When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

"No, it'll have to be now."



"My god, what is this? You're not the police, are you? What did we do, forget to pay somebody off?"



"I'm working for the fellow upstairs," I said, gesturing. "He'd want you to cooperate with me."



"Mr. Morrissey?"



"Call Tim Pat and ask him, if you want. My name is Scudder."



From the rear of the theater, someone with a rich brogue called out, "Mary Jean, what in Christ's fucking name is taking you so long?"



She rolled her eyes, sighed, and held the door open for me.



* * *



AFTER I left the Irish theater I called Skip at his apartment and looked for him at his saloon. Kasabian suggested I try the gym.



I tried Armstrong's first. He wasn't there, and hadn't been in, but Dennis said someone else had. "A fellow was looking for you," he told me.



"Who?"



"He didn't leave his name."



"What did he look like?"



He considered the question. "If you were choosing up sides for a game of cops and robbers," he said thoughtfully, "you would not pick him to be one of the robbers."



"Did he leave a message?"



"No. Or a tip."



I went to Skip's gym, a large open second-floor loft on Broadway over a delicatessen. A bowling alley had gone broke there a year or two earlier, and the gym had the air of a place that wouldn't outlast the term of its lease. A couple of men were working out with free weights. A black man, glossy with sweat, struggled with bench presses while a white partner spotted him. On the right, a big man stood flat-footed, working the heavy bag with both hands.



I found Skip doing pulldowns on the lat machine. He was wearing gray sweatpants and no shirt and he was sweating fiercely. The muscles worked in his back and shoulders and upper arms. I stood a few yards off watching while he finished a set. I called his name, and he turned and saw me and smiled in surprise, then did another set of pulldowns before rising and coming over to take my hand.



He said, "What's up? How'd you find me here?"



"Your partner's suggestion."



"Well, your timing's good. I can use a break. Let me get my cigarettes."



There was an area where you could smoke, a couple of armchairs grouped around a water cooler. He lit up and said, "It helps, working out. I had a head and a half when I woke up. We kicked it around last night, didn't we? You get home all right?"



"Why, was I in bad shape?"



"No worse'n I was. You were feeling pretty good. The way you were talking, Frank and Jesse had their tits in the wringer and you were ready to start cranking."



"You think I was a little optimistic?"



"Hey, that's okay." He drew on his Camel. "Me, I'm starting to feel human again. You get the blood moving, sweat out some of the poison, it makes a difference. You ever work with weights, Matt?"



"Not in years and years."



"But you used to?"



"Oh, a hundred years ago I thought I might like to box a little."



"You serious? You used to duke it out?"



"This was in high school. I started hanging out at the Y gym, lifting a little, training. Then I had a couple of PAL fights and I found out I didn't like getting hit in the face. And I was clumsy in the ring, and I felt clumsy, and I didn't like that."



"So you got a job where they let you carry a gun instead."



"And a badge and a stick."



He laughed. "The runner and the boxer," he said. "Look at them now. You came up here for a reason."



"Uh-huh."



"And?"



"I know who they are."



"Frank and Jesse? You're kidding."



"No."



"Who are they? And how did you manage it? And-"



"I wondered if we could get the crew together tonight. After closing time, say."



"The crew? Who do you mean?"



"Everybody we had with us chasing around Brooklyn the other night. We need some manpower, and there's no point involving new people."



"We need manpower? What are we going to do?"



"Nothing tonight, but I'd like to hold a war council. If that's all right with you."



He jabbed his cigarette into an ashtray. "All right with me?" he said. "Of course it's all right with me. Who do you want, the Magnificent Seven? No, there were five of us. The Magnificent Seven Minus Two. You, me, Kasabian, Keegan and Ruslander. What's tonight, Wednesday? Billie'll close around one-thirty if I ask him nice. I'll call Bobby, I'll talk to John. You really know who they are?"



"I really do."



"I mean do you know specifically or-"



"The whole thing," I said. "Names, addresses, the works."



"The whole shmear. So who are they?"



"I'll come by your office around two."



"You fuck. Suppose you get hit by a bus between now and then?"



"Then the secret dies with me."



"You prick. I'm gonna do some bench presses. You want to try a set of bench presses, just sort of warm up your muscles?"



"No," I said. "I want to go have a drink."



I didn't have the drink. I looked into one bar but it was crowded, and when I got back to my hotel Jack Diebold was sitting in a chair in the lobby.



I said, "I figured it was you."



"What, the Chinese bartender describe me?"



"He's Filipino. He said a fat old man who didn't leave a tip."



"Who tips at bars?"



"Everybody."



"Are you serious? I tip at tables, I don't tip standing up at a bar. I didn't think anybody did."



