When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (28 page)

"No," he said. "You had to."

"Now he knows his best friend hates his guts." I turned, looked up at theParc Vendome. "He lives on a high floor," I said. "I hope he doesn't decide to go out a window."

"He's not the type."

"I guess not."

"You had to tell him," Billie Keegan said. "What are yougonna do, let him go on thinking Bobby's his friend? That kind of ignorance isn't bliss. What you did, you lanced a boil for him. Right now it hurts like a bastard but it'll heal. You leave it, it just gets worse."

"I suppose."

"Count on it. If Bobby got by with this he'd do something else. He'd keep on until Skip knew about it, because it's not enough to screw Skip, Bobby'sgotta rub his nose in it while he's at it. You see what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"Am I right?"

"Probably.Billie? I want to hear that song."

"Huh?"

"The sacredginmill, cuts the brain in sections. The one you played for me."

" 'LastCall.' "

"You don't mind?"

"Hey, come on up. We'll have a couple."

We didn't really drink much. I went with him to his apartment and he played the song five, six times for me. We talked a little, but mostly we just listened to the record. When I left he told me again that I'd done the right thing in exposing BobbyRuslander. I still wasn't sure he was right.

I slept late the next day. That night I went out toSunnysideGardens inQueens with Danny Boy Bell and two uptown friends of his. There was a middleweight on the card, a Bedford-Stuyvesant kid Danny Boy's friends had an interest in. He won his fight handily, but I didn't think he showed a whole lot.

The following day was Friday, and I was having a late lunch in Armstrong's when Skip came in and had a beer with me. He'd just come from the gym and he was thirsty.

"Jesus, I was strong today," he said. "All the anger goes right into the muscles. I could have lifted the roof off the place. Matt? Did I patronize him?"

"What do you mean?"

"All that shit about I made him my pet actor. Was that true?"

"I think he was just looking for a way to justify what he did."

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I do what he said. Remember you got a hair up your ass when I paid your bar tab?"

"So?"

"Maybe I did that with him. But on a bigger scale." He lit a cigarette, coughed hard. Recovering, he said, "Fuck it, the man's a scumbag. That's all. I'm justgonna forget about it."

"What else can you do?"

"I wish I knew. He'll pay me back when he's rich and famous, I liked that part. Is there any way we can get the money back from those other two fucks? We know who they are."

"What can you threaten them with?"

"I don't know. Nothing, I guess. The other night you gathered everybody together for a war council, but that was just setting the stage, wasn't it?To have everybody on hand when you put it all on Bobby."

"It seemed like a good idea."

"Yeah.But as far as having a war council, or whatever you want to call it, and figuring out a way to sandbag those actors and get the money back-"

"I can't see it."

"No, neither canI. What am Igonna do, stick up the stickup men? Not really my style. And the thing is,it's only money. I mean that's really all it is. I had this money in the bank, where I wasn't really getting anything out of it, and now I haven't got it, and what difference does it make in my life? You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"I just wish I could let go of it," he said, "because I go around and around and around with it in my mind. I just wish I could leave it alone."

I had my sons with me that weekend. It was going to be our last weekend together before they went off to camp. I picked them up at the train station Saturday morning and put them back on the train Sunday night. We saw a movie, I remember, and I think we spent Sunday morning exploring down around Wall Street and the Fulton Fish Market, but that may have been a different weekend. It's hard to distinguish them in memory.

I spent Sunday evening in the Village and didn't get back to my hotel until almost dawn. The telephone woke me out of a frustrating dream, an exercise in acrophobic frustration; I kept trying to descend from a perilous catwalk and kept not reaching the ground.

I picked up the phone. A gruff voice said, "Well, it's not the way I figured it would go, but at least we don't have to worry about losing it in court."

"Who is this?"

"Jack Diebold. What's the matter with you? You sound like you're half asleep."

"I'm up now," I said. "What were you talking about?"

"You haven't seen a paper?"

"I was sleeping. What did-"

"You know what time it is? It's almost noon. You're keeping pimp's hours, you son of a bitch."

