“Vadge,” George said.
“That’s my word,” Vivian said. “I invented it for Eddie. I never say it anymore. I haven’t said it in eight years. I guess that means I want you to look at me the way Eddie used to.”
George stood and took off his coat and loosened his tie. He raised his highball in a toast: “Here’s to it and from it and to it again. When you get to it do it for you may never get the chance to get to it to do it again.” He drained the highball and set it on a table. He sat down and stared at Vivian’s center.
“That’s what Ed used to do,” she said.
George hummed a few notes. Let me.
“Forty years in the post office and then he died. I never figured it out. Still haven’t. I should’ve grabbed you when I had a chance.”
“Why would you grab me?”
“We went out twice. I met you down at Kinderhook Lake, Electric Park by the Ferris wheel. We danced a few dances at the pavilion and then we came back to Albany on the trolley. A week later you took me dancing out to Snyder’s Lake in your convertible. You were with a bunch of sassy fellows, with mouths on them. You weren’t that way but I thought you might be, so I didn’t encourage you. And then Peg took you out of circulation.”
“Electric Park only kept the lights on till ten, and then the hicks went to sleep. The last trolley was at ten-fifteen. Thirty-five minutes to Albany, a grand ride, even in the dark.”
“Sometimes romance went on in the back of the trolley.” She shifted her body forward, closer to George. “You’re a lovely man, Georgie.”
He put his hand on her stocking so that his forefinger touched the flesh of her thigh. “Let me call you sweetheart,” he said.
“You can call me that.”
And he sang:
“Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.”
“Love,” whispered Vivian. “Where do they keep it?”
“Will you dance with me, Vivian is it?”
“I surely will, Georgie.” She stood and tossed her robe onto a chair.
“Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.”
George put his right arm around her waist as he sang. He put one finger under the straps of her slip and her bra and moved them downward until her left breast was free. He kissed it.
“Oh, George, it’s so nice to have you here tonight.”
“Let me call you sweetheart. .”
As he sang he tried to move her to the waltz tempo, but the crowded room allowed for no pivoting and so he waltzed her in place, his feet moving one-two-three, with hers doing the same, but he held her so they did not move forward, just one-two-three, and again, in place, right here is just fine, and it’s getting better, and he ended the song:
“I’m in love with you.”
He stopped moving and kissed Vivian, a long kiss. There’s something about a kiss that you can’t get anyplace else.
“Vadge, is that it?”
“That’s it, Georgie. You got it.”
Quinn the Samaritan parked by the Emergency entrance to Memorial Hospital and went inside for a stretcher. An orderly wheeled one to the door and with Matt’s help lifted Tremont out of Quinn’s backseat onto it. Medical expertise would now banish all ’ritises from the peripheries of Tremont, the assassin-in-progress. Drug that man. Be kind and send him back into the world painless.
“You’re back,” the orderly said to Tremont.
“You know Tremont?”
“He’s a regular,” the orderly said.
“He’s sick as hell,” Quinn said.
The orderly nodded and wheeled Tremont inside. Matt followed.
“You ain’t leavin’,” Tremont said.
“I’ll be back. Matt’ll be with you.” Matt would stay with Tremont until he was safe in a room. Keep in touch through the city desk, Quinn told Matt. We’ll reconnect after my interview.
“Who you interviewing?” Matt asked.
“The Mayor.”
“Very timely. Tell him not to accept rides from strangers.”
Markson, the city editor, had cigarettes going in two ashtrays at the city desk where he was whittling away at a pile of copy with his pencil. In shirtsleeves, tie loose, loafers, no socks, pot belly gaining on him, Markson looked up as Quinn crossed the city room. Ten reporters were typing their stories, the copy desk editing them in full frenzy as the Times Union moved toward deadline for the first edition.
“The Mayor,” Markson said, “did you nail him?”
“I didn’t call him yet. Frankly I don’t think he’ll talk to me. I’m a public enemy, but that’s not the point.” Inhaling Markson’s twin columns of smoke Quinn reached over to stub out one cigarette but Markson slapped his hand.
“I need all the smoke I can get,” he said. “I called the Mayor myself. He will see you. If he’s not in his office he’ll be at the Fort Orange Club. He’ll interrupt his cocktail hour for you. I told him what a great job he and the police were doing to keep down tension in the city and that we wanted to help and that you’re doing the story. I didn’t ask him about Bobby. You do that. You interpret what he says, even if it’s no comment. He’ll probably praise the hell out of him.”
“Patsy McCall once said Bobby was a stiff and a louse. Alex didn’t contradict him.”
“No need to resurrect that one. Let’s not make Alex sound like an assassin, all right?”
“How about an assassin’s target?”
And as Quinn sketched the assassination scheme Markson dropped his pencil and pushed his chair away from the desk. Quinn motioned him toward the teletype cubicle where the clacking covered their voices, and told him Tremont’s tale of Zuki, using no names, not Tremont, not Zuki, no mention of the Brothers, which was Markson’s first question: Are they in on it?
Quinn said, “I have no idea and I’m making no accusations and I won’t name a name till I find out what’s real. I’ll keep you posted. I don’t want my source jailed as a conspirator, or maybe killed. He did nothing illegal. He backed off this scheme.”
“He went to target practice.”
“He did, and that was a mistake. He backed off when he heard Alex’s name.”
“We couldn’t run the story even if you verified it, which you can’t. Everybody will lie. Your shooter’s a patsy and your man giving him the gun is either nuts or a provocateur. It’s conspiracy horseshit — let’s get the lefties. We got beaucoup stories tonight. We don’t need speculation.”
“Unless somebody does shoot Alex. If not my man, somebody else.”
“Goddamn it, Quinn, you’re a shit-stirrer.”
Markson walked out of the cubicle, heading for the hierarchy on the second floor. No way he can handle this alone; no way Quinn can handle it alone either. Quinn checked the wire for the latest on Bobby: Condition critical, probably brain dead; police searching for a woman in a black and white polka dot dress who ran down the hotel stairs after the shooting and yelled in exultation, “We got Bobby Kennedy.” At his desk Quinn called Pat Mahar at the Elks. George never arrived. You sure? Positive. Beautiful, another goddamn calamity. Where the hell did he go? Where would he go? Quinn wanted to call Roy to find out what he knew about Zuki but first he called Doc Fahey at the detective office and asked him to have the night squad keep an eye out for George on the street, he may be lost, and he’s wearing a gray Palm Beach suit and a tan coconut straw hat. The cops know him for years, maybe not the young ones. He knows the city better than me, Doc said, but I’ll spread the word. Doc was right. George couldn’t get lost for very long in this town. Quinn called home and Renata told him Gloria was sleeping and Max was on his way there, she’d reached him at Cody’s. He’s very mysterious about coming to Albany, she said. He had lunch with Alex today at the Fort Orange Club. Maybe that has something to do with him coming here. Quinn told her George was roaming loose in town.