THE WATCH WAS A ROLEX SUBMARINER, a stainless steel Swiss with sapphire crystal. The white dot and index markers sat against the black dial as if one were making a board for backgammon. The matte black aluminum bezel held the center in its place, completing the piece.
It was a simple, elegant watch. My father used to hold my ear close to his wrist. He'd say that if you try hard enough to listen, you'd be able to hear ghosts passing through.
My father had inherited the watch from his father. When I was born, my grandfather paid a visit to the house. From what he told me, it was necessary for any respectable man to own a good timepiece. It was a mark that you had made it in life. Oddly enough, my father couldn't afford to make rent beyond the next two months and the Rolex was worth more than a whole year's rent. Still, my grandfather told him he must now look after a wife and child, and the watch was a way of marking a new passage of life. He handed over his prized possession to my father, and that proved to be the last time they spoke as he died shortly after of pneumonia.
I suppose that's why my father clung so tightly to the watch, why he was stubborn to part with it even to his death. It was tax season, and my father had been working late. There was a man who had followed him off the subway—right off Penn Station, on his way home from the office—and pulled a gun on him a couple blocks from our apartment. He had asked my father for his wallet with which he was willing to part. But when the man asked for his watch, my father refused. This was recorded in the police report.
It must've been about one or two in the morning when my mother and I were startled by the knocking at our door. Both of us had been well into our sleep. When the officer broke the news plainly to my mother, she thought he was mistaken. After all, James Miller was quite a common name. The officer then proceeded to reveal the steel watch, that unmistakable Rolex, and my mother lost it. She fell to the floor, crumpling into a boneless pile, wailing and heaving like all 36th Street had never heard before. Dazed, I rushed out to comfort her, not quite knowing how to process the news. As I held my mother in my arms, I couldn't help staring at the watch, its second marker sweeping its way around the black dial effortlessly.
*****
Somehow, we managed to get by those years after my father’s death. My mother worked odd jobs—bookkeeper, grocery clerk, nanny—while I went to school and dabbled in class. School wasn’t hard, just monotonous. The subjects couldn’t keep my attention and I did the minimal work to pass.
Music was my one distraction—I was hard on the violin. I practiced every day for four hours and earned first chair by sophomore year. I soaked up all the classics: Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Kreisler. I would play the hell out of those cassettes and learn the music by ear. Because of her odd hours, my mother and I would often miss each other, but on occasion we’d have dinner together when she got back early. One time she noticed the deep red marks on my neck.
“Steven Miller, you better not tell me you’re knocking up them girls and making me a fool,” she said. I assured her they weren’t hickeys, and that she had nothing to worry about because strings never got any action. (I’d be damned if they did—I would’ve been the Wilt Chamberlain of quartets.) I saw the doubt in her eyes, so I played her some Bach and Mozart and Tchaikovsky, as if to say you’ll know the truth by my allegrettos. She took it in, then without skipping a beat replied, “Is this your way of telling me you’re gay?”
Four years later, I’m somehow out of school and having no clue what to do. Most of my friends were off to college to become accountants, lawyers, programmers. A few of them left the city to find work. I considered getting a degree at some junior college, maybe even cross the bridge and tunnel for a change of scene, but it didn’t make sense. More years of monotony, for what? I figured I could use a break, so I did nothing, absolutely nothing.
I couldn’t recall how that year went by to tell you the truth. I was slumming it hard. I couldn’t tell Wednesdays apart from Sundays. My days and nights all felt like one big inkblot, like a haze that dissipates after a cigarette. My routine was predictable:
2 p.m. - rise
2:05 - Bulleit Rye, Lucky Strike cigarette
2:20 - shower
3 p.m. - coffee, scrambled eggs with tabasco
3:30 - another glass of Bulleit, Lucky Strike
3:46 - shit
4:20 - grass (of course)
5 p.m. - milk, six Danish cookies
5:30 - start movie
7 p.m. - Budweiser, Lucky Strike
7:30 - finish movie
8 p.m. - Skylight Diner for dinner
8:45 - Lucky Strike
4 a.m. - sleep
Time spent after dinner was split between reading a book, catching the Yankees (if it’s not winter), or hitting the sports club. If I were feeling extra ambitious, I’d go shoot pool or try to ring a girl from my P.S. days. Most of them didn’t return my calls. But on the off chance they did, I’d have myself another lucky strike.
