CHAPTER 11

Straight, no chaser

I recall vividly the first time I was allowed to study in the magnificent main Manhattan library all on my own. I was eleven years old, too cool to go over and pet the lions, but wildly in love with them, secretly. Daddy had dropped me off that morning—school was on spring hiatus—with lunch money and threats to my life if I dared leave the reading room and go traipsing unaccompanied across Forty-second Street. I was doing big time research for my paper on Japanese poetry, thinking of making a living as a haiku poet.

The library had fallen into awful disrepair in my lifetime, the grime and neglect all but burying its majesty. But a major renovation effort over the past three years or so has restored its grandeur. And now, not only does the facade gleam and the lions stand proudly, the park behind it is splendidly kept as well; not one but two lovely cafes have opened—one on either side of the stairs leading up to the entrance; and high atop the building there is a grand style restaurant, with prices to match, from which you can look down into the stacks of the circulating library! A bit much, maybe. But on the whole I approve.

I could have gone to NYU, or borrowed a card from a friend with library privileges up at Columbia But I figured the public library to be a much better bet for the kind of research I needed to do—nothing arcane, like images of water in the poems of Basho. No. More like pop culture.

“V” as in “Valokus.” There was nothing so difficult about that. I was trying to treat the Henry Valokus mystery like a paper I had absolutely no heart for but knew I’d have to tackle before the semester was over.

Who was it who first glamorized the image of the mobster? Was it old Hollywood? Was it Al Capone? Scott Fitzgerald with Gatsby’s bootlegging? The mob in all its sundry manifestations seems to be the source of ongoing, inexhaustible fascination. More books get published about gangsters than about women in rotten marriages, which is saying something.

Just what made us so interested in criminals, anyway? Personally, I blamed Coppola for making Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro look so edible in the Godfather movies. I must have been about twelve years old when I saw those films on television and I sure wanted me an Italian. Of course the sad realization that blacks and Italians in American cities are locked in a filthy embrace of loathing and violence against one another for as long as the two races exist was still ahead of me then. Still, while I wouldn’t drive through parts of Bensonhurst on a bet, I’ve never met an Italian from Italy that I didn’t get along with.

I started with the old newspapers and magazines.

There were mafia bigwig profiles, mob family genealogies, Cosa Nostra wars, inter-ethnic mob contacts, favorite mafia recipes, gangster angst, coming of age horror stories, interior decorating tips.

I skimmed them all.

Didn’t see Valokus. But there was Vincent … Little Vince … Big Vince … Vinnie the Bull … Vick the Gimp. Val the Hulk. Vicious Vittorio. Vaseline Eddie.

There was Henry the Barber, Henry the Bomber, Sweet Henry, Hungry Henry, Henry the Hangman.

But those preposterous monikers that shared Henry’s initials were about as close as I came to locating Henry Valokus.

Pop out of there, Henry, I whispered to each fresh roll of microfilm. But Henry didn’t pop. He wasn’t in the newspapers. He wasn’t in the magazines. He was no pop idol at all.

Then, undaunted, I gathered to my table virtually all the current titles on the Mob, or La Cosa Nostra, or the Mafia, or the Syndicate. There were fat books by scholars and memoirs by reputed members of the organization, serious sociological treatments of the subject which deplored the stereotypes, bad screenplays, good screenplays, transcripts of crime commission hearings. There were novels that spoofed the mob, recasting its members as comic figures and grisly photo books that gave the lie to the laughter. There was a bonanza right in front of me.

“V” for Valokus.

Eighteen books later I hadn’t found a single reference to him.

Now what was I supposed to do? Knock on the door of one of those downtown social clubs and ask if they had any graduation yearbooks?

Wearily, I started returning all the books. I believed those crazies in the van. I believed the gun against my head. If Henry really was a mobster—why hadn’t he popped out?

Either because Henry Valokus was not his real name or because he was just too lowly a soldier.

It had been a while since I’d spent the day on a hard wooden chair in the library. My back hurt and I was hungry. I’d had it for the day. I trudged down the marble stairs of the main entrance and toward the exit. But I didn’t leave. I had had a perfectly brilliant idea. Twenty-five cents worth.

I rushed to the phone and dialed Aubrey.

