Blind Moon Alley (2 page)

“Don't believe everything you read,” I tell him, surprised at how easily we're falling into our old rhythm after twelve years.

“Bullshit,” he says. His voice is cracking and I wish I could pour him a beer. Then he says: “Y'know, they're fryin' me in a couple of days.”

I tell him that I heard about it on the radio.

“Asked me what I want for my last meal,” he says. “As if it's a fancy occasion, right? Just like a regular restaurant, except the chair at the head of the table has fuckin' cables attached to it. I told them to go screw their mothers.”

There's nothing to say, so I stay quiet. Before he says anything else, the call clicks back to the operator. She tells me to report to Eastern State Penitentiary, Tuesday night, seven o'clock.

I'm not following and I tell her so.

“Mr. Garvey's last meal,” she says. “He's allowed one guest, and he's requested you.”

The tone in her voice says she assumes any friend of Aaron Garvey's is a criminal. I'd feel better about myself if she were wrong.

She spills a bunch of details and I jot them down on the back of Doolie's yellow pages.

I wipe my sweat from the receiver with my shirtsleeve, hang up the phone, and step out of the booth. The older guys are still singing in the corner. I tell Doolie and Angela that everything's fine, then take my place behind the bar and splash some bourbon over ice for Homer. I don't mention that I'll be meeting my old friend Aaron Garvey just in time to watch him die.

I put a smile on my face and rinse a batch of highball glasses. I'm trying to wash Garvey off my mind, but I can't stop wondering why, if the guy could share his last meal with one person, he picked me.!

CHAPTER 2

My apartment is two flights up from the Ink Well. One of the windows in the parlor is painted shut and the plaster on the ceiling is cracked and peeling. I'm not complaining; it's a decent place and Doolie cut me a square deal. The guy doesn't have deep pockets—the Ink Well is getting squeezed just like every other joint in town—but as long as I'm running the bar, I don't have to pay a dime in rent. If he hadn't hired me, I might be back in New York, sleeping on a park bench or fighting for a bed in a church basement.

A gust of wind rattles the window and I look outside before pulling down the shades. There's still some light in the sky, but the air is muggy and a thunderstorm is baptizing the Philly locals. Two blondes are across the street, huddled under the awning at Ronnie's Luncheonette, smoking cigarettes and laughing, oblivious to the fact that Aaron Garvey will get smacked with a thousand volts of juice later tonight, right here in the City of Brotherly Love.

I've got the radio on. Rudy Vallee's singing “You're Driving Me Crazy,” and the music brings me closer to another world—one without speakeasies, electric chairs, or albinos. Listening to Rudy Vallee makes me feel white. Normal white. As he croons, I picture myself on a beach, free of blisters and prescription creams. My mirror hangs directly over the radio, so I turn the other way, toward the kitchen. I sing along with Rudy and promise myself I'll smear some of the doc's ointment on my face as soon as the song is over.

I reach into my pocket, pull out thirty bucks—my week's pay—and shove it into an envelope. Then I sit at my desk, which has nothing on it other than a typewriter, a stack of blank paper, and a framed photo of my father during his younger days in the ring. I scrawl his name—Ernie Leo—on the envelope and address it to the Hy-Hat, the Harlem social club I started visiting when we moved to New York eleven years ago. Now I own the place and the champ runs it. From what he tells me, things are going well. The Hy-Hat has more members than ever before and he's giving late-night boxing lessons to the older kids; even some of the girls have been hitting the dummy bag. He says I should quit breaking the law and work with him, but it doesn't seem to cross his mind that the Hy-Hat would be an empty storefront if I weren't sending an envelope his way on the first of every month. And I need a bar in front of me to do that.

Hunching over the Underwood he bought me before I dropped out of City College, I hammer out a note. I tell him about Garvey's invitation to dinner, and I ask him if he remembers how the girls in Hoboken used to call Garvey “Adonis” because of his massive shoulders and bright white teeth.

