When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Page 35

I stayed where I was, letting the others mob him, but he worked his way over to me and got an arm around my shoulders. "This is the man," he announced. "Best fucking detective ever wore out a pair of shoes. This man's money," he told Billie, "is no good at all tonight. He can't buy a drink, he can't buy a cup of coffee, and if you went and put in pay toilets since I was last here, he can't use his own dime."
"The john's still free," Billie said, "but don't go giving Jimmy any ideas."
"Oh, don't tell me he didn't already think of it," Tommy said. "Matt, my boy, I love you. I was in a tight spot, the world was lookin' to fall in on me, and you came through for me."
What the hell had I done? I hadn't hanged Miguelito Cruz or coaxed a confession out of Angel Herrera. I hadn't even set eyes on either man. But I had taken his money, and now it looked as though I had to let him buy my drinks.
I don't know how long we stayed there. Curiously, my own drinking slowed even as Tommy's picked up speed. I wondered why he hadn't brought Carolyn; I didn't figure he'd care much about appearances now that the case was closed forever. And I wondered if she would walk in. It was, after all, her neighborhood bar, and she'd been known to come to it all by herself.
After a while Tommy was hustling me out of Armstrong's, so maybe I wasn't the only one who realized that Carolyn might turn up. "This is celebration time," he told me. "We don't want to hang around one place until we grow roots. We want to get out and bounce a little."
He had the Riviera, and I just went along for the ride. We hit a few places. There was a noisy Greek place on the East Side where the waiters all looked like mob hit men. There were a couple of trendy singles joints, including the one Jack Balkin owned, where Skip had reportedly stolen enough money to open Miss Kitty's. There was, finally, a dark beery cave down in the Village; I realized after a while that it reminded me of the Norwegian bar in Sunset Park, the Fjord. I knew the Village bars fairly well in those days, but this place was new to me, and I was never able to find it again. Maybe it wasn't in the Village, maybe it was somewhere in Chelsea. He was doing the driving and I wasn't paying too much attention to the geography.
Wherever the place was, it was quiet for a change and conversation became possible. I found myself asking him what I'd done that deserved such lavish praise. One man had killed himself and another had confessed, and what part had I played in either incident?
"The stuff you came up with," he said.
"What stuff? I should have brought back fingernail parings, you could have had someone work voodoo on them."
"About Cruz and the fairies."
"He was up for murder. He didn't hang himself because he was afraid they'd nail him for fag-bashing when he was a juvenile offender."
Tommy took a sip of scotch. He said, "Couple days ago, black guy comes up to Cruz in the chow line. Huge spade, built like the Seagram's Building. 'Wait'll you gets up to Green Haven,' he tells him. 'Every blood there's gwine have you for a girlfriend. Doctor gwine have to cut you a brand-new asshole, time you gets outta there.' "
I didn't say anything.
"Kaplan," he said. "Talked to somebody who talked to somebody, and that did it. Cruz took a good look at the idea of playin' Drop the Soap for half the jigs in captivity, and the next thing you know the murderous little bastard was dancing on air. And good riddance to him."
I couldn't seem to catch my breath. I worked on it while Tommy went to the bar for another round. I hadn't touched the one in front of me but I let him buy for both of us.
When he got back I said, "Herrera."
"Changed his story. Made a full confession."
"And pinned the killing on Cruz."
"Why not? Cruz wasn't around to complain. Cruz probably did it, but who knows which one it really was, and for that matter who cares? The thing is you gave us the lever."
"For Cruz," I said. "To get him to kill himself."
"And for Herrera. Those kids of his back in Puerto Rico. Drew spoke to Herrera's lawyer and Herrera's lawyer spoke to Herrera, and the message was, look, you're going up for burglary whatever you do, and probably for murder, but if you tell the right story you'll draw shorter time than if you don't, and on top of that, that nice Mr. Tillary's gonna let bygones be bygones and every month there's a nice check for your wife and kiddies back home in Santurce."
At the bar, a couple of old men were reliving the Louis-Schmeling fight. The second one, the one where Louis deliberately punished the German champion. One of the old boys was throwing roundhouse punches in the air, demonstrating.
I said, "Who killed your wife?"
"One or the other of them. If I had to bet I'd say Cruz. He had those beady little eyes, you looked at him up close and got that he was a killer."
"When did you look at him close?"
"When they were over to the house. The first time, when they cleaned the basement and the attic. I told you they hauled stuff for me?"
"You told me."
"Not the second time," he said, "when they cleaned me out altogether."
He smiled broadly, but I kept looking at him until the smile turned uncertain. "That was Herrera who helped around the house," I said. "You never met Cruz."
"Cruz came along, gave him a hand."
"You never mentioned that before."
"I must've, Matt. Or I left it out. What difference does it make, anyway?"
"Cruz wasn't much for manual labor," I said. "He wouldn't come along to haul trash. When did you ever get a look at his eyes?"
