Out on the Cutting Edge (8 page)

"And, except for the kid, I don't think I ever lost a night's sleep over any of them. And I never agonized over the assholes I sent up for something they didn't do. I think it was wrong to do it, I wouldn't do it that way now, but none of that stuff bothers me anywhere near as much as not visiting Aunt Peg when she was dying. But that's an alcoholic for you. The big stuff is easy. It's the little shit that drives us crazy."

"Sometimes it's the big stuff, too."

"Something eating you, Eddie?"

"Oh, shit, I don't know. I'm a neighborhood guy, Matt. I grew up in these streets. You grew up in Hell's Kitchen, the one thing you learned was not to tell nothing to nobody. 'Don't tell your business to strangers.'

My mother was an honest woman, Matt. She found a dime in a pay phone, she'd look around for somebody to give it back to, but I must of heard her say it a thousand times. 'Don't tell nobody your business.' And she walked the walk, God bless her. Two, three times a week till the day he died, the old man'd come home half in the bag and slap her around.

And she kept it to herself. Anybody asked her, oh, she was clumsy, she walked into a door, she lost her balance, she fell down a flight of stairs.

But most people knew not to ask. If you lived in the Kitchen, you knew what not to ask."

I started to say something but he took my arm and urged me to the curb. "Let's cross the street," he said.

"I don't like to walk past that place if I don't have to."

The place in question was Grogan's Open House. Green neon in the window offered Harp lager and Guinness stout. "I used to hang out there a lot," he explained. "I like to steer clear of it now."

I knew the feeling. There was a time when I drank away the days and nights at Armstrong's, and when I first got sober I'd go out of my way to avoid passing the place. When I had to walk past it I would avert my eyes and speed up my pace, as if I might otherwise be drawn in against my will, like iron filings to a magnet. Then Jimmy lost his lease and relocated a block west at Tenth and Fifty-seventh, and a Chinese restaurant moved into his old spot, and I had one less problem in my life.

"You know who owns that joint, Matt?"

"Somebody named Grogan?"

"Not in years. That's Mickey Ballou's place."

"The Butcher Boy?"

"You know Mickey?"

"Only by sight. By sight and by reputation."

"Well, he's a sight and he's got a reputation. You won't find his name on the license, but it's his store.

When I was a kid I was tight with his brother Dennis. Then he got killed inVietnam . Were you in the service, Matt?"

I shook my head. "They weren't drafting cops."

"I had TB when I was a kid. I never knew it at the time, but there was something showed up on the X

ray, kept me out of the service." He threw his cigarette in the gutter. "Another reason to quit these things.

But not today, huh?"

"You've got time."

"Yeah. He was okay, Dennis. Then after he died I did some things with Mick. You heard the stories about him?"

"I've heard some stories."

"You heard about him and the bowling bag? And what he had in it?"

"I never knew whether to believe it or not."

"Well, I wasn't there. One time, though, and this was some years ago, I was in a basement two, three blocks from where we're standing now. They had a guy, I forget what he done. Ratted somebody out, it must of been. They're in the furnace room and they got him tied to a post with a clothesline, and a gag in his mouth, and Mickey puts on this long white butcher's apron, covers you from your shoulders down to your feet. The apron's pure white except for the stains on it. And Mickey picks up a ball bat and starts wailing on the guy, and the blood sprays all over the place. Next time I see Mickey he's in the Open House with the apron on. He likes to wear it, like he's a butcher just off work, ducked in for a quick one.

'See that?' he says, pointing to a fresh stain. 'Know what that is?

That's rat blood.' "

We had reached the corner a block south of Grogan's Open House, and now we crossedTenth Avenue again. He said, "I was never no Al Capone, but I done stuff. I mean, shit, voting for Abe Beame's the closest I ever came to an honest day's work. I'm thirty-seven years old and the only time I ever had a Social Security card was in Green Haven.

They had me working in the laundry there for whatever it was.

