Blind Moon Alley (23 page)

“Any good?” I ask Wallace, nodding toward the book.

“Wonderful,” he says.

He starts talking about the story—he tells me it's a morality tale about love and greed and corruption—and I wonder if there's anything in there I haven't seen firsthand. I'm not about to admit to him, or myself, that I'd never pick up a book that thick, regardless of what it's about.

Wallace hands it to me. “Just finished it. It's all yours.”

“Really?” Part of me wants to shove it back at him. The other part wants the book.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it but fighting the urge to look inside. I'll take a peek at the first couple of pages later. If Wallace can find it so damned interesting, maybe I can, too.

Angela is looking at us as though she's watching Einstein and Freud swap notes. I want to believe she's proud of me for seeking knowledge, but I'm sure she's prouder of Wallace for sharing his.

I'm about to ask her if she's still planning on going back to school but I don't want to embarrass her. I thank Wallace again for the book and say a final farewell. The truth is I'm going to miss the joint. In here, I was one of the gang. On the street, I'm one of a kind.

I walk out the door, leaving Angela and my long-forgotten hope for the two of us behind me.

As I walk up the stairs to my apartment, I flip through the novel. The book looks wordy and dense, but I'm determined to enjoy it. I don't put it down until I step inside my apartment. When I do, I'm staring down the barrel of a Colt thirty-eight special.

“Evening, Snowball.”

It's Reeger's mustached friend. He's wearing a threadbare white shirt under a pair of brown suspenders. He's got wide, round sweat stains under his arms and on his chest; he looks more like a railroad laborer than a dead bull's muscle.

“You can drop the rod,” I say.

“I can but I won't,” he says, chuckling as though I couldn't keep up with a brain as sharp as his. His breath reeks; he's either been drinking hack moonshine or high-caliber dog piss. “Now turn around and walk out the door like a good little freak.”

I'd like to bang the smile off his face, but my knucks are in the nightstand by my bed and my gun is strapped to my ankle.

“Where we going?” I say.

“To say hello to Mister Lovely.”

Oh, fuck. That's about the worst answer I could have gotten. Lovely doesn't talk to people. He mutilates them.

“Why me?” I ask, as if I didn't know Lovely was in business with Reeger and wants to even the score.

“I have no idea,” the goon says and smiles again. “But I'm glad it's you and not me.”

He pushes me out the door and his wristwatch scrapes my blistered ear. It stings, but I wouldn't let this guy see me wince if I were laying face-down on Doolie's griddle. I walk two paces in front of him, grateful that he's either too stupid or too drunk to think of patting me down. He shadows me, his Colt in his hand and his jacket draped over it.

He tells me to walk toward Vine, so that's what I do. On the way, we pass a young guy sauntering into the Ink Well; he's wearing a white shirt with a stiff collar and he's got black garters on his arms. He must be the new bartender. I hope he knows how good he's got it compared to his predecessor.

“Where are we going?” I say again.

The goon lets out another one of those creepy chuckles. When we get to his Studebaker, he throws me inside and won't let me open a window. I'm baking in the passenger seat, smelling the liquor that oozes from his pores, wondering if I should try reaching for my gun. I don't. Even if I could shoot my way out of this, Lovely would find me. Maybe not today or tomorrow—but soon enough.

As we cross Market and head toward the water, I realize we're going back to Bobby Lewis's. I remind myself that as far as Lovely or anybody else is concerned I've never been there, I've never seen the back alley, and I don't know a thing about any missing folder.

The thug turns onto Fitzwater and I see Lovely's Packard town car parked out front, a chauffeur reading the paper in the front seat. We park behind it and my chaperone pulls me out of the car by the shoulder. Bobby Lewis's is closed—it's still a crime scene—but we step around the police barricade and walk through the front door, which has been replaced by a couple of wooden boards. I don't dare say it to the goon, but using the door is a far cry easier than wriggling through the transom window.

The place is empty and has a ghostly feel to it. Spilled blood stains the raw wooden floor. So do two chalk lines, one of which outlines the silhouette of Aaron Garvey. I wonder where his body is now—I'm betting the bulls buried him in an unmarked grave to avoid the glare of photographers' bulbs. There's nothing I can do to give him the graceful exit he deserved. I wish there were a way to let him know that I settled with Reeger, especially now that I'm going to pay the price for doing it.

