Blind Moon Alley (26 page)

“Jersey, I know it's late but you gotta hear this.”

He must be working the graveyard shift at the docks. I give it a fifty-fifty chance that he's back in trouble with the street bulls guarding the pier.

“I'm listening,” I say.

There's a long pause. I picture him staring up at the ceiling, searching for the words that can explain his arrest.

“It's Myra,” he says. Then he stops talking again.

The rims of my eyes get hot. My tongue goes dry and my heart sinks to my balls.

“What about her, Homer?” I say. My saliva is as thick as paste. “What?”

“She's here at the docks,” he says. “And she's about to get in trouble, big fuckin' trouble.”

I'm praying Homer is overreacting, but he can't be, not at three in the morning.

“What's going on?” My temples are pounding so hard I'm surprised Homer can't hear them.

“There's a shipment of whiskey idling offshore. I was supposed to sign these containers off to nobody but Otto Gorsky, y'know, Mr. Lovely. But Myra's telling me to sign them off to her.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. My simple friend means well, but he doesn't know the deal.

“Lovely is Myra's boss,” I say. “She's probably buying the hooch for the bar.”

“No,” Homer says. “She's not buying the booze, she's selling it. And it's a ton more than any bar needs. She wants me to sign off so a boat can leave with the hooch. It smells funny, Jersey. I'm telling you, she's crossing Lovely. And if I sign, I'm a dead man.”

Homer could be right.

He could also be wrong.

I run through the reasons Myra would be on the docks selling hooch that was earmarked for Lovely. It can't be for the money, because she doesn't have to pay off Reeger, not anymore. Besides, if she needed cash, she would've just kept Lovely's twenty grand. There's only one scheme that makes sense—and I'm ashamed of myself for even considering it.

“Homer, how did Myra get down there?” I ask him.

“What do you mean?”

“How'd she get to the docks?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

He's not making this easy. “Homer, is there a car around?”

“I don't see one. But she can't drive anyway, she's got a busted foot.”

I've seen people with crutches drive—it's far from impossible. All it takes is a little coordination and a lot of determination.

“You sure you don't see any car?”

“Nope, no car,” he says. “Jersey, what's going on?”

The sweat on my neck goes cold as the pieces continue to come together. Myra's been playing me all along. She's selling Lovely's booze for one last big score before leaving Philly. And she's doing it from behind the wheel of the Auburn, which means I'm no longer part of the ride.

Johalis was right; this whole mess boils down to her. She set Connor and Garvey up, then she did the same to Reeger and me. This is her last move and it's a beauty. She'll sell the booze, take the cash, go off to California without me, and leave me here, alone, to deal with Lovely.

I palm the sweat from my temples as I realize what it is that Myra sees in my red, blistered skin and fluttering green eyes. It's the same thing the Madame sees when she stares into her crystal ball.

She sees nothing at all.

CHAPTER 15

There's a thick fog hanging over Penn's Landing, but it doesn't slow me down. I know my way around the piers—I've been here a few dozen times over the years, usually picking up booze from rumrunners who don't have connections at the New York harbor. I wish I were in one of those old trucks right now. Instead, I'm riding in the back of a taxi, hoping to find out that everybody around me is wrong about Myra. The odds aren't in my favor.

I tell the driver to kill the lights and creep up King Street to the wharf. This is the darkest area of the landing and that's no accident. Carpenter's Wharf channels so much booze it might as well have a tap at the end of it.

I can't see much from this distance, but I can make out the silhouette of a schooner at the end of the pier. It makes sense—bootleggers like Lovely often hire fishing boats to get the booze from rumrunners waiting out in the Atlantic, just beyond the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard. But I don't see the workers that are normally on hand to take the whiskey off the schooner and load it into the trucks. And I don't see the trucks.

“Let me out here, driver,” I say.

The cabbie pulls over and I hand him a sawbuck. Then I tell him to make a U-turn and keep the lights off until he's back on Dock Street.

