When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Tommy Tillary got called Tough Tommy, and had a certain tough-guy quality to his manner. Skip Devoe actually was tough, but you had to sense it underneath the surface. It wasn't on display.



He'd been in the service, not the navy you'd have thought his uncle would have preconditioned him for but the army's Special Forces, the Green Berets. He enlisted fresh out of high school and got sent to Southeast Asia during the Kennedy years. He got out sometime in the late sixties, tried college and dropped out, then broke in behind the stick at an Upper East Side singles' bar. After a couple of years he and John Kasabian pooled their savings, signed a long lease on an out-of-business hardware store, spent what they had to remodeling it, and opened up Miss Kitty's.



I saw him occasionally at his own place, but more often at Armstrong's, where he'd drop in frequently when he wasn't working. He was pleasant company, easy to be with, and not much rattled him.



There was something about him, though, and I think what it may have been was an air of cool competence. You sensed that he'd be able to handle just about anything that came along, and without working up a sweat. He came across as a man who could do things, one too who could make quick decisions in midaction. Maybe he acquired that quality wearing a green hat in Vietnam, or maybe I endowed him with it because I knew he'd been over there.



I'd met that quality most often in criminals. I have known several heavy heist men who had it, guys who took off banks and armored cars. And there was a long-haul driver for a moving company who was like that. I got to know him after he'd come back from the Coast ahead of schedule, found his wife in bed with a lover, and killed them both with his hands.



Chapter 3



There was nothing in the papers about the robbery at Morrissey's, but for the next few days you heard a lot of talk about it around the neighborhood. The rumored loss Tim Pat and his brothers had sustained kept escalating. The numbers I heard ranged from ten thousand to a hundred thousand. Since only the Morrisseys and the gunmen would know, and neither were terribly likely to talk, one number seemed as good as the next.



"I think they got around fifty," Billie Keegan told me the night of the Fourth. "That's the number keeps coming up. Of course everybody and his brother was there and saw it."



"What do you mean?"



"I mean so far there's been at least three guys assured me they were there when it happened, and I was there and can swear for a fact that they weren't. And they can supply bits of color that somehow slipped by me. Did you know that one of the gunmen slapped a woman around?"



"Really."



"So I'm told. Oh, and one of the Morrissey brothers was shot, but it was only a flesh wound. I thought it was exciting enough the way it went down, but I guess it's a lot more dramatic when you're not there. Well, ten years after the 1916 Rising they say it was hard to find a man in Dublin who hadn't been part of it. That glorious Monday morning, when thirty brave men marched into the post office and ten thousand heroes marched out. What do you think, Matt? Fifty grand sound about right to you?"



Tommy Tillary had been there, and I figured he'd dine out on it. Maybe he did. I didn't see him for a couple of days, and when I did he never even mentioned the robbery. He'd discovered the secret of betting baseball, he told everybody around. You just bet against the Mets and the Yankees and they'd always come through for you.



EARLY the next week, Skip came by Armstrong's in midafternoon and found me at my table in the back. He'd picked up a dark beer at the bar and brought it with him. He sat down across from me and said he'd been at Morrissey's the night before.



"I haven't been there since I was there with you," I told him.



"Well, last night was my first time since then. They got the ceiling fixed. Tim Pat was asking for you."



"Me?"



"Uh-huh." He lit a cigarette. "He'd appreciate it if you could drop by."



"What for?"



"He didn't say. You're a detective, aren't you? Maybe he wants you to find something. What do you figure he might have lost?"



"I don't want to get in the middle of that."



"Don't tell me."



"Some Irish war, just what I need to cut myself in on."



He shrugged. "You don't have to go. He said to ask you to drop by any time after eight in the evening."



"I guess they sleep until then."



"If they sleep at all."



He drank some beer, wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. I said, "You were there last night? What was it like?"



"What it's always like. I told you they patched the ceiling, did a good job of it as far as I could tell. Tim Pat and his brothers were their usual charming selves. I just said I'd pass the word to you next time I ran into you. You can go or not go."



"I don't think I will," I said.



But the next night around ten, ten-thirty, I figured what the hell and went over there. On the ground floor, the theater troupe was rehearsing Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow. It was scheduled to open Thursday night. I rang the upstairs bell and waited until one of the brothers came downstairs and cracked the door. He told me they were closed, that they didn't open until two. I told him my name was Matthew Scudder and Tim Pat had said he wanted to see me.



"Oh, sure, an' I didn't now ye in that light," he said. "Come inside and I'll tell himself you're here."



I waited in the big room on the second floor. I was studying the ceiling, looking for patched bullet holes, when Tim Pat came in and switched on some more lights. He was wearing his usual garb, but without the butcher's apron.



