When the Sacred Ginmill Closes Read online

Page 19

 

  My head ached fiercely and my gut felt like it had taken somebodys best shot. I lay down again, got up quickly when the room started to spin. In the bathroom I washed down a couple of aspirin with a half-glass of water, but they came right back up again.

  I remembered the bottle Billie had pressed on me. I looked around for it and finally found it in the flight bag. I couldnt remember putting it back after the last drink of the night, but then there were other things I couldnt recall either, like most of the walk home from his apartment. That sort of miniblackout didnt bother me much. When you drove cross-country you didnt remember every billboard, every mile of highway. Why bother recalling every minute of your life?

  The bottle was a third gone, and that surprised me. I could recall having had one drink with Billie while we listened to the record, then a short one before I turned the lights out. I didnt want one now, but there are the ones you want and the ones you need, and this came under the latter heading. I poured a short shot into the water glass and shuddered when I swallowed it. It didnt stay down either, but it fixed things so the next one did. And then I could swallow another couple of aspirins with another half-glass of water, and this time they stayed swallowed.

  If Id been drunk when I was born…

  I stayed right there in my room. The weather gave me every reason to remain where I was, but I didnt really need an excuse. I had the sort of hangover I knew enough to treat with respect. If Id ever felt that bad without having drunk the night before, Id have gone straight to a hospital. As it was, I stayed put and treated myself like a man with an illness, which in retrospect would seem to have been more than metaphor.

  The phone rang again later in the afternoon. I could have had the desk stop my calls, but I didnt feel equal to the conversation that would have required. It seemed easier to let it ring itself out.

  It rang a third time in the early evening, and this time I picked it up. It was Skip Devoe.

  "I was looking for you," he said. "You going to bounce around later?"

  "I dont want to go out in this. "

  "Yeah, its coming down again. It was slacking off for a while there and now its teeming. The weather guy says were gonna get a lot of it. We saw those guys yesterday. "

  "Already?"

  "Not the guys in the black hats, not the bad guys. The lawyers and the accountants. Our accountants armed with what he calls a Jewish revolver. You know what that is?"

  "A fountain pen. "

  "You heard it, huh? Anyway, they all told us what we already knew, which is terrific, considering theyll bill us for the advice. We got to pay. "

  "Well, thats what you figured. "

  "Yeah, but it doesnt mean I like it. I spoke to the guy again, Mr. Voice on the Phone. I told old Telephone Tommy we needed the weekend to find the money. "

  "You told Tillary?"

  "Tillary? What are you talking about?"

  "You said-"

  "Oh, right, I didnt even make the connection. No, not Tillary, I just said Telephone Tommy, I could have said Teddy or any name with a T. Which suddenly I cant think of. Name me some names start with T. "

  "Do I have to?"

  There was a pause. "You dont feel so hot," he said.

  "Keegan had me up till dawn listening to records," I said. "Im not a hundred percent yet. "

  "Fucking Keegan," he said. "We all hit it pretty good, but hes gonna kill himself with it. "

  "He does keep at it. "

  "Yeah. Listen, I wont keep you. What I want to know, can you keep Monday open? The day and the night. Because I think thats when were gonna move on this, and if we have to do it Id just as soon get it over with. "

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Well talk about that, iron it out. Okay?"

  What did I have to do on Monday? I was still working for Tommy Tillary, but I didnt much care what hours I put in. My conversation with Jack Diebold had confirmed my own opinion that I was wasting my time and Tillarys money, that they didnt have a case against him and werent likely to make one. Carolyn Cheathams diatribe had left me not greatly inclined to do much for Tommy anyway, or to feel all that guilty about taking his money and giving him small value for it.

  I had a couple of things to tell Drew Kaplan next time I talked to him. And Id dig up a few more along the way. But I might not have to put in too many long hours in Sunset Park s bars and bodegas.

  I told Skip Monday was wide open.

  LATER that evening I called the liquor store across the street, I ordered up two quarts of Early Times and asked them to have the kid stop at the deli and pick up a six-pack of ale and a couple of sandwiches. They knew me and knew Id make it worth the delivery boys while to give me special service, and I did. It was worth it to me.

  I took it easy with the hard booze, drank a can of ale, and made myself eat half a sandwich. I took a hot shower, and that helped, and then I ate another half-sandwich and drank another can of ale.

  I went to sleep, and when I woke up I put the TV on and watched Bogart and Ida Lupino, I guess it was, in High Sierra. I didnt pay a whole lot of attention to the movie but it was company. I went over to the window now and then and watched the rain. I ate part of the remaining sandwich, drank some more ale, and nipped a little from the bourbon bottle. When the movie ended I turned the set off and had a couple of aspirins and went back to bed.

  * * *

  SATURDAY I was a little more mobile. I needed a drink again on awakening but I made it a short one, and the first one stayed down this time. I had a shower, drank the last can of ale, and went downstairs and had breakfast at the Red Flame. I left half of the eggs but ate the potatoes and a double order of rye toast and drank a lot of coffee. I read the paper, or tried to. I couldnt make much sense out of what I read.

