Blind Moon Alley (6 page)

“Glad to help,” I say and I mean it. How many people get a chance to save the Joe who fought for them as kids? Not many, I'd imagine.

There is a difference, though, and I'm sure Garvey realizes it. At Elementary School Four, he was fending off a bunch of wisecracking sixth-graders. Me, I'm about to take on a city's worth of bloodthirsty, law-bending cops.

CHAPTER 4

It's the Fourth of July and I'm celebrating Independence Day by helping my old buddy find freedom. It's a scorcher; the sun is coming through the Auburn window and toasting the side of my neck. I slip on a pair of dark glasses—those rays are murder on albino eyes—but the damned things make it even harder for me to see the road in front of me.

I haven't been back to New York since I drove to Philly months ago. The night I left, I walked out of a speakeasy overrun with gangsters and packed my things for what I thought would be a quieter life at the Ink Well. But now, as I cruise up New York's West Side, it hits me that my life hasn't changed at all. I'm on the run, I'm ducking the cops, and to make matters worse, I've got an escaped convict crouching behind me in the backseat.

“Almost there,” I tell Garvey as we pass 86th Street.

“Swell,” he says. He's sitting on the floor with his knees to his chin. His legs must be cramping up, but if he lived through two years at Eastern State, he'll make it through this.

We left Philly just before dawn. I snuck Garvey into the Auburn on Blind Moon Alley; we couldn't have been in the open air for more than fifteen seconds. He still needs a bath, but at least he's out of his prison grays. He's wearing some of my old clothes. They're far from tailored—the pants are too short and the shirt collar is too tight—but they'll have to do until I find him something better.

My plan is to set him up in the back room of the Hy-Hat, where he'll have food and a place to sleep. While he's hiding out, I'll head back to Philly and get in touch with Myra—maybe she can give Garvey some of his money back. The only question is my father. The champ has no idea I'm coming, and considering how he feels about me bartending at a juice joint, he might have a problem helping out a convicted cop killer.

I drive through Harlem and turn onto 127th Street. As I approach the Hy-Hat, I can see something's not right. Three teenaged boys are standing outside the club clutching pool cues and looking toward Seventh Avenue. They seem rattled, as if the town bully just spotted them on their way home from school. I toss the sunglasses onto the passenger seat to get a better look. A young girl is leaning against a fire hydrant; she can't be more than twelve. All four kids are colored, but the young girl's skin is as light as a coffee with two creams. Her dress is a size too big and her kinky hair is gunked up with grease; it looks like she tried to wax it into Shirley Temple ringlets but quit before finishing. She's bawling and rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

The closer I get, the more obvious it becomes that these kids are in trouble. And the champ is nowhere in sight.

“Stay down,” I tell Garvey.

He doesn't answer, but I hear rustling in the back. I gave him an old cotton blanket as a cover; he's probably pulling it over his back.

I guide the Auburn to the curb in front of the Hy-Hat and park. Then I duck down and grab my pistol from under the seat. I slip it into the back waistband of my pants and loosen my shirt so it drapes over the metal.

When I walk toward the teens, they don't greet me with the usual handshakes and pats on the back. They seem frozen in fear. The young girl has stopped crying and is gawking at my nose guard and raccoon eyes.

“I'm Jersey,” I say and extend my hand.

She's never met me before, but all the kids at the Hy-Hat know who covers them when they can't meet their dues. The fear leaves her face and she shakes my hand with her tear-moistened fingers.

I recognize the tall, gangly boy. He's Billy Walker, a big-hearted fifteen-year-old who has been coming here for years. I'm about to ask him what's going on, but the girl grabs my wrist and starts jabbering. The top of her head barely reaches my chest.

“We called the police,” she says, her round cheeks glistening. She points inside. “It's Mr. Leo.”

I don't know what I expected but this isn't it. I run into the Hy-Hat and find my father slumped on the floor at the far end of the game room. I rush over to him. He's leaning on the wall; he's got a cut above his eyebrow and another along the cleft of his chin. His starched white shirt is ripped across his left shoulder and he has a nasty scratch along his collarbone. If I didn't know better, I'd think a tiger jumped him to get at his meaty brown neck.

He looks at my black eyes and bandaged nose. “What the hell happened?”

“Let's start with you.” I say, nodding toward the room. One of the ping-pong tables has been smashed in two. There's a broken bottle of pickles at my feet and a tray's worth of sandwiches strewn across the room.

“Some thugs showed up lookin' for Aaron Garvey,” he says. “Why in God's name would they think he was here?”

The answer is sitting on my tongue—
Because he's right outside, Champ
—but the words won't leave my lips.

My father looks around the room, at the old ping-pong table we'd spent so long repairing, at the empty booths usually filled with kids. “I'm sorry,” he says.

I guess he thinks he let me down, that he failed at protecting the club even though the kids are all still standing. I know failure, and this isn't it.

“They started badmouthin' you, too,” he says. “That's when I went at 'em. Busted my hand and my knee.” He holds up his calloused right hand and shows me a row of puffy, swollen knuckles.

There are a dozen kids standing in a circle around us. I'm hoping they're too young to read the papers. If they do, they're bound to recognize Garvey.

“There's a man in the car out front,” I say to a shirtless boy sitting on his knees next to me, crying. The kid's got purple jam on his chin and smells of grapes.

“Tell him Snowball says to get in here right away.”

As the kid runs off, I loosen my father's tie and unbutton his collar. I try to help him to his feet, but I can't lift him.

“In here,” I call out, hoping Garvey can hear me.

