Rhode Island Red (14 page)

Oh well. I could hardly question Reardon about that. It would sound as though I was accusing him of stealing.

In the top drawer I found a single yellow pencil and a packet of old yellow index cards fastened by a thick rubber band twisted so tightly it had eaten into the sides of the cards. I undid the band.

That was peculiar. It was a series of lined yellow 5 × 8 index cards. On each one was written a name in some kind of crayon. Mostly black crayon, but sometimes red or purple. They looked like the name cards teachers fasten on young children when they take them as a group to the zoo or museum, to identify them if they are lost.

At first I thought there were names written on all of the fifty cards. But then I realized that only the first five or so contained any writing. No more. The names were:

JOHN SCULLY

LEWIS GIACOMO

BILLY NEVINS

EVAN CONNELL

JACKDUNN

Hmm. A good bet it wasn't a Dixieland band.

That was it. I turned off the light and beat it out of that cellar, knowing that sooner or later there was going to be a rat who could take those half blind cats.

Mr. Reardon was waiting for me outside. He seemed perfectly at ease on that little island, surrounded by the incessant noise of hysterical automobiles. I could see the grime imbedded in his exposed neck.

“You gonna take that stuff away?”

“Look,” I said, “I think my grandfather would have liked you to have his stuff. Why don't you take anything you can't use and give it to the thrift shop. It all goes to charity, doesn't it?”

He started to mumble that he didn't believe the thrift shop would pick it up and maybe he was better off just dumping it on the street.

“Whatever you think is best, Mr. Reardon. You've been so nice to help me this way. If I could just ask you one other favor—I don't suppose you could tell me what these are?”

I placed the index cards into his hands. He studied all five of them carefully, miraculously rotating the stump of a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other without using his hands.

“Where'd you find these?” he asked.

“In my grandfather's bureau. Any idea who these people are?”

He flipped through the cards once more.

“Sure I do.”

“You do?”

“John Scully lived two houses down. Died last year. And I've known Jack Dunn since we were boys. He used to live on Eleventh Avenue. He's in a home up in the Bronx now. And, hell, Bill Nevins was shot to death more than twenty years ago in his candy store on Fifty-first.”

“You mean you can remember the men attached to those names from all those years ago?” I asked.

“'Course I can. Hell's Kitchen was like a small town once upon a time. People knew their neighbors, you grew up and married some girl from the neighborhood, lived on the next block. We felt this place belonged to us. There's nothing left of that now. But in those days that's how it was.”

“Any idea why Wild—my grandfather would have those names written down?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“All those men worked on the docks years ago. But your grandad never knew them.”

Oh, no?
thought I.
I
wouldn't count on that
.

The old New York docks had come back into the picture. There was the collection of books at Inge and Sig's place; what appeared to be outdated sailing information in Henry's abandoned apartment; and now this.

“What makes you so sure he didn't know them?”

“Nah. These men were all members of St. Anne's Church, forty years ago, when Father Hogarth was alive. You know St. Anne's Parish?”

“No,” I admitted.

“On Forty-fourth Street. It was in a movie once. They used to call it the longshoremen's church. But that was when the docks were a place to work. That was a long time ago.”

He handed the cards back to me, shrugging. He had no idea why Wild Bill would make and keep such a list. Unhappily, neither did I.

“Did my grandfather have any close friends?” I asked.

“Just one,” Mr. Reardon replied, “if you can call a rummy a friend. His name is Coop. You'll find him at the Emerald Bar, on Ninth. He cleans up there. And for all anybody knows, he lives there.”

The Emerald was a long, narrow place sandwiched between a thrift shop and a bodega. A single small glass window looked out onto Ninth Avenue.

At the bar sat eight old white men drinking Bud from long necked bottles in synchronized swigs. I watched them for quite a while, waiting for one of them to mess up. But nobody did.

There was a jukebox at the rear of the place. Tony Bennett was singing something,
Stranger in Paradise
, my pop had once had the sheet music for. I distinctly remember seeing it in the flip-open piano bench.

At the end of the long bar the room turned left, into an L. There at one of two tables was another old man, reading the
News
in the dim light. He was the only black man in the bar. I assumed this was Coop.

Not one of the drinkers turned around as I walked past. Only the bartender glanced my way, probably deciding whether I looked like a genuinely distressed down and outer who needed to use the ladies room or a junkie looking for a place to fix.

“Mr. Cooper?”

He looked up from the paper but didn't speak.

“Mr. Cooper, I was related to Heywood Tuttle. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes and answer some questions about him. Someone told me you were his friend.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down across from him, even though he had yet to speak a word to me.

“Mr. Cooper, I said—”

“Don't know no Heywood Tuttle.”

“Oh. Well, his friends called him Wild Bill.”

“Then why didn't you say Wild Bill?”

“Sorry. I'm saying it now. You were a friend of Wild Bill's?”

“Bill's dead.”

“I know.”

“He dropped dead, on the street. Just fast as that. Stroke, they said. On his way here, I reckon. Said he just fell down dead. Just like that. It just go to show you, when you think you on top of the world, that bastard'll lay in wait for you, throw a big ole brick down from the roof on you. Fore you know it, you dead.”

“You mean someone threw a brick at Wild Bill?”

“No, girl. I mean God. I'm just usin' ah example.”

“Listen, Mr. Cooper, did you know Wild Bill long?”

In answer, he let go of the newspaper and held up his two hands, at a great distance from one another, presumably to mean the friendship had stretched over many a year.

“Did Wild Bill ever mention a Rhode Island Red?” I asked.

“A red what? … Oh, yeah. He mention it.”

“Can you tell me what he said?”

Coop leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

I repeated my request, but he remained as he was, eyes closed.

