Blind Moon Alley (5 page)

Doolie took the night off, so I'm closing the joint with Angela. Homer's on the door and I've got my snubnose under my apron, tucked into the waistband of my pants.

I gave last call at two a.m., but Angela's friend Wallace is dawdling with some friends at a table in the dining room; they're dissecting the Scottsboro case over the last of their sandwiches and beer. Calvin's still here, too. He saddled up to the bar around eight and has been asking me about the bar fight. I can't blame him for being curious. After all, he's here as often as I am and has no interest in running into a ginned-up Jack Dempsey wannabe.

“I never thought that kind of stuff would happen here,” he's saying.

Again, I hate myself for lying, for telling Calvin he's not safe here, that there's an unlocked window in our underground refuge.

“Times are changing,” I say and shrug my shoulders.

“Sure are,” he says and downs the last drops of his Rob Roy.

The poor lug's still out of work. He's been doing everything he can to make his grocery money go farther—baking his own bread, cooking his own jam, canning his own tomatoes—but there isn't a trick in the book that can stretch a paycheck of zero. He makes a couple of bucks singing with his quartet at a barbershop here in Center City, but the shop just got a radio and he'll soon be losing that money, too. He's not as worried about himself as he is about his wife, Rose. The night he lost his job, he went through half a bottle of King's Ransom before he mustered up the courage to go home and tell her that he had nothing to show for eighteen years at the Baldwin plant other than a handshake and a pink slip.

He's got three bucks sitting on the bar and I can only hope he's got more in his pocket. His tab is close to ten dollars, but I take only one and leave him two. If I don't help him out, he'll be busted by month's end. He nods in gratitude, pockets his bills, and heads for the door. I follow him and tell Homer to take the rest of the night off.

“You sure, Jersey?” Homer says. I can see he's disappointed that Reeger hasn't shown up. He's itching for another crack at the guy.

“Go home,” I tell him. “I'll keep the door locked until the place empties out. See you tomorrow.”

He pulls his flat cap from his pocket and tugs it onto his head. Then he leaves with Calvin, bending the poor guy's ear about how he'd have done the same thing as Garvey if he were ever thrown in the pen.

Angela comes out of the kitchen as I'm shutting the door behind the two of them. She's no cook, but she volunteered to fill in for Doolie on his night off. A gob of ketchup smears her apron and sweat stains the pink cotton under her arms. My guess is that she'll think twice about manning that stove again anytime soon. Doolie is the only one of us who can stand that kind of heat for an entire shift.

She's fingering her hair with her right hand—she's had a bald spot about the size of a poker chip ever since she was burned as a kid and I can tell she's trying to cover the small patch of exposed pink scalp. She hands the check to Wallace; he gives her a couple of bills and tells her to keep the change.

When Wallace's crew is ready to leave, I open the door, let them out, and slide the deadbolt back into place. Angela and I are alone but I'm not sure she notices. She cleans the table and gets ready to leave for the night as Nat Shilkret's orchestra plays “You Can't Stop Me from Loving You” on the radio. I wonder if she hears the song quite the same way I do.

I open the trapdoor and make my way down the spiral stairway—the cool, dark air feels good against my damp neck. It's late, but if I can restock the bar quickly enough, I'll walk Angela home. I pull the chain and light the room. I nearly trip off the final step when I see I'm not alone.

“Hiya, Snowball.”

Sitting on a stack of liquor boxes is Garvey. He gives me a weary grin but then spots the metal plate guarding my nose and winces. “Jesus.”

I don't stop to explain—I just run to the hatch to make sure it's locked. It is.

Garvey is dirty and banged up. The acrid smell of his sweat reaches all the way across the room. His prison duds are so soiled they look more like a grease monkey's outfit than a state-issued jumpsuit. He's got an unruly beard, a swollen lip, and a crusty purple scab along the top edge of his left ear.

“How the hell did you get here?” I ask him in a hoarse whisper.

