"The Almost Perfect Crime and Other Award Winning Stories of New York."

By Bob Natiello

"The Almost Perfect Crime" is a gripping collection of fiction and nonfiction stories. They spill over with action and colorful, one-of-a-kind characters who face criminal, humorous and romantic situations in New York and other big eastern cities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467044288

Bob Natiello

Bob Natiello is a New York native, born and raised in Brooklyn. After a career as a Madison Avenue advertising and marketing executive, he retired to Sedona, AZ. where he now writes award winning fiction and non-fiction. His short story, "Dog Fight", won First Prize in Manhattan Media’s 2009 fiction contest. It appeared in New York Press, West Side Spirit and Our Town. Arizona Authors Assn just declared three of his stories finalists in therir 2011 contest. Two 2010 stories were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His J.D. Salinger send-up won the Society of Southwestern Authors’ First Prize for Literary Humor. The SSA also anthologized Hollywood Marines in its veterans’ tribute, Duty, Honor, Valor and awarded Special Mentions to a number of his short fictional pieces. His fiction has earned him three successive invitations to the “fiercely competitive” Sirenland Writers Conference, Positano, Italy. His song lyrics have been heard nationwide on radio and TV commercials, also on a gold single and a gold album, Polydor label..

Book preview

"The Almost Perfect Crime and Other

Award Winning Stories of New York."

Bob Natiello

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

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© 2012 by Bob Natiello. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 12/16/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4430-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4429-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4428-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011961443

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Author’s Note

The Almost Perfect Crime

Dog Fight

Escape From The Jingle Jungle

J.D. Salinger’s Tobacco Dependency

Taps For Dov-Ber-Rasofsky

Backfire

El Caballo Blanco

Two Brown Envelopes

How Jiminy Cricket Helped Even

The Score With The Dodgers

Ticket To K Street

Classroom Expectations

Swanky Frankie And The Turf War

When Life Was A Crapshoot

Therapist’s Therapy

Another Week Inside

The Brill Building

Letters To The Editor

Opposites Detract

A Favorable Impression

Basketball: From School

Yard To Worldwide.

Hollywood Marines

The Christening Dress

Sudden Death

Author’s Biography

Dedication

To Peggy, the Eighth Lively Art.

And to Joe, Peter, Annie, Mike and Buck.

Author’s Note

This particular Sunday unfolds pretty much like any late-fall Sunday in my northern New Jersey home. Church and breakfast pass, and I aimlessly flip through The New York Times Book Review. Several black and white ads offer adult writing courses, but they make no new claims. I’m certain of this. I’ve longingly read hundreds of versions—sponsored by Columbia, NYU, Marymount and dozens of other Manhattan-based universities—for 35 years. If you like arithmetic, 35 years extends to almost 2,000 Sundays.

Lingering over Columbia’s persuasive invitation—and warmed by a series of contemplative coffee sips—I abruptly come face to face with a pleasant realization. I’m retired. I no longer need to fantasize about taking this or any other writing course. For the first time in my life—with five children and their college educations behind me—I can sign up for the course I’d always regretted I never took while in college.

Columbia looks just perfect. From my Wyckoff address, the George Washington Bridge looms a mere 20 minutes away. Given normal traffic, I can cross it, head down the West Side Highway, park and walk to the classroom in another 20 minutes. All told, the entire driveway-to-classroom trip figures to take less than an hour.

I tamp down my swelling enthusiasm when I discover I’m required to submit a writing sample. I could dredge up that short story I’ve been working on. It’s the first I’ve ever tackled, woefully amateurish. But if I polish it up, who knows, some admissions reader might take kindly to a fictional piece based on my 30 years as a Madison Avenue ad agency executive.

My Hail Mary pass connects. I soon find myself at Columbia, my six-foot frame twisted into one of those agonizing, one-armed college desks. Intent on my application, I shift to notice an elegantly turned out blonde. Her hair, parted dead center, reaches straight to her shoulders where it flips upward in an elegant u-turn. She seems to have materialized into our midst from nowhere. High heeled—wearing a straight tan skirt and tasteful bling at the wrist of her beige blouse—she radiates confidence. Three young women spring from their desks at her appearance. As if drawn by a magnet, they surround her and plead, Dani, Dani, I want to be in your class again. Oh, Dani, how do I get into your class this year?

Dani is Dani Shapiro, I learn, author of Playing with Fire and Fugitive Blue. Her latest novel, Picturing the Wreck, is ready for early ’97 release. I’d like to be in her class, too. Taking criticism from this brainy-looking, fetching woman at least 30 years my junior would be a pleasure. But it is not to be. While she smiles and chats with her students, I return to my application unaware that 12 years will pass before our paths cross again.

