Shoot the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Eight - The Thread

Something was bothering me and I had been walking all morning trying to figure out what it was.

On the East side of Central Park, right behind the Metropolitan Museum, there's a little rise called Graywacke Knoll. It was one of the highest natural spots in Manhattan before it was leveled off. It's a secluded spot with a thicket of flowering shrubs girding the slopes of the little hill. I walked up the stone steps and onto the little plaza in the center of which was erected Cleopatra's Needle, a sixty-nine foot stone obelisk that had been pounded out of the earth more than three thousand years ago. It was one of two that stood in the ancient city of Heliopolis, eventually to be moved by the Romans to Alexandria. One of the pair fell in an earthquake and eventually wound up in London. The other was wheedled out of the Egyptian government as a gift and brought to New York City in 1880.

A little boy was riding around the obelisk on his bike, followed by his mother. The kid was wearing kneepads, elbow pads, and a bright yellow crash helmet. He's trundling along at a quarter of a mile an hour on his training wheels all wrapped up for the Motocross in Tuba City. And his mother followed along behind, face twisted with worry. If this kid fell he was so well-armored that it was the pavement that had better look out.

I sat meditating on the hieroglyphics carved up the face of the monument. It helped me focus on Mickey's ludicrous Land of the Pharaohs analogy, which was the only clue I had to his madman mind-set.

Something was trying to break out of the assorted flotsam and jetsam kicking around in my brain. It seemed to be right there in front, clamoring to be recognized, but I couldn't open the door and let it in. Suddenly the kid on the bike, inspired to recklessness by a sense of armored invulnerability, stood on the pedals and went faster. Before his mother could act, the kid took a spill. He fell awkwardly, and the handlebars of the bike struck him in the mouth with sickening force; the only area that wasn't protected. He lay on the ground dazed and in shock. His mother ran to him and I followed.

When the boy rose to one elbow, blood was gushing from his mouth. His mother screamed and only then did he start to cry. I suppose he had the right; both his front teeth were knocked out. The kid spat them pitifully into his own hand and held them out for us to see, eyes wide with horror.

If she could get him to a dentist fast enough the teeth could be saved. I tore a clean handkerchief in half and packed the kid's bleeding mouth with one piece. The other piece, I soaked with Evian water from the mother's copious tote bag and folded it over the teeth.

It wasn't until I closed the cab door and sent them on their way that I knew what had been bothering me.

It was the corpse in the tub.

I stopped at a bar had a drink and phoned around until I found somebody in New Jersey willing to answer a simple question.

"You said you're checking dental records to identify the body? Right?"

"That's right," the voice said, bored or tired or both.

"What did you find?"

An exasperated sigh. "What do you think? Teeth."

"You mean actual teeth? Teeth in his head?"

"Yes. Teeth in his head. What other kind of teeth are there?"

"Full dentures," I said and hung up.