Thirty cents an hour? Something ridiculous like that, and they had to take out taxes and Social Security, so you had to get a Social Security card. Up to then I never had one, and after that I never used it."

"You're working now, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Little get-well jobs. Sweeping out a couple of joints after closing, Dan Kelly's and Pete's All-American. You know the All-American?"

"Talk about a bucket of blood. I would duck in there for a quick one, but I never stayed any length of time."

"Like making a pit stop. I used to love that, walk into a bar, have a quick pop, then out again to face the world. Anyway, I go into those two joints late at night or early in the morning, sweep the place out, take out the empties, put the chairs back around the tables. And there's a moving company down in the Village gives me a day's work now and then.

Everything's off the books, you don't need no Social Security card for those jobs. I get by."

"Sure."

"My rent's cheap, and I don't eat much, I never ate much, and what am I gonna spend my dough on?

Night-clubs? Fancy clothes? Fuel for my yacht?"

"Sounds as though you're doing all right."

He stopped walking, turned to face me. "Yeah, but I'm just shooting the shit, Matt." He put his hands in his pockets and stood looking down at the pavement. "The point is I done stuff I don't know if I want to tell anybody about. Admitting it to myself, all right, like I already know it, right? So it's just a matter of getting honest and facing up to it. And admitting it to God, well, man, if there's no God it don't make no difference, and if there is a God He already knows everything you done, so that part's easy. But coming clean with another person, shit, I don't know, Matt. I done certain things that you could go away for, and in some cases there's other people involved, and I just don't know how I feel about all that."

"A lot of people take the step with a priest."

"You mean like confession?"

"I think it's a little different. You're not seeking formal absolution as much as you're attempting to

unburden yourself. You don't have to be a Catholic, and you don't have to go through it in a church. You can even find a priest who's sober in AA and understands what the program's all about. But even if he's not he'd be bound by the seal of the confessional, so you wouldn't have to worry about him saying anything to anybody."

"I couldn't tell you the last time I was in a church. Wait a minute, did you hear what I just said? Christ, I was in a church an hour ago. I been going into church basements once or twice a day for months. But the last time I went to mass, well, I went to a couple weddings over the years, Catholic weddings, but I didn't take communion. I'm sure it's more than twenty years since I made confession."

"It doesn't have to be with a priest. But if you're worried about confidentiality--"

"Is that how you did it? With a priest?"

"I took it with another person from the program. You know him.

Jim Faber."

"I don't think I know him."

"Sure you do. He comes toSt. Paul 's all the time, he was there tonight. He's a few years older than I am.

Hair's mostly gray, wears a beat-up army jacket most of the time.

You'd know him if you saw him."

"He wasn't at the Flame, was he?"

"Not tonight."

"What is he, a cop or a detective or something?"

"No, he's a printer, he's got his own shop over onEleventh Avenue

."

"Oh, Jim the Printer," he said. "Been sober a long time."

"He's coming up on nine years."

"Yeah, well, that's a long time."

"He would tell you he just did it a day at a time."

"Yeah, that's what they all tell you. It's still nine fucking years, isn't it? No matter how you slice it, divide it into hours and minutes if you want, it still comes to nine years."

"That's the truth."

He took out another cigarette, changed his mind, returned it to the pack. "Is he your sponsor?"

"Not formally. I've never had a sponsor in any formal way. I've never been very good at doing things the way you're supposed to. Jim's the person I call when I want to talk about something. If I call anybody."

"I got a sponsor when I was about two days out of detox. I got his number next to my phone. The phone doesn't work and I've never called him anyway. We go to different meetings, so I never see him, either."

"What's his name?"

"Dave. I don't know his last name, and I have to say I'm beginning to forget what he looks like, it's so long since I saw him. But I've never yet thrown his number away, so I guess he's still my sponsor. I mean, I could call him if I had to, right?"

"Sure."

"I could even take the step with him."

"If you felt comfortable with him."