At length, it occurred to me what he was doing. Waiting for me to offer to buy him a drink. I got up and went to the bar. The bartender didn't wait for me to order. He placed a bottle of Amstel Light on the bar. Next to it he placed a glass and filled it halfway up with rotgut wine from a gallon jug. I paid for the drinks and brought them back to Coop.

He sipped daintily at the wine but finished the beer in practically a single gulp. Then he smiled and gestured for me to come closer. I moved right next to him.

He put his mouth against my ear and screeched:
“Burrk! burrk! burrk!”
—an earsplitting rendition of barnyard fowl. Then he added, “Girl, you think Bill ain't had nothing better to talk about than chicken.”

I controlled my anger and wiped at my ear.

Then I pulled out the index cards and spread them over the table.

“Did he ever talk to you about these men?” I asked.

He drank more wine, surveying the names, shaking his head.

I stood up and started to leave.

“You know,” he said slyly, “you look like Bill about as much as old Eleanor Roosevelt do. Least the police and the white man come around here ain't tried to lie and say they related to Wild Bill. Least they don't try to play me for a fool.”

I sat down quickly. “I didn't mean to play you for a fool, either,” I said. “The police have talked to you—a black cop? Big and mean looking. And a white man who wasn't with the police?”

“That's right.”

“When? When did this white man ask you about Bill?”

“About a week before Bill die, maybe less.”

“Do you know what his name is? Did he give you his address or his phone number?”

“He give me some of that good brandy is what he give me. And tell me there's a hundred dollars in it if I can tell him where to find Wild Bill.”

“And did you?”

“No. Couple of weeks before Bill die ain't nobody much see him. He was acting mighty peculiar. Might as well have been a shadow for all the time he spent around here. And then, next thing we hear, he dead.”

“What did he look like?”

“You don't know what Bill even look like?”

“Not
him
, not Wild Bill,” I said, almost out of patience. “The white man!” I signaled the bartender to fix Coop up again.

So Henry Valokus—and, it sounded like, Leman Sweet—had been looking for Wild Bill a week or less before he died. Valokus and Wild Bill had more than Providence in common. That was for sure. But who really had been hunting who? And which one knew the secret of Rhode Island Red?

I headed north and west, toward St. Anne's Church.

It was easy to find: half the block had been razed. The gray stone church, its steeple rising high and alone, stood sad watch over the street, brooding and yet somehow hopeful. Next to the church was the decrepit building, now all boarded up, that had once been the school.

The youngish, flaxen-haired Finn who turned out to be the current priest at St. Anne's couldn't have been nicer to me. But he could be of very little help.

He took the index cards from my hand and went through them slowly, asking me at one point if I was planning to write a parish history.

“Why do you ask that?” I replied.

“Well, some of these names sound vaguely familiar. But it's probably from the records I've been going over lately. Probably their children went to school here, when we had a school, that is. But this generation is all gone.”

The father had no recollection of ever seeing a man who fitted Wild Bill's description either. And no, there had been no gentleman, about so high, with a European accent, inquiring about old parishioners lately.

Everybody in this scenario was mighty interested in ships, in the docks of New York, way back when. That strange roster of longshoremen intersected with a talented jazz trumpeter who ended up a desperate drunk, a mobster who had informed on and then become a laughing stock to his confederates and a crooked undercover policeman. But I had no idea why.

I'd been sitting on the church steps for a good twenty minutes, weary and craving a cigarette, when I noticed the white van across the street. At the wheel was the woman who'd held the gun to my head.

I stood suddenly and beat it back into the doorway of the church. But that prompted no movement from the van. They continued to sit there.

How long, I wondered, had they been following me. All day? And if they were going to try to snatch me again, what were they waiting for? Clearly, if they'd wanted to kill me they could have done so at any time during the last twenty minutes. But they'd chosen to do nothing. Why?

We had a real stand-off going. I wasn't budging from the doorway. And they weren't budging from the curb.

And then, without ceremony, they left. Just drove away.

I spotted the van again near the supermarket. The folks inside never said a word and never made a move toward me.

I walked into D'Agostino and bought three prime lamb chops, some fresh spinach, and a head of garlic. I went home and put the groceries on the kitchen table. But the moment I opened the bag I realized that I didn't want to eat. I just wanted to sleep. I walked out of the kitchen and collapsed on the divan.

CHAPTER 12

Monk's dream

Paris.

I am down in the Metro. The Les Halles stop. I am blowing my heart out. I never in my life ever sounded so grand.

There is not another soul around. Yet my high white silk hat is overflowing with gold coins.

Suddenly the cops show. They are all ferocious Senegalese wearing impenetrable aviator shades. They've come to get me, take me away. And they aren't being gentle about it.

I'm thrown into the back of a van, screaming, protesting my innocence—of whatever the charge may be.

The handcuffs go around my wrists.

You stole those coins!
one of the flics shouts to me in his barking dog French. And he upends my hat and pours all the money into my lap.

I look down at the coins. Embossed on each one is the head of a fierce looking rooster.

Suddenly all the coins begin to bleed profusely. Within seconds, I have a lap full of warm, sticky blood.

And then the telephone rings!

I had never been so happy to be roused from sleep.

I picked up the ringing phone and heard “Hey, what are you wearing?”

“Ah, come on, Walter. You're making obscene phone calls now?”

He laughed heartily. “No. But I am planning to be obscene with you in person. Which I hope is gonna be in a few minutes.”

“Are you coming up?”

“Not exactly. I want you to come down. You're hungry, aren't you?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. There's a hip place on First and First. The steaks are great and this Creole brother behind the bar's got a martini with your name on it. Get on down here. And I want you to wear something nice.”

Martini? What was I—a businessman? “Walter, are you sober?”

“Not completely. I just feel good.”

“Did something happen at work?”