We Were Kings (11 page)

“Do you know if he was in debt to anyone? Was he getting by financially?”

The tin-whistle player and the bagpiper laughed, and the older man shook his head. The soft skin of his cheeks trembled. He had all the warmth that the tall man lacked. “Ah, that's a good one, a musician who's not in debt to somebody. Mickey, like everyone else that plays the circuit, made very little from what he loved to do, and any man you ask around here, despite the
craic,
is just making ends meet. He worked double shifts at the docks and even with that, I know it was difficult on him and his family.”

“So he wouldn't have had time to be gambling?”

“No, not that I ever heard of.”

“Has your boss, de Burgh, has he ever been strong-armed by any of the local Irish gangs?”

“You mean the Americans?”

“Again with the Americans. I mean any gangs—has anyone demanded kickbacks from the money you guys bring in off a weekend? Do you have people pressing you for security or to be the sole suppliers for your booze?”

“No, none of that here. They wouldn't dare.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wouldn't be wise, Detective. We can look after our own.”

“The way you looked after Mickey.”

“God rest his soul, now that's not fair. It wasn't anyone here who did that to Mickey.”

Owen nodded. The thin man's polished shoes stamped the tiles of the hallway as he returned; he carried a sheet of ruled paper in his hand, his face as expressionless as ever. He held it out to Owen, who took it and glanced briefly at the names written there in a fine penmanship.

“That's the name of Mickey's bandmates and the musicians from bands they regularly played with here and at Mr. de Burgh's other venues around the city. Perhaps they'll be able to shed some light on the unfortunate circumstances of Mickey's death.”

“Unfortunate circumstances? That's an odd way of putting it.”

“How else would you put it, Detective?”

“
Unfortunate
is when I spill coffee on my best white shirt or when my horse comes in last or when the Sox lose to the Yanks.
Unfortunate
is that washerwoman with the broken back scrubbing the floor.
Murder
is what I call it when a man is beaten to a pulp, tarred and feathered, then shot through the head. Nothing fucking unfortunate about it at all.”

“I stand corrected, then. That is a more precise way of putting it, surely.”

Owen was suddenly sweating. The room seemed much too warm, and though it was a vast space he felt the air close and stifling. He coughed into his hand, felt the sweat trickling down his back. He pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket and the pen from its binder clip. “Do you mind,” he said, “if I get your names again?”

“Donal Phelan,” the thin man said.

“Peadar McGann,” said the whistle player.

“Martin Butler,” the bagpiper said and looked up at him. Owen glanced at his face, wrote the name slowly, pursed his lips, and then put the notebook back in his pocket. He looked at the pins on the thin man's lapel and then at his eyes. “Would you tell Mr. de Burgh that I stopped by, and if anything comes to mind, even something you don't think is important, would you mind giving me a shout?”

“We'll do that, Detective,” said the thin man curtly, tapping the pocket of his jacket blazer where he'd deposited Owen's business card. “Most certainly we will.”

On the street, Owen considered the placards stapled to telephone poles and the posters in storefront windows announcing the upcoming shows in the Square: Tommy Keenan and the Big Brass Céilí Band was in for a string of weekends at the Crystal Ballroom, and Patrick Costello and the Boys of the Glen were being flown in direct from Ireland for a special concert at Dorchester's Florian Hall and two nights at the Hibernian. He reached for his notebook and opened it again, considered the names there. He thought of Martin Butler, the bagpiper, and the thin man, Donal, with the cold eyes. The world was becoming a dangerous place and you had to know where to tread and then you had to tread lightly. Eisenhower was exploding nuclear warheads by the hundreds in the Pacific as a show to the Soviets, and in the less than a decade since the war ended, the world seemed to have changed so much.

He crossed at the intersection of Dudley and Washington and a woman stepped out of DeWitt's Travel Agency before him, causing him to stop. She was still adjusting the clasp on the brown handbag slung over her shoulder when she looked up. It was Mickey Flynn's widow.

“Mrs. Flynn,” Owen said.

