Blind Moon Alley (7 page)

“S'pose not.”

My father looks as if he's at a wake, mourning the death of the Aaron Garvey he used to know. He wants to find a way for Garvey to get out of this mess, but he wants to do it by the book. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the book says that convicted cop killers fry.

I leave him and the doc and go to check on Garvey, who's keeping watch in the waiting area. The place is even stuffier than the exam room. I'd give anything for the luxury of breathing through my nose.

I find Garvey pulling a window shade away from the glass and peeking at the street outside. A slice of sunshine crosses his soiled face as his eyes dart from left to right and back again. We're on the ground floor—he can't be seeing much more than a few feet of the chipped sidewalk and the leafy branches of the maple tree. I look at his frail, beaten body and realize that after his stint at the penitentiary, he might as well be taking in the Grand Canyon.

“Where's Reeger gonna show up next?” I say.

Garvey finally turns his gaze away from the street. “Wherever you are,” he says with a chuckle, even though he's not joking.

I picture the Sarge showing up at the Ink Well looking for me—and dropping the hammer on Angela and Doolie instead.

“I've got to get back to Philly,” I say.

“The city might be safer when you're not there,” Garvey says, crossing the room to the right window. He checks the street again, drumming his fingers on the gray marble windowsill. I almost wish Reeger would show up just so my friend would have something to do with his energy.

“I'm going back anyway,” I say. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do all I could to protect Angela. Her only crime has been hanging coats in a speakeasy.

By the time Garvey and I get back to the exam room, the champ's hand is wrapped in a hard white cast and he's got his torn seersucker jacket slung over his arm. His suit is about four years out of style, but I'm sure he'll try to get another season or two out of it. I'd buy him a new one, but he'd never wear it. Taking my money, he says, is the same as breaking the law with me.

The doc tells me he wants to take a look at my nose. I can't wait to get these cotton rods out of my nostrils, so I jump up on his exam table. He shines his tiny flashlight at my cheeks, peers at my skin through his horn-rims, and mutters under his breath. Then he removes the metal guard from my nose, and with a skinny gripper that looks like a miniature pair of pliers, he carefully tugs the long, bloody cotton sticks out of my nostrils. Breathing never felt so good.

“Your nose is doing fine, healing nicely. Just leave the guard on for another week or so,” he says.

Then he thumbs my right eyelid and angles my head toward the overhead lamp. I tell him I don't have time for a checkup. I know I'm an albino.

“Your skin concerns me, though,” he says, ignoring me. “You've got to stay out of the sun.” He sounds as if he's afraid of disappointing me, as if I were planning a second career as a lifeguard.

“Okay, no daylight.” I'm cracking wise, but the doc's not listening. He's clucking his tongue and examining the burnt rims of my ears. He's a funny old coot. He'll lecture you on how your blood carries oxygen to the brain and then forget where he left his office keys.

I'm itching to get back to Philly, but the doc has me wait while he opens his bottom desk drawer and rummages through a bin of vials and bottles. After a couple of digs, he pulls out a new tube of cream and hands it to me. He tells me to lather up generously when I'm in the sun. I nod and slide the tube into my pants pocket.

“Ready?” Garvey asks.

“Yep,” I tell him.

I turn to the champ. “We'll drop you at the Hy-Hat on our way back to the Ink Well.”

“I'm comin' with you,” he says. “None of us'll be safe until this gets cleared up.”

I'm surprised that he wants to come along. I'm also worried that he's going to nag us about breaking the law.

“Champ, they need you at the Hy-Hat,” I say.

He doesn't have time to answer before Garvey pipes in. “Whatever we do, we better do it now,” he says. “We gotta keep on the move.”

“Then let's go,” the champ says, pointing toward the door.

I can tell he's not taking no for an answer.

“You sure you want in?” I ask. “This could get really ugly.”

“That's why I'm comin',” he says. “To stop that from happenin'.”

He has no idea how bad things can turn, but I nod and give him a pat on the back. “Okay,” I say. “Then let's go.”

It feels good to have him with me.

We thank the doc and walk to the Auburn, which is parked on 88th Street. I take the wheel, my father sits in the passenger seat, and Garvey slumps down in the back.

“So what don't I know?” my father asks me. “Sometimes you got a way of leavin' stuff out.”

“I told you everything,” I say, and I did. He knows about Reeger, Garvey, even Myra and Lovely.

“Then Reeger's coming back,” the champ says. “And you're gonna need somebody at the Ink Well with you. You got room for another pair of hands?”

He'd never work at a juice joint, so I know he's thinking of his old friend, Johalis. It's a smart move. Johalis spent years working the grift in Philly. The guy knows the local streets like I know sunburn. He's got friends everywhere—in the speakeasies, at the stationhouse, even in City Hall. Johalis always talks about how the champ saved him from a couple of overenthusiastic bagmen back in the day; now he'll have a chance to even the score. I'd have called him already, but there are some favors you can't ask anybody but your closest friends—and hiding a convicted killer is one of them.

I pull onto Riverside Drive and a smile crosses my lips. I'm battered, bruised, and banged-up. But at least I'm not alone.

Like most grifters, Johalis lives in a place that's nearly impossible to find. For starters, his place is on Ludlow Street, but not the one that runs five miles across town. He's on a different Ludlow: a tiny, one-block hideaway that's tucked away east of Center City. And finding the street doesn't help much, because even the mailman can't tell one row house from the next. All eight have matching stone steps leading up to square wooden doors and, next to the front stairways, street-level basement apartments with black metal doors. I remember Johalis lived below a trumpet teacher, so it isn't until I hear a screechy scale blare out of a second-story window that I think I've found his place. I tap the diamond-shaped glass window on the apartment door and wait to see Johalis's wrinkled lids peer out from behind the yellowed lace curtain.

