He then pushes open the station’s storm door and enters onto that segment of Broadway Billy and his friends are just now approaching from the north.
Billy pauses and says, Hey, Mike.
Mike turns and is distracted only momentarily from the performance at hand but does say, Eh, Billy, and turns back then to the rug-rats and spins out the change onto the sidewalk under the canopy: dollar, two, five, ten, twenty. Who knows how much change Mike the Wop strews before the rug-rats of Broadway? He gives, they receive. They scramble and pick it up, take it home, and buy the milk and beer.
A man, a grown man, a bum, a wino, a lost derelict from the sewers and gutters of elsewhere, passes and sees Mike’s generosity and reaches down for a dime.
Get lost, bum, says Mike, and when the bum does not, Mike raises a foot and pushes the bum over, into the street, where he falls and rolls and is almost run over by a Yellow cab just leaving for Loudonville with a customer and four valises, and is also almost decapitated by the Number Four Pine Hills trolley.
The bum rises, walks on, the dime in his grip.
Mike supervises as the rug-rats clean up every visible nickel and penny, sift in the soft dirt of the gutters for dimes that rolled into the glop. And some will be back, scrounging at dawn for coins that eluded everyone last night. Now they take their cache and disentangle themselves from one another. They run, seethe into the night, and evaporate off Broadway.
Billy watches them go, watches, too, as Mike crosses the street to walk beneath the brightest of the bright lights, one of the many maestros of Broadway power, now heading into the center of the garden in search of other earthly delights.
The station was still alive with travelers, with the queers buzzing in and out of the men’s room, and the night crowd hot for the papers. When Billy had bought the Times-Union, found the ad, decoded what they all knew was there to begin with, then Martin said to Morrie: “I saw your father tonight and told him about this.”
“Heh,” said Morrie. “What’d he say?”
“Ah, a few things.”
“Nothing good, bet your ass on that, the old son of a bitch.”
“It wasn’t exactly flattering, but he was interested.”
“Who’s that?” Billy asked, looking up from the newspaper.
“My old man,” Morrie said.
“He’s a son of a bitch?”
“In spades.”
“What’d he do?”
“Nothing. He’s just a son of a bitch. He always was.”
Well, you got an old man, is what Billy did not say out loud.
They stood in the rotunda, in front of the busy Union News stand with the belt-high stacks of Albany papers, the knee-high stacks of New York Newses and Daily Mirrors, the ankle-high stacks of Herald Tribs and Tmeses and Suns. Billy was translating Honey Curry’s name from the code. E-d-w-a-r-d C-u-r-r-e-y They spelled it wrong.
“Honey Curry,” Billy said. “Where the hell is he these days?”
Martin passed on that, and Morrie said, “Who knows where that son of a bitch is?”
Billy laughed out loud. “Remember when they had the excursion. The Sheridan Avenue Gang. And Curry went wild and hit Healy, the cop, with a crock of butter and knocked him right off the boat and Healy goddamn near drowned. Curry lit out and wound up in Boston and Maloy met him there, downtown, and they’re cuttin’ it up and Curry’s afraid of his shadow. Then a broad walks by, a hooker, and looks at Curry and says to him, Hi ya, honey, how ya doin’? and Curry grabs her with both hands and shoves her up against a tree and shakes the hell out of her. How come you know my name? he says to her.”
“That’s Curry,” said Morrie.
“Where’s Maloy? I hear he’s in Jersey. Newark, is it?” Billy asked.
“Could be,” said Morrie.
“Goddamn,” Billy said. “That’s where I heard it.”
“What?”
“The rumor they were going to kidnap Bindy last summer. We were up in Tabby Bender’s saloon. You and me. Remember?”
“No. When was that?” said Morrie.
“Goddamn it, don’t anybody remember what I remember? We were sitting at the bar, you and me, and Maloy was with Curry, and Maloy asks if I heard about the Bindy kidnap thing and I didn’t. We talked about it, Maloy and Curry shootin’ the shit and comin’ up to the bar for drinks. And then Maloy tells me, We’re gonna take this joint. Now, you remember?”
“I remember that,” Morrie said. “Screwballs.”
“Right,” said Billy. “Maloy says, Get out now if you want; we’re gonna clean him out. And I told him, I’m comfortable. Clean him out. Take the pictures off the walls. What the hell do I care? And you and me kept drinking.”
“Right,” Morrie said. “We never moved.”
“Right, and they go out and they’re gone ten minutes and back they come with handkerchiefs on their faces. Goddamn wouldn’t of fooled my nephew, in the same suits and hats. And they cleaned out the whole damper, every nickel. And when they were gone, I said to George Kindlon, the bartender, Let’s have a drink, George, and I pushed a fiver at him. I don’t think I can change it, he said, and we all busted up because George didn’t give a rat’s ass, he didn’t own the joint. It was Tabby’s problem, not George’s.”
“Right,” Morrie said, “and George give us the drink free.”
“Yeah,” said Billy. “But it was Maloy and Curry really got us the free drink.”
“That’s it. Maloy and Curry bought that one,” and Morrie laughed.
“Son of a bitch,” Billy said.
“Right,” said Morrie.
Billy pictured Morrie kicking the holdup kid. Vicious mouth on him then, really vicious, yet likable even if he used to be a pimp. He had a good girl in Marsha. Marsha Witherspoon, what the hell kind of a name is that? Billy screwed her before she even went professional. She was a bum screw. Maybe that’s why Morrie dumped her, couldn’t make a buck with her. But he didn’t take up any other whores. Morrie would always let Billy have twenty, even fifty if he needed it. Morrie was with Maloy the night Billy almost lost a match to Doc Fay two years ago. Billy played safe till his ass fell off to win that one, and when he won and had the cash, Morrie and Maloy came over and Maloy said, You didn’t have to worry, Billy. If he’d of won the game, we’d of taken the fuckin’ money away from him and give it to you anyway. Crazy Maloy. And Morrie was tickled when Maloy said that, and he told Billy, Billy, you couldn’t have lost tonight even if you threw the match. Morrie was two years older than Billy and he was a Jew and a smart Jew and Billy liked him. This was funny because Billy didn’t like or even know that many Jews. But then Billy thought of Morrie as a gambler, not as a Jew. Morrie was a hustler who knew how to make a buck. He was all right. One of Billy’s own kind.
While Billy, Martin, and Morrie ate midnight steaks in Becker’s back room, tables for ladies but no ladies, George Quinn came in and found Billy, took him away from the table and whispered. “You hear that Charlie McCall’s been kidnapped?”
“I heard that, George.”
“Do you know your name’s in the paper in some kind of mixed-up spelling?”
“I know that, too.”
“The cops were just at the house looking for you.”
“Me? What for?”
“They didn’t say. Peg talked to them. She asked if you were in trouble and they said no, but that’s all they’d tell her.”