My sweaty index fingers dampen the metal keys as I thank him for taking care of the Hy-Hat. I tell him that I'll quit bartending and join him at the club as soon as I find a job back in New York. But then I reread the note, rip it out of the typewriter, and toss it in the trash. I don't want to let the champ down again. The truth is that I won't be walking away from the Ink Well any time soon. New York isn't doing any better than Philly—its classifieds are thinner than my shaving razor. For now, the cash I send will have to speak for me.

I seal the envelope and jam it into my pocket. Then I reach into the closet and put a five-dollar bill into the Zealandia shoebox I use for Angela's high-school fund. She wants to go back to school—she dropped out so she could help her uncle, Doolie, run the Ink Well when his wife died. The problem is that she can't afford to leave her job. Doolie covers her apartment over on Buttonwood just like he does for me in this place. By this time next year, though, I just might have a surprise for her.

I close the box, throw on my raincoat, and head out the door. Dinner's at seven and I don't want to keep my friend waiting.

I pull the Auburn to the curb and kill the wipers, lights, and engine. Eastern State Penitentiary might as well be a military fortress, right down to the filth on its walls and guards at its iron gates. It's hard to believe I'm in Fairmount, not even two miles north of the Ink Well.

The rain is tap-dancing on the roof of the car. I don't have time to wait it out; dinner starts in half an hour. I yank my fedora down low on my forehead, pull the lapels of my raincoat over my neck, and trot across the avenue. The shower is blowing sideways; it's stinging my cheeks like a plague of warm needles.

Turrets reach up and pierce the sky to my right and left. I'm sure each one houses a marksman with a loaded Springfield, steady trigger finger, and little time for Aaron Garvey's friends. The prison stretches more than five city blocks. I make it under the granite arch that marks the main entrance and shake the rain from my hat and oxfords. A red-haired guard in a blue uniform and tan cap struts out of the gatehouse. The badge on his chest says his name is Milmo.

I start to tell him why I've come, but before I can get a word out, he sees my face and winces. The rain is still prickling my skin and the blotches on my face are probably the color of a candied apple.

“You're here for what?” His eyes meet mine, and he stares me down. Maybe he doesn't like albinos. He should only know what I think of prison guards.

“I'm here to see Aaron Garvey.”

He straightens up when he hears the name. It hits me that I'm still relying on Garvey to be taken seriously.

Milmo tells me he has to pat me down.

“I'm not stupid enough to show up here packing heat,” I tell him as I unbutton my raincoat. “But you're gonna find a flask in my back pocket.”

He's bigger than I am but that's not saying much. I'm barely six feet tall and weigh a buck-sixty-five. My midsection is soft and my shoulders are so bony they look as if a miner could use them to chisel stone.

He frisks me. Once he's satisfied I'm clean, he reaches around my waist and pulls out my flask. Then he opens it and takes a sniff of Doolie's best whiskey.

“Smells illegal,” he tells me.

“It is,” I tell him. “But I was invited to dinner and didn't want to show up empty-handed.”

He takes a healthy slug and screws the top back on as his cheeks flush. Then he slips the flask back into my pocket. For a cheap shamus, he's sure got the swagger of a real cop.

He ushers me into the gatehouse, where three other guards are sitting on folding chairs and listening to Eddie Cantor on the radio. I turn away from the bright lamps they've got burning, but it's no use, my eyes shimmy. Milmo stares at me with the same confused expression I get from the rumrunners who say I'm too white to be colored, and too colored to be trusted. I could save him four years of medical school by telling him that albino eyes go haywire every once in a while, but I skip it.

“If you don't pick up the pace,” I tell him, “I'm going to miss the appetizers.”

He grabs a stack of papers on his desk and has me sign one that says I'm Jersey Leo. Then he gets a short, bald guard named Flanagan to join us on our walk to cellblock one. They open an iron gate and we make our way through the empty, fencedin grounds. It's a desolate, flooded square, even starker than the schoolyard Garvey and I played in back in Hoboken.