"You're good to come," he said. "Ye'll have a drink with me? And your drink is bourbon, is it not?"



He poured drinks and we sat down at a table. It may have been the one his brother fell into when he came stumbling through the door. Tim Pat held his glass to the light, tipped it back and drained it.



He said, "Ye were here the night of the incident."



"Yes."



"One of those fine young lads left a hat behind, but misfortunately his mother never got around to sewing a name tape in it, so it's impossible to return it to him."



"I see."



"If I only knew who he was and where to find him, I could see that he got what was rightfully his."



I'll bet you could, I thought.



"Ye were a policeman."



"Not anymore."



"Ye might hear something. People talk, don't they, and a man who keeps his eyes and ears open might do himself a bit of good."



I didn't say anything.



He groomed his beard with his fingertips. "My brothers and I," he said, his eyes fixed on a point over my shoulder, "would be greatly pleased to pay ten thousand dollars for the names and whereabouts of the two lads who visited us the other night."



"Just to return a hat."



"Why, we've a sense of obligation," he said. "Wasn't it your George Washington who walked miles through the snow to return a penny to a customer?"



"I think it was Abraham Lincoln."



"Of course it was. George Washington was the other, the cherry tree. 'Father, I cannot tell a lie.' This nation's heroes are great ones for honesty."



"They used to be."



"And then himself, tellin' us all he's not a crook. Jaysus." He shook his big head. "Well, then," he said. "Do ye think ye'll be able to help us out?"



"I don't see what help I could be."



"Ye were here and saw them."



"They were wearing masks and they had caps on their heads. In fact I could swear they both had their caps on when they left. You don't suppose you found somebody else's hat, do you?"



"Perhaps the lad dropped it on the stairs. If you hear anything, Matt, ye'll let us know?"



"Why not?"



"Are ye of Irish stock yourself, Matt?"



"No."



"I'd have thought maybe one of your forebears was from Kerry. The Kerryman is famous for answering a question with a question."



"I don't know who they were, Tim Pat."



"If you learn anything…



"If I learn anything."



"Ye've no quarrel with the price? It's a fair price?"



"No quarrel," I said. "It's a very fair price."



IT was a good price, the fairness of it notwithstanding. I said as much to Skip the next time I saw him.



"He didn't want to hire me," I said. "He wanted to post a reward. Ten K to the man who tells him who they are and where he can lay his hands on them."



"Would you do it?"



"What, go hunting for them? I told you the other day I wouldn't take the job for a fee. I'm certainly not going to go nosing around on the come."



He shook his head. "Suppose you found out without trying. You walked around the corner on the way to buy a paper and there they were."



"How would I recognize them?"



"How often do you see two guys wearing red kerchiefs for masks? No, seriously, say you recognized them. Or you got hold of the information, the word got out and some contact of yours from the old days put a flea in your ear. You used to have stool pigeons, didn't you?"



"Snitches," I said. "Every cop had them, you couldn't get anywhere without them. Still, I-"



"Forget how you find out," he said. "Just suppose it happened. Would you?"



"Would I-"



"Sell 'em out. Collect the ten grand."



"I don't know anything about them."



"Fine, let's say you don't know whether they're assholes or altar boys. What's the difference? Either way it's blood money, right? The Morrisseys find those kids, they gotta be dead as Kelsey's nuts, right?"



"I don't suppose Tim Pat wants to send them an invitation to a christening."



"Or ask 'em to join the Holy Name Society. Could you do it?"



I shook my head. "I can't answer that," I said. "It would depend on who they were and how bad I needed the money."



"I don't think you'd do it."



"I don't think I would either."



"I sure as shit wouldn't," he said. He tapped the ashes from his cigarette. "There's enough people who would."



"There's people who would kill for less than that."



"I was thinking that myself."



"There were a few cops in the room that night," I said. "You want to bet they'll know about the reward?"



"No bet."



"Say a cop finds out who the holdup men were. He can't make a collar. There's no crime, right? Nothing ever got reported, no witnesses, nothing. But he can turn the two bums over to Tim Pat and walk with half a year's pay."



"Knowing he's aided and abetted murder."



"I'm not saying everybody would do it. But you tell yourself the guys are scum, they've probably killed people themselves, they're a cinch to kill someone sooner or later, and it's not like you know for certain the Morrisseys are going to kill them. Maybe they'll just break a few bones, just scare 'em a little. Try to get their money back, something like that. You can tell yourself that."



"And believe it?"



"Most people believe what they want to believe."



"Yeah," he said. "Can't argue with that."