“Hello, Detective.” Despite the heat, she was wearing a black mourning dress and a black shawl, her red hair pulled back beneath a dark kerchief. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed, her cheeks flushed from the heat. To him, she looked the same as she had on the evening he'd met her down at the coroner's office after he'd agreed to show her the body and Fierro had lifted back the sheet covering her husband. The light had been different then, certainly, brighter, harsher, diminishing the lines and creases on her face so she seemed very young and vulnerable, and the morgue was a cold room, but little else seemed to have changed. It was difficult to imagine that only two days had passed since then.

“Are you—are you okay? The children—”

“Yes, yes, I think we are,” she said, slightly breathless, as if the question were of such a serious complexity she was trying to understand what it meant. Her eyes looked about as if she thought someone might tell her what to say. “Mrs. Ryan is looking after Mairéad and Finn today,” she said, almost as if it were a question to herself, and she frowned, as if she were in doubt of the fact, and then continued, “while I run some errands.”

Owen didn't know what to say and felt helpless. He went to speak—some commonplace-yet-safe nonsense about how he was glad to see her out and about so soon—but Mrs. Flynn spoke first.

“It still feels so queer,” she began. “I don't think I have my head wrapped about it. I expect to go home and see Michael, but I know that isn't going to happen.” She looked at him briefly, red-rimmed eyes blazing, and then looked away to where people moved about the street. There was the thrum of traffic, the clang and squeal of distant trolley cars, the sky high and bright above, and she squinted into it. Owen didn't think she was squinting because of the light but rather because she was trying to find a way to explain something.

“I don't know,” she said, “I don't know at all.”

“What's that, Mrs. Flynn?”

“I don't know what we'll do now. I'm just after getting our tickets back home, and meself and the children are taking the boat next Wednesday.”

“You're going back to Ireland?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Sure there's nothing for us here now anyway. It was always Michael's idea to come to America, to Boston. It's a hard, cruel place and I never did get used to it. Thank God, Mr. de Burgh has arranged everything. It will make it less of a hardship. It will be good to be settled back home, good for the children to be around family, around their own.”

“Mr. de Burgh took care of the trip for you?”

“He did and he's going to get Michael's body shipped home and Mr. Phelan says they're arranging a dance and all the proceeds will go to help us get started again and—”

She still stared at a point above the passersby and the traffic, looking as if she were lost, as if she had woken to find herself in a place she didn't recognize.

“I see him in my dreams, Detective,” she said, and her voice had a hushed, awed quality to it. “He's come to me every night since I saw what they'd done to him, and in the dream he's always whole and himself again and I wake up happy but then I realize I haven't woken up at all.”

She tottered slightly and for a moment he thought she might fall. He reached out an arm to steady her. “Mrs. Flynn, if there's any way that I can help—”

“I don't need your help,” she said quickly, her cheeks reddening, as if she were embarrassed that she'd momentarily lost herself and had said too much. “But thank you,” she said, her voice trembling now. “I hope you find the men responsible for this. I hope the men who killed my Michael get justice for what they did to him.”

“I promise you that they will. If you leave a forwarding address, I can contact you with any news of the case, I'll let you know—”

“No!” Mrs. Flynn shook her head fiercely. “When I leave here I don't want to hear another thing, I don't ever want to remember this place.” She turned and strode away with her hand held to her face, her steps quickening as she began to cry, and the words came to Owen, muffled with grief: “Thank you.”

Owen watched her go. Sunlight and heat trembled on the chrome and glass of cars, on the traffic moving east and west along the Avenue. The light glanced and ricocheted off metal stanchions before buildings and on mailboxes and newspaper stands and the trolley banging and clanging up Dudley Ave. The migraine grasped his head in its claws and squeezed and shook it so that it seemed horses were galloping thunderously in his skull. A wave of nausea came upon him and he thought he might be sick. He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief and cursed the heat and walked weakly back to his car.