But really, I couldn’t say I was proud of any of it. If a man is not doing something for too long, with no sense of purpose or direction, he’ll feel like a shell of himself. Life will have slipped out from under him before he knows it. Now, I can’t pretend to say I did anything to bring myself out of this. I can only say that my life, perhaps all of life, is about as much happenstance as it is sheer self-determinism.
It all hit me one day at an arcade. I was playing Galaga, smashing all sorts of records, when I noticed an envelope slip from the peacoat of a girl who got up to leave.
“Excuse me, miss. You dropped something.”
It was too loud and she couldn’t hear me. I kept on playing as I was a stage away from claiming another hi-score. Yet I knew I couldn’t let her leave without it. Should I chase after her? Goddammit. By instinct I picked up the envelope and made chase. By the time I was outside, she and her friend had just left in a cab. I hailed another cab and told him to follow her, still within eyesight two blocks down.
During the ride I inspected the envelope, addressed to “Wendy.” It felt kind of bulky, like a bunch of small papers but not money or cards. The seal was broken. Should I look inside? No, it’s not my envelope and it’s none of my business. But I wondered what it could be.
It didn’t occur to me, the absurdity of this whole episode, until I was five blocks in. I ended up having seventeen more to go. I was going out of my way, wasting time and money I didn’t have to return an envelope (full of stickers for all I know) to a stranger I never met. If I were thinking straight, perhaps I would’ve hung onto the envelope and waited for her return. Or I could have left it at the counter. Why the hell did I run after her?
One might suppose it’s the same reason I watched every Yankees game to its bitter end or why I never liked jazz music. I needed things to resolve. Envelopes lying on the floor or left in the hands of some idiot didn’t sit well with me. I had to restore order and see this thing through.
Our cab pulled up to the apartment right as she was entering. “Wendy!” I shouted. She turned around, a quizzical look on her face. Who the hell are you? “You dropped something back there,” I said, flashing the envelope. Her expression lightened, a sense of gratitude mixed with slight confusion.
“Wow, that’s silly of me, thanks,” she paused. “So, you followed me all the way out here just to return it?”
“I hate it when I lose things, and I figured it might be important,” I said.
“I appreciate it. My mother would’ve killed me if I had lost it,” she said. She waved goodbye and disappeared into the complex, slamming the door behind her.
Something in me felt unsettled. Was I expecting her to invite me in? I didn’t suppose so, but cab fare would’ve been nice. Or at least tell me what was in the envelope.
I thought about it more on the ride back. My anxiety had nothing to do with the envelope or the girl. I realized it had to do with my father.
James Franklin Miller.
The cops never caught the man. Of course, they have a side to their story. They say it was inexperience, chalking it up to a young naive suspect who most likely didn't intend to shoot. A teenager perhaps, dabbling in petty crime, not knowing what else to do when my father refused besides pulling the trigger. It seemed pretty textbook. But for all their theories and leads, the cops had failed to bring in a suspect. Not one.
All these years, I’ve tried to push it out of my mind. But suddenly it was all I could think about on that long ride back. I retraced the path my father took that evening. I mapped out the moves of the killer, how he might have dressed, which neighborhood he lived in. All these thoughts, leading to everywhere and nowhere all at once.
That’s when I knew, or at least thought I knew. If I can track down a girl and her lost envelope, I figured I’d might as well join the academy.
I’ll find the man and bring him down myself.
*****
I watched a ton of Cops growing up, and it’s a shame what that show does to a boy. You’re thinking if you ever put on a badge, you’ll be a hero. You’ll chase low-life peddlers through porches after busting them with coke. Or respond to a domestic assault and pistol whip the scum for laying out his girl.
My time at the academy was less glamorous. It was like my days at P.S. 89 with more physical ed. Each morning started the same. Recruits had to prepare the room for inspection, making sure beds were made with all dirty laundry put away. Even a strip of bedsheet showing under the bunk meant a demerit.