“In there,” the goon says as he points his chin toward the manager's office. Outside the room, two muscleheads stand guard. They're each wearing herringbone suits and look about as relaxed as the cue sticks on the wall rack next to them.

The goon's about to step on the chalk outline of Garvey's head so I push him out of the way. He wheels around and points the Colt at my forehead, his lips twisted into an ugly scowl. Behind him, the muscleheads reach inside their jackets and pull out their own revolvers. If anybody fires, I'll land right where Garvey died.

“Show some fucking respect,” I say to the goon.

My eyes shimmy and he looks at them strangely, as if he's staring at a hypnotist's pendulum. I'm itching to grab my pistol and put a slug between his bushy eyebrows, but he's pressing his Colt against my chest and the muscleheads have their hands on their rods. My ankle never seemed farther away.

“Get in there,” the goon says and nods toward the business office.

I do what I always do when somebody's got a loaded thirty-eight pointed at me: I follow instructions.

On the way in, I pass the muscleheads.

“What's the matter?” I say. “Never saw an albino before?”

They don't answer; they just stare straight ahead. Either Lovely told them to act like brainless robots or they came up with the idea on their own.

The goon pushes me into a cramped room that smells of furniture wax and tobacco. The space holds four file cabinets and an oversized oak roll-top desk; a fully stocked bar runs across the back wall. An old skinny guy wearing a starched white shirt, black pants, and burgundy vest sits at the desk, hunched over a foot-high stack of folders, a bottle of whiskey, and a Smith & Wesson revolver. Next to the gun sits a coffee can filled with fleshy body parts swimming in some kind of alcohol. They look like pig knuckles soaking in brine, except they're human. One floater is definitely a thumb—it's so preserved I can make out the knuckle and fingernail. Another looks like a testicle.

This must be Lovely—the man the papers are still calling Otto Gorsky. He's got to be ninety. His head is bobbing like a buoy on the ocean; his hands rock up and down as if they're holding yo-yos. I could probably snap his wrist with one hand, but that coffee can is keeping me in check. Those scraps are a reminder that his goons are ready to carve me up on his say-so. And I'm betting they can't wait for that say-so.

He looks up and greets me as if we were long-lost friends and haven't seen each other since first grade. His dark eyes crackle with life behind their wrinkled, sunken lids.

“Snowball,” he wheezes. His fleshy jowls hang loosely and his lips cry out for the doc's ointment—they're as wrinkled as dried prunes, cracked, peeling, and at the corners, bleeding. He shakes my hand and his fingers are stiff, bending only at the second knuckle. He points to a chair opposite him, and I sit down. My knees are shaking nearly as badly as his shoulders. If he has me dismembered, I hope it's after I'm dead.

He stares at my yellow hair, my colorless cheeks, my eyes. Then he says, “You really are one ugly motherfucker.”

“My mother doesn't think so,” I say.

“Funny man,” he says. “But you don't know your mother. I've heard the story.”

I don't say anything, but the guy has done his homework. My mother skipped out on the champ and me right after I was born.

“You were raised by your nigger father,” he says, shaking his head, either out of pity, disgust, or necessity.

My fists tighten so hard I feel the tension rise up through my forearms. I want to grab Lovely's shaking head and bounce it against the desk until he either starts calling my father “the champ” or his skull smashes like a melon. Or both.

“Am I right?” Lovely says. “White mother, nigger father?”

I don't answer. I
refuse
to answer.

“That's why you are what you are,” he says. His voice gives out when he gets to the end of long sentences—the power in his body is a far cry from his power on the street. “They say that the niggers, they make the albinos when they fuck the white women.”

My hands are balled into fists; my toes are curled into knots. “That's not why I'm albino, you stupid fuck,” I say, surprised by the menacing tone in my own voice.

Lovely acts hurt, as if nobody has ever called him stupid before. He turns to his muscle. “How 'bout the balls on this kid?” he wheezes. “Charlie, put the gun away and shut the door.”