"I don't even know him. Do you have anybody that you sponsor, Matt?"

"No."

"You ever hear anybody's fifth step?"

"No."

There was a bottle cap on the sidewalk and he kicked at it.

"Because I guess that's what I'm leading up to. I can't believe it, a crook looking to confess to a cop. Of course you're not with the department no more, but would you still, you know, be bound to report anything I said?"

"No. I wouldn't have the legal right to withhold information, the way a priest or a lawyer might, but that's how I'd treat it. As privileged information."

"Would you be willing? It'd be a whole load of shit once I got started, you might not want to sit through it."

"I'll force myself."

"I feel funny asking."

"I know. I felt the same way."

"If it was just me involved," he began, then broke off the sentence.

He said, "What I want to do, I want to take a couple of days, sort things out in my mind, think some things through. Then if you're still willing we can get together and I can talk some. If that's all right with you."

"There's no hurry," I told him. "Wait until you're ready."

He shook his head. "If I wait till I'm ready I'll never do it. Gimme the weekend to sort it out and then we'll sit down and do it."

"Sorting it out is part of it. Take all the time you need."

"I been doing that," he said. He grinned, put a hand on my shoulder. "Thanks, Matt. That's my block coming up and I think I'll say good night."

" 'Night, Eddie."

"Have a good weekend."

"You too. Maybe I'll run into you at a meeting."

"St. Paul's is just Monday through Friday, right? I'll probably get there Monday night, anyway. Matt?

Thanks again."

He headed for his building. I walked up a block on Tenth, walked east on one of the cross streets. A few doors from the corner ofNinth Avenue , three young men in a doorway went silent at my approach.

Their eyes followed me all the way to the corner, and I could feel their stares like darts between my shoulder blades.

Halfway home a hooker asked me if I felt like partying. She looked young and fresh, but they mostly do these days; drugs and viruses keep them from lasting long enough to fade.

I told her we'd have to make it some other time. Her smile, at least as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa's, stayed with me all the way home.

AtFifty-sixth Street a black man, bare to the waist, asked me for spare change. Half a block farther, a woman stepped out of the shadows and made the same request. She had lank blond hair and the face of an Okie out of one of those Depression photographs. They each got a dollar from me.

There were no messages at the hotel desk. I went up to my room and took a shower and got into bed.

Some years back three brothers named Morrissey owned a small four-story brick building on West Fifty-first half a block from the river.

They lived in the top two stories, rented out the ground floor to an Irish amateur theater, and sold beer and whiskey after hours on the second floor. There was a time when I went there a lot, and there may have been half a dozen occasions when Mickey Ballou and I were there at the same time. I don't know that we ever exchanged a word, but I remember seeing him there, and knowing who he was.

My friend Skip Devoe had said of Ballou that, if he had ten brothers and they all stood around in a circle, you'd think you were atStonehenge . Ballou had that megalithic quality, and he had too an air of wild menace just held in check. There was a man named Aronow, a manufacturer of women's dresses, who one night spilled a drink on Ballou. Aronow's apology was immediate and profuse, and Ballou mopped himself up and told Aronow to forget it, and Aronow left town and didn't come back for a month. He didn't even go home and pack, he took a cab straight to the airport and was on a flight within the hour. He was, we all agreed, a cautious man, but not overly cautious.

Lying there, waiting for sleep to come, I wondered what was on Eddie's mind and what it might have to do with the Butcher Boy. I didn't stay up late worrying about it, though. I figured I'd find out soon enough.

The good weather held all weekend. Saturday I went to a ball game. The Mets and the Yankees had both had a shot at it. The Mets were still leading their division, in spite of the fact that nobody was hitting.

The Yankees had slipped to six or seven out and it didn't look as though they were going to turn it around. That weekend the Mets were inHouston for three games with the Astros. The Yankees were coming to the end of a home stand, hosting the Mariners, and I got to see Mattingly win it with a double down the line in the eleventh.