"Jesus," I said.

"Go getyourself a newspaper," he said. "I'll call you in an hour."

THE News gave it the front page. KILL SUSPECT HANGS SELF IN CELL, with the story on page three.

MiguelitoCruz had torn his clothing into strips, knotted the strips together, stood his iron bedstead on its side, climbed onto it, looped his homemade rope around an overhead pipe, and jumped off the upended bedstead and into the next world.

Jack Diebold never did call me back, but that evening's six o'clock TV news had the rest of the story. Informed of his friend's death, Angel Herrera had recanted his original story and admitted that he and Cruz had conceived and executed theTillary burglary on their own. It had beenMiguelito who heard noises upstairs and picked up a kitchen knife on his way to investigate. He'd stabbed the woman to death while Herrera watched in horror.Miguelito always had a short temper, Herrera said, but they were friends, even cousins, and they had concocted their story to protectMiguelito. But now thatMiguelito was dead, Herrera could admit what had really happened.

THE funny thing was that I felt like going out toSunsetPark. I was done with the case, everyone was done with the case, but I felt as though I ought to be working my way through theFourth Avenue bars, buying rum drinks for ladies and eating bags of plantain chips.

Of course I didn't go there. I never really considered it. I just had the feeling that it was something I ought to do.

That night I was in Armstrong's. I wasn't drinking particularly hard or fast, but I was working at it, and then somewhere around ten-thirty or eleven the door opened and I knew who it was before I turned around. TommyTillary, all dressed up and freshly barbered, was making his first appearance in Armstrong's since his wife got herself killed.

"Hey, lookwho's back," he sang out, and grinned that big grin. People rushed over to shake his hand. Billie was behind the stick, and he'd no sooner set up one on the house for our hero than Tommy insisted on buying a round for the bar. It was an expensive gesture, there must have been thirty or forty people in there, but I don't think he cared if there were three or four hundred.

I stayed where I was, letting the others mob him, but he worked his way over to me and got an arm around my shoulders. "This is the man," he announced. "Best fucking detective ever wore out a pair of shoes. This man's money," he told Billie, "is no good at all tonight. He can't buy a drink, he can't buy a cup of coffee, and if you went and put in pay toilets since I was last here, he can't use his own dime."

"The john's still free," Billie said, "but don't go giving Jimmy any ideas."

"Oh, don't tell me he didn't already think of it," Tommy said. "Matt, my boy, I love you. I was in a tight spot, the world waslookin ' to fall in on me, and you came through for me."

What the hell had I done? I hadn't hangedMiguelito Cruz or coaxed a confession out of Angel Herrera. I hadn't even set eyes on either man. But I had taken his money, and now it looked as though I had to let him buy my drinks.

I don't know how long we stayed there. Curiously, my own drinking slowed even as Tommy's picked up speed. I wondered why he hadn't brought Carolyn; I didn't figure he'd care much about appearances now that the case was closed forever. And I wondered if she would walk in. It was, after all, her neighborhood bar, and she'd been known to come to it all by herself.

After a while Tommy was hustling me out of Armstrong's, so maybe I wasn't the only one who realized that Carolyn might turn up. "This is celebration time," he told me. "We don't want to hang around one place until we grow roots. We want to get out and bounce a little."

He had theRiviera, and I just went along for the ride. We hit a few places. There was a noisy Greek place on theEast Side where the waiters all looked like mob hit men. There were a couple of trendy singles joints, including the one JackBalkin owned, where Skip had reportedly stolen enough money to open Miss Kitty's. There was, finally, a dark beery cave down in the Village; I realized after a while that it reminded me of the Norwegian bar inSunsetPark, the Fjord. I knew the Village bars fairly well in those days, but this place was new to me, and I was never able to find it again. Maybe it wasn't in the Village, maybe it was somewhere inChelsea. He was doing the driving and I wasn't paying too much attention to the geography.

Wherever the place was, it was quiet for a change and conversation became possible. I found myself asking him what I'd done that deserved such lavish praise. One man had killed himself and another had confessed, and what part had I played in either incident?

