Night Work (24 page)

“Maybe they should put cameras up.”

“Cameras?”

“Sure. Movie cameras or TV cameras or something. On the buildings, so if someone does something you just go look at the film.”

“Jesus, what a terrible idea. Do you want them to have a record of what you do out on the street?”

“No.” Alice laughed. “God, no. So what do you do now?”

“Well, there are two other places with building permits I couldn't get into. Maybe he was working in one of them. And then the people with the red setter will be back at the end of the week. I'd like to know what made them take off.”

“I never would have thought of that, fancy clothes and workman's hands.”

“I didn't think of it either.” He told her about Bonner and Newly.

“I never saw a colored cop until I came up to New York, not where I grew up.”

The waiter brought refills for their drinks, a martini straight up with a twist for Cassidy and a Sazerac for Alice. She took a sip. “Hmm, that's good. This is what my daddy used to drink when he was feeling flush.”

“Where was that?”

She scanned his face.
Was he being polite, or did he want to know?
“Cut Off, Louisiana.”

“Near New Orleans?”

“No. Well, about seventy miles south, but it might as well have been the other side of the planet, New Orleans seemed so far away. Cut Off. They sure named that right. Lafourche Parrish on Bayou Lafourche. My daddy fished the bayou. My brothers worked the sulfur pit. Have you spent much time in a small southern town?”

“No.”

“One main street. Two churches. A crappy diner. A Tastee Freez where everyone hangs out after school. Two garages, a general store, a hardware store, one grade school, one high school, town hall, some houses. A whole lot of nothing. The boys are going to work for their fathers fishing, or in the hardware store or the garage, the sulfur mine. The girls'll be their wives and have babies who grow up to do the same thing. Everybody knows you. Everybody knows your business. They think they know who you are, and that's who you have to be.”

“Who were you?”

“Honey, I was the high school slut.” She said it with a grin, but when she took a sip of her drink, she watched defiantly over the rim of the glass for his reaction.

“Damn. I kept telling my parents they were sending me to the wrong schools.”

She laughed. “Yeah, sure. Every school had one. You must have too.”

“Uh-uh. I was locked up in all boy schools from kindergarten through high school. We had to hunt for girls outside the classroom.”

“Hunt? All you had to do is stand on the corner and wait. Some girl would come along as hot for you as you were for her. You think we didn't want it? If there was some way girls could know they weren't going to get knocked up you couldn't fight them off with a stick. But I was the town pump, and they were the high school heroes who nailed me. As if I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“There were only two conversations boys had in high school—one was sports. The other was girls. What did she let you do? How far did you get with her? First base, second base, third, all the way? Did you stick her? Did you get her? Nobody did, of course, and everybody lied. And we were pretty sure if it was going to happen we would have to trick her into it. No one told us girls wanted it too. The best-kept secret.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “At sixteen I decided to stop feeling sorry for who I was and what people thought. I took off with a traveling salesman who sold women's foundation garments. God, did he know women. I guess he would, hands in their underwear all the time. He set me up in a little apartment in Washington and helped me get a job at Berman's Department Store. I loved that place. I'd never seen so many beautiful clothes, shoes, perfume, and women coming in all day long and trying them on. They knocked it down in 1954, city beautification, or something. I never went back to look to see what they put up that they thought was more beautiful.”

“What happened to the salesman?”

She shrugged. “He dumped me. I met people and had other jobs. I was a secretary up on Capitol Hill for a while, but I sure wasn't hired for my typing. I met Georgie at a party and went to Cuba and met you, and here we are having dinner.”

Dinner arrived with a bottle of wine.

“Fair's fair. I get to hear about you now. Growing up in New York, and all.” She leaned forward in anticipation.

“Nothing to tell. I grew up on Sixty-sixth Street. My father's a producer of Broadway plays. I've got a brother and a sister and a bunch of nieces and nephews. I went to school on Seventy-fourth Street, joined the army, came back, joined the cops.”

“Wow, you're some wonderful storyteller. I was on the edge of my seat. Some men can't wait to tell you about themselves. You can't shut them up. Some you have to dig it out with a pick. Now I know which one you are.”

