“I came here plenty of times,” Peg said.
“I didn’t, and neither did he,” Billy said.
“You’re gonna ruin it,” Peg said. “You’ll be like Sarah, spoiling it for everybody else.”
“I ain’t spoilin’ nothin’ wasn’t spoiled years ago,” Billy said.
“Have some mint jelly, Billy,” said Molly. “Sweeten your disposition.”
“I’m sayin’ my father never got nothin’ outa this house and neither did we, and I don’t want nothin’ now.”
“You told me Molly gave you gold on your birthday,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And she gave me gold too,” Peg said.
“You know where I got that gold, Billy?” Molly asked.
“You never said.”
“You remember Cubby Conroy?”
“I remember his kid, Johnny,” Billy said. “They shot him over highjacked booze and dumped him in the gutter.”
“Cubby was a good friend of your father’s. They grew up together on this block.” Molly paused, looked at Roger. “Mr. Dailey,” she said, “do lawyers keep secrets?”
“If they don’t, they’re not very good lawyers.”
“I can’t tell my story unless you keep it a secret.”
“I’ll carry it silently to my grave,” Roger said.
“Good,” said Molly. “Cubby Conroy was a bootlegger.”
“Right,” said Billy. “He was also a con man. He and Morrie Berman got badges and flashed them at Legs Diamond and convinced him they were dry agents. They almost copped a truckload of his booze before he caught on.”
“I did hear that,” Molly said. “And then somebody shot Cubby. Perhaps it was Mr. Diamond, who was upset by what they did.”
“Maybe so. Diamond was like that. But how do you know all this tough stuff?”
Billy was smiling, and I marveled at the way Molly had turned him around so quickly. She was wonderful at human relationships and I loved her.
“Well, you know, don’t you,” Molly said, “that they killed Cubby up in Glens Falls in one of those roadhouses. Then they killed Johnny, and the only one left was Charity, Cubby’s widow, who had a collapse of some sort, afraid they’d come after her, I suppose, or maybe just living alone and drinking alone. I used to cook her a dinner every day and bring it over, but it didn’t help much. She got sicker and sicker and one day she told me she had this bootleg money she wanted me to have. All her relatives were dead, she didn’t know where Cubby’s people were, but wherever they were she hated them, and so the money was mine. I thanked her a whole lot and took it home.”
“Where’d she have it hid?” Billy asked.
“Inside an old mattress in the cellar.”
“How much?”
“Twelve thousand dollars,” Molly said, and we all wheezed our awe.
“She let you take twelve thousand home?” Billy asked.
“She did. I had to make six trips in the car with my suitcase. Maybe seven.”
“Wasn’t she afraid of goin’ broke?” Billy asked.
“She wasn’t broke.”
“How’d you know that?”
“When she died,” Molly said, “I found another fifteen thousand in two overstuffed chairs and a sofa. That took twelve trips.”
We all wheezed anew.
“Twenty-seven grand,” Billy said.
“Very good arithmetic, Billy,” Molly said.
“What’d you do with it?” Roger asked.
“Everything I wanted to do,” Molly said. “I went to Philadelphia for two weeks to visit our cousin and I looked at the Liberty Bell, and I bought curtains for the house, and I went to Keeler’s twice a month and had oysters and lobster, and I paid for the new oil furnace when the coal furnace cracked in half, and I gave money to special people, and I turned it all into gold and put it in safe-deposit boxes because I didn’t trust paper money.”
“You have any of it left?” Peter asked.
“If I do will you take back my bequest?”
“Of course not,” said Peter.
“I have nineteen thousand.”
We all looked carefully at Molly now, a woman worth scrutiny, the true and quixotic mistress of this house, the secret financial power behind Sarah’s imperious, penurious throne, the self-sufficient dowager, ready with the quick fix for family trouble, the four hundred dollars she gave me a case in point.
“You know, Billy,” said Molly, “when your father came home during the war I called and invited him for dinner, lunch, anything, just to get him back in the family. But he hung up on me and wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“I went to see him at the ball park,” Peter said. “He told me he was too busy to talk to me. He wasn’t a forgiving man, your father. Always difficult.”
“I got along with him,” Billy said. “So did Peg.”
“I’m glad somebody did,” Peter said.
“He gave Billy his old baseball glove,” Peg said.
“Sure, why not?” said Peter. “Can you imagine him telling Billy not to take this money?”
Billy fell silent.
“I’m going to take some pictures of the table,” Giselle said with perfect timing. “I’ll use your camera and tripod, Orson,” and she went up the back stairs, knowing exactly where my camera equipment was.
“I feel like an interloper,” Roger said, “but I might as well get it straight. What was Francis doing at the ball park? I thought he lived on the road.”
I pointed to Billy for the answer, and he gave me the back of his hand.
“Don’t bug out on us, Billy,” I said.
“Who’s buggin’ out?”
“Francis came home in 1942 to help the family when he thought Billy was being drafted,” I said. “Francis stayed close to Annie till he died, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did,” Billy said.
Giselle came down with the camera and flash and set them up on the tripod in the back parlor. Nobody spoke while she did this. We waited for her to say she was ready, but she’d heard our conversation and she left the camera standing and came back to the table.
“Francis lived up by Hawkins Stadium, the ball park,” I said, “isn’t that so, Billy?”
“Hoffman’s Hotel,” Billy said. “Eight rooms with a saloon. Old-timey street guys and barflies, newspapermen with no teeth and dyin’ ballplayers, an elephant graveyard. But Francis was in good shape for a guy who bent his elbow so much, and he went to all the Senators’ home games. Johnny Evers was one of the bosses of the club and he and Francis both played big-league ball at the same time, so Evers gave Francis a season pass. Those were tough days for baseball, all the young guys gettin’ drafted, and you hadda fill their shoes with kids, or old guys, or deaf guys, or guys with one arm, or one eye. Francis tells Evers he knows a guy doin’ short time in a Buffalo jail hits the ball a mile and does Evers want him? Evers says hell yes and hires the guy when he gets out and hires Francis as a coach. Francis, he’s sixty-two and he suits up, ain’t played a game of ball for maybe twenty-eight years and he’s out there telling kids and cripples never to swing at the first pitch, and how to steal bases and rattle the pitcher, when to play close in, when to go deep. Ripper Collins is managin’ and he pinch-hits Francis, puts him in for the hit and run, or the sacrifice, because Francis can still bloop it to right once in a while, and he’s champ with the bunt, lays it down the line, soft, easy, never lost the touch. He runs like a three-legged goat, takes him two weeks to get to first base but it don’t matter. He’s out from the go but the runner gets to second or third. I seen him do this half a dozen times before they drafted me, December, and I’m gone eight months I’m back out with a bad eye. Francis is coachin’ third, and they’re writin’ stories about him, and the con he talked Johnny Evers into signin’ is knifed dead on a dance floor hustlin’ somebody’s wife. Dangerous game, baseball. And there I am in a box behind third and there’s the old man, movin’ like a cricket, and while I’m watchin’ him he falls over in the baseline. You can’t get up? I’m up and over the fence, on the field, and they got a stretcher comin’, take him down to Memorial. I’m in a cab behind the ambulance but it don’t make no difference. He’s dead before his chin hits the dirt.”