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We passed through a short dark hall into a bright kitchen where two women and three children were either cooking or eating. One dirty-faced little girl looked up from the dining table, smiled, and stuck her finger in her nose.
The frowning woman took me through another door into what I could only call a sitting room.
There were two stuffed chairs therein. One was yellow with big dark blue polka dots. It was of normal dimensions and looked quite comfortable. The other chair was twice the size of its little sister and might have been black. I couldn’t make out the full design or color because they were obstructed by the impossibly fat man who sat there.
Kierin Klasky weighed well north of four hundred pounds. He could have willed his face to be sewn into a basketball after he died; it was that large and round. The features of his physiognomy were mostly just fat, as were his bloated hands and ham-round thighs.
Kierin was a white man in a blue suit wearing a red tie. There was a black Stetson on the table next to his sofa-size chair. I wondered if he ever donned the hat and stood up.
“Joe!” he bellowed.
“Kierin.”
“I heard you got fired.”
“That was eleven years ago.”
“I’m still here,” he said. “What do you need?”
Back before my dismissal from the force I saved Kierin from a bust that would have put him away for years. He had information I needed about the heroin connection at the Brooklyn docks and I got a friend in records to taint his most recent arrest report.
“Can I sit?” I asked the fat man.
“Please do,” he said and gestured. “Maria!”
A woman blundered gracelessly into the room. She was young and wearing a peasant dress that might be found anywhere in Eastern Europe a century ago. It was made from strips of differing fabrics dyed in bold colors.
Her face was both beautiful and haunted.
“Yes, Papa?” she said.
“Bring our guest grappa.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said and then lurched away.
“She’s a beautiful thing,” Kierin said. “But her mind is always somewhere else.”
“Looks like she doesn’t need to pay attention,” I said.
“Why are you here, Joe?”
He was older than I, but in our business age hardly mattered. I was his inside asset for three months when he really needed it.
“Do you know a junkie named Burns?”
Maria came back carrying a delicate water glass three-quarters filled with clear hundred-and-ten-proof liquor.
She waited for me to take a sip. When I didn’t gag she smiled and left.
“First or last name?” Kierin asked.
“Nickname. They call him that because he has burn scars on his face and left arm.”
“Oh, him. Yes. A very troubled young man. Do you need to find him?”
“I can do that on my own. I just wanted to know anything you could tell me.”
“He’s a good customer when he’s got money. Must have found a new connection, though. I haven’t seen him in months. Maybe he’s dead.”