After inspection, we’d go outside for training, most times it was light running and circuit exercise. Some days we’d run the full hour. Then it’s the paperwork. The long, hard hours, burning in the classroom—traffic, law, search and seizure, ethics, emergency response, patrol work, tactical crime. Role-playing was my only reprieve.
One time, my group acted out a skit around a disturbance call. The Lindstroms and Morettis weren’t getting along with each other. The Morettis regularly enjoy good company, and the Lindstroms are fed up with the noise. They’ve been harassing each other, name calling and backbiting and the whole bit. Harold, a neighbor across the street, decided to call the police, a typical domestic disturbance.
“What’s going on, gentlemen?” I said as the responding officer.
“We’re just trying to have a good time,” said Royce, playing Tom Moretti.
“We got a complaint from one of your neighbors about the noise.”
“Just some music. I don’t see nothing wrong with that.”
“Nothing wrong? It’s 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Jerry, playing Frank Lindstrom.
“Look, you’re going to need to keep it down,” I said. “No loud noise after eleven. This isn’t the first complaint.”
“What’s the actual crime here, officer?” asked Royce.
“The crime is you pisans got no business being in our neighborhoods,” said Jerry with a wild look in his eye. “Get your ass out.”
“What you just say?”
“You heard me, guido.”
Royce threw the first punch and Jerry went sideways. They were trading blows on the ground as I stood there watching. I didn’t remember that part of the script. Lieutenant Jeffries stepped in and broke it up.
The funny thing is, Royce wasn’t Italian—he was black. But Jerry had beef with him, and the way he called him guido almost sounded like he was calling him something else. If Royce had been looking for a reason to hit him, stupid color commentary seemed as good as any.
*****
I recalled this scene as I found myself sitting across Mr. Lim. How that time prepared me for this moment now, fourteen years later, I couldn’t tell you. (Well I suppose there’s one thing, don’t call him a chink.) There are times when I think about how different my life would’ve been if none of this happened. Where would I be if I hadn’t chosen the academy?
I wouldn’t be having tea at a filthy dim sum restaurant on East Broadway. For eleven months I had been working undercover as a Hasidic Jew named Levi Bernheim. Lim and I were now in a private back room, discussing business. All I could think about was how much har gow and char siu bao I've eaten in the past few weeks. Except it all tasted horrible because it was kosher.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the lazy susan. I looked haggard, my eyes weighed down like sandbags. I hated my scraggly beard—I despised it to hell. I didn't mind the kippah and black hats and suits, but the beard made my neck itch incessantly. The Jews must use a special neck cream, why hadn’t I thought of this? I'm sure I could get a discount with my connections.
Samuel Koi Shing Lim was sent from Hong Kong on the order of the Mo Wan Shing to oversee the smuggling trade in the states. Under Lim, the triad had managed to expand their business through racketeering, prostitution and trafficking. By this time MWS had infiltrated much of Queens and Brooklyn, planting their roots into the transport sector and striking against other Chinese companies pushing goods into the boroughs. Drugs and women meant big money, but it was risky. Lim knew as much. With the feds cracking down on criminal activity, MWS had to pivot or risk getting burned. He was looking to move their revenue streams to legitimate business.
I was part of a sting operation to buy back seven of his girls from an underground ring. Negotiations at this point were a formality. Or so I thought.
“Your watch, Bernheim-san, it is no Piguet, no Patek,” he started. Lim was Chinese, but he oddly subscribed to Japanese customs like bowing and calling everyone san. “Still, I cannot say why I am drawn to it. I don’t know how to put this, but in Chinese we call it wai lik, a special power.”
Lim was a calculating man with pressed suits as precise as his posture. He wore round thin glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache, his hair parted to the right. He was not without his charm, but he concerned himself most with business. Why did he bring up the watch?
“I’m not quite sure I follow, Mr. Lim," I said.
"What I'm saying is, your watch will ensure the good fortune of our deal."
"We already had a deal, Mr. Lim,” I replied. “We’re not talking about the watch.”