“Easy,” he says, flashing one of his old schoolyard grins. “That whiskey you gave Milmo really got him going. After you left, he ransacked the cellblock looking for more. He found a bottle of rye—I think he took it off some bank robber—and polished it off with Flanagan in my cell. Those boys were sloshed. In the back of the wagon, I palmed Milmo's keys right off his belt, then undid my cuffs while the two of them sat there yakkin' about the good ol' days. The minute the truck slowed down, I made a break for it. Flanagan was already out cold, but Milmo still had an eye open. He went for his gun, but one punch put him down. I made it out of the truck and the driver never even knew I'd slipped out.”

“But how'd you find the Ink Well? It's not as if we've got a sign hanging outside,” I say, still keeping my voice down in case Angela gets too close to the bar. Then I add, “I thought you were in Harrisburg.”

“Harrisburg?” he whispers, a faint whistle coming from that broken brown tooth. “Is that what they're sayin'?”

I nod. “That's the word on the radio.”

“Not true,” he says, shaking his head. “I ran at night, covered my duds with grease, and asked an old hobo if he knew an albino bartender. Y'know, there aren't many. It didn't take all that long to find the place.”

He smiles but I can't do the same. My mind is racing and all I'm seeing are bad endings.

“So what now?” I say. “You can't stay here. You want to know what happened to my nose? Reeger came here with a bunch of questions and didn't like my answers.”

“Reeger,” Garvey says, his voice no louder than the rustle of a leaf. “I'll handle him.”

“That's not gonna be as easy as you think. He's got a whole squad out looking for you. His boys are tailing me day and night.”

Angela calls my name. I motion for Garvey to be quiet. She opens the trapdoor and I pray I don't hear the click of her heels on the hard wooden steps.

“G'night, Jersey,” she shouts down.

“G'night,” I say, hoping Garvey's sweaty smell doesn't make it all the way up the stairs. “Remember to lock the door behind you.”

I hold my breath, braced for the worst.

“Okay, see you tomorrow,” she says. She shuts the trapdoor and I let out a sigh of relief. Then I put my finger in the air to keep Garvey from speaking until I'm sure Angela is well out of earshot. When I hear the front door close, I turn back to him.

“Tell me you have a plan,” I say.

“Who's she?” he asks.

“Never mind her. Start talking.”

“Do you have anything to eat?”

I must look annoyed because he says: “Please, Snow. I'm starving.”

I can't turn him down, so I bring him upstairs into the kitchen and make him a cold meatloaf sandwich. He eats it like the starving man he claims to be—taking big bites and barely chewing. I pour him a glass of milk but can see he'd like something stronger, so I spike it with a shot of scotch. Then I make him another sandwich and tell him to slow down, that I'm not kicking him out.

Leaning on the fridge, I watch him eat and wait for him to fill up. Halfway into the second sandwich, he starts to talk.

“I need the money,” he tells me, his cheek bulging from a lump of meatloaf.

“The money?”

“The twenty large. I need Myra to pay me back.”

“I thought you said she gave it to Lovely.”

“She did,” he says, nodding. “But now I need her to pay it back. How else'm I supposed to live? If I'm gonna run, I'm gonna need that dough.”

I'd like to tell him he's wrong, but he's not.

He takes a slug of the spiked milk. “What'd she say about Reeger?” he says. “He still on her back?”

“I never met with her, Garv,” I say, shaking my head. “And I never said I would.”

He looks disappointed in me; as if they'd fried him up at Rockview and he came back to find out I hadn't fought for his honor. I try not to let it eat at me.

He's still looking around the kitchen so I toss him an apple. It's barely in his hand when he bites into it.

“I'm gonna have to get out of the country,” he says as he chews. “Got no choice.”

He's right. He can't fight that murder charge. He's already lost his appeals, and that was when he was given a chance to speak. Now he's a marked man, a breathing bull's-eye.

I can't send him back out on the streets; everybody in Philadelphia wants him dead. He'll be gunned down within days. Or, if he's lucky, the cops will bring him in alive and fry him before the week is out. But what he wants—my help in dodging a statewide dragnet—could land me in the chair next to his.

I look at my old friend as he munches on the apple. I want to give him a bushel of fruit, and sandwiches, and dinners. And I'd like to see him get the hell out of the country. But if I'm going to help, there are some things I have a right to know.