The night air is soggy—it's wrapping my body like an invisible, moist blanket. My nose guard is burning my skin; it feels as though it just popped out of Doolie's toaster. I'm dying to take the damn thing off for a few minutes but know I shouldn't. Instead, I take off my fedora and give my forehead a wipe with the crook of my arm.

The champ is standing curbside—he's got his eye on the Auburn, which is parked down by South Fifth. Garvey's still crouched down in the back; he'll need to stretch his legs soon, but we're waiting to make sure the coast is clear of Reeger's boys.

“You sure you've got the right door?” my father asks me. He's never been here, so he's even more in the dark than I am. I shrug my shoulders.

The champ's suit pants are dirty and ripped. His lower lip is swollen and tinged with blue. His right eyebrow has a crust of dried blood, and his shirt is ripped up to the elbow to make room for the cast. I want to offer him and Garvey a bath, a meal, and some clothes, but if Johalis isn't home, I'm not sure where to bring them. It can't be to my place, not while half the precinct is dining on the fine food at Ronnie's Luncheonette.

Johalis would have some ideas, but the curtain doesn't move. There are hundreds of places he could be, one of which is at the bottom of the Schuylkill in pajamas made of cement. The trumpet upstairs scratches out a kindergartener's nursery rhyme, and I wonder if a slow round of taps would be more appropriate.

“Forget it,” my father says from the curb.

Maybe the champ doesn't realize it, but we're running out of options. I knock harder, as if slamming my knuckles against the glazed glass could somehow force Johalis to appear.

“Let's go,” the champ says again, already halfway back to the car.

I knock again, but when the curtain doesn't budge, I give up and walk down Ludlow to join my father and Garvey in the Auburn.

I'm nearly at South Fifth when a steel blade kisses the back of my neck. The thug who's holding it doesn't need to speak; I'm sure it's Reeger, or somebody on his payroll. He yanks my arm behind my back and pulls me one step into an alley. Pain shoots up my shoulder and I'm afraid to make a move, much less turn around. I've got my snubnose in my pocket, but it might as well be at the Ink Well. I put my hands where he can see them.

A deep voice fills my right ear. “Jesus Christ, Jersey. What the hell are you doing here?”

Johalis looks like he tumbled out of bed. His black hair is greasy and hanging loosely over his ears; his long chin is covered by moss-like stubble.

“Looking for you,” I say, my voice shaky.

He lets go of my arm and I shake it in the air a few times, trying to regain feeling.

Johalis has an inch on me, but he's in no better condition than I am. His stomach is the size of a basketball and pops out over his belt; his shoulders might be even bonier than mine. But the guy knows his way around a street fight. Put him in a boxing ring with Reeger, and there's little doubt the Sarge would walk away with the title. Put them in an alleyway, and my money's on Johalis.

I jerk my thumb toward his shiv.

“Expecting somebody?” I ask.

“No, but when somebody shows up with tape covering their face, I get careful. Sorry.” He smiles and his crow's feet crinkle.

My father is making his way back up Ludlow. He's biting at his upper lip, but when he sees Johalis, he relaxes. I wonder if he realizes that his friend makes a living by bending the law, that the tools of Johalis's trade are no more elaborate than a nose for opportunity and a barrel of street-smarts. Knowing the champ, he chooses not to see it.

“There you are,” he says to his friend.

Johalis doesn't comment on my father's cast or banged-up face, nor does he ask about my nose guard. Instead, he pats the champ on the back and launches into stories about the times they lugged bricks at a construction site by the Hudson River. If I didn't know better, I'd think they enjoyed pushing two-hundred-pound wheelbarrows for a living.

I'm sure he's biding his time, waiting for my father to get to the reason we're here, and his wait isn't long. The champ tells him everything: how Garvey called me, how Reeger showed up at the Ink Well and then again at the Hy-Hat. He even tells Johalis how Garvey needs to get his money back from Myra to flee the country. Johalis listens poker-faced, but when the champ throws in that he wants to help me without breaking any more laws, Johalis lets out a long, slow whistle.

Fireworks go off over the Schuylkill and I remember it's the Fourth of July. My father keeps on talking, but I gaze up at the glittering display. For a brief second, I'm sitting on the roof of the Ink Well with Angela, watching the Philadelphia sky light up in red, white, and blue. I wonder how I can get there from where I am now: plotting to save my pal from the electric chair.

“I keep telling Jersey to quit the bar,” the champ tells Johalis.

I can't let it go without explaining my side. Neither of them understands what the Ink Well means to me.

“I can't quit, not now,” I say. “Reeger will drop a hammer on the joint.”

“But you can't protect the place on your own,” my father says.

“Sure I can.”

Johalis glances at my nose, probably doubting my ability to protect anything. Thankfully, he changes the subject.

“Slow down,” he tells us. His voice is as rich as cocoa and as thick as a malted. I'm telling you he could woo a Rottweiler out of a butcher shop. “I've got to clear some things up,” he says. “From the little you told me about Garvey, I'm assuming he had good reason to kill that cop. Am I right?”

“If I didn't think so,” the champ says, “I wouldn't be here.”

I nod in agreement, although I doubt my father would feel the same had he first met Garvey at Eastern State and not at Elementary School Four.

“I figured as much,” Johalis says. “So let's worry about him first.”

“So you're in?” I say.

Johalis flips his thumb toward my father. “If it weren't for him I might not be standing here,” he says. “Yeah, I'm in.”

The champ smiles and starts to say thank you, but Johalis cuts him off. “Jersey,” he says, “Get your buddy off the street and bring him inside.”