Lim had a guard standing at the door, making me with his eye. I had no doubt there was extra muscle if shit went down. This was Lim's turf and I was dealing on his terms. He stared at my wrist and did not seem to budge.
I didn't see how I could part with it. He gave his life over this piece. I’ve held onto it all these years, damn near lost it twice, only to hand it over to this mongrel? But I had no choice. I couldn’t risk blowing this operation.
I unclasped the watch from my wrist and handed it over. It took all the strength from the LORD Jehovah to spare me from putting a bullet through his brain.
He smirked. "Please, send the good Rabbi my regards."
*****
Her name was Tamila. Disheveled bangs swept her left eye, and her rotten mustard tank top struggled to hang onto her sunken shoulders. I ran my finger down her cheek. I couldn’t shake the sadness from her eyes, the hollowness of her stare. Only fifteen, she’d seen more horrors than would fill five lifetimes.
“Miller, it’s go time,” Cortez shouted, his voice piercing my reverie. My eyes went from the photo to the group of men circled up before him. It was the Strategic Response Group, or SRG, our tactical swat unit deployed for special operations. The men were dressed to the nines: helmets, body armor, knee pads, gloves, assault webbing. They were holding M4a1s, with Sigs and Berettas strapped to their sides. Like a bunch of stormtroopers, all dressed in black, ready to mourn the dead with their bullets.
Lim was very particular about the exchange. He never used a building twice, so he wanted to meet at a deserted warehouse near the Brooklyn Bridge. “Right past the memorial ramp where, if you may recall, the 16-year-old Jew was shot.” He was referring to Ari Halberstam, and I knew he cared too much for detail to let this slip casually. Lim was putting a check on me, his idea of poetic justice, as if to say don’t be the next dead Jew.
I was instructed to go in and meet with Lim individually, no handlers. My car had to be parked around the corner, not to be visible from the front entrance. My driver would pull up with a black van in the lot next to the warehouse. Once the money was secured, Lim would have his soldiers transport the seven girls tied up and blindfolded into the van. Upon their departure, I would wait another five minutes to ensure Lim’s caravan was out of sight.
Our unit stationed the fifty-two SRG officers in the adjacent complex. The plan: two squads flank from the east-west entrances, and two squads on standby near the getaway vehicles. A sniper was staking out from the window of the 15th floor, about fifty yards away. Lim usually came with his entourage of twelve, heavily-armed. Upon securing the girls, the goal was to detain and arrest all individuals without gunfire; if one of his men pulled the trigger, all bets were off.
I arrived at the doors at 4:17pm. I was wearing my usual black two piece with my pressed white button-up, topped with my black wool fedora. I was clutching a briefcase with stacks of hundreds, a hundred and fifty thousand in all. Beats of sweat were dripping down my temples—it was awfully warm or it might’ve been the nerves. One of his men patted me down but left my hat alone, then led me across the building to an office with a lone window in the north end. The walls in the room were divided horizontally by the chipped paint, half maroon, half white, and the place reeked of bleach. I imagined his crew had arrived early to inspect and clean the grounds, as Lim was terribly allergic to dust.
Lim was sitting at an oak desk, the sole object in the room, with his legs crossed. Lim seemed unusually pleasant. “Ah, Bernheim-san,” he said. “Take a seat, my friend. You care for some tea?”
I declined. “Your money is here. Where are the girls?”
He reached under the desk and removed a cardboard box. He extended his hand to a guard, a cue to slip the boxcutter onto his palm. Like a surgeon, he dissected the box with gentle precision and what seemed a pleasure almost sincere. He dipped his hand into the crevice and pulled out several fortune cookies.
“You won’t believe the money that's out there," Lim proceeded. "The type of deals I make, the people who do business with me. Manufacturers, dentists, lawyers. You, a god-fearing Jew. Everyone has morals, everyone has a number, too. Isn't that right, Jew? It's all one big happy American dream until someone gets woken up."
"Where are the girls?" I demanded.