Instead of my friend's raspy voice, I hear a young girl's high-pitched sobs coming from a few feet behind me. It's the kid with the Shirley Temple curls.

“He had a gun,” she says, her bawling now coming in bursts. She sounds more like she's hiccupping than crying.

“A gun?” I ask the champ.

My father's got his arm around my back. He leans toward my ear and keeps his voice low. “Two thugs. One roscoe.”

I curse myself for not coming here sooner, and for not bringing Homer with me. It also occurs to me that I've got to get Garvey a pistol.

The girl starts talking through her sobs again—she's speaking at top speed, as if she needs to get the whole story out in a single breath. “They came in here and were arguing with Mr. Leo in the game room and he beat them up and then one of them took out a gun and Mr. Leo kept punching but they hit him on the head with the gun and he fell on the floor.”

She finally takes a breath.

“That's when we called the police,” she says.

I don't tell her the cops are the ones who did this.

“Did one of them have a scar on his cheek?” I ask.

She says yes, one had a scar, and the man with the gun had a mustache. Any doubts I had regarding Reeger's connection to the surge in business at Ronnie's Luncheonette just disappeared.

“What's going on, Son?” my father says. The look in his eye says he's afraid of the answer.

Before I can start, Garvey walks into the room. He's dirty and smelly—and looks far from an Adonis in his ill-fitting clothes.

The champ's cheeks sag when he sees what's become of his old charge. I can only imagine how he'd have felt if he saw Garvey in his prison uniform.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he says, his voice trailing off.

Garvey nods his head to acknowledge the conversation they're not having. Then he says, “It's been too long, Champ.” He looks around the ransacked game room and adds, “We gotta get a move on.”

My father turns to me. “You gonna tell me what's goin' on?”

“It's a long story,” I say.

The champ's jaw tightens. “Start at the beginnin'.”

“You're gonna have to trust me,” I tell him. “It's not what you've been hearing on the radio.”

He doesn't say anything; he's waiting for more. I know my father, and he's not going to budge until I tell him something he wants to hear.

“Trust me, Champ,” I say. “It's not what it seems.”

He must buy it because he looks at Garvey and shakes his head. “Son, there's only so fast you can run.”

“That's why we're driving,” I say, and then ask Garvey to help me with my father.

We get the champ to his feet and start walking slowly toward the door. The champ is still muttering questions, most of which are directed at me.

“Who you running from exactly? Just the cops? Hoods?”

I say they're the same thing.

“Cops don't bust noses,” he says, eyeing the guard taped to my face.

“Sure feels like they do,” I say.

When we get to the front door, the kids are still right behind us and I'm gripping the champ by the back of his torn shirt. I can hear police sirens blaring—they can't be more than five blocks away.

“So who was the guy who showed up here?” the champ asks me.

I tell him I'll answer all of his questions later, but right now he's got to move more quickly.

The sirens are getting louder and Garvey doesn't need any prodding. He's got my father's right arm around his neck and is pulling him forward. The champ's trying to keep up but his leg is dragging.

We make it to the Auburn; I open the passenger door and drop him into the front seat. He slowly bends his knee to get his leg under the dash. Garvey squeezes into the back and I trot around to the driver's door.

The kids gather by the Hy-Hat entrance, waiting to hear something that will right things.

Instead, I say, “Don't tell the police we were here.”

I get behind the wheel and curse myself for sucking a gang of milk-drinking, ping-pong-playing outcasts into my mess. They have no idea what hit them, let alone what to tell the cops.

The Auburn's rear wheels screech as I pull away from the littered curb, leaving the kids to talk their way out of trouble. I can't bring myself to look behind me as I speed away from the one place that I've always managed to keep clean. Until now.

Doc Anders soaks a tray of bandages in a dish of slushy plaster and wraps my father's hand in a cast. I've known the doc for years; he spent a lot of time in front of me when I tended bar here in New York. He's an oddball but I trust him—he knows what he's doing and he keeps his mouth shut.

When we got here, the first thing he did was lock the door and draw the shades. I sat in the dark catching my father up on the basics—how Garvey got railroaded, how he showed up at the Ink Well—as the doc examined the champ's knuckles.

“It looks as though the radiocarpal joint needs more support,” he says and nods, as if he's agreeing with himself. Then he slides his brown horn-rimmed glasses up his nose with his gloved index finger and goes back to work.

The champ keeps his arm extended in front of him so the doc can continue wrapping his hand, the busted tool of his former trade. I feel responsible.

“I'm sorry you got sucked into this, Champ,” I say to the man who raised me after my mother left, the man who loved me without regard to the freakish pallor of my skin. He's getting older now—he's fifty-one—but I remember him long ago, taking me to the Polo Grounds, buying me strawberry ice cream at the Jersey City Carnival, telling me I was the same as everybody around me, that I could be anything I wanted to be. Had I listened to him and stuck with college, none of this would have happened. I'd never have been in the
Inquirer
and Garvey wouldn't have found me. The champ would be back at the Hy-Hat showing Billy Walker how to throw a left hook; and Angela would be in the Ink Well coatroom, hanging jackets without looking over her shoulder. If I could go back in time and redo things, I'd be sure to make the champ proud this time around. When I see the plaster on his hand, my throat closes and my eyes well up. The skin cream I put on my lids rolls into my eyes and burns like gasoline.

“This ain't your fault,” he says. “You're tryin' to do the right thing, I s'pose. I'm just not sure that young man should be runnin'. And now you're runnin' with him. You're breaking the law . . . again. Why do you always have to get mixed up in these things?”

“What else can I do?” I say. “He's got nowhere else to go.”