"Oh, come on. Where have you been doing your drinking, the Blarney Stone? The White Rose?"



He looked at me. "You're in a funny mood," he said. "Bouncy, peppy."



"Well, I'm right in the middle of something."



"Oh?"



"You know how it is when it all falls into place and things break apart for you? I had an afternoon like that."



"We're not talking about the same case, are we?"



I looked at him. "You haven't been talking about anything," I said. "What case are you- oh, Tommy, Christ. No, I'm not talking about that. There's nothing there to crack."



"I know."



I remembered how my day had started. "He called me this morning," I said. "To complain about you."



"Did he now."



"You're harassing him, he said."



"Yeah, and a hot lot of good it's doing me."



"I'm supposed to give you a character reference, tell you he's really good people."



"Is that right. Well, is he really good people?"



"No, he's an asshole. But I could be prejudiced."



"Sure. After all, he's your client."



"Right." During all of this he had gotten up from his chair and the two of us had walked to the sidewalk in front of the hotel. At the curb, a cabdriver and the driver of a florist's delivery van were having an argument.



I said, "Jack, why'd you come looking for me today?"



"Happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought of you."



"Uh-huh."



"Oh, hell," he said. "I wondered if you had anything."



"On Tillary? There's not going to be anything on him, and if I found it- he is my client."



"I meant did you find anything on the Spanish kids." He sighed. "Because I'm starting to get worried that we're gonna lose that one in court."



"Seriously? You've got them admitting to the burglary."



"Yeah, and if they plead to burglary that's the end of it. But the DA's office wants to go for some kind of homicide charge, and if it goes to trial I could see losin' the whole thing."



"You've got stolen goods ID'd with serial numbers found in their residence, you've got fingerprints, you've-"



"Aw, shit," he said. "You know what can happen in a courtroom. All of a sudden the stolen goods isn't evidence anymore because there's some technicality about the search, they found a stolen typewriter when they were only empowered to search for a stolen adding machine, whatever the hell it was. And the fingerprints, well, the one was over there months ago hauling trash for Tillary, that would account for the prints, right? I can see a smart lawyer kicking holes in a solid case. And I just thought, well, if you ran into something good, I'd like to know about it. And it helps your client if it locks up Cruz and Herrera, right?"



"I suppose so. But I haven't got anything."



"Not a thing?"



"Not as far as I can see."



I wound up taking him to Armstrong's and buying us both a couple of drinks. I tipped Dennis a pound just for the pleasure of seeing Jack's reaction. Then I went back to my hotel and left a call at the desk for one in the morning, and set my alarm clock for insurance.



I took a shower and sat on the edge of my bed, looking out at the city. The sky was darkening, turning that cobalt blue it shows all too briefly.



I lay down, stretched out, not really expecting to sleep. The next thing I knew the phone was ringing, and I had no sooner answered it and hung it up again than my clock sounded. I put on my clothes, splashed a little cold water on my face, and went out to earn my money.



Chapter 22



When I got there they were still waiting for Keegan. Skip had the top of a file cabinet set up as a bar, with four or five bottles and some mix and a bucket of ice cubes. A Styrofoam ice chest on the floor was full of cold beer. I asked if there was any coffee left. Kasabian said there was probably some in the kitchen, and he came back with an insulated plastic pitcher full of coffee and a mug and some cream and sugar. I poured myself black coffee, and I didn't put any booze in it for the time being.



I took a sip of the coffee and there was a knock on the door out front. Skip answered it and came back with Billie. "The late Billie Keegan," Bobby said, and Kasabian fixed him a drink of the same twelve-year-old Irish Billie drank at Armstrong's.



There was a lot of banter, joking back and forth. Then it all died down at once, and before it could start up again I stood up and said, "Something I wanted to talk to all of you about."



"Life insurance," Bobby Ruslander said. "I mean, have you guys thought about it? I mean, like, really thought about it?"



I said, "Skip and I were talking last night, and we came up with something. The two guys with the wigs and beards, we realized we'd seen them before. A couple of weeks ago, they were the ones who stuck up Morrissey's after-hours."



"They wore handkerchief masks," Bobby said. "And last night they wore wigs and beards and masks, so how could you tell?"



"It was them," Skip said. "Believe it. Two shots into the ceiling? Remember?"



"I don't know what you're talking about," Bobby said.



Billie said, "Bobby and I only saw 'em Monday night from a distance, and you didn't see 'em at all, did you, John? No, of course not, you were around the block. And were you at Morrissey's the night of the holdup? I don't recall seeing you there."



Kasabian said he never went to Morrissey's.



"So the three of us got no opinion," Billie went on. "If you say it was the same two guys, I say fine. Is that it? Because unless I missed something, we still don't know who they are."