I’d remembered her talking about a man—Aubrey had told me about him not long after she started dancing at the Emporium. He dropped in a few times a week to collect the receipts from the safe. He signed the checks, hired and fired. He knew every single person who worked in the club. He was the man.

“Who is it?”

I could hear the tiredness in her voice. I knew that once again I had awakened her.

“It’s me, Aubrey,” I said apologetically. “I’m really sorry. But it’s kind of an emergency.”

I heard mumbling in the distance.

“Guess I woke Jeremy up too.”

“Morning, Nan,” he called into the receiver.

“Jeremy says you got more emergencies that anybody he knows.”

“Really? Well, tell him when his little book gets published I’ll treat it as a matter of no urgency whatever.”

“Ima let you tell him that yourself, Nan. What’s the matter now?”

“Can you get me an appointment with that gangster who manages the Emporium?”

“You mean Justin Thorn?”

“Yes. He is a gangster, isn’t he?”

“Who ain’t?”

“When do you think you might see him again?”

“I don’t know—maybe tonight. Nan, what the hell you want with crazy Justin?”

“It’s too long a story,” I said in exasperation. “Look, I know he likes you. Do you think you could get him to talk to me? Tell him I swear I won’t take up too much of his time.”

“You shoulda gone to Paris, Nan.”

“I know. I want to let you get back to sleep now. Please, just call him for me. Tell him I don’t want to know anything about his business and tell him it won’t take long.”

She didn’t answer for the longest time. I could hear her lighting a cigarette and inhaling.

Then she said: “Okay. Call me back in twenty minutes.”

I hung up and rummaged through the postcards section of the library bookstore. I bought one: an old William Claxton photo, a beautiful night-time shot of a bass player shielding his ax from the rain.

When I called Aubrey back the line was busy. I went back to the bookstore and bought another card; this one of a young Langston Hughes uptown.

I called again five minutes later.

Justin Thorn would see me about 1 P.M. in his office on West Eighteenth Street, a place called Tower Printing.

“I guess next time I see you you’ll tell me what the fuck you doing, Nan.”

“Trust me,” I replied. “Happy dreams, you two.”

About five minutes to one I took the elevator up to the fifth floor of the dingy building which housed Tower Printing.

I rang a buzzer outside the peeling door. An answering buzz let me in.

There was no printing equipment that I could see on the premises. There were no computers, no typewriters, no files. There was only one desk and one chair in the waiting room. The walls were bare. The floor was highly polished.

A stout, black, middle-aged woman wearing a gaily colored head wrap sat behind the desk. She was cussing bitterly as she fiddled with a boom box.

I greeted her. “Good afternoon. I have an appointment with—”

“Through there,” she said, cutting me off. Then she added: “Don’t knock. He doesn’t like people to knock.”

Justin Thorn looked up when I entered the room. He was seated on a rattan sofa with purple cushions, reading the Village Voice. There was no desk in the room, only the sofa and two matching armchairs.

“Mister Thorn?” I asked, taken aback and, I feared, unable to mask my astonishment.

First of all, his faded designer jeans and tight-fitting studded leather jacket—he wore no shirt underneath and he was working on a little belly—made him look like some suburban closet case on Christopher Street twenty years ago. Yes, he was as gay as tics are tiny.

That seemed pretty original for the mob. Or were they a good deal more enlightened than I was giving them credit for? Then again, maybe I was the one who was behind the times. Perhaps tolerance—shall we say, affirmative action—had reached even into the cradle of crime.

Justin’s hair was coiffed almost onto death—long, peroxided, tied at the back with a velvet band.

And, perhaps most startling of all, he was no older than I.

“Aubrey’s friend?” he asked.

“Yes. Thank you for seeing me.”

He looked me over, brazenly, critically, before offering me a seat. There was a hint of distaste in his gaze, and more than a little confusion.

It was apparent that I had discomfited him. And then suddenly I realized why. I realized what he was thinking.

“No, no,” I said reassuringly, “I don’t want to dance in your club. I’m not here for that. I’m not looking for any kind of job, as a matter of fact.”

His face relaxed somewhat.

I jumped right in. “I need information,” I said.

“What kind of information?”

“About the mob.”

