The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (18 page)

I turned the corner. The main room was like an
airplane hangar. There were twenty or so couples twirling on a huge
dance floor. There was a long bar on the right side of the dance
area, tables on two other sides, and a wall with a grand piano and
sound system on the fourth side. People of all ages, skin tones, and
dress codes were arrayed around the outer ring of the door. If I were
twenty years older, I think I would have said the joint was jumping.

The swing song ended, people applauded, and the
Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" came on. There was a whoop
from the bar area to my right, and the world changed over, from 1943
to 1965. Probably two-thirds of the swingers left the floor, and
their spaces were swallowed up by four-fifths rockers. A
college-looking girl asked me to dance. I declined, a guy about my
age next to me said he would, and they went stomping out there. I
ordered a vodka and orange from a harried but cheerful waitress, and
zigzagged into another room to check my overcoat. I came back to the
dance room. I stood and watched and listened as the Stones turned to
the Temptations, then to the Beach Boys, then back, as my screwdriver
arrived, to I think Glenn Miller and Harry James for one each.

As nearly as I could tell, the generation gaps in the
place were more apparent than real, and everybody was having a ball.
I saw my waitress again, and ordered two more drinks to save her a
trip. A thirtyish woman maybe five-nine came up and said I looked
like I wanted to dance. I told her she was clairvoyant. We danced
three rock tunes when a slow one came on. I told her thank you and
turned away. I found my waitress and got the screwdrivers.

I danced three or four more times and touched up my
waitress maybe twice more for two-handers. I know I grew only dimly
aware that the crowd was thinning out and that I was no longer being
asked to dance. I also know I had a little trouble finding the men's
room, a little more retrieving my coat, and still a little more
finding the front door as the house lights came up to
"the-party's-over" level of brightness. I remember the
bouncer asking me if I wanted a cab, but the cold air felt good
again, and I waved him off, not quite completing whatever sentence I
was saying. Within a few blocks, my eyes grew a little big for their
sockets, the sidewalk a tad slippery from the absence of snow or ice.
That struck me funny. That's why I was having trouble walking. In
Boston, there was so much ice and snow on our never-shoveled
sidewalks that I was so used to allowing for it that I just couldn't
make the adjustment back to good old unadulterated concrete . . .

I bounced my head off the concrete before I realized
I had been hit. I remember only two of them, but later I was told
there were three. I was lying on my left side. The first one I saw
was the guy who bent down and sent the left jab at my right eye. I
twisted my face left and back and took a glancing shot off my right
cheekbone. I sent my right hand cupped, fingers stiff, up into his
throat, and he pulled away, gagging and coughing.

I levered up on my left elbow and got a wicked kick
from behind, just to the left of my spinal column and barely missing
my left kidney. The pain approached the paralyzing level. I reached
my right hand back and got kicked in my forearm. I forced myself to
roll away from the kicker and got my forearms crossed in front of my
face just as he delivered his third shot with his right foot. The
crotch formed by my forearms absorbed most of the force, but the toe
area of his boot caught me just under the chin. I locked my hands
around his calf and put my head just outside his right knee. Then I
lunged up onto my knees and forward,  driving my shoulder below
his knee and pulling his foot into my body to dislocate the knee
joint. I slipped a little, though, and as he and I went down, I felt
his ankle and knee just twist funny. He yelled in pain. I took a
couple of kicks to my left thigh from somebody else, which didn't
help the cause. Somebody, maybe the new kicker, put an amateurish
forearm lock around my throat from behind. I got back onto my knees,
and the first kicker rolled and crawled away from me; I whipped my
left list up into the forearm's groin area but missed the target, him
just releasing and running. I realized a car was pulling up, high
beams on and hom honking loud and long. I also realized that I was
alone on the sidewalk with my wallet intact but my clothes and me
less so.

"Y'know, ya coulda been dead by now."

I pulled the handkerchief away, and inspected the
bloodstain. I licked a reasonably clean comer of the cloth and began
dabbing. .