My application and writing sample impress. I’m instructed to join the class of novelist A.M. Homes, author of Jack and The End of Alice. But before I can attend the first meeting, she phones to tell me things have changed. She cannot accept me. I think I deserve an explanation, I say through my office phone. She remains firm but ultimately suggests I attend The Writers Voice, a group that meets at the YMCA, Sixty-second Street and Central Park West. Despite feeling disappointed and dismissed, I register for a beginner’s course led by author Kaylie Jones who, halfway through, surprises us with the news that she is the daughter of James Jones, author of the famous novel, From Here to Eternity.

I end Kaylie’s YMCA program grateful for having learned far more about short story writing than I ever imagined. But there is no time to ply my craft. I’m immersed in leaving our Wyckoff home for retirement in Sedona, Arizona. The moment I settle in high desert country, I make plans to attend annual writers conferences in Albuquerque and Tucson. I submit my writing to many contests and, despite countless failures, feel euphoric when the Society of Southwestern Authors phones to grant me an award. My J.D. Salinger send-up, J.D. Salinger’s Tobacco Dependency, has earned First Prize in their literary humor category.

Rejections mount over the following years, but in spring, 2009, I’m chosen to attend the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. In a fiercely competitive selection process, I feel fortunate to make the cut. I grow absolutely ecstatic when picked for Dani Shapiro’s group of ten writers. I haven’t seen her since that chance meeting at Columbia over a decade ago.

She insists on the best from us. Yet she encourages us to go forward, despite our weaknesses. Her rare teaching combination of support-but-demand works for me. In a private conference overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, she urges me to write about New York and city life.

Positano bites deep, according to John Steinbeck. So it is no surprise that I’m drawn to return. In 2010 and 2011, I benefit from the tutelage of Ron Carlson and Hannah Tinti. Back home in Sedona, I build my collection of prize-winning stories to the point where it is ready for publication. Twenty-two—almost half are award winners—appear here. Other stories and some poetry, not in keeping with the theme of this series, have been omitted. I owe deep thanks to Dani and to these many friends for making it possible.

To the regulars in my writers group—Peter Bernhardt, Carol Gandolfo, Lee Phelps, Bill Ward, Bernie Silver, Jocelyn Buckner and Bob Wallace for their honest criticism and cheerful support.

To Ron Carlson, writer-in-residence at UC Irvine, for his spot-on advice in suggesting the title for this collection.

To Kathy Neumann for her generous advice on editing, structure and all the important things that improve reader understanding.

To my daughter-in-law, Eva Natiello, whose creativity and insights know no limits.

To Adele Paroni for getting me started on the awards track. Without her unceasing thoughtfulness, I’d never have won (or even known about) Manhattan Media’s short story contest.

To Ray Cooke and Bob McRoberts who, with the eyes of experienced attorneys, clarified text and legal documents.

To Anna Kaehler who—though destined to become one of Arizona’s great writers—always finds time to provide guidance.

To Barbara Shea for her thoughtfulness in providing story ideas.

To Sally and Joel Harrison for never complaining about various spins on their name.

To Marty Landa for endlessly patient computer help and guidance.

To Carol Ebersole for lending authenticity to hospital and first responder scenes.

To Anne Marie McGovern for providing a geographical understanding of the Washington, DC suburbs.

To Hannah Tinti an outstanding teacher and gifted ukulele accompanist.

To Michael Maren for his patience with my shameless self-aggrandizement and to all my Sirenland colleagues for their understanding and support.

To the Sedona Library and its reference staff led by the ever supportive Patricia Lowell.

Bob Natiello, Sedona, AZ

November 2011.

The Almost Perfect Crime

From age fifteen until halfway through college, I slept with a murderer. When he took up residence in my bedroom, he didn’t look like a man who had hammered Mary Coleman’s skull, then turned her face blue while twisting a silk stocking around her neck. His dark, gentle eyes, olive skin, and straight black hair gave no indication that he tried to hide the crime by saturating her body with gasoline and tossing a lighted match on it.

These grisly deeds took place in 1924 in Mary Coleman’s Manhattan apartment, Lenox Avenue and West 117th Street. The man who committed them was my soft-spoken uncle, Harry Fenton.