_________________________

Park Street, Downtown

THE GOLDEN DOME
of the State House blazed as the sun rose higher over the city. Dante, hustling up Park Street from the train station, glanced at his watch: 10:26. He was nearly an hour late.

The Commonwealth faced the northeast end of the Boston Common. It was a fine-dining establishment where politicians fine-tuned legislation and where businessmen impressed potential clients or greased up old contacts; a place where the dying blue bloods on Beacon Hill came to dine and bask in a privilege that no longer held any influence in the city. Occasionally the nouveau riche arrived here to show off their newly minted wealth with pompous, unrefined flourish and to prove to others, as well as themselves, that they could afford any entrée in the leather-bound menu.

It took a moment for Dante's eyes to adjust to the darkness of the lobby. Spots brought on by the harsh sunlight skittered in his vision, and he pressed at his eyes until they passed. A worker pushed a large vacuum cleaner across the plush maroon rug. The electrical cord snaked and coiled along the ground. Dante carefully stepped over it and into the restaurant.

Several chandeliers hung from the gilded ceilings, dimmed to the lowest setting. Even in such muted light, he could see that the cherrywood walls, dividers, and railings were polished to a mirror-sharp shine. Looking as if they'd been taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, oil paintings hung in ornate, gold-tinted frames. To his right, a smoking area was cordoned off and squared up with black leather chairs, the backs sectioned with shallow button tufts and detailed along the borders with silver nails. Stepping farther into the main dining room, he saw tables draped in fine white cloth, and he watched as several drab women in their fifties carefully placed fine china beside the polished silverware, crystal glasses, and napkins folded into sharp-lined pyramids.

Dante stood there and felt a familiar panic wind its way up his stomach, sucking the air from his chest. He reminded himself that it was for the money and nothing else: thirty dollars plus tips, four nights a week. With that and the work at the garage, he could get out of the red and find a bigger apartment or even rent a small house outside of Boston, perhaps in Medford, where many of the North End Italians had moved over the past few years.

Across the dining room, a very thin man walked out of the connecting hallway, saw Dante standing there, and raised his hand, beckoning him over as if he were demanding a servant to quickly step to it. Dante took off his hat and walked between the tables and nearly stumbled as he hurried up a set of three stairs to meet the man.

“I'm assuming you're here for the audition?”

“Yes. Are you Mr. Jennings?”

“I am.”

The man was wearing the pin-striped suit of a banker, the collar of his shirt open at the neck where coils of blondish-white hair glimmered metallically. The suit probably cost well over two hundred but most likely that didn't matter to the man; he looked as if he had slept in it three nights in a row. His skin appeared flushed, and his gray eyes were rimmed with red. Dante could smell cologne and, underneath it, a fair share of whiskey coming through his pores. He could tell the man was suffering the worst part of a hangover and was in desperate need of a drink.

“I'm Dante Cooper. I called you a couple of days ago.” He reached out to shake the man's hand. The man's face showed little emotion, and he seemed reluctant to reach out but did so anyway. His grip was limp and clammy. Dante squeezed it tight and then let go. When the man turned around, Dante instinctively wiped his palm against the side of his pants.

“Follow me, David. There's a couple ahead of you. You can just wait at the bar if you like.”

“It's Dante.”

“What's that?”

“My name…it's Dante.”

“Oh yes, Dante it is.”

They passed by the steel double doors that opened into the kitchen. The light coming from the circular windows was intense and sterile, the brightness of an operating room in a hospital. From inside, someone called out in Russian, and the sounds of pots and pans banged in response as the cooks scrabbled to get the lunch preparations in full motion.

“This is where the piano is,” the thin man said. “We call this the Red Room.”

Other than the polished dark oak of the bar and the circular tables arranged on the floor, the lounge seemed to possess every shade of red imaginable. Sangria. Scarlet. Burgundy. Cardinal. Several ornate lamps with tasseled crimson shades sat atop the U-shaped bar, bleeding a subdued and secretive light. Facing north and with velvet curtains pulled back, several large windows looked out onto the street.

“Just take a look at her,” Jennings said. “Not bad.”

