it, never, never, never!” as he pounded deep dents in the hood. “I’ll always be there! Watching!”
    I stood gasping for breath. My knees wouldn’t lock properly, but the muscles in my thighs couldn’t keep my legs straight. The adrenaline, subsiding now, had burned out all my muscles. Raggedy Andy. I leaned against a mailbox. Did Jellyroll think the bat was meant for him, or was it just me? He got behind the mailbox and peeked out to watch the guy beat the car.
    Others watched, skittish, keeping their distance. That kind of wild, primitive rage has a terrible attraction. The rubberneckers didn’t notice me hugging the dome of the mailbox like a wino. They crouched to see who was in the car. But there was nobody in the car. Nobody at all.
    The guy was tiring visibly. The frequency and severity of his blows diminished to slow motion, until finally he couldn’t lift his slugger off his shoulder anymore. Apparently spent but satisfied, he walked off.
    After a while I let go of the mailbox. I’d left my handprints in its soot. My knees were suspect, but I directed us west across the avenues. We picked our way around Lincoln Center, avoided thecongestion at Seventy-second Street by cutting west on Seventy-first, a block north on West End Avenue and we were in the park. I had a plan to stroll north in Riverside Park to my place at 104th. Jellyroll would love that.
    Riverside Park can soothe the ravaged nerves on its good days. This could have been a good one; the sun was still high, yet a cooling breeze ambled down the Hudson. The air seemed clean. Children and dogs frolicked and gamboled. People shot baskets. I passed a couple of refrigerator-crate shantytowns in the field north of the Henry Hudson on-ramp, but I could still dig the fantasy of urban civilization and the human impulse to preserve the greenery within it.
    We passed the children’s playground and took a little side trip down to the promenade along the bank of the river toward the tennis courts. The temperature dropped five or ten degrees down here. A red Moran tug pushed a cement barge upriver against the current. White water boiled up from its struggling propeller, and I was reminded of the children’s story about Scuffy the Tugboat. That was kind of a melancholy, bittersweet recollection, but it felt a lot better than scared shitless.
    I sat on a bench while Jellyroll rolled on his back in the cool grass. As I sat there watching Scuff y, the muscles in my neck began to soften their grip; but you can’t sit long on these benches, because as the wood slats rot in the damp air, they become homes for ants. The slats are infested. Probably prime real estate if you’re an ant. Ants crawl up your thighs. If you ignore them, they’ll marshal their forces to carry you back to their queen.
    Jellyroll was circling and sniffing a young husky named Roger. But I didn’t recognize the walker. He was a big man in a small singlet and Yankees cap. Roger’s owner was named Phil. I didn’t need to be told. Phil had had AIDS.
    “Yesterday,” said the man in the Yankees hat. He didn’t wait around to see my sadness at the news. He’d probably had enough of that. He leashed Roger and bolted. I didn’t blame him.
    “Artie—”
    “Haw!”
    “Little tense these days? As you know, I can relate to that.”
    “Hello, Seth.”
    Seth was a depressive playwright. Seth’s dog, a black Lab cross named Buchner, was also depressed—by association, most of us dog walkers figured. Buchner hadn’t always been like that. He and Jellyroll used to wrestle and chase as puppies. Jellyroll still tries to get up a game, but Buchner is distracted, morose.
    “You want to hear some ironic shit?” asked Seth, sitting with us on the bench.
    “Not really.”
    “I got this showcase production in the East Village, right? New