Chapter Twenty-Six

It was all Arch and I could do to get the guy out to the coupe and jam the three of us into the seat. I got it turned around and we headed downtown to Bellevue Hospital as fast as the Ford would go. That was pretty fast, and there was nobody else on the streets. The guy’s breathing was shallow. His eyes were half open sometimes, and the foam at his mouth was gone. What was his name? Wilcox called him Summers. Arch said he’d seen men survive worse, but with that kind of wound to the head, you couldn’t be certain.

“What did you think about what he said?” I asked as we sailed down First Avenue. “Hobart.”

“I believe every word. It doesn’t contradict anything I’ve learned about Learned Wilcox. I just hope that whatever he was pouring down the evil old bastard’s throat was effective, painful, and slow. How are you? Any regrets about Trodache?”

Truth is that was the first moment I was able to think about him. Everything since had been pure reaction. Until Arch brought it up. Then the sight of the man sprawled on the floor caught up with me, and I felt a quick sick wave, like I was going to throw up, but worse. For all my reputation as a gangster and gunman, I haven’t shot that many guys, and it’s never been something I wanted to do. But, hell, Trodache bothers me less than any of them. In his way, he was as bad as Learned Wilcox. Somebody should’ve shot him a long time before I did.

When we got close to Bellevue, I pulled in where I saw an ambulance. We got a couple of orderlies to take Summers. I told them that he’d been hit on the head and he worked for Peter Wilcox. Before they could ask anything else, Arch and I made ourselves scarce.

We drove back uptown and stopped at the first telephone booth we saw. I dropped a nickel in and dialed Ellis’s precinct. I was surprised that he was there. When he heard my voice, he said, “What in the hell is going on? Captain Boatwright came in an hour ago looking like he’s been poleaxed and asked me who you were. Come clean. What gives?”

“Shut up, I’ll explain later. I’m about to do you the biggest favor of your career if you handle it right.” If he didn’t handle it right, he’d be in the crapper, but I didn’t mention that. “Tell Boatwright that Peter Wilcox needs his help. He’s at the place he used to live, 900 Fifth Avenue at Seventy-First. There’s a body there. Maybe three. He’s gonna want to keep it quiet.”

Ellis was asking if it had anything to do with the actress when I hung up. I never learned exactly how he managed, but Ellis did his job that night and made sure that nobody was embarrassed.

They kept everything out of the papers until Wednesday, and then the story said that Mr. Peter Wilcox’s driver, Stanley Summers, had been attacked in Mr. Wilcox’s Fifth Avenue home by a man thought to be living in the nearby Hooverville in Central Park. Mr. Summers shot and killed the intruder and was being treated at a private hospital. They didn’t say anything about Hobart and Learned Wilcox, but a week later, it was announced that the surviving founder of the Ashton-Wilcox Bank had succumbed following a brief illness. It was funny, really, the way people reacted, what with him having been such a big cheese. But the funeral barely made the front page, and what I heard from most people in the speak was that they were surprised to learn he was still alive.

I figured that sooner or later Peter Wilcox would want to talk to me and he did. It was a damn strange meeting, I can tell you that. Maybe a month went by and on a dead Tuesday night, Summers came in. He didn’t recognize me. There was no reason he should. I was at my table when I saw him go to the bar and talk to Frenchy. Frenchy pointed me out. Summers came over and said Peter Wilcox wanted to talk to me privately. I told him to come up to my office.

A few minutes later, Wilcox and Summers and another big guy who could have been Summers’s brother came in. I was behind my desk. They stood and said no to a drink. After what seemed like a long time, Wilcox said, “I have looked into your background and I believe I understand your role in the unfortunate situation that involved my family. Junior stole one of Mr. Apollinaire’s books and somehow used it to extort money from an actress. You delivered the money.”

“Right.”

“It was a ridiculous thing for him to do. I’m afraid my son inherited many of his mother’s weaknesses. He’s now receiving the care he needs. But I’m still puzzled as to why you came to my father’s house on Sunday night.”

“Hobart told me to follow him when he took your old man out of the soirée on Corlears Street.”

“You were there?”

“Yeah, what’dya think of the picture?”

His face flushed and his ears turned red. “You must understand that my attraction to exotic diversions and Mr. Apollinaire’s productions were because my wife was incapable of enjoying conjugal relations. The doctors told me it was part and parcel of the crippling melancholia that caused her to create those terrible fantasies.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t believe that story.”

“Nobody cares what I believe. It’s your wife and father and son, or maybe your brother, that Hobart was talking about. You know them better than I do.”

Wilcox stared at me for what seemed like, again, a long time before he shook his head like I had disappointed him. They started for the door.

I said, “What about Hobart? What happened to him?”

Without looking at me, he said, “We’re taking care of him.”

But getting back to the night it happened, after I talked to Ellis on the telephone, Arch and I stopped one more time at a sewer grate where I wiped the Banker’s Special clean and ditched it. Arch told me to leave him at the speak. He kept a change of clothes there, and it was too late to go home.

“Thanks for coming along tonight,” I told him. “Couldn’t’ve done this by myself.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it, and if the opportunity should ever present itself, I wouldn’t mind seeing that picture again. It was amateurish in many respects, but she really is something.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“And if I’m not out of line, I have to say that I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I asked for a job six months ago. But it has never been boring. Thanks.”