Getting out of the cab, I check for my snubnose. It's right where I put it—in my shoulder holster, pressed up against my chest. I follow the trolley rails toward the end of the pier, dwarfed by the shipping containers that surround me. The landing smells about as fresh as a junkyard—giving off a steady whiff of damp weeds and spilled oil. The only sounds that break the nighttime air are my oxfords hitting the wooden path, and the river beneath me, splashing against itself.

The fog is wet and heavy. I take off my fedora and wipe the mist from my forehead with the sleeve of my jacket. Then I put my fedora back on and tug its straw brim over my eyes. I don't know why I bother. If anybody spots an albino walking the Philly docks at three in the morning, they're going to remember—hat or no hat.

I'm halfway down the pier and there's still no sign of Homer, Myra, Lovely, or anybody.

I'm about a hundred yards from the schooner when I spy an Auburn parked in front of an empty loading dock. It's got to be mine, unless there are two Auburns with the same line of rusty bullet holes across the back.

The last thing I need is to be accused of stealing my own car, so I take a glance over my shoulder before pulling open the driver's door. It swings freely—the lock has been jimmied—and I see a screwdriver jammed into the ignition keyhole. I can't help but feel as though my car has been violated.

I reach under the seats and unearth nothing more than a ball of gunky dust. But then I check the visor and find an envelope with a stack of hundreds as thick as my thumb. I don't have to count it to know how much is there. It's twenty grand. And it belongs to Lovely.

As I stuff the dough into my breast pocket, I spot a shoebox under the dash. My eyes have failed me before, but they're not letting me down now. That's a Zealandia box and I'll bet there aren't any shoes inside of it. It's the box from my closet, the one holding the last of my cash, the one I had earmarked for Angela. I guess it wasn't enough for Myra to steal only my heart.

Two lights shine at the end of the pier. They look like a pair of flashlights, so I stay close to the containers in case I can be spotted in this fog. Then I creep toward the glow.

When I get about sixty feet away, I can hear Myra's voice. I move closer and spot her leaning on a pair of crutches that are tucked under her armpits. A guy in a fisherman's cap is holding both flashlights; he's pointing them at Myra's hands as she counts through a wad of bills.

I step out of the shadows and stand squarely in front of her.

“I hope that includes the price of selling me out,” I say.

“Jersey,” she says and gives a smile. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was happy to see me. But I do know better.

The captain shines one of the lights in my face. He looks spooked, as if I were the ghost of his dead quartermaster.

“Who the fuck are you?” he says.

“I'm the sucker,” I say. My eyes are shimmying to beat the band, but I keep them trained on Myra. “There's always one. This time it's me.”

“You're one of those circus freaks,” he says, pointing both flashlights at me. “You're one of those albinos.”

“I'm that, too,” I say. “But right now, sucker fits best.”

Myra's hair hangs over her left eye, but her right one carries a mix of guilt and shame.

“Okay, we're done,” the captain says to Myra and turns off both flashlights. We'd be in total blackness if it weren't for the fog light on the schooner.

The deal's done and the captain walks back to his boat. Myra doesn't stop him and neither do I. As far as I'm concerned, he can take Lovely's booze all the way to the Pacific and fill my reservation on the beach. Right now, I'm only concerned with Myra—and the skinny that Johalis sang into my deaf ears.

“You set all this up from the start,” I say. “Connor and Garvey. Reeger and me. And now you're ripping off Lovely. Who were you going to pin this one on? Let me guess. That circus freak with yellow hair and green eyes.”

She looks wounded. Her eyes moisten and she shakes her head. “I took the money so we could go to Hollywood,” she says, pushing the hair off her face. “Together.”

She's trying to stay balanced on the crutches and I fight the urge to help her.

“I guess you were going to come back for me, after stealing my car and my money,” I say.

“I was,” she says and looks at me with those glistening almond-shaped eyes. “I swear.”

Something happens to a man's heart when he knows the woman he loves is lying to him. It becomes so raw it feels every pain it's ever been dealt, every injustice it's ever experienced. I'm looking at Myra, but all I'm seeing are the things I'll never have: a day of sunbathing in Santa Monica; a childhood worth reliving; the mother who left a month after I was born.

