Blind Moon Alley (25 page)

“Why else would he give you your money back?” I say.

“He said it's a second chance,” she says. “Who cares what he wants from you? You'll be so far away, he'll never find you.”

“I don't care what he said,” I say. “You can't take that money. It's not a chance to do things right. It's a chance to make the same mistake again. You owed Garvey, then Reeger, and now you'd owe Lovely. And there's no place in the world far enough away to duck him.”

Myra takes a long slug of her martini. I know when somebody wants a drink to hurt, and this qualifies.

“There's good news here,” I say. “Even without the twenty large, you're still out of debt. You don't have to pay Garvey and you don't have to pay Reeger.”

I think of Johalis telling me how Myra used suckers like me to wipe away her debts, and it fits. But I didn't pull that trigger at Bobby Lewis's for her—not entirely, anyway. I pulled it for Garvey and Calvin. And me.

“All you're losing is twenty large,” I tell her. “I know it's a ton of dough, but it was never yours anyway. You can live without it.
We
can live without it.”

“But we can't live without it in L.A.,” she says.

Her tears are putting a shine on her rouged cheeks, which are glimmering like wet stones. I nearly cry myself; my throat closes and the backs of my eyes burn. I want to help her. I want to be the hero that she wants me to be. But if we take Lovely's money, I won't be the hero
I
want to be.

Her hand is on the table; I put mine on top of it.

“I promise we'll get to Hollywood,” I say. “I'll figure something out.”

I want to believe my own words, but I can't even imagine how I'll scratch up the dough to get us on the train. Every possibility—hijacking comes to mind—is nearly as bad as working for Lovely.

“I
will
get the money,” I say again, trying to sound more confident the second time around.

Myra's sobbing, and all I need to do to lift her pain is tell her that I'm okay with owing Lovely. But I can't do it. Instead, I sit there, my hand on hers, listening to the piano player bang out “My Future Just Passed,” wondering if he's playing it for me.

I'm with Johalis at his place on Ludlow, my shoulders still wet from the afternoon rain. He pours me a finger of whiskey and we raise a glass to Madame Curio, who walked out of Eastern State this morning. She deserves a shot herself; she was locked up in that hellhole for nearly two weeks. Now she's free, but springing her cost plenty. I had to pay Johalis's bull two hundred bucks to lose the Madame's file in a pile of dead inmates' dental records.

“To the Madame,” I say before downing the whiskey.

The brown sends a wave of calm through my chest and I feel I've earned it. I promised the Madame I'd get her out of the pen and I delivered. Not that it matters anymore, but I had to dip into Angela's shoebox to do it. That Zealandia box now holds all the money I've got to my name—three hundred and forty bucks. The Hy-Hat safe is empty; the champ can't even meet the rent. At the rate I'm going, the most exotic place I'll be taking Myra is a bread line on Market Street.

“All's well that ends well,” Johalis says before going into his kitchen to get some ice.

I sit on Johalis's sofa and take a look over the folder that Garvey found at the pool hall. As I flip through the papers, a trumpet student blares out a scale upstairs. I ignore the screechy exercises as best I can, focusing instead on the pile of notes and paystubs. Lovely's name pops up on three cocktail napkins, a roadmap, and two ledger sheets. In each instance, a number is written next to his name. And every one of the numbers is preceded by a dollar sign.

Johalis comes back in with a bucket of ice in his hand. “Why would Lovely care so much about the folder?” he says. “He's got half the city's cops in his pocket.”

“Maybe he's worried about the other half,” I say. “Or maybe he really is out to destroy Reeger. I'm telling you, I'm surprised we haven't caught him at Laurel Hill, pissing on the guy's grave.”

The trumpet is now blowing a sour version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I ran it by my boys at the precinct,” Johalis says. “From what we put together, Reeger wasn't a loan shark. He muscled in on loan sharks, took over their payments, told them that if they didn't like it, they could spend a few years in the slammer. It worked, because he was ripping off sharks and crooks. Nobody was going to complain. And Reeger isn't the only bull in that folder. Connor's in there. Others, too. But Reeger was the head of the ring.”

I look down at the folder. Johalis is right—a lot of these names belong to other cops. They were the muscle that swung Reeger's hammer.

“What am I supposed to do with this file?” I say. “I can't bury it.”

“Why not?” Johalis says, concern peeking out from the lines on his face.

“Because every news report is saying Reeger was a hero for killing Garvey. I can't let the world think that.”

“Let it be,” Johalis says. “Just be happy Reeger got what he had coming.”

It's good advice, assuming all I wanted to do was save my own skin. But I owe it to Garvey to clear his name. Besides, greed never dies with the greedy. The cops in this folder will follow Reeger's lead, and if I don't stop them, there will be other Garveys and other Myras. I have to do something with this file; I just don't know what yet.

I walk to the door and shake Johalis's hand. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I owe you one.”

“No, you don't,” he says. “I owed your father and I still do. If it hadn't been for him, I'd be sipping shine with Reeger right now.”

I think of the champ and the lineup of friends he's got waiting to help him. The man gains respect simply by respecting himself. I wonder if I'll ever be able to do the same.

“Thanks just the same,” I tell Johalis. “You owed my father, but you helped me.”

Johalis nods. “Any time you need me, just call.”

I hope I never have to take him up on that offer.