"The stuff you came up with," he said.

"What stuff? I should have brought back fingernailparings, you could have had someone work voodoo on them."

"About Cruz and the fairies."

"He was up for murder. He didn't hang himself because he was afraid they'd nail him for fag-bashing when he was a juvenile offender."

Tommy took a sip of scotch. He said, "Couple days ago, black guy comes up to Cruz in the chow line. Huge spade, built like the Seagram's Building. 'Wait'llyou gets up to Green Haven,' he tells him. 'Every blood there'sgwine have you for a girlfriend. Doctorgwine have to cut you a brand-new asshole, time you getsoutta there.' "

I didn't say anything.

"Kaplan," he said. "Talked to somebody who talked to somebody, and that did it. Cruz took a good look at the idea ofplayin ' Drop the Soap for half the jigs in captivity, and the next thing you know the murderous little bastard was dancing on air.And good riddance to him."

I couldn't seem to catch my breath. I worked on it while Tommy went to the bar for another round. I hadn't touched the one in front of me but I let him buy for both of us.

When he got back I said, "Herrera."

"Changed his story.Made a full confession."

"And pinned the killing on Cruz."

"Why not?Cruz wasn't around to complain. Cruz probably did it, but who knows which one it really was, and for that matter who cares? The thing is you gave us the lever."

"For Cruz," I said."To get him to kill himself."

"And for Herrera.Those kids of his back inPuerto Rico.Drew spoke to Herrera's lawyer and Herrera's lawyer spoke to Herrera, and the message was, look, you're going up for burglary whatever you do, and probably for murder, but if you tell the right story you'll draw shorter time than if you don't, and on top of that, that nice Mr. Tillary'sgonna let bygones be bygones and every month there's a nice check for your wife and kiddies back home inSanturce."

At the bar, a couple of old men were reliving the Louis-Schmelingfight.The second one, the one where Louis deliberately punished the German champion. One of the old boys was throwing roundhouse punches in the air, demonstrating.

I said, "Who killed your wife?"

"One or the other of them.If I had to bet I'd say Cruz. He had those beady little eyes, you looked at him up close and got that he was a killer."

"When did you look at him close?"

"When they were over to the house.The first time, when they cleaned the basement and the attic.I told you they hauled stuff for me?"

"You told me."

"Not the second time," he said, "when they cleaned me out altogether."

He smiled broadly, but I kept looking at him until the smile turned uncertain. "That was Herrera who helped around the house," I said. "You never met Cruz."

"Cruz came along, gave him a hand."

"You never mentioned that before."

"I must've, Matt. Or I left it out. What difference does it make, anyway?"

"Cruz wasn't much for manual labor," I said. "He wouldn't come along to haul trash. When did you ever get a look at his eyes?"

"Jesus Christ. Maybe it was seeing a picture in thepaper, maybe I just have a sense of him as if I saw his eyes. Leave it alone, will you? Whatever kind of eyes he had, they're not seeing anything anymore."

"Who killed her, Tommy?"

"Hey, didn't I say let it alone?"

"Answer the question."

"I already answered it."

"You killed her, didn't you?"

"What are you, crazy? And keep your voice down, for Christ's sake. There's people can hear you."

"You killed your wife."

"Cruz killed her and Herrera swore to it. Isn't that enough for you? And your fucking cop friend's been all over my alibi,pickin ' at it like a monkey hunting lice. There's no way Icoulda killed her."

"Sure there is."

"Huh?"

A chair covered in needlepoint, a view of Owl'sHeadPark. The smell of dust, and layered over it the smell of a spray of little white flowers.

"Lily-of-the-valley," I said.

"Huh?"

"That's how you did it."

"What are you talking about?"

"The third floor, the room her aunt used to live in. I smelled her perfume up there. I thought I was just carrying the scent in my nostrils from being in her bedroom earlier, but that wasn't it. She was up there, and it was traces of her perfume Iwas smelling. That's why the room held me, I sensed her presence there, the room was trying to tell me something but I couldn't get it."