“One question then,” Martin said with his mildest voice, “and then I’m done with questions.”
The brothers waited solemnly.
“Is Bindy in town?”
“He’s in Baltimore,” said Matt. “At the races with his wife.”
Martin nodded, waited, then said, “Patsy, Matt. You say there’s nothing going on and I have to accept that, even though Maloney looks like he’s about to have twins on the stair carpet. But very obviously something is happening, and you don’t want it out. All right, so be it. I give you my word, and I pledge Em Jones’s word, that the Times-Union will not print a line about this thing, whatever it is. Not the rumor, not the denial of the rumor, not any speculation. We will not mention Charlie, or Bindy, or either of you in any context other than conventional history, until you give the go-ahead. I don’t break confidences without good reason and you both know that about me all my life. And I’ll tell you one more thing. Emory will do anything in his power to put the newspaper behind you in any situation such as the hypothetical one we’ve not been discussing here. I repeat. Not discussing. Under no circumstances have we been discussing anything here this morning. But if the paper can do anything at all, then it will. I pledge that as true as I stand here talking about nothing whatsoever.”
The faces remained grave. Then Patsy’s mouth wrinkled sideways into the makings of a small grin.
“You’re all right, Martin,” he said. “For a North Ender.”
Martin stood and shook Mart’s hand, then Patsy’s.
“If anything should come up we’ll let you know,” Matt said. “And thanks.”
“It’s what’s right,” Martin said, standing up, thinking: I’ve still got the gift of tongues. For it was as true as love that by talking a bit of gibberish he had verified, beyond doubt, that Charlie Boy McCall had, indeed, been grabbed.
“You know I saw Charlie last night down at the Downtown alleys. We were there when Scotty Streck dropped dead. I suppose you know about that one.”
“We knew he was there,” Patsy said. “We didn’t know who else.”
“We’re working on that,” Matt said.
“I can tell you who was there to the man,” Martin said, and he ticked off names of all present except the sweeper and one bar customer, whom he identified by looks. Matt made notes on it all.
“What was Berman doing there?” Patsy asked.
“I don’t know. He just turned up at the bar.”
“Was he there before Charlie got there?”
“I can’t be sure of that.”
“Do you think he knew Charlie would be at the alleys?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Do you know Berman?”
“I’ve been in his company, but we’re not close.”
“Who is close to him?”
Martin shook his head, thinking of faces but connecting no one intimately to the man. Then he said, “Billy Phelan seems to know him. Berman backed him in last night’s match and did the same once before, when Billy played pool. He seems to like Billy.”
“Do you trust Phelan?” Matt asked.
“No man in his right mind would trust him with his woman, but otherwise he’s as good as gold, solid as they come.”
“We want to keep tabs on that Berman fellow,” Patsy said.
“You think he’s connected to this situation?” and both Patsy and Matt shrugged without incriminating Berman, but clearly admitting there certainly was a situation.
“We’re keeping tabs on a lot of people,” Patsy said. “Can you ask young Phelan to hang around a while with Berman, the next few days, say, and let us know where he goes and what he says?”
“Ahhhhh,” said Martin, “that’s tricky but I guess I can ask.”
“Don’t you think he’ll do it?”
“I wouldn’t know, but it is touchy. Being an informer’s not Billy’s style.”
“Informer?” said Patsy, bristling.
“It’s how he might look at it.”
“That’s not how I look at it.”
“I’ll ask him,” Martin said. “I can certainly ask him.”
“We’ll take good care of him if he helps us,” Matt said. “He can count on that.”
“I don’t think he’s after that either.”
“Everybody’s after that,” Patsy said.
“Billy’s headstrong,” Martin said, standing up.
“So am I,” said Patsy. “Keep in touch.”
“Bulldogs,” said Martin.
Three
Martin drove downtown and parked on Broadway near the Plaza, as usual, and headed, he thought, for the Times-Union. But instead of turning up Beaver Street, he walked south on Broadway, all the way to Madison Avenue. He turned up Madison, realizing then that he was bound for Spanish George’s bar. He had no urge to drink and certainly no reason to confront either George or any of his customers, especially at this hour. George, notorious in the city’s South End, ran a bar and flophouse in Shanks’s old three-story livery stable. He had come to America from Spain to build the Barge Canal and stayed on to establish an empire in the dregs, where winos paid to collapse on his cots after they had all but croaked on his wine.
The sour air assaulted Martin as he stepped inside the bar, but he understood the impulse that was on him and did not retreat. His will seemed unfettered, yet somehow suspended. He knew he was obeying something other than will and that it might, or might not, reveal its purpose. In the years when this came as a regular impulse, he often found himself sitting in churches, standing in front of grocery stores, or riding trolleys, waiting for revelation. But the trolley often reached the end of the line and took him back to his starting point without producing an encounter, and he would resume the previous path of his day, feeling duped by useless caprice. Yet the encounters which did prove meaningful, or even prophetic of disaster or good fortune, were of such weight that he could not help but follow the impulse once he recognized it for what it was. He came to believe that the useless journeys did not arise from the same source as those with genuine meaning, but were rather his misreadings of his own mood, his own imagination, a duping of self with counterfeit expectations. Five such fruitless trips in four days after his debauch made him aware his gift had fled. Now, as he gagged on the wine-pukish rancidity of George’s, on the dead-rat stink and the vile-body decay that entered your system with every breath, he was certain that the impulse was the same as it had always been, whether true or false; and what he was doing was giving his mystical renewal a chance to prove itself. He ordered a bottle of beer and when George was looking elsewhere he wiped its neck clean with his handkerchief and drank from the bottle.
“I don’t see you too much,” George said to him.
George was, as usual, wearing his filthy sombrero and his six-gun in the embroidered leather holster, and looked very like a Mexican bandido. The gun, presumably, was not loaded, or so the police had ordered. But any wino aggressive on muscatel could not be so sure of that, and so George, by force of costume alone, maintained order on his premises.
“That’s true, George,” Martin said. “I keep pretty busy uptown. Not much on this edge of things lately.”