Arch got out. I drove to the garage on Ninth and walked back to the Chelsea. I was still worried about Connie, but I didn’t know what to make of everything else that had happened. I kept seeing moments from that day before, Trodache’s surprised look, the Chinaman I slugged at the market, and the two others backing down the stairs and the kids on the street hanging on to their rope. Bobby in his red ringmaster’s coat, Carlos in the ape suit and codpiece, and Nola falling out of that dress. Damn, that’s what got it all started, her in that dress. As Arch said, she was really something.

By then the sky was getting light in the east and traffic was picking up. The workweek had started. The bank holiday was still in operation and we had nothing to fear but fear itself and it was still cold. As I walked up to the front door, I realized Arch was right. Working for me wasn’t boring. We’d done a lot in six months, and when I had that thought, I understood why Connie was mad at me, and I knew I was a dope.

Her note was stuck in my door. At first, I was afraid to touch it, thinking that it was just to say good-bye, but it didn’t.

Jimmy,

If you’re not stinking drunk from your night out with the boys at the stag movie, come up to see me. I’m either on the roof or in my room.

C

I wanted to charge up the stairs as fast as I could, but if I did that, I’d be out of breath and red in the face and she’d know how crazy I was. So I walked slowly up to the fifth floor and knocked on her door, not too loud. Nothing. Okay, she was on the roof where we went sometimes when we were coming back from a busy night in the summer and it was already light and still cool. I took my time gimping all the way up to the metal door at the top floor. Just so you know, it had a stronger strike plate than the one I kicked open in Chinatown that afternoon. As I was climbing the stairs, I tried to figure out what I was going to say, and all of it seemed wrong.

The door was wedged open with the brick she’d put there. It squeaked against the spring as I pushed it open. She heard that. When I got around to the south side of the building where I knew she’d be, she was turned around in a rocking chair, looking at me. Four of the chairs were set up by a place where the top section of the railing was broken off, so you could sit and see over it to the rooftops and trees.

We spoke at the same time. I said, “I’m sorry I forgot . . .” and she said “I know that you . . .”

We both laughed and I sat down next to her. She was wearing a heavy coat, a scarf, and a wool hat. Her cheeks were flushed pink in the cold. After the little nervous laugh, she wasn’t smiling, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She said, “You first.”

“I forgot our anniversary. If that’s what you call it. It’s been one year since I met you. The exact date was last week sometime. That’s why you’ve been so sore.”

“Thursday,” she said, and I still couldn’t read her mood.

“Thursday when we saw King Kong, when Miss Wray came in and all this got started, but I can’t blame that. I just forgot. I mean, I didn’t forget, I just don’t think about stuff like that.”

“I know you don’t. After we closed up tonight, Marie Therese and I talked about it. While we were waiting for you and Arch to come back.” She stopped, expecting me to explain.

Instead, I said, “Where were you all day? I was worried. So was Marie Therese.”

“I took a walk. I told you I was going to.”

She didn’t say anything about a walk, but I wasn’t about to start another fight about it.

“I think better when I walk,” she said, “and I had a lot to think about. I went up to the park and down to the Battery. I took the ferry to Staten Island because we haven’t done that and I walked back to the bar.”

“That’s a long walk.”

“It is. My legs are tired.”

“What did you and Marie Therese talk about?”

“You. Where were you?”

“I think you know. Arch and I went to Bobby’s version of King Kong.” I stopped, trying to figure how much to tell and decided to keep it as simple as I could. “I was looking for you. The other night, Bobby came close to offering you a job serving drinks there. I thought he might have done it again in the note he left for you last night. I had reason to think there could be trouble. I was right.”

“You’re saying you went there to protect me, not to watch a stag film? Ha! Marie Therese said you’d come up with a good story, but this one takes the cake.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “There’s a lot more to it, but now’s not the time. What were you thinking about and talking about with Marie Therese? That’s more important.”

She could tell that I was serious and that I didn’t make up the part about being worried about her.

She said, “I’m trying to decide what to do. My mother wants me to come home. When I first decided to leave, I had to fight her to apply for the position with the agency. She never liked the idea of me going back east and working for rich people. I haven’t really told her what Jimmy Quinn’s is, either. She thinks it’s a restaurant. If she knew it was a speakeasy, she’d go nuts.”

My first thought was to ask her if she wanted to go back to California, but I remembered what Arch said about her old man, and I saw the hard set of her face and I knew she wasn’t doing that. It was something else. “What did Marie Therese tell you?”

She laughed again but not like it was really funny. “You know what she said. She wants us to get married. For a while I thought I wanted that, too, but now I don’t.”

“What?” I didn’t expect to hear that.

“Don’t look like that. I know what you think. But I’m eighteen years old. I don’t want to be a barmaid for the rest of my life. It’s fine for now, but there’s a lot of things and places that I don’t know anything about. I’ve been here a year, and I’m just beginning to understand how much I don’t know about this city, and there’s a lot more to the world than New York.”

I didn’t understand that last part at all.

“Yeah, that’s a lot to think about all right,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things too. Past few days, I’ve heard a lot of stories and seen guys and women using each other and selling themselves and lying, and doing the most terrible things you can imagine, and all I can think now is that I don’t want to be like that with you.”

I stopped because I wasn’t saying what I wanted to say, but she was paying attention to me and maybe she knew what I meant, so I tried again. “I’m sorry that I forgot about when I met you, but I want you to know that every day since then, I’ve looked forward to seeing you and doing things with you, and I want to see you tomorrow and the day after that.”

I guess that was enough because she pushed up out of her chair and climbed onto my lap and gave me the longest, sweetest, most serious kiss I’d had in weeks. Finally, she came up for breath. Then looking worried and sounding a little embarrassed, she said, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”