*   *   *

Jimmy Greef came into Chumley's through the unmarked door in the little courtyard off Barrow Street. He went to the end of the bar and dropped the leather satchel on the floor and kicked it in under the bar gate. Jamie, the Irish bartender with hair like white cotton, gave him a knowing nod, picked up the satchel, and carried it to the back room. The second bartender, Willie, a slender black-haired man with a mustache clipped so close it looked like a black smear, mopped the clean bar in front of him and said, “How you doing, Jimmy? Get you something while you wait.”

“Yeah. Get me one of them, it's like a martini, but made with rye? With the cherry.”

“A Manhattan?”

“Yeah, that's it. A Manhattan.”

“Up, or on the rocks?”

“Yeah, up. And give me two of them cherries.”

“You got it.” Willie moved away to make the drink, and Jimmy Greef lit a Chesterfield, inhaled deeply, and blew smoke at the back bar. He could feel some of the tension leave him. Not that he was nervous carrying the bag. Nah, not nervous, but he recognized the responsibility. If they trusted him to carry the bag, it meant he was moving up the ladder. Only six months since he made his bones and here he was doing a thing of trust. Twenty-four years old and on the way up. He took off his fedora and dropped it on the bar and ran a palm over his hair to make sure it stayed slicked back on his skull. His sideburns were long like Elvis's, who he thought he looked like, except maybe his lips were thinner. Not that he admitted it, but a girl he met out at Coney said he did. He wore a dark blue suit from Barney's Bargain Basement with wide chalk stripes, a little too long in the sleeves and the pants, a little too flashy, a look-at-me suit cut a little full in the chest to hide the pistol in its holster under his left arm. Nah, the nerves didn't come from carrying the bag. No one in his right mind was going to try to take it off. No one who knew what was what, anyway. That would mean war. A couple of independents made the move a few years ago, but the word was they ended up in a swamp in Jersey. Still, he always felt good when he came into one of the joints and took a little breather while they got the payment, and he felt better when he dropped the bag at the end of the night at Carmine's. I mean, say what you want, you're carrying fifteen, twenty grand, someone might just try to get lucky. Then how do you explain that to Carmine? You don't. Someone takes the bag, no matter who, you're dead. Don't think about that, man. Don't.

“There you go, Jimmy.” Willie slid the Manhattan to him and turned away to serve another customer. Greef ate the first cherry. It tasted like it looked, dark red and sweet. Petey Lick could tie the stem in a knot with his tongue, but Greef couldn't figure out how to do it no matter how many times he tried. He took a sip of the drink, lit another cigarette, and turned and leaned his back against the bar and looked out into the restaurant. He liked Chumley's. A lot of good-looking broads came here to eat, usually with guys, but sometimes there were strays at the bar. College girls came to look at the pictures of the writers on the walls, maybe. He got lucky a couple of times. Chat them up. Buy them a drink or two, let the jacket slip open so they saw the gun. The gun got them hot every time. That one in the red dress over near the wall. Was she eating alone? No, there he was just coming to sit down, back from the men's room or something. Jesus, those were some tits on that blonde in the booth with the black-haired guy.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Could it be? He reached into his breast pocket and took out a photograph. It was a color print of a woman facing the camera. There was a palm tree behind her. A man had his arm around her waist, but the man had been cut out of the picture. He looked at the photograph and then over at the woman. The hair's different, blond, not brown, shorter and cut different, but Jesus, it sure looks like her.

A thump on the bar startled him, and he jerked around. “Here you go, Jimmy. All done.” Jamie slapped the leather satchel and winked.

“Yeah, good. Put it on the floor back there and watch it for a minute. I've got to do something.”

“Sure. No problem.” Jamie took the bag and put it on the duckboards behind the bar.

Greef walked with what he thought was nonchalance to look at some of the book jackets on the wall near the booth where the blond sat, and then turned casually and studied her. Yeah. It's her. Jesus Christ. Everybody's been looking for her for months, and I found her. This is going to be good for me. He turned and headed for the phone booth at the far end of the bar.

