Baby Breath revised, John Andrew Durler Sr. [best short books to read txt] 📗

his belly.

"Our little girl died. Three months old. The cops thought I killed her because it was so long after her birth and because I was the only one who took care of her. My wife never went near her, never wanted her, couldn't bare to get her hands dirty, or deal with diapers. You know what babies are? Vulnerable, having absolute trust in the person caring for them? Oh God! She was so beautiful, so fragile!"

The bartender suddenly rose up from leaning and said, "Holy Shit! You're the guy in the newspapers two years ago! Did you do it?"
#$%^mmmmmmmmmm


Alex sighed. "It never ends. It follows you to your grave. No, I didn't do it. I thought at one time maybe my ex-wife did because she had the opportunity, but after, I thought about it, she didn't. She had no motive. Our daughter wasn't a problem for her career and she had nothing to do with her care. They never found anything that caused Jenny's death. They cut her up into pieces the bastards, a whole group of them. Fucking ghouls. Used her as an exercise for interns to teach them how to do a post marten. You know what it's like? You're in shock, and they take her and open her little body up and cut pieces of every organ and fold her little stomach inside out."


"Oh, my God Mac! I'm going to be sick." He was pale. Alex grabbed his arm, clenched it, looked into his eyes and said, "You know, back then, I wanted to do it to their kids, in my mind, you know over and over. But I couldn't--except in my mind-- every fucking day as I waited to get her body released so we could bury her, thinking about her in pieces."

"Okay Okay," he said, eyes wide. "I believe you Mac. I believe you. Take it easy. Have another drink--on me."

As he filled the glass Alex asked pointedly, "Do you believe me? Really?"

"People tell me their stories. All kinds are spilled out here on this bar. I know the bullshit from the real scoop. People look away when they lie. You didn't. Yeah, you told the truth. I have a gut for the truth."

Alex looked at him, desperate. "Let me ask you something? I've been thinking--suppose I replace my Jenny with another baby? I don't mean replace, I'm sorry, no I could never replace Jenny. I mean what if I find a baby no one wants and raise her?"

"You're gonna steal a baby?"

"No. No. I'd never do that. Let's say if I got a baby through adoption, foster father, something like that. You read about it all the time in the papers, or a surrogate mother, a lawyer representing a pregnant girl, that kind of thing. Do you think that would be abnormal?"

"Nah. Gee, I don't know about any of that, only what I read in the papers, There was this guy in Bay Shore years ago they got for selling babies. Gave him a slap on the wrist and took his license. A year later he got his license back, but did real estate deals instead. They had it in the Babylon Beacon on the front page."

"Silas David." Alex said.

"What? You got your baby from him?"

"No. But I just came from Bay Shore. I spoke to his brother-in-law, Jake."

"You're going to buy a baby from him?"

"No. But I know who the woman was who sold him the baby, and if I'm lucky, I'll have a baby soon."

"I don't know Mac. My cousin tried to adopt. It took six years."

"This woman who sold it through Silas David has a baby. I just saw her with it in a stroller. I'm going to see her and feel her out. You know, negotiate."

"What did Silas say?"

"Silas is in Israel. Give me another drink and I'll tell you the story. By the way, what's your name?"

"They call me Harry The Horse."

"Play the ponies?"

"Uh, uh. I had a betting service. I sold winners."

"What's a betting service."

"Actually it was a sports service. I bought a list of people who gamble and called them up. Actually I stole half the list and bought the other half from a guy that owed me money. I'd bullshit them. Half I'd give one team, and the other half the opposing team. I didn't know a thing about sports or horses. I'd charge the winners three hundred dollars for a tip on a football game. It was great for a while, except for the threats from the losers. Think about it. Twenty guys call you and you give ten the winning team, and ten the opposing team I got ten winners. and ten losers and man, I was raking it in and you know how word gets around?"

"Why aren't you still doing it?"

"One day two crooked noses, you know, mob guys walked in and wanted a piece of it. I was scared shit when they walked in. I sold it for five grand and got out. No way did I want to be connected to those guys. Then I went south and followed the golf tournaments hustling golf. I used to be a golf pro. I made out until enough people knew I was hustling. After that I had to handicap to get a game. The big money was gone, so I took what I had and came back here and got a job at Slomins installing burglar alarms. I worked there for two years, then couldn't get up one day with a back problem and got this job seven months ago."