"Relax, Mr. Bernheim. You'll have the girls soon enough. This is a fortuitous occasion, let us celebrate." He slid me a cookie with forceful intent, his eyes staying on me. Begrudgingly, I unwrapped the cookie and cracked it in half. On a thin white paper, in black ink, were the words:
DIRTY LITTLE RATS WILL DIE CRUEL DEATH :)
He made me.
The guard grabbed his pistol, pointing it square at my chest. The moment of truth. I closed my eyes, then drew a final breath...
BOOM.
In an instant the doors crashed open and there were voices yelling "Move!" I dropped to the floor and removed my hat, clutching the small Beretta I had strapped underneath. BAM—BAM. One in the neck, one in the chest, two guards down. I glanced at my suit to see if there was blood, I was clean. Out in the corridor Lim’s soldiers were engaged with the SRG, bullets screaming left and right. Everything was moving fast. I looked through the window to find Lim making his way up a staircase to the second floor.
I secured the corners, then traced him up the stairs. Approaching the hallway, I saw four doors, two on each side. Everything around me fell silent. I was walking through the tunnel of a barren sand dune. I could hear whispers like ghosts shifting in the wind.
I kicked down the first door, nothing but a few paint containers. I took down the door across. Empty. I hurried in on the third.
“Hands up! Don’t move!” I shouted. Lim was fixed like a statue, with his back towards me and hands to the side. Broken pieces of glass surrounded his feet. He had shattered the window but the jump was too deep. “This is it, Lim. Nowhere to go.”
He turned to face me, his hands inching up in the air. There was a trickle of blood running down his palm. The Rolex was snaked around his right wrist. For a moment perpetual, we stood.
As for the next thing that happened, I have a hard time explaining.
I was moving in for the arrest when a shard fell from the pane. The sun reflected off his wrist, blinding me momentarily. Then I felt a sting in my torso, which forced me to pull the trigger—except here’s the thing, I don’t remember pulling the trigger. I watched his head whip back violently, then a pause, before the rest of him fell to the floor. As I inched towards the body, I spotted a 9mm in the grip of his palm. I kicked the gun away and bent down to check his pulse. He was gone.
The noise around me unmuted as I heard boots approaching. I was eager to check my clip—but first, the watch. I lifted Lim’s arm, pinched the steel clasp, and slid it onto my wrist. The face of the Rolex, its white dots against the beautiful black dial, was as pure and bright as ever. The time: 4:44.
I looked down to find my shirt blossoming into a glorious rose. My energy was fading before me. I laid down, held my hand close to my chest, and with my eyes shut, let it all slowly fade to black.
*****
Many years ago, I was working another case. It wasn’t a big case (much lower profile than a sex sting), and I had been assigned to a partner, Diggs, who was more of a philosopher than cop. We had a lot of down time, I had too much booze, and he talked about everything but the case. It was a hell of a combination.
One time, Diggs brought up the idea of eternal return. He talked about how the universe and time was infinite, and since there were limited events in our existence, this meant the same events could recur in an infinite loop. I asked him if it was like déjà vu, or Sisyphus rolling a rock. No, he said, and it wasn’t the point. What you’re supposed to ask yourself is, would you be OK if you had to live your life over again, with the same results, both good and bad, exactly the way you have lived it?
At that time, I brushed it off. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, and I didn’t think it mattered much, anyway. It was drivel from a mad man and I was too bent on solving our case. But as I was sitting in the hospital bed, recovering from my wounds, the conversation replayed in my mind. I thought about how I never found the murderer. I thought with greater curiosity about the inner demons that had left me. I didn’t feel apathy, but I didn’t feel rage or bitterness either. Had I come to peace with it? Did I learn to let it go? Would I’ve been OK if I were to redo this a thousand more times, each episode leading to the same sterile room, hooked up to an IV, wondering about the ghost who took my father?
One might suppose there are many things to be found in this world. The girls. My father’s watch. A man’s sense of purpose in the great universe. (I’ll settle for two of three.) Equally there are many other things never to be found.
The burden of life, I decided, was to carry on whether or not I knew the ending. The universe will go on, and so will time, forever. On this earth we're all just ghosts passing through.
This is what my father knew. This is what Diggs was trying to tell me. It all made sense now. ⏹