It took Dante a moment, but then he registered whom the man was referring to. On the sidewalk, a peroxide-blond woman passed one of the windows, stopped in midstride, turned, and looked at her reflection in the glass, making sure the lines of her lipstick were clean and that not a hair was out of place. With it so dark inside, she had no idea she was being watched.

“Such a pretty little thing. A mouth like that wasn't meant for singing Sunday hymns to the parish, I'll tell you that,” Mr. Jennings said.

When the woman seemed satisfied with her appearance and moved on, Jennings turned to Dante. “Make yourself at home.” He gestured to the bar where three other men were sitting.

Jennings walked to the man at the grand piano in the corner of the room, a gleaming and stately Steinway Model M, Louis XV–style. Mr. Jennings sat down on a leather chair, folded his arms across his chest, and told the pianist to start.

Dante listened as the player went into a breezy number, soft and light and pleasant. But the notes seemed to reverberate monotone, no life making them carry across the room. Dante turned back to the three men at the bar. He sat down on a high stool, flicked a match and lit a cigarette.

The man closest to him was wearing a sharp-collared short-sleeved shirt and a watch that hung heavily off his thin wrist, boldly shining in the way that real gold didn't. He looked to be in his early twenties, probably a student over at the new Berklee School of Music, still thinking that the songs he wrote would actually make a difference in the world.

A few stools over, a man in his forties wore a thin olive sports coat patched at the elbows and a porkpie hat that had seen better days. He had hard times all over his face, remnants of failures and bad decisions etched deeply into the crow's-feet that lined his eyes. He was probably the type always trying to stretch it clean but falling for the junk just when he thought he had a handle on sobriety. Dante knew that look well.

The old-timer leaned on the cushioned rim of the bar top and smoked a cigarette that he didn't seem to be enjoying. He turned and eyed Dante, weakly nodded, and then resumed his empty stare to the window and the lines of people passing to and from work like tin figures in a carnival shooting gallery.

The third player was a black man not much older than himself. A pair of black sunglasses casually rested atop his head, and the beginnings of a mustache peppered his upper lip. Boyishly handsome, the man seemed sure of himself as his eyes danced over a sheet of music before him, studying it, tapping his fingers on the edge of the bar to how it all played out in his head.

Dante asked the man with the porkpie hat, “How many have played already?”

“About six or seven others, I forget.”

“Any good?”

The man shrugged his shoulders, turned his attention back to the window.

Time seemed to slow. Dante waited and smoked one cigarette after another.

The Berklee kid played Chopin, and he played it well, note for note. But the grandiose ballad sounded through the place too regal and too formal, even for a highbrow establishment like the Commonwealth.

Next up was the older gent with the porkpie hat. Dante could tell he liked Art Tatum, injecting some touches of early bop in the first phrases of “The Breeze and I,” but he knuckled through the last part, and right before he reached the end of the song, he had to start the chorus over from scratch. He wasn't getting a callback. That was obvious. He stood up from the piano, shoulders stooped, mumbled “Good day” to Mr. Jennings, and, with his hands shoved in his pockets, padded across the rug to the hallway leading back into the restaurant. Probably the only thing on his mind was where to score next. Addicts like that fucked up on purpose, Dante knew, just so they had an excuse to fall face-first off the wagon.

The hip black guy played something modern—off the Top 40 charts, most likely. Could have been a Perry Como song or the one Claudia had been humming to herself in the shower that morning. He read off the song sheet with ease and played with a natural grace and exuberant charm, at points looking up at the empty tables as though guests were sitting there enjoying his performance. As the song came to an end, he sang out the last line with a high contralto that carried through the empty room. He was mimicking the singer Jimmy Scott, and although he lacked the right pitch, Dante had to commend the guy. He had showmanship, something Dante knew he lacked.

“Nice job, kid,” Mr. Jennings said. “Your name again?”

“Evan Williams.”

“Thank you, Evan.”

“You're more than welcome,” the player said, gathering his sheet music from the piano rack. “Thank you for your time, sir.”