“Bullshit,” I say. “You played me. You counted on me nailing Reeger, but you figured I'd get the chair. You would have been free and clear.”

“It's not true,” she says, a damp shine glistening on her cheeks. “You have it all wrong.”

The schooner's engine revs as the captain readies to pull it away from the wharf.

She tries to step toward me but is hampered by her crutches. “It's not too late,” she says. “I've got the money. Let's go. We can leave right now.” She holds up the captain's dough to show me our future, but she might as well be promising me a trip to Lovely's operating table.

“What's your angle this time, Myra? Set me up against Lovely? I'll pass.”

Her eyes go wide. She must realize she'll be left to deal with Lovely on her own; she can't be upset that I'm not going with her.

Suddenly, I hear footsteps behind me. A lot of them. When I turn around, I see Homer running toward us, his cap scrunched in his hand. Six bulls follow him; they're carrying flashlights and nightsticks.

Homer is yelling out to me. “Jersey, I got the cops.”

It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that once Homer realized Myra was running out on me, he broke his code of silence and sang like a canary.

My suspicions are confirmed when Homer points at the schooner and tells the bulls it's the boat with the booze.

Four cops make their way onto the schooner. The other two walk over to me with their nightsticks ready. When the taller bull steps through the fog, I see it's the one from the stationhouse, Thorndyke. He looks disillusioned, as if he expected more from an upstanding albino bartender.

“Is this the guy selling the whiskey?” he asks Homer. His glasses are covered with the dew from the foggy air.

“No,” Homer says. But he doesn't say anything else. I guess he can't bring himself to finger Myra now that he sees me standing with her.

“Her?” Thorndyke says with a look of surprise.

Myra looks desperate. She's boxed and she knows it. If the cops take her in, they'll nail her with plenty. If they let her go, then Lovely will catch up with her and take a couple of her fingers to make up for the double-cross. There was only one way her plan could succeed: she had to get out of here tonight.

“It wasn't me,” she says to Thorndyke. “I know how it looks but it wasn't me.” She's talking fast, in short bursts like machine-gun fire.

“Who was it then?” Thorndyke asks.

Myra's looking to her right and left as if she wants to find somebody to pin it on. But there's nobody there.

She looks at Thorndyke and says, “Aaron Garvey.”

Thorndyke raises an eyebrow. “Aaron Garvey is dead.”

“I know,” Myra says. “But he made the deal before he died. He was buying alcohol for the Red Canary. He wanted me to buy it for him, but I wouldn't do it. I came here to call the deal off.” She holds up the dough and shows it to Thorndyke. “See? I still have the money. Ask Jersey, he knows.”

She looks at me, her eyes pleading with me to back her up.

Thorndyke and his buddy are next to her, waiting for me to say something.

Homer is beside them, doing the same.

Myra looks at me, “Jersey, please.”

I picture her as a girl of twelve, the braids in her hair, the hurt in her eyes—and the look of hope that filled her face when we talked about Hollywood. I want to believe that girl is still in Myra, somewhere.

But then I picture Garvey, the guy who stood up for me all those years, the guy who deserved to die with a hell of a lot more dignity than he did.

“It's not so,” I say.

Thorndyke looks to the floor. I can see he's disappointed; I guess he doesn't want to book a woman on a bootlegging charge.

“Homer's right,” I say. “Myra's running this booze.”

Thorndyke pulls the handcuffs from his belt and panic invades Myra's expression. Her eyes are jerking from the bulls to me, then to the glinting steel in Thorndyke's hands.

I can't look at her as I fill in the rest of the blanks for Thorndyke. “Lovely made the deal but she stepped in. She was supposed to pick up the booze but sold it to the guy in that schooner. I won't bother telling you all she took from me.”

When I turn back toward Myra, she's got a gun in her hand and it's pointed at my chest. I have no idea where she had it hidden, probably holstered on the side of her crutch. She can't be more than eight feet away from me—which is far too close for her to miss. If she squeezes the trigger, I'll be dead before the gun cools. But she'd be crazy to do it. To get out of here alive, she'd have to keep shooting while running to the Auburn on crutches.