"I appreciate your stopping."

'The cabbie, beefy, bald, and iiftyish, glanced up at
me in his inside rear mirror. "You're just lucky those three
wasn't good at this yet. No knives. If they'd had knives, they woulda
used 'em, and a fuckin' medical convention couldn't a helped you
then."

"You're probably right,” I said, looking down
at the holes in the knees of my pants.

"You bet I am. I spotted those kids. Maybe an
hour ago. They was hangin' around the edge of the retail strip. I
knew they was lookin' for a mark, but the fuckin' cops can't do
nothing, Used to be the cops would arrest the fuckers or at least
roust them. Now, not only won't the arrest hold up, but the fuckin'
Soo—preem Court'll let the kids sue the cops. For civil rights
violations. You figure it out."

"I can't help you there," I said. My cheek
hurt, my chin and knees burned, and my lower back and thigh ached.
Worst of all, the adrenaline had sobered me up.

"Ya sure ya don't wanna go to the hospital?"
asked the cabbie.

"I'm sure, but thanks."

"Hey, citizens gotta stick together. Ya know,
lotsa guys, cabbies I mean, woulda seen you get jumped and turned
right around. Mebbe two or three I know woulda radioed the dispatcher
to send the cops, but that's it. Me, I think you gotta help. It's no
good to complain about things if you don't, y'know. Then we're like
animals." He pulled into the Marriott Key Bridge's drop-off area
and a doorman, just inside the door, reluctantly put down a magazine
and started out toward us.

"Animals," continued the cabbie. "Just
like those fuckin' kids that jumped you."

I handed him a twenty. "Thanks, my friend."

"Thanks, buddy," replied the cabbie.

I turned, waved off the blinking doorman, and limped
into the hotel lobby.
 
 

FIFTEEN
-•-

IN THE MOVIES ON TV, YOU ALWAYS SEE THE HERO leap up
after a brawl and be unmarked and unrestricted the next time he
appears. In real life, it doesn't work that way. Where I grew up in
Southie, a lot of the kids went into amateur and then club boxing.
Not as many as in the white sections of Dorchester, or
almost-all-black Roxbury, but a lot. I remember the kid who lived
next door. He was only eighteen years old, but after a particularly
tough three-rounder, he would walk, sit, eat, and talk funny for
three or four days. You take it easy, use ice, and chew carefully.
You rarely call Gidget to go surfing. I had put ice on my cheek and
thigh when I got in the night before. When I woke up, though, my
right rib cage hurt like hell. I couldn't remember getting hit there,
but I showed a fist-sized bruise to match the two on my left thigh.
My back ached just enough to tell me there was substantial, but not
serious, damage. I did not try to touch my toes. I moved slowly to
the bathroom. No blood in the urine. I turned to the sink. My right
cheek, reversed as my left in the mirror, was dull red and purple,
not the brighter, almost glossy red and purple you get when you don't
ice it. My chin was scraped and scabby like that of a nine-year-old
who had fallen while running during recess. I realized that the ribs
must have been the first hit, the one that put me down, because I had
only a little swelling on the left side of my head from the bounce
off the sidewalk. I thought about the cabbie's remark on knives, and
I suddenly had to use the toilet again. I took a long, hot bath and
shaved very delicately. I ordered breakfast via room service, no
orange juice. The bellboy bringing in the tray did not indicate by
word or look that he thought I had been hit by a car. I tipped him a
princely sum.

I chewed breakfast on the left side of my mouth and
reached for the telephone. ·

Amazingly, I got J .T. right after Ms. Lost-In-Space.
"Colonel Kivens speaking, sir."

"Sir?" I said. "How often do people
above colonel call you?""

"Who is this, please?"

"Christ, J .T ., you sound a lot more—" I
stopped. Cold. Al and I had had such a similar conversation when he
called me.

"Who is this?" said J .T., a bit more
aggressively.