  After breakfast I stopped in McGoverns for a quick one. Then I went around the corner to St. Paul s and sat there in the soft stillness for a half-hour or so.

  Then back to the hotel.

  I watched a baseball game in my room, and a fight on "Wide World of Sports," along with the arm-wrestling championship of the world and some women doing some kind of aquatic mono-ski exhibition. What they were doing was evidently very difficult, but not terribly interesting to look at. I turned them off and left. I dropped in at Armstrongs and talked to a couple of people, then went over to Joey Farrells for a bowl of three-alarm chili and a couple of Carta Blancas.

  I had a brandy with my coffee before returning to the hotel for the night. I had enough bourbon in the room to get me through Sunday but I stopped and picked up some beer because I was almost out and the stores cant sell it before noon on Sunday. Nobody knows why. Maybe the churches are behind it, maybe they want the faithful showing up with their hangovers sharp at the edges, maybe repentance is easier to sell to the severely afflicted.

  I sipped and watched TV movies. I slept in front of the set, woke up in the middle of a war movie, had a shower and shaved and sat around in my underwear watching the end of that movie and the start of another, sipping bourbon and beer until I could go back to sleep again.

  When I woke up again, it was Sunday afternoon and it was still raining.

  AROUND three-thirty the phone rang. I picked it up on the third ring and said hello.

  "Matthew?" It was a woman, and for an instant I thought it was Anita. Then she said, "I tried you day before yesterday, but there was no answer," and I heard the Tarheel in her voice.

  "I want to thank you," she said.

  "Nothing to thank me for, Carolyn. "

  "I want to thank you for being a gentleman," she said, and her laughter came gently. "A bourbon-drinking gentleman. I seem to remember having a lot to say on that subject. "

  "As I recall, you were reasonably eloquent. "

  "And on other subjects as well. I apologized to Billie for being less than a lady and he assured me I was fine, but bartenders always tell you that, dont they? I want to thank you-all for seeing me home. " A pause. "U
h, did we-"

  "No. "

  A sigh. "Well, Im glad of that, but only cause Id hate to not remember it. I hope I wasnt too disgraceful, Matthew. "

  "You were perfectly fine. "

  "I was not perfectly fine. I remember that much. Matthew, I said some hard things about Tommy. I was bad-mouthing him something awful, and I hope you know that was just the drink talking. "

  "I never thought otherwise. "

  "He treats me fine, you know. Hes a good man. Hes got his faults. Hes strong, but he has his weaknesses. "

  At a fellow police officers wake, I once heard an Irish woman speak thus of the drink. "Sure, its a strong mans weakness," she had said.

  "He cares for me," Carolyn said. "Dont you pay any mind to what I said before. "

  I told her Id never doubted he cared for her, and that I wasnt all that clear on what she had or hadnt said, that Id been hitting it pretty hard that night myself.

  SUNDAY night I walked over to Miss Kittys. A light rain was falling but it didnt amount to much.

  Id stopped at Armstrongs first, briefly, and Miss Kittys had the same Sunday-night feel to it. A handful of regulars and neighborhood people rode a mood that was the flip side of Thank God Its Friday. On the jukebox, a girl sang about having a brand-new pair of roller skates. Her voice seemed to slip in between the notes and find sounds that werent on the scale.

  I didnt know the bartender. When I asked for Skip he pointed toward the office in back.

  Skip was there, and so was his partner. John Kasabian had a round face, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses with circular lenses that magnified his deep-set dark eyes. He was Skips age or close to it, but he looked younger, an owlish schoolboy. He had tattoos on both forearms, and he didnt look at all to be the sort of person who got tattooed.

  One tattoo was a conventional if garish representation of a snake entwined around a dagger. The snake was ready to strike, and the tip of the dagger dripped blood. The other tattoo was simpler, even tasteful: a chain-link bracelet encircling his right wrist. "If Id at least had it on the other wrist," he had said, "at least the watchd cover it. "

  I dont know how he really felt about the tattoos. He affected disdain for them, contempt for the young man whod elected to get himself thus branded, and sometimes he did seem genuinely embarrassed by them. At other times I sensed that he was proud of them.

  I didnt really know him all that well. His was a less expansive personality than Skips. He didnt like to bounce around the bars, worked the early shift and did the marketing before that. And he wasnt the drinker his partner was. He liked his beer, but he didnt hit it the way Skip did.

  "Matt," he said, and pointed to a chair. "Glad youre going to help us with this. "

  "Whatever I can. "

  "Its tomorrow night," Skip said. "Were supposed to be in this room, eight oclock sharp, phones gonna ring. "

  "And?"

  "We get instructions. I should have a car ready. Thats part of the instructions. "

  "Have you got a car?"

  "I got my car, its no hassle having it ready. "

  "Has John got a car?"

  "Ill get it out of the garage," John said. "You think we might want to take two cars?"