Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (11 page)

Billy took his trig gray fedora out of the hatbox and thought: pies. And pictured Pete the Tramp stealing two steaming pies off a kitchen windowsill, then running off and eating them behind a
fence.

Billy looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. He looked good. Maybe handsome to some. Not like a man who owed seven eighty-eight to anybody. Whataya think,
because Billy owes a few bucks he can’t look good?

“Aren’t you eating anything?” Peg said when he went downstairs.

“I’ll grab something downtown.”

She didn’t make him ask. She fished in the apron pocket and handed him the bill, folded in a square. A twenty. He kissed her quick and parted her corset.

“That’s all I can give you,” she said.

“I didn’t expect so much. You’re a classy dame.”

“Class runs in this family,” she said.

Billy got off the Albany-Troy bus at Broadway and Clinton Avenue and walked up Clinton, past Nick Levine’s haberdashery, where the card game would be. He walked toward
the theaters, three of them on Clinton Square, and stopped at The Grand. Laughton in his greatest role. As Ginger Ted. Ragged son of trouble. A human derelict on the ebb tide of South Sea life.
Surpassing such portrayals as Captain Bligh, Henry VIII, Ruggles of Red Gap. An experience definitely not to be missed.
The Beachcomber.
Billy made a note to avoid this shit. Fats Laughton
in a straw hat on the beach. He walked around the box office to check the coming attractions in the foyer. A Warner Baxter thing. Costume job with that lacy-pants kid, Freddie Bartholomew. Billy
had already avoided that one at the Palace, coming back for a second run now. The Grand, then, a wipeout for two weeks. Billy headed for the restaurant.

There were four restaurants within a block of each other on Clinton Square but Billy, as always, went to the Grand Lunch next door to The Grand, for it had the loyalty of the nighttime crowd,
Billy’s crowd. Dan Shugrue, well liked, ran it, and Toddy Dunn worked the counter starting at six, an asset because he spoke the language of the crowd, which turned up even in daylight for
the always-fresh coffee and the poppy-seed rolls, the joint’s trademark, and because since Prohibition the place never closed and nobody had to remember its hours. Also there was Slopie
Dodds, the one-legged Negro cook, when he worked, for he was not only a cook but a piano player who’d played for Bessie in her early years, and he did both jobs, whatever the market dictated.
Nobody believed he’d played for Bessie until it came out in a magazine, but Billy believed it because you don’t lie about that kind of thing unless you’re a bum, and Slopie was a
straight arrow, and a good cook.

The place was brightly lighted, globes washed as usual, when Billy walked in. Toddy, behind the counter, gave him half a grin, and Slopie gave him a smile through the kitchen door. Billy
didn’t expect the grin from Tod. Billy also saw his Uncle Chick sitting alone at one of the marble-topped booth tables, having coffee and doughnuts before going to work at the
Times-Union
composing room. It was the first time Billy had seen Chick in months, six, eight months, and even that was too soon.

“Hello, Chick,” he said, said it aloofly from the side of his mouth, that little hello that hits and runs.

“Howsa boy, Billy, howsa boy? Long time no see.”

“All right, Chick.”

Billy would have kept walking, but his uncle’s gaze stayed on him, looking at those clothes, so spiffy, so foreign because of that; and so Billy spoke compulsively. “How you
been?” A man’s got to be civil.

“Fine and dandy. Sit down.”

“I got some business here a minute,” and Billy’s hand said, I’ll be back, maybe. He walked to the counter, where Tod was already drawing a coffee, dark. Tod also shoved a
spoon and an envelope at him.

“Forty there,” Tod said, jaunty in his counterman’s white military cap of gauze and cardboard. “All I can come up with.”

Billy didn’t touch the envelope.

“That phone call,” Billy said.

“Forget it. Peg called me.”

“She tell you what happened?”

“All but the numbers.”

“Seven eighty-eight eighty-five. How do you like that, doctor?”

“You got a reason to be edgy.”

“I’m through till I pay it off and get another bankroll.”

“You got no reserve at all?”