I step out onto Ludlow. The sun is beating down on the wet, shiny street; the air is as moist and heavy as a used washrag. I put my dark glasses on and tug the straw brim of my fedora down low. I walk to the corner as the trumpet blares “Me and My Shadow” behind me. I get in the Auburn, start the engine, and drive home. I doubt Lovely's boys are following me, but I stick to side streets and back roads anyway.

By the time I get home, Myra has already left for the Red Canary. The place feels empty without her. I remind myself that this is how I lived—alone—until a few weeks ago. I guess I'm no different than an inmate coming out of solitary at the pen. Just because I came out of it alive doesn't mean I want to go back.

I put on the radio and sit at the Underwood. I type out a one-sentence letter:
The attached folder was pulled from the hands of Sergeant Reeger as he lay dying at Bobby Lewis's pool hall.
I don't sign my name. I just stuff the letter into an envelope along with the folder, then address the envelope to the
Inquirer
. If anyone at the paper looks into this file, they'll surely uncover the crooked bulls hiding inside. If they don't, at least I'll know I tried.

Before I head out the door, I reach into Angela's shoebox, pull out twenty bucks, and grab another envelope. This one I address to the champ at the Hy-Hat. We're not only behind on the rent; he needs money for a new icebox motor. I know we can't afford to keep the Hy-Hat open any longer—not without me pouring drinks somewhere—but it pains me to shut it down. The club is my getaway: the kids there are free of guns, free of moon, and free of the Reegers and Lovelys of the world. And this is when they need us the most—the longer the bread lines, the shorter their cash. If we close down, they'll have nobody to take them in. They'll wind up working the city's speakeasies, just like I did.

I'm not about to desert them again, not after driving off with the champ and Garvey and leaving Billy Walker holding the bag. Luckily, the kid is as sharp as he is strong; he handed the bulls a pile of malarkey and walked out of the precinct as clean as a pile of starched linens. But that doesn't mean I had a right to put him in that position.

I put a stamp on both envelopes and leave my place.

The sun is setting and the shadows of the trees stretch across Juniper. I check Ronnie's Luncheonette and see nothing but an empty bench out front. The place is free of hoodlums, just like I am. I have to admit the evenings in Philadelphia are much more enjoyable when nobody is looking to send a bullet through my skull.

I drop the envelopes in the mailbox and walk up Juniper to Enrico's flower shop. If I hurry, I can pick up some roses for Myra and still catch her set at the Canary tonight.

The young salesgirl at Enrico's knows me. I'm not surprised; I'm sure there aren't many locals plunking down two-fifty for bouquets nowadays.

“The usual?” she asks. She's got shiny brown hair and the same expression of innocence I see on the faces of the kids at the Hy-Hat. It's the look of a young teen who's ready to take big bites out of the world but hasn't yet found out the world bites back.

“Sure thing,” I say. My eyes start shimmying, so I turn away and pretend to examine a row of potted plants.

It doesn't take her as long to assemble the bouquet as it does for my eyes to calm down, so when she hands me the box, I look down at my oxfords. I hand her three bucks and tell her to keep the fifty cents change—as if I've got it to spread around.

I leave Enrico's with the box under my arm and a spring in my step. I'm free of Reeger and in love with Myra. As the champ promised me so many years ago, I won't be spending the rest of my life alone.

When I reach the corner, I take out my car keys—but see that I won't be getting to the Red Canary any time soon.

The Auburn is gone.

I lay the flowers on the kitchen table. Then I grab a bottle of Gordon's, splash a triple-shot over three ice cubes, and stir the booze with my finger.

If I don't find the Auburn, Myra and I will never get out of here. As it was, we needed a thousand bucks to leave for California. I figured we'd raise about four hundred of it by driving to New York and selling the car before getting on the train. Without that cash, we're down to a few hundred bucks and haven't even gotten a foot out of the door yet.

I'm glad Myra's at the Canary because I don't want her to see me flummoxed. I have no idea how to find the Auburn—and I've yet to come up with a way to scratch together the extra dough. If Myra wants to circle a date for our getaway, she's going to need a calendar as thick as the yellow pages.

I've got one move left, but I don't want to make it. I could call Lovely. He'd have the Auburn back under my pale ass in the time it takes him to lop off a grifter's thumb. But calling him would be as bad as taking his money. I refuse to leave Philly with any loose ends—or loose cannons—behind me.

I put on the radio. Cab Calloway is playing “Nobody's Sweetheart” and I'm glad it no longer applies to me. I'm in front of the mirror, and for first time since my nose was broken, I take a good, long look at myself. I can't say I like what I see.

I pour another gin—a double—then take a slug. Leaning back on the couch, the booze goes to work and I welcome the peace that arrives as reality fades. I drift away from my plan to find the Auburn and, instead, land on a beach in Santa Monica, where I'm watching Myra slip out of her swimsuit as the sun toasts my chest and the turquoise water laps at her feet.

We're rolling in the sand when the telephone in the hallway rings, yanking me back to Philly. My head throbs and my neck aches, and I curse Mr. Gordon for filling the bottle that landed in my kitchen.

I wipe the sweaty sleep from my eyes as I walk to the phone. It's three in the morning and Myra's still not here. I'm guessing she'll be on the other end of the receiver, but when I pick it up, I hear Homer's voice instead. He's talking fast and in a hushed whisper.