"Jesus Christ. Maybe it was seeing a picture in the paper, maybe I just have a sense of him as if I saw his eyes. Leave it alone, will you? Whatever kind of eyes he had, they're not seeing anything anymore."
"Who killed her, Tommy?"
"Hey, didn't I say let it alone?"
"Answer the question."
"I already answered it."
"You killed her, didn't you?"
"What are you, crazy? And keep your voice down, for Christ's sake. There's people can hear you."
"You killed your wife."
"Cruz killed her and Herrera swore to it. Isn't that enough for you? And your fucking cop friend's been all over my alibi, pickin' at it like a monkey hunting lice. There's no way I coulda killed her."
"Sure there is."
"Huh?"
A chair covered in needlepoint, a view of Owl's Head Park. The smell of dust, and layered over it the smell of a spray of little white flowers.
"Lily-of-the-valley," I said.
"Huh?"
"That's how you did it."
"What are you talking about?"
"The third floor, the room her aunt used to live in. I smelled her perfume up there. I thought I was just carrying the scent in my nostrils from being in her bedroom earlier, but that wasn't it. She was up there, and it was traces of her perfume I was smelling. That's why the room held me, I sensed her presence there, the room was trying to tell me something but I couldn't get it."
"I don't know what you're talking about. You know what you are, Matt? You're a little drunk is all. You'll wake up tomorrow and-"
"You left the office at the end of the day, rushed home to Bay Ridge, and stowed her on the third floor. What did you do, drug her? You probably slipped her a mickey, maybe left her tied up in the room on the third floor. Tied her up, gagged her, left her unconscious. Then you got your ass back to Manhattan and went out to dinner with Carolyn."
"I'm not listening to this shit."
"Herrera and Cruz showed up around midnight, just the way you arranged it. They thought they were knocking off an empty house. Your wife was gagged and tucked away on the third floor and they had no reason to go up there. You probably locked the door there anyway just to make sure. They pulled their burglary and went home, figuring it was the safest and easiest illegal buck they ever turned."
I picked up my glass. Then I remembered he had bought the drink, and I started to put it down. I decided that was ridiculous. Just as money knows no owner, whiskey never remembers who paid for it.
I took a drink.
I said, "Then a couple hours after that you jumped in your car and raced back to Bay Ridge again. Maybe you slipped something into your girlfriend's drink to keep her out of it. All you had to do was find an hour, hour and a half, and there's room enough in your alibi to find ninety spare minutes. The drive wouldn't take you long, not at that hour. Nobody would see you drive in. You just had to go up to the third floor, carry your wife down a flight, stab her to death, get rid of the knife, and drive back into the city. That's how you did it, Tommy. Isn't it?"
"You're full of shit, you know that?"
"Tell me you didn't kill her."
"I already told you."
"Tell me again."
"I didn't kill her, Matt. I didn't kill anybody."
"Again."
"What's the matter with you? I didn't kill her. Jesus, you're the one helped prove it, and now you're trying to twist and turn it back on me. I swear to Christ I didn't kill her."
"I don't believe you."
A man at the bar was talking about Rocky Marciano. There was the best fighter ever lived, he said. He wasn't pretty, he wasn't fancy, but it was a funny thing, he was always on his feet at the end of the fight and the other guy wasn't.
"Oh, Jesus," Tommy said.
He closed his eyes, put his head in his hands. He sighed and looked up and said, "You know, it's a funny thing with me. Over the phone I'm as good a salesman as Marciano was a fighter. I'm the best you could ever imagine. I swear I could sell sand to the Arabs, I could sell ice in the winter, but face-to-face I'm just no good at all. Wasn't for phones, I'd have trouble making a living selling. Why do you figure that is?"
"You tell me."
"I swear I don't know. I used to think it was my face, around the eyes and mouth, I don't know. Over the phone's a cinch. I'm talkin' to a stranger, I don't know who he is or what he looks like, and he's not lookin' at me, and there's nothing to it. Face-to-face, somebody I know, whole different story." He looked at me, his eyes not quite meeting mine. "If we were doin' this over the phone, you'd buy what I'm telling you."
"It's possible."
"It's fucking certain. Word for word, you'd buy the package. Matt, suppose for the sake of argument I said I killed her. It was an accident, it was an impulse, we were both upset over the burglary, I was half in the bag, and-"
"You planned the whole thing, Tommy. It was all set up and worked out."
"The whole story you told, the way you worked it all out, there's not a thing you can prove."
I didn't say anything.
"And you helped me, don't forget that part of it."
"I won't."
"And I wouldn'ta gone away for it anyway, with or without you, Matt. It wouldn'ta got to court, and if it did I'da beat it in court. All you saved is a hassle. And you know something?"
"What?"
"All we got tonight is the booze talking, your booze and my booze, two bottles of whiskey talkin' to each other. That's all. Morning comes, we can forget everything was said here tonight. I didn't kill anybody, you didn't say I did, everything's cool, we're still buddies. Right? Right?"