“A wipeout.”

“Then what’s next?”

“I thought I’d look up Harvey. You want to make the call?”

“For when?”

“When, hell. Now. I’m there if he wants me.”

Tod looked at his watch. “Five to six. He’s home by now. Shit. I got to work. I’ll miss it.”

“I’ll tell you about it. But I wanna make the game at Nick’s.”

“How you gonna play with no money?”

“I got almost two bills.”

“And you got this forty,” and Tod shoved the envelope closer.

“Two-thirty then. I play with half that. I can’t afford to lose more than that. I got to save something for Martin, unless I can swing him.”

“I’ll call Harvey, good old Harv.”

“Hey, you hear I rolled two-ninety-nine last night? I beat Scotty Streck and the son of a bitch dropped dead from shock.”

“I saw the obituary in the afternoon paper. It didn’t mention you. Two-ninety-nine? What stood up?”

“The four pin. Gimme a western.” Billy pocketed the envelope and carried the coffee to Chick’s table, thinking: I could grunt and Toddy’d get the message. Talk to Chick
all week and he’ll ask you is this Thursday. Chick wasn’t dumb, he was ignorant. Anybody’d be ignorant living in that goddamn house. Like living in a ditch with a herd of goats.
Years back, Chick got baseball passes regular from Jack Daley, the
Times-Union’s
sports editor. The Albany Senators were fighting Newark for first place and Red Rolfe was with Newark,
and George McQuinn and others who later went up with the Yankees. Chick gave the passes for the whole Newark series to young Mahan, a tub-o’guts kid whose mother was a widow. Billy always
figured Chick was after her ass. Chick gave Billy a pass two weeks later to see Albany play the cellar club. Who gave a damn about the cellar club? Billy can’t even remember now which club it
was. Shove your pass, Nasty Billy told his uncle.

“You’re all dressed up,” Chick said, chuckling. “Are you going to work?”

“Not to give you a short answer to a snotty question, but what the hell is it to you? What am I supposed to do, dress like a bum? Look like you?”

“All right, Billy, I was only kidding.”

“The hell you were.”

“Dress any way you want. Who cares?”

“I do what I want, all right.”

“Calm down, Billy, and answer me a question. You seen Charlie McCall lately?”

“I saw him last night. He bet against me in a bowling match.”

“You hear anything about him?”

“Since last night? Like how he slept?”

“No, no.”

“What the hell you asking then?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“I’d be dead if I couldn’t.”

“I hear Charlie’s in bad trouble. I hear maybe he was kidnapped last night.”

Billy stared Chick down, not speaking, not moving except to follow Chick’s eyes when they moved. Chick blinked.
Kidnapped
. With Warner Baxter.

“You heard what I said?”

“I heard.”

“Don’t that mean anything to you?”

“Yeah, it means something. It means I don’t know what the hell it means. You got this straight or you making it up?”

“I’m telling you, it’s a secret. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I know you know Charlie and thought maybe you heard something.”

“Like who kidnapped him?”

“Hey, come on, Billy. Not so loud. Listen, forget it, forget I said anything.” Chick bit his doughnut. “You heard any news about your father?”

“Wait a minute. Why is it a secret about Charlie?”

“It’s just not out yet.”

“Then how come you know?”

“That’s a secret, too. Now forget it. What about your father?”

“Nothing. You know any secrets about him?”

“No, no secrets. Nothing since he came to see us.”

“And you kicked him out.”

“No, Billy, we wanted him, I wanted him to stay. Your Uncle Peter and I went all over town looking for him. You know it was your Aunt Sate had the fight with him. They always fought, even
as kids. He was gone before we even knew he was out of the house.”

“Bullshit, Chick.”

“Nobody can talk to you, Billy. Nobody ever could.”

“Not about him they can’t.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I know how he was treated, and how I was treated because of him.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Somebody said, “Haw! My mother just hit the numbers!” And Billy turned to see a boy with a broken front tooth, about fifteen, brush cut, sockless, in torn sneakers, beltless pants,
and a ragged cardigan over a tank-top undershirt with a hole in the front. His jackknife, large blade open, danced in his hand, two tables away.