The sound of the back door opening stopped Harry The Horse. He went back into the gloom of the hallway. Alex heard him talking to someone, then he returned, poured himself a beer and filled my glass.

"So. Tell me about Bay Shore?"

"Who was that in the back," Alex asked, suspicious?"

"The cook, a lunch crowd starts coming in about ten minutes."

Alex sipped his drink and said, "I looked up the lawyer-real estate investor Silas David and knocked on a door with his name painted in gold letters. Nobody answered. I went down the hall and knocked on all the doors in the old converted frame house and nobody knew much of anything about him except for the superintendent I found in the basement stuffing his face.

He was a short, balding, beer belly and cigar puffing slob surrounded by girlie magazines, empty Budweiser cans and K.F.C. cartons. Between his wiping his greasy fingers on his pants and his tearing chicken apart, sucking it off the bone dipping a plastic what I call a spork, you know, that combination of a spoon and fork in one piece of plastic, into a quart of mashed potatoes and gravy, and in his short bursts of conversation I got some information."

A young couple walked in and sat in a booth on the other side of the bar. Alex reached out and grabbed a hand full of beer nuts. He laid them out on the bar in a row, picked one up and popped it in his mouth.


"Let me get them Mac, be right back." Harry The Horse said as he went down the bar just as the cook came out of the swinging door behind the bar. Harry The Horse came back. "They want lunch. The cook will take care of them. A waitress comes in at one o'clock. So, go on."

Listen, "can I call you Harry.

"Whatever you want."

Alex cracked a beer nut and parked it on the top of his gum letting the sweet salty taste fill his mouth.

"Well, the fat slob said, "yeah, I know him. He's my brother-in- law. You want to reach Silas David, you got to go to Tel Aviv. He left three months ago with a boat load of trees."

"Someone told me he sold black market babies. I'm looking to adopt one."

He dropped a chicken bone on the table, licked his fingers and said, "You got to be kidding. He sold one baby, absolutely according to the dictates of the law. That woman signed a contract-to sell her baby when it was born, all expenses paid and three thousand dollars for her. I know because I was a witness to her signature, which I notarized. I told Silas she was trouble. I could tell."

"What do you mean, you could tell?"

"Hey, you're asking a lot of questions here,he said in an angry, suspicious voice. You a detective? A cop?"

"Whoa! You get hot quick." Alex laid a 50 dollar bill on the table. "Just a father whose baby died."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. A terrible thing to lose a child." He picked up the 50 folded it and put it in his pocket.

"Anyway, she was a whiner, and a liar. First she said her husband punched the crap out of her when she told him she was having his baby. He said it wasn't his, and left town. When Silas drew up papers to serve him, she read them, and tells him she wasn't married but her boyfriend was going to marry her, but on the way to town hall, she told him she was pregnant and that's when the beating occurred.

"Shit Alex." Harry asked, "You sure you want to get involved with this whack?"

"Just, listen, will you? This guy says, "She was a sick ticket--a Jehovah Witness. All during her pregnancy she came with these people all dressed up to kill, trying to convert me, asking me to get them an appointment to see Silas David too. I finally told them not to come back or I'd call the cops. I don't know what she told them, but they were really surprised when I laid that on them. And us being Jewish. Beat that."

He wiped his fingers, burped, cracked another Bud and continued.

"Uh, do that again. I'm trying to remember everything."

Alex placed another 50 on the table.

He put his hand on it and slid it across the table and snapped it.

"Anyway, three months after the baby was adopted, she wanted it back. Ebenezer told her he didn't know who the adopting parents were because he was just a middle man between the other parents who were represented by another attorney. She stormed out and got the big time lawyer, Seeben, and sued Silas David for a million dollars, lost, then pressed criminal charges against him. That crap in the papers was all bullshit. Fuckin Seeben had a hard on for my brother-in-law and he represented her with the criminal charges because he got fucked out of his thirty percent fee on the civil trial. Silas David's a scrappy kid, but that Seeben was too connected to fuck with."

"Yeah--I know what you mean."

添ou get fucked by Seeben too?"

"Who's Seeben?"

He runs the biggest law firm in the county, practically owns Bay Shore. He was the fist lawyer that took on Lilco and beat them on a meat suit."

"Meat suit?" I asked, thinking refrigerated railroad cars full of