Until age twelve, I hadn’t the slightest notion I had an Uncle Harry. The only uncles I knew were my mother’s brothers, Bob and Bill. Uncle Bob, a generous, James Cagney look-alike, held down a clerk’s spot at the New York Stock Exchange. Uncle Bill, handsome, fastidious and possessing the self-absorbed vanity of the family’s youngest son, worked at a Maiden Lane insurance company.

My mother, separated from my gambling father when I was a baby, supported my sister and me as an eighteen-dollars-a-week telephone operator with a midtown oil corporation. All of us lived in a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section.

Through the thirties and early forties—before Uncle Harry’s 1945 arrival—I slept in one of these bedrooms with my mother and sister. Uncle Bob and Uncle Bill shared the middle bedroom. My grandmother—Nana from the moment I could combine two syllables—slept in the third bedroom with Aunt Marge.

Despite over-occupied quarters and depression-induced austerity, I was a happy, well fed child. Even in the face of record nationwide unemployment, every adult in the household subwayed daily to a salaried, white-collar job in Manhattan. None of them ever made the slightest mention of Harry Fenton, serving 20-years-to-life at New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility, less than 500 miles from our apartment. In a family of regular churchgoers, a shroud of silence surrounded their murderous son and brother as tight as a Mafia clan’s blood-oath of omerta totale.

Their secret might have lasted forever but for my falling into sole possession of the middle bedroom. This shift in living arrangements seemed like such a normal family progression, I hardly noticed it.

Uncle Bob, in anticipation of his marriage, had placed a deposit on a Flatbush apartment close to Brooklyn College. Uncle Bill had been drafted, and sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When Nana revealed Uncle Bill had married and fathered a son, I silently rejoiced. Even though he would soon come home because of a medical discharge, I knew his family situation would require him to find his own quarters. Too young and too naive to realize it, I was enjoying single-bedroom luxury, the only male in an all-female household.

With the expansiveness of my own room, I inherited the chest of drawers my departing uncles had used to store their shirts, socks, and other personal belongings. While transferring my meager possessions to it, my busy hands lit on a white, creased, five-by-seven sheet. Unfolding it, I saw it was meant for Uncle Bob. I absorbed the superficial meaning of its half-dozen typewritten lines in seconds.

Dear Bob,

All of us here at the firm were shocked at the news of the terrible thing that your brother, Harry, has been involved in. If there is anything we can do, please let us know.

It bore the signature of a male company official. While his name, the month, and day are lost to me, the year, 1924, is engraved in my memory. Nothing in my life—as a 12-year-old student, altar boy, strident street athlete, newspaper boy, and bugle-blowing Boy Scout—had prepared me for this note written six years before my birth.

The paper appeared fresh despite its 18-year, dresser-drawer interment. Understanding the note’s surface meaning came easily. Even if the message had not been set below a formal corporate letterhead, I still would have grasped the meaning of firm. Uncle Bob aspired to Wall Street success. The firm was the stock brokerage house that employed him.

At the time the note was written, Uncle Bob would have been no more than 19. Perhaps he felt reassured knowing the terrible thing was now in the open, and his firm stood willing to help if called. But with no education beyond grade school, chances are he worried. Having a brother who committed a terrible thing might weaken his grip on the bottom rung of the firm’s ladder.

Re-reading the note, I felt curious and scared. My inexperienced, pre-pubescent mind transmitted warning messages, the same kind I received when gaping at an inflammatory sexual photo. It felt wrong to continue, but I couldn’t put it down. The longer I read, the more two puzzling questions persisted: Who was Harry Fenton, and what was this terrible thing?

I had learned at an early age that curiosity was unwelcome in our household. My elders always dismissed it either with silence or an impatient hush. As the youngest, I had no option; I simply stifled my inquisitiveness. But this time I decided to take the risk.

After several weeks of surreptitious peeks at the note, I came upon my mother in the presence of Aunt Marge. I took their apparent affability as a sign that circumstances might be right. Without preamble, I offered a straightforward, Mom, who is Harry Fenton.

I should have known better. She rolled her eyes heavenward and, in obvious desperation, turned toward her older sister. Aunt Marge cooperated fully. She groaned with undisguised impatience, fluttered her eyelids, and sniffed repeatedly. Those were the only answers I received. I never raised the question again.

Left to my own fantasies, I wondered what Uncle Harry had done to cause such agitation. Did he commit a crime against his own father, Nana’s husband, also named Harry Fenton? Nana sometimes spoke of her husband’s early, untimely death. She also mentioned his sawdust business. Long before I was born, it served as the family’s sole income source.