“Saunders kid,” Chick said softly.

“Who?”

Chick whispered. “Eddie Saunders. Lives up on Pearl Street near us. He’s crazy Whole family’s crazy His father’s in the nut house at Poughkeepsie.”

“She had a dollar on it,” Eddie Saunders said. “Four forty-seven. Gonna get five hundred bucks. Haw!” With his left foot he nudged a chair away from a nearby table, then
slashed its leatherette seat twice in parallel cuts.

“Gonna get me some shoes,” he said. “Gonna go to the pitchers.”

A lone woman in a corner made little ooohing sounds, involuntary wheezes, as she watched the boy. Billy thought the woman looked a little like Peg.

“Who’d she play the numbers with, Eddie?” Billy asked the kid.

The boy turned and studied Billy. Billy stood up. The boy watched him closely as he moved toward the counter and said to Tod, “Where’s my western? And gimme a coffee.” And then
he turned to the kid.

“I asked who she played the numbers with, Eddie.”

“The grocery.”

“That’s big news. Bet your mother feels good.”

“She does. She’s gonna buy a dress.”

Eddie tapped the knife blade on the marble table top and let it bounce like a drum stick. Billy took the ironstone mug of coffee and the western off the glass counter and moved toward the boy.
When he was alongside he said, “You oughta close that knife.”

“Nah.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“You won’t make me.” And Eddie made little jabs at the air about two feet to the right of Billy’s stomach.

“If you don’t close it,” Billy said, “I’ll throw this hot coffee in your eyes. You ever have boiling hot coffee hit you in the eyes? You can’t see nothing
after that.”

Eddie looked up at Billy, then at the mug of steaming coffee in his right hand, inches from his face. He looked down at his knife. He studied it. He studied it some more. Then he closed the
blade. Billy set his western on the table and reached out his left hand.

“Now give me the knife.”

“It’s mine.”

“You can have it later.”

“No.”

“You rather have coffee in the face and then I beat the shit out of you and get the knife anyway?”

Eddie handed the knife to Billy, who pocketed it and put the coffee on the table in front of Eddie. He put the western in front of him. “Have a sandwich,” Billy said. He pushed the
sugar bowl toward the kid and gave him a spoon a customer had left at the next table.

“Now behave yourself,” Billy said, and he went back to his table. “Will you for chrissake gimme a western?” he said to Tod.

The dishwasher came in the front door with the Clinton Square beat cop, Joe Riley. Riley had his hand on his pistol. People were leaving quickly. Tod came around the counter and explained the
situation to Riley, who took Eddie’s knife from Billy and then took Eddie away.

“That was clever, what you did,” Chick said.

“Toddy taught me that one. I seen him use it on nasty drunks two or three times.”

“All the same it was clever, and dangerous, with that knife and all. You never know what crazy people will do. It was clever.”

“I’m a clever son of a bitch,” Billy said, and he reached for Chick’s check and pocketed it. One up on you, Chick, you sarcastic prick. “Doughnuts are on me,
Chick.”

“Why thanks, Billy, thanks. Take care of yourself.”

Tod came around the counter with two coffees in one mitt and Billy’s western in the other. He sat down.

“You play a nice game of coffee.”

“I had a good teacher. You call Harvey?”

“Yeah. He’ll be down at Louie’s.” Tod looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes from now. Damn, I wish I didn’t have to work. I love to see old Harvey in action.
He makes me feel smart.”

“Listen, you know what I heard? Charlie McCall was snatched.”

“No. No shit?”

“And I just saw him last night. He backed Scotty against me in this match.”

“That’ll teach him.”

“They must’ve grabbed him after he left the alleys.”

“Wow, that’s a ballbuster. Broadway’ll be hot tonight.”

“Too bad I gotta play cards. Be fun just floatin’ tonight.” Billy finished his coffee and then gave both his own and Chick’s food checks to Tod, who knew how to make them
disappear. “Now I gotta go get fresh money.”