As the kid walked past him, Dante nodded. “Nice job.” Williams didn't say anything back, only smiled. Dante couldn't tell if it was a grateful smile or a cocky one.

“Mr. Cooper. You're next.”

Dante sat down on the cushioned bench, lightly tapped out a few notes to see how tightly tuned the keys were. Mr. Jennings reclined back in the leather chair, crossed his legs before him. The bar was now empty, and the only movement came from the bartender rearranging bottles along the shelves.

“Where'd you play out?” Mr. Jennings asked.

“To be honest, it's been a while. The Pacific Club, a short run at the Hi-Hat—afternoons, not evenings. Played at the Roseland with Pomeroy for a bit. Filled in with Sonny Stitt's band a couple of times. Here and there.”

“What're you going to play?”

“A medley. Some Porter and Carmichael.”

For the first time since Dante had entered the place, the man smiled at him. “Are you going to play it like the coloreds would?”

“I'm just going to play it, I guess.”

“Then do what you got to do.”

Dante clenched and unclenched his left hand, hoping to get the blood flowing under the scar that curled along his knuckles. He took a deep breath, let it go, and then started to play. His fingers flowed over the keys and he tried to keep nothing in his head but the song itself. Halfway through the number, he felt he was hitting his stride, but from the hallway came the sounds of the vacuum cleaner, and he stumbled over a note like a drunken man misjudging his next step. Quickly getting back into the music, he continued with the medley, changing the tune to “The Nearness of You.”

At the bar, a bottle crashed against another bottle. The bartender appeared frustrated, slammed another bottle on the bar top, coughed, and then cleared his throat. Maybe the prick was sending secret signals to Jennings, Dante thought. Perhaps he was the one making the final decision on who would get the gig.

The keys seemed to swell under Dante's fingers. He hit a sour note, followed it up with a refrain that was lost in the sucking white noise of the vacuum moving closer to the lounge. And then his left hand locked, his scarred fingers suddenly filled with concrete, and the last note was struck a half a second behind, ruining his groove altogether. He stopped and looked up at Jennings.

“Sorry, all this noise got to me.”

The man grinned, sat forward on the leather chair. “To be honest, sounds a bit too colored for my taste. Try cleaning it up a bit. Make it sound nicer, you know, more gentle.” And then he nodded for Dante to continue.

Dante moved into a different piece, “These Foolish Things,” Margo's favorite song. He allowed himself to think of her, seeing her at her most healthy and vibrant, right after the war, September 1945. Revere Beach. The sky-blue dress with the snug bodice, a matching sun hat that shaded her mascara-thick eyes, the white heels that staggered her steps and slightly bowed her thin legs inward. And the white gloves nearly up to her elbows, one wrist boldly displaying an aquamarine bracelet that he'd bought her, telling her it cost him a pretty penny, something she'd gracefully accepted even though she could tell it was nothing more than costume jewelry and not worth very much.

He slowed the song down so each note reverberated and resonated just the way she'd liked it.

Halfway through the song, his heart rapidly beating against his rib cage, he thought he was nailing it. But Jennings must have thought otherwise. The man casually stood up from his chair and walked over to the bar. Dante slowed down the number, and when he saw the bartender fix the man a drink, he stopped playing altogether. The last note resonated dissonant and miserable in the belly of the grand piano and died as it sounded across the room. The memory of Margo in her blue dress blurred, dissolved, and then faded to black.

Dante sat there wondering if he should wait for the man to come back or just get the fuck out and call it a day. When Jennings sat down at the bar and lit a cigarette, Dante knew he wasn't coming back. The audition was over. He stood up from the bench, went to the bar, and grabbed his hat from the stool.

“That's it, right?”

“Yeah, that's it.”

“When will you let us know?”

Jennings took a pull off his vodka tonic in a large glass tumbler. “To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with any of you today. If I had to choose one, though, it'd probably be the nigger. Maybe if he were a few shades lighter, he'd get the job.”