Nana often told how the senior Harry hitched Billy, his horse, to his wagon and drove to sawmills outside the city. He scooped up the loose sawdust, piled it into his wagon, then sold it to companies for use as packing material. He closed the day by stabling the horse and wagon at 512 West 29th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. From there, he walked nineteen blocks downtown to 29 Jane Street, the Greenwich Village apartment where he, Nana and their five children lived. It was the damn corrugated boxes that ruined the sawdust business, Nana often said, sometimes with a sad, tremulous catch in her voice.

After some thought, I concluded it was unlikely the younger Harry had been involved with his father’s early death. If he had, the firm’s note to Uncle Bob would have read, ". . . the terrible thing that has happened to your brother Harry and to your father." Since the note didn’t mention the older Harry, I concluded Uncle Harry’s deed—whatever it was—involved someone else.

For the next three years, Uncle Harry seldom occupied my thoughts. I had completed elementary school, and was being challenged by Jesuit scholastics and honors courses. How could I think about an uncle I had never seen when class assignments required me to stand before my peers, translate Classical Greek into Latin, then translate the Latin into Spanish, and finally, the Spanish into English. Staying in shape for these academic workouts kept all thoughts of Uncle Harry in check.

Nana broke through my two main preoccupations—studies and my basketball team captaincy—on a June morning in 1945. In an unusually soft, matter-of-fact style, she stopped me in the hall outside the middle bedroom. Your Uncle Harry is coming to live with us, she said. He’ll be sleeping in your room with you.

Nana was the boss. I accepted the news in silence although she must have known I was not hearing Uncle Harry’s name for the first time. Mother and Aunt Marge would have told her I raised his name three years before.

CH-01.jpg

Harry Fenton, far right, best man at his

cousin’s wedding, 1949.

Uncle Harry arrived in our Brooklyn apartment, one block off Eastern Parkway, within a few days of July 23, 1945, his parole date. While recently searching for that date—available for the asking from the Clinton Correctional facility—I also turned up his sentencing date: June 8, 1924.

My first meeting with Uncle Harry was a pleasant surprise. With a soft smile and a hard grip, he offered a subdued, Looks like we’ll be bunking together. For a man who had spent more than 7,000 days behind bars, he appeared as at-home in the middle bedroom as my other uncles. He differed sharply in looks, however. With their naturally wavy hair, upturned smiles, and fair skin, Uncles Bob and Bill possessed the fine, winning looks of Nana and Aunt Marge.

Uncle Harry looked like my mother. His nose was sharp. His eyes, smaller than his brothers’, were identical to my mother’s—hazel, close together, and gentle. In contrast to his brothers’ wavy hair, Uncle Harry’s was combed straight back. Over time, the two gene pools splitting the Fenton family became clear to me. Bob, Bill, and Aunt Marge were gifted with Nana’s refined appearance. My mother and Uncle Harry inherited the dark looks of their father. I could only hypothesize about this, however, since I had never seen the older Harry Fenton, either in person or in a photo.

Though Uncle Harry’s physical posture lacked the straight-backed authority of his younger brothers, he packed more muscle into his 5'8" frame. His back rippled when he donned his morning tank-top undershirt. For a 43-year old—I’d noted his birth date from some personal papers he’d left on the desk—his middle was flat and firm. He appeared to weigh no more than 150 pounds.

It was not that I liked Uncle Harry from the start. Rather, it was hard to dislike him. His soft, intimate speech held me. At night, before we fell off to sleep, he’d tell stories, some true, others obviously apocryphal, but all reflecting New York’s underside. My favorite story concerned the city employee in search of a promotion.

This city-hall guy, Uncle Harry began, wants a promotion. So he goes to his boss, and tells him he’s after a higher-level job.

‘Oh, that’s a grand job, the boss tells him, a grand job.

‘I know it’s a grand job, the applicant says, that’s why I want it.’

"‘It’s really a grand job,’" the boss repeats.

The poor underling got nowhere because no matter how many times the boss said, ‘It’s a grand job,’ the guy never caught the hint. The boss was telling him he’d have to come up with a thousand-dollar kickback to get it. He’d chuckle, and in no time we were asleep.

The only reference I ever heard him make to his past life was slipped into one of these pillow talks. He simply inserted the clause, while I was up on the farm, and continued without pause. When I heard it, I clenched my buttocks fist-tight in anticipation of what he might say next. But because of past slapdowns, I didn’t voice the slightest bit of curiosity. There was no need to. I had seen enough Saturday-afternoon crime movies to recognize up on the farm for the euphemism it was. What I didn’t know was why he was up on the