“Garv,” I say.

He looks up at me, his right hand holding the apple and poised in midair. I speak slowly, as if that makes the question any easier to say, or to hear.

“What exactly happened that night?” I ask him. “At the Canary?”

“You think I'm a killer, too?” He looks down toward his feet, which are bare, bruised, and swollen. The nails are caked with dirt and dried blood. I can't imagine how he ran on them all the way from Eastern State.

“It's not about what I believe,” I say. “I just need to know the truth.”

He nods as if he understands, and starts talking, slowly.

“The whole thing started long before you read about it in the papers,” he says. “Myra chased some guy here from New York—a thug, small-time stickup artist, did some time in Pittsburgh over at West Pen. Anyway, she came here for him but wound up at the Red Canary. She's a singer—y'know, a nightclub act—at least she is now. Gorsky, I mean, Lovely, liked her, so he sold her a piece of the place.”

“So how'd it wind up with you shooting a bull?”

His eyes go cold and the corners of his lips turn downward. “Joe Connor,” he says. “Reeger's partner.”

He's staring at the oven door as if he's watching the scene play out in front of him.

“I had an arrangement with Myra. I gave her the money, and she was gonna give me a hundred bucks a week until it was paid off.”

I imagine he charged Myra some kind of vig, but that's not the point. “And?”

“And Connor wanted Myra to start paying him instead of me. He'd been badgering me for months, bringing me in, arresting me, but I always told him the same thing—he could jam his badge up his ass, I wouldn't let him or anybody else muscle in on me. Well, his boys came down on me, Snow, and they came down hard. I gave as good as I got, but that night at the Canary I couldn't keep up with them. They banged me up all over. I couldn't even stand up on my own. Connor, he puts one live round in his cylinder, spins it, and jams it in my mouth. He sticks the fuckin' barrel so hard down my throat he breaks my tooth. Then he puts my hand on the trigger and tells me to squeeze. And all the time he's laughing, telling me he's the law, he's the boss, how if I don't like it I could call the cops. I'm tasting metal, Snow, and his boys got their guns on me, and I'm so damned scared I peed my pants. I prayed dear God for my life, not for the one I'd lived, for the one I'd never had. I prayed for the wife I never found, for the boy I never raised.”

Garvey stops talking for a moment. He stares into the musty air in front of him and his eyes well up.

“He made me pull that fucking trigger, Snow, but the chamber was empty. And God help me, he made me pull it a second time. And the chamber was empty again. So I took the fucking thing out of my mouth and aimed it at Connor—and pulled the trigger a third time. I got lucky. I nailed him right under his jaw, and goddammit, it felt good. It felt great. That bullet was meant for me, Snow, but it hit him. His boys were on me right away, but they couldn't do nothin'. The place was flooded with cops—clean ones—right after the shot went off.”

“Jesus, Garv.”

“If I didn't nail him, I'd a blown my own head off.”

“So why didn't you say that in court?”

Garvey gives me a look that says the courts are as corrupt as the cops, and I know he's right. “They brought in two witnesses,” he says. “Reeger and Myra. Reeger nailed me. Big surprise. Myra was so damned scared she barely opened her mouth. They'd a killed her if she talked.”

He says it as if cold-blooded murder is logical and I suppose, in some worlds, it is.

I look at my old friend, a small-time crook caught in a street war with hardened bulls. I'm in debt to the guy he used to be and the best I can do is pay back the man he has become. No, I can't get the cops off his back, but with a little luck, I can get him out of the country before Reeger or the state police nail him.

“I figured something like that happened,” I tell him. “That you had no choice.”

His tired eyes wake up. “So you're in?”

“Damn straight,” I say. “I can't let you out there alone. Not like this.”

“Swell,” he says and breathes a sigh of relief. Then he adds, “You know I'll have to stay here.”

I shake my head. “Can't do that,” I say. “But I've got a place where you can lay low. You'll hide out there while I sort the money stuff out with Myra. We'll need to get you cleaned up, some new clothes.”

“Snowball,” he says. “Thanks.”

I think that's the first time I ever heard Garvey thank me, probably because he's never owed me anything before.