He grinned. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I need some information about someone who’s in the mob. Or at least I think he is. That’s why I’m here.”

He burst into hearty laughter. “That’s a good one, child. I never knew Aubrey to be a practical joker.”

“She isn’t. I’m serious.”

He hesitated for a moment, fear creeping around the edges of his expression. “You wearing a wire or something equally ridiculous?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Reporter?”

“Not smart enough for that.”

“That’s very funny too. Now tell me why you picked me to give you a mafia lesson.”

“Aubrey says everyone in her business is either in the mob or owned by the mob. To hear her tell it, it’s an occupational hazard.”

“Let me tell you something, girlfriend. Listen to anything Aubrey’s got to say. She’s rarely wrong about anything.” He batted his eyelids playfully. “So, Okay I’m a mob-stah. But to tell you the truth, I’m really a bartender. From Lockport, Indiana. White bread as they come. That is, I used to be a bartender. Until I was … discovered … at the soda fountain.”

“By way of the West Street bars?”

“You’re not that dumb, miss.”

“My name is Nanette.”

“Nice name for a stripper.” He fired up a Benson & Hedges 100 with a day-glo colored disposable lighter.

Justin didn’t have to offer me a cigarette twice. I pounced as soon as he turned the pack my way. I hadn’t had a cigarette like that in so long.

“Mr. Thom, I’ll come to the point. I’m hoping you know a … crook … whose name is Henry Valokus. I seem to be in a fair amount of trouble and so is he, I think. He may not know it but he needs my help. I’m … in love with Henry Valokus … and I can’t find him. Can you help?”

“You’re in love,” he said slowly, “with who?”

“Henry Valokus. Valokus. Comma. Henry. Do you know him?”

“What did he do—knock you up?”

“Nothing like that.”

He blew smoke at the ceiling and repeated dully, “You’re in love—with Henry Valokus.”

“That’s what I said, Bub.”

After his coughing fit was all played out, he rose from the sofa and came to stand very close to my chair.

“But he’s an asshole, isn’t he?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Thorn, but could you please just get to the point?”

“If he’s the same guy I’m thinking of, he’s a bit of a boob. Kind of looks like Napoleon, dresses like Victor Mature?”

“Dresses like who?”

“Never mind. Comes out of Providence, right? Talks with an accent.”

“That’s him.”

“If I tell you what I know about him, will you promise not to die of boredom?”

“Promise.”

Justin Thorn stretched, walked back to the sofa, sat down, crossed his legs and lit another cigarette.

“It’s a ten second story, really. He was born over in Europe but he grew up in Rhode Island, which means he worked for the Calvalcante family, out of Boston. They run the rackets in Hartford, Providence, New Haven.

“Valokus was busted for—oh, shit, what was it?—right—a hijacking charge. He ratted out somebody or other. Not a big muckety muck, really, but still, the Feds put him in Witness Protection. But when the case came to court Valokus got shredded by the defense attorneys. Prosecution’s case fell all to shit. Case dismissed.”

“Then what happened?”

“They kicked his ass out of the Protection Program. Cut him loose. They’re some vengeful mothers, you know.”

“Then what?”

“He did time on the original hijacking charge.”

“And when he was released?”

“Don’t tell me that schmuck is good in bed.”

“Listen, mister …”

“Okay, Okay” He shook his head. “Jeez. Straight people,” he said in puzzlement. “Oh, well, judge not lest ye be judged, as the good book tells us. I mean, Miss Susan Hayward wasn’t the greatest actress who ever drew breath but I’m ready to kick ass if anybody says a word against her.”

“Please, what happened to Henry Valokus after he got out of prison?”

“Nothing happened, far as I know. Nothing at all. Don’t you get it?”

“No.”

“Any other rat would have been gotten to. Either in jail or out of jail. Someone would have whacked him long ago. He’d be dead and buried. But Valokus was such a pitiful rat … such a buffoon … that even if there was a contract out on him, there weren’t any takers. The studio didn’t pick up his option.”

“Poor Henry,” I said.

Justin laughed and coughed and laughed and coughed. “Now you take me. If I ratted out one of my associates, you’d probably find me in a Hefty bag on Christopher Street. Half of me, that is. You’d still be looking for the other half. And I’m just a poor little faggot they promoted from the ranks. Valokus could have been a real bad guy.”