"J.T., it's John Cuddy. I'm sorry to-"

"John, how are you? Wait a minute, where are
you?"

“
I'm here. In D.C., I mean. I just came in from
Pittsburgh. J .T., Al—"

"I know," he said quietly. "There was
a blurb about it in the Post. I'm really sorry."

"Yeah," I said. "Listen, I need some
information. I need to know some things about what Al was doing in
Vietnam. I'm convinced he wasn't killed by any—"

"Listen," he said knowingly. "Everybody
goes there. If I were you though, the one thing I wouldn't miss is
the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I think it's the best."

“
If I meet you there, can we talk in the clear?"

"That's right," he said cheerfully.

"Twelve noon today?"

"That's fine. Be sure to see the Spirit of St.
Louis. Enjoy your stay now."

"I'll be the one with the red carnation."

He gave a forced chuckle and rang off.

Terrific. Either J.T. was worried about somebody
overhearing what I would say to him about Al or what he would say to
me about Al. Or what he would say to anyone about anything. Just
terrific.

I hung up and called the
Suffolk County DA's office. I asked for Nancy Meagher. A secretary
came on and said Nancy was out for the morning. I told her to tell
Nancy that Mr. Cuddy had called and would call back later. She
thanked me and hung up. I propped up some pillows and lay back on
them. I thought about calling my "friend" at the insurance
company who was supposed to get a guard to watch over Jesse and
Emily. My ribs hurt every time I inhaled and only a little less as I
exhaled. I thought about calling the D'Amicos and complimenting them
on the depth of their son's loyalty to his brother. I noticed that my
thigh didn't ache when I was lying down. Instead of those calls, or
calling Martha and commiserating, or Carol and misleading, or Straun
and cursing, I put on the pay-TV channel and watched Clint Eastwood
do to about a hundred guys in sequence what I should have done to my
three the night before.

* **

The taxi left me about two hundred feet from the
steps of the building. My thigh spasmed every time my left leg hit
the ground, but I knew the more I walked on it, the sooner it would
loosen up. My back and rib cage would ache for a few days.

It was a clear, bright day, somewhere in the high
40s, which was good, since the seams under both arms on my topcoat
were split and hence being repaired back at the hotel or some
subcontractor thereof. I had junked my pants, so I was wearing the
funeral suit. Gingerly, I climbed the stairs.

I walked into the crowded lobby. Somehow I'm
reluctant to use "museum" to describe a place that has
things in it that I remember as current events. The huge Apollo space
capsule exhibit was off to the right. A number of airships, from
World War I bi-planes to post-Korea jet fighters, were hanging from
the ceiling, fifty or sixty feet above my head and suspended in
eternal flight. I spotted J.T., in uniform but strolling unmilitarily
around the base of the Apollo exhibit while the turistas streamed
along a walkway over his head to see into the spacecraft. I edged
over to and under Lindbergh's plane, staring up at it like a little
kid in church. Lindbergh was well before my time, and I didn't mind
thinking of his plane being in a museum.

"A brave man," said a familiar voice from
behind me.

"Who gave a lot to his country," I replied.

J.T. stepped even with me.

"Sorry about the telephone."

"I assumed you had your reasons."

He was frowning. "I did. And do. How is Al's
family taking it?"

"Wife's O.K., son is too young. Everybody else
is dead."

I must have sounded pretty despondent, because J.T.
didn't reply right away.

"What is it you need?"

"A1 was killed by somebody who knew what he was
doing."

"The paper, uh, implied that—"

"Yeah, I know. But his room at the hotel in
Boston was tossed professionally, after he was taken and maybe even
before he was killed. Also, Al called me to set up dinner after some
meeting he was going to have. He'd have had no reason to go looking—"

"Hey, John. Take it easy. I wasn't implying
anything. I just meant the paper—"

"Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "I
know, I know. Let's walk a little."

"I noticed your limp. And your face isn't
exactly yearbook material."