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Wee Willie Ryan, my childhood friend who usually gave me a hard time as soon as I walked in the door at Finn’s pub, had finished his pint and gone by the time I arrived. Seamus Hanlon, a gaunt, white haired cop who’d spent many an evening at our kitchen table from the time I could toddle until I was forced to sell the house to pay my father’s medical bills, sat at the bar sipping Guinness.
“Where’s Billy?” I asked as one of the regulars slid over a space to let me sit by Seamus.
He chuckled. His long-time partner Billy Leary had completed the trio whose conversation had floated around me, warming me, in the kitchen while my mother filled the front room with her constant chill.
“Kate wanted him home early so they could go to some card party.” He got a kick out of how the ever-grumbling Billy fell in line when his wife put her foot down. So did I.
A look around didn’t show any bowls in evidence. On Fridays, those in the know who arrived early enough could get a bowl of Irish stew that Finn’s wife Rose made in their upstairs apartment then brought down to a hotplate. Apparently I’d missed out, thanks to Clem Stark’s visit. It was one more thing to hold against him.
“Stew must have gone fast tonight,” I observed.
“It didn’t go at all.” Rose set a pint topped with perfect foam in front of me. “My stove played out. I went upstairs to check and it was stone cold. No point wasting it, so I sent it home with Willie Ryan. Maire can cook it up for those little rascals of theirs.”
She flitted down the bar to serve someone else. We sipped our stout in comfortable silence. Seamus was good for sitting with, each of us traversing our own thoughts. He wasn’t given to idle chatter, but his quiet presence calmed and reassured like a warm hearth.
“Clem Stark’s been around trying to hire me,” I said at length.
Amusement navigated Seamus’ craggy features.
“Bet you handed him his hat.”
“I threatened to staple his mouth shut.”
He gave a sly grin.
“Somebody tell him you were tired of working for yourself, did they?”
“No, he’s figuring if we go to war, the men who work for him now — I think there may be three — will leave for the army.”
Seamus grunted and signaled Finn for another pint. I was still working on mine.
“Are we going to war, Seamus? Lots of people seem certain.”
He shook his head. “You’d need a crystal ball to answer. No telling what those men in Washington will get up to.”
We shared more silence. The day had been so full I hadn’t had much time for thinking. Now that I did, my thoughts kept wandering back to the abruptly closed lamp shop. There must be some way I could contact the man who’d run it, or at least find an employee or the rental agency.
“You’re thinking awfully hard there,” Seamus observed.
“Yeah, and I’m tired of it. Want to get a sandwich?”
His lips pursed.
“I’d need to change out of my uniform first.”
“Happens you know a girl with a car.”
“Did you have someplace in mind for the sandwich?”
I did, and it was in somewhat the same direction as the gaudy building whose image seemed stuck in my head.
***
“Cheese on top of tuna salad?” Seamus shook his head skeptically as I drove.
“They toast it all, and the cheese melts. It’s good.”
“I might skip the cheese. The toasting part sounds nice, though.”
Possibly he was thinking that doing without the cheese would save him a nickel. Seamus wasn’t hard up, but he was thrifty. I’d waited at the place where he roomed while he changed into a brown tweed jacket and gabardine trousers. Now we were heading south on Main.
“You mind if we take a little detour first? Drive down a stretch of Fifth a time or two?”
“I like riding in a car. Don’t get to do it much now.”
It had never occurred to me he might miss his daily stint in a cruiser now that his bad knee confined him mostly to desk duty. Reaching over, I squeezed his hand. I made a mental note to invite him on an occasional excursion.
It felt good having the heater on in the DeSoto. People getting on and off trolleys wore coats buttoned up. The home-bound crowd had dwindled to nothing. Now people were headed back to the heart of the city for dinner or picture shows or on dates. I waited for a trolley to pass and then turned onto Fifth. The café where I’d talked to the waitress that morning was pulling the CLOSED sign down as we passed. The music store already had called it a day. I slowed as we came abreast of the gaily painted building with the bay windows. Could Tremain have wound up there because he was following whoever he suspected was plotting to steal information about the Crescendo project?
“Working on something down here, are you?” asked Seamus.
“Yeah. A man I’m looking for supposedly was somewhere around here the last time anyone saw him, but so far I haven’t been able to find hide nor hair.”
Continuing for several blocks, I came around again.
There was a sauciness about the building that had housed the lamp shop. Its ornate facade flirted with passers-by as shamelessly as a woman sliding her skirt up her thigh. The windows were dark though, and the pale shape of the FOR RENT sign showed in the window. This time I didn’t slow.
Seamus chuckled.
“You thinking of something funny?” I asked absently. For Seamus, taciturn as he was, a chuckle was the equivalent of hooting with laughter.
“The woman who used to own that place. The one with the little bitty towers hanging over the street. She has money enough to fill a couple of banks, and sits on a couple of highfaluting boards now, but my, twenty years ago she was a corker!” He chuckled again.
I nearly stood on my brakes. Never before had I heard Seamus say so much unprompted. Hearing him mention a woman save Kate or a few other cop wives was even more unusual. Hearing her mentioned in connection with the very place I was interested in left me wobbly as an all-night drunk.
“Tabby Warren.” Oblivious to the effect he’d produce, he said the name more to himself than to me. “I had a feeling she was giving me the eye a couple of times,” he confided shyly. “It didn’t seem to bother her a bit that I’d arrested her.”
Certain I would cause a wreck if I did otherwise, I brought the DeSoto to rest at the curb. I turned and stared at him.
“That place back there was a bawdy house?”
“Naw, and you’d never mistake Miss Warren for that kind, either. It was a speakeasy. Got raided a good dozen times, at least. I worked on some of them. Your dad too. ‘Course Tab– Miss Warren wasn’t there every time. I put her in the paddy wagon twice, though. Spotted her a couple of other times when we burst in, but she slipped away somehow. Some of those places had secret exits, but we never found the one there.”
Seamus was smiling at memories. I leaned back and listened to this incredible flood of information about his past.
A secret way out. My thoughts were skittering. What better place to hold someone prisoner if you could somehow arrange to have the building all to yourself.... No, that was wishful thinking. There were businesses on either side. Calls for help would be heard. Still, it was the last place Gil Tremain had been seen.
***
To my surprise, Seamus decided to let them add cheese to his sandwich. Maybe memories of his younger days were making him frisky. Or maybe it was just remembering the notorious Tabby Warren.
Over supper his talkative streak continued enough to tell me about a couple of raids on the building in question. He couldn’t quite hide his enjoyment as he described merry chaos when the police burst in: Screams. Whistles blowing. Socialites swinging at cops and sometimes at dates they were too drunk to recognize. Sons and daughters of high society trampling each other to get out without being slapped into handcuffs.
“Not that breaking the law is something to laugh at,” he added, noting my merriment. “And however harmless the people going there and people running the place might have been, the men who kept them supplied with liquor were gangsters and killers.”
I wiped my eyes.
“And you never asked Tabby Warren out? In spite of her dropping clues she was interested”
“Well, I don’t know for sure she was. Anyway, I was a cop, still walking a beat, and she had all this money. Besides, she was young enough to be my daughter.”
He sighed.
“My, she did make an impression though. Hard to scare. Sassed and gave lip. Back at the station the men booking her would stutter and stumble, she flustered them so.” He gave me a sideways look. “Come to think of it, she was a lot like you.”