“So I guess you wouldn’t have any idea where I might find him—where he might be hiding out?”

He laughed again. “You mean like the Gangster Arms on West Fourteenth Street? No, sugar, not a clue.”

I thanked him and rose to leave.

“Wait just a sec,” he called.

I turned back and met his eyes.

“Listen, Nanny. I don’t know whether I buy your story or not. You don’t look like the kind of girl who’d be fucking a guy like Valokus, no matter what they say about Greeks. Anyhoo, I guess I’ve always been a sucker for a smash-up in love.”

“A what?”

“A smash-up. I call all women ‘smash-ups.’ At any rate, I told you what I know because you’re Aubrey’s friend. And Aubrey is real good for my business. I owe her. I don’t even think I have to remind you to be cool, but I will anyway. You know what I’m saying?”

Actually, I hadn’t a clue what he was saying. But I nodded—gravely, sagely—and moved out of the door.

I turned into the first coffee shop I saw. The ubiquitous Greek coffee shop. I ordered coffee and one of those lard-laden muffins and I sat at the counter thinking dark thoughts.

Those unfriendly white folks in the van had not lied. Dear Henry Valokus was a criminal. But, according to Justin Thorn, not a very successful one. A schmuck, he’d called Henry. A buffoon. Well, Henry wasn’t the first man I had found endearingly eccentric, while the world judged him a great deal more harshly. But a boob? An asshole? I stared down at the countertop, hurt, ashamed somehow, as if someone were calling me those names. Like the kids bad-mouthing Aubrey, my best friend.

So my lost love really was from Providence. Just like Wild Bill, aka Heywood Tuttle. Both show up in New York. Both connected to street musicians—Valokus to me, Wild Bill to the murdered blind girl. Providence. Some divine Providence. How many miles from Providence to Provence?

At least he hadn’t lied about being Greek.

This poem was beginning to unravel. Both from Providence. One actually played with Bird. One claimed to be obsessed with Bird.

Where had their connection started? Was Wild Bill the gardener for the Valokus estate? Not bloody likely. Did he sell moonshine to Henry’s father? Where did the thread begin and where did it end?

Well, wait a minute. I already knew where it ended, didn’t I? Brad Weston, the melancholy pianist, had told us that poor Heywood Tuttle had lived his last days in a squalid tenement that hovered over the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

I walked west to the Tunnel and hopscotched through the traffic. Motorists flinched when they saw me, thinking I was one of those mad window wipers.

Up loomed a single half block of tenements, an island in the center of a traffic mess. Half of the island was filled with crumbling condemned houses, many of them boarded up. The sidewalk had been all but removed.

But four buildings remained. All occupied. I wondered how the residents negotiated back and forth late at night.

The fumes and honking noise were almost overwhelming. It was hell. And the devil might be living behind any door.

I pressed myself against a wall and waited. Tuttle had lived in one of those buildings. But which one? And how could I get inside without someone calling the police?

The spirit was upon me, or with me. Five minutes later an old man with the raw boned look of the covered wagon pioneer menfolk walked out of one of the buildings carrying a torn carton which he dropped unceremoniously at the curbside trash collection area. Inside the box, among the debris, were the red shoes I’d seen Wild Bill wearing.

“Excuse me!” I called out hastily to the old man before he could disappear into the building again. “Excuse me, but I think you knew my grandfather.”

He looked at me, not comprehending.

“Wild Bill was my grandfather.”

The old man squinted at me, removed the cigar and pronounced: “Hickok?”

For a moment I didn’t understand. Then I got the joke. And I laughed.

“My name’s Reardon,” the old man said, “and I don’t know any Wild Bill.”

“I mean Heywood Turtle.”

Mr. Reardon pulled on the long string and there was light in the basement. Three cats flashed by us, headed toward the far wall.

“Friends of mine,” Mr. Reardon said.

Mr. Reardon was really quite nice to me. He explained that my grandfather had been a decent man at heart, it had just been “the drink” that made life so tough for him. It happened “to a lot of us,” he said. He was so sorry not to have made it to the funeral, and he’d be