I now know the goon's name, not that I plan on having an occasion to use it.

Lovely pulls two juice glasses out of the desk drawer with his rickety hands. He nearly drops them both, but I know better than to ask if he needs help. Once he sets the glasses down, he pours us each a shot of brown, spilling nearly as much as he serves.

Charlie comes over and wipes the spill with his handkerchief. He doesn't say a word—he just blots it up and returns to his post behind me.

“Here,” Lovely says, pushing one of the glasses toward me. “This is the best I've got. It's pretty decent.”

I pick up the shot, raise it to my lips, and wait for Lovely to join me—I'm not about to drink without him—but he can't get his hand to his lips. He winds up lowering his head to meet the booze in front of his chest. Once he does, I down the brown. I have no idea what the hell he just poured from that bottle, but it's some of the smoothest whiskey I've had since I left New York.

I put my empty glass back down on the desk.

“Okay, Mister Lovely,” I say, careful not to wince as I spit out that twisted name. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

I'm trying to wipe my palms on my pants leg without looking awkward, even though I doubt Lovely would be offended at bad manners.

“You sent for me,” I say. “And I'm here.”

“Yes, yes. You're here now,” Lovely says. “But I'm more curious about the other morning.”

My stomach flips but I try not to react. I don't know how the fuck Lovely knows I was here, but he wouldn't be asking me if he had any doubts. It hits me that if he knows this much about me, he could have a goon picking up the champ right now. Or visiting Myra. If I get out of here with anything resembling a life, the first thing I'm going to do is check on the two of them.

“Yeah, I was here,” I tell him because there's no point in lying. If he asks, I'll say that I watched as Garvey pulled the trigger. But Lovely doesn't come at me with a question. He just smiles, his wrinkly white face creasing like a crumpled newspaper.

“You got to watch the bastard go down?”

I'm not sure if he means Reeger or Garvey. “Which bastard?”

“Reeger,” he says. “You watched him get it, you lucky son of a bitch?”

If Lovely is glad Reeger's dead, I really don't know why I'm here. My thoughts keep going back to the champ and Myra. And Johalis. I hope they're clear of this.

“I thought you were in business with Reeger,” I say, wondering how else Charlie the goon jumped from one boss to the other.

“In business with Reeger? That two-faced scumsucker was moving in on my loans, taking over the payments.” Lovely is getting worked up, and the more agitated he gets, the more he seems to shake. “He didn't only take the money, he'd hike up the vig. And he was coming down on my muscle, too, throwing them behind bars. I never saw one cop take on so many triggermen. I had a fucking contract on his head, and nobody was able to put him down, until you and your friend Garvey came along.”

He stops and pulls out a small bottle of pills from his vest pocket. He can't get it open, so Charlie comes over, unscrews the cap, and plucks a single pill. He puts it on Lovely's tongue and pours him a finger of whiskey. Then he helps the old man drink it so he can wash the medicine down.

“I never said I put down Reeger,” I say as he finishes his shot.

He ignores me and tells Charlie to pour two more shots of brown. I'm starting to wonder if this stuff is regular booze or Lovely's magic serum. It could be both.

Lovely talks to me but his eyes are on Charlie, he's watching him pour the booze. “The only problem is that the papers are going to make Reeger a fucking saint for catching an escaped convict,” he says. “If you could've made it look like he was fucking some boy, maybe raping a nun, now that would've really been something.”

Lovely does his best to drink his shot, but half of it lands on his chin. Charlie comes over and wipes Lovely's face with a fresh handkerchief, then goes back to his post behind me. Lovely's shoulders relax as the booze does its work.

A smile crosses the old man's face. “Did he moan? Scream in agony? Beg for his life?” he asks as he gazes up at the painted tin on the ceiling. He looks like a kid waiting to hear his favorite bedtime story. When his lips stretch, I spot a glint of gold in a row of shiny white teeth. I wonder how many local Joes landed in the poorhouse so he could flash that thousand-dollar smile, so he could live in luxury until the doctors pull a sheet over his remains and the evil in his soul is finally snuffed out for good.