I follow them down a dim, muggy corridor lined on both sides with matching doors. The doors are solid wood—no windows—and I wonder how many guys have childhood friends locked up here and don't even know it. We stop at a door marked forty-two. Milmo and Flanagan draw their nightsticks and stand on opposite sides, Milmo on the left and Flanagan on the right. Milmo reaches over and slowly unlatches the door, then motions with his head for me to go on in.

For the first time since I arrived, I wonder if I'm about to see the warm eyes of my old friend or the cold glare of a ruthless killer. Milmo's waiting at the door and I won't give him the satisfaction of seeing me blink. My throat goes dry and my ears go hot, but I walk into the cell without breaking stride.

The cramped room has a high arched ceiling with a small hole exposing a patch of gray sky. Rain spits into the cell, sprinkling the back wall. In the center of the space is a square table with two meals waiting; on the far side of it sits my old buddy Aaron Garvey. When he sees me, he flashes one of his schoolboy grins and I'm immediately back at Elementary School Four.

“Hiya, Snowball,” he says, standing up and shaking my hand.

His lopsided smile is tainted by a mouthful of yellow teeth; a front tooth is broken and nearly as brown as his skin. He looks weaker than I'd imagined—Adonis's chest is now at least three inches smaller than his stomach—and when he shakes my hand, his bony grip manages only a light squeeze before it relaxes. People think Garvey is losing his life tonight, but it's been getting sucked out of him since he walked in here three years ago.

“Look at you,” he says as he gives me a pat on the back. “Y'look just like in the paper.”

I don't bother to comment that newspapers print in black and gray. “Thanks,” I say.

He shakes his head in disbelief. “Hard to believe it's been so long.” When his last couple of words pass that broken tooth they're accompanied by a faint whistle.

Garvey sits back down and the spirit drains from his face. His dark cheeks are drawn, but in his reddish-brown eyes I spot a glimmer of the twelve-year-old kid who fought for me. That kid needs help, and I'm sorry I can't be the one to give it to him.

Milmo stands in the corner of the cell, his nightstick at his side, and I hear the door shut behind me. I realize that he'll be with us until I leave, which means Garvey and I won't be talking about a number of things during dinner—including him.

“Have a seat,” Garvey tells me, pointing to the open folding chair as if he were sitting in a real dining room. I throw my coat and jacket over the back of the chair and sit down. The chair is uneven—it rocks from leg to leg. The air is saturated and my shirt collar clings to the back of my neck. I try my best to look comfortable.

“I brought you something,” I say as I pull out my flask.

“Hopin' you would,” he says. The grateful tone in his voice is as much a part of my old friend as the way he rubs his ear with his thumb.

There are two empty coffee cups sitting on the table, so I fill each one halfway. He lifts his.

“Old friends,” he says and downs his whiskey.

Milmo coughs and I know why. He's not about to watch us finish off the booze without getting a taste. I hand him my cup; for this meal, I'll be drinking straight from the flask.

Satisfied, Milmo walks behind Garvey to the back of the cell, where he sits on the corner of the cot and sips his hooch.

I refill Garvey's cup and then down a slug.

“Glad y'showed up,” my friend tells me. “I'm on my own here. I might be alone later tonight, too.”

He must know that the execution is open only to the press and immediate family, so I don't bother explaining why I'll be back at the Ink Well when he says his final good-byes.

“It'll be fine,” he says with a sarcastic chuckle. “What could go wrong?”

“Nothing,” Milmo says from behind Garvey.

Garvey's shoulders stiffen and he flips his thumb toward Milmo. “Thinks I'm a fuckin' butcher.”

I'm wondering if Milmo is wrong, but I won't put my friend on the spot, especially since he's only got a few hours left to live. I must be wearing a troubled expression, though, because he volunteers an answer.