Alice was aware of the young man with the Elvis sideburns who pretended to look at the book jackets so that he could turn and study her. Men had been looking at her tits since she was thirteen, and very few of them had the courage to do it straight out. She dismissed Jimmy Greef and accepted the cigarette Cassidy offered.

“Do you want a nightcap?” he asked.

“Sure. Here?”

“Is there somewhere you want to go?”

“It's a nice night. We could walk until we see something we like.”

“Let's do that.” He raised a hand for the check.

“They're paying the check right now.” Jimmy Greef stood in the phone booth so he could see the table where Alice and Cassidy sat. “Yeah, I'm sure it's her. What? No. Like I said, she's with some guy. I don't know who he is. What do you want me to do?” He listened for a while. “Okay. Sure. I can do that. Only thing is, I've got the bag with me.” He listened again. “Right. Yeah. Sure. Look, Carmine, this is my thing, right? I found her. You'll let people know, right? Okay. Thanks. Yeah. I'll call soon as I know where she goes.” He hung up and opened the door to the booth to the hum and buzz of the restaurant and went to the end of the bar where the bartender was opening a bottle of wine. “Hey, Jamie, let me have the bag, huh?”

The bartender put down the bottle and corkscrew and lifted the bag to the bar top. “You could have a hell of a week in Vegas with what's in there.”

“Not funny. You don't even want to think that way.”

“Just kidding, man.” Suddenly nervous. “Just kidding.”

“Yeah, well, don't. Okay. I'll see you next week.”

Greef waited until Cassidy and Alice went out the Bedford Street door and then followed them up Bedford to Christopher, then over to Hudson where they turned north. In the distance the spire of the Empire State Building was brilliant with colored lights. A taxi slowed in hopes of a fare and then went on. Near Charles Street a man and two women milled in the street, shouting and shoving each other drunkenly. The man fell down. The women helped him to his feet and they began shoving each other again. Halfway up the block a group of teenagers in blue jeans and flannel shirts clustered on a stoop with a guitar player and sang something about Tom Dooley hanging down his head. A whore in a tight green dress stepped from a doorway and asked for a light, but Greef waved her off and went on. Up ahead the blonde laughed at something the man said and bumped him with her hip. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. A few minutes later they went into the White Horse Tavern, and Greef stepped into the phone booth on the corner. He put the money satchel on the floor and closed the door only partway so the light stayed dark, dropped a dime, and dialed. The phone was picked up on the third ring.

“Yeah, it's me,” Greef said. “They're in the White Horse on the corner of Eleventh and Hudson. Yeah, I can see them. They're at the bar. She's got her hand in his pocket. The guy definitely thinks he's getting laid tonight, but he's in for a surprise. Okay, okay. I'm just saying. Who are you sending? Yeah, I know them both. Tell them they can park on Eleventh. Plenty of places. Tell them to look for me near the phone booth on the corner. Right. Okay. Hey, Carmine, you told them it was me who found her, right? Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I'll be right here unless they leave. They leave, I'll call you.” He hung up and opened the door to the booth and looked through the window of the White Horse to where the man and woman stood at the bar.

At the far end of the White Horse bar three men in orange Con Edison jumpsuits chewed over the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles nearly two years ago, the wounds of betrayal still raw. The bartender, a big Irishman with the face of a basset hound and long gray hair, brought Cassidy and Alice Rusty Nails and said, “Nah, nah. On the house, Mike,” and pushed his money back at him.

Alice sipped her drink. “Do you know everyone in the Village? The waiter at the restaurant, this guy, the people who stopped to say hello when we were eating.”

“I've lived down here a while. Sometimes I can help someone out. A kid gets in trouble, someone's got a beef with someone and needs someone to arbitrate without getting a lot of other people involved.”

“You like being a cop, don't you?” She took the cigarette from between his fingers and took a drag. When he got it back he could taste her lipstick.

“Some of it, I guess.” She waited for him to go on. “You get up in the morning, and you go to work. Some days you're hip deep in the really awful things people do to each other. Some days you see how good people can be to each other. Some days you can help. Some you're just shoveling shit against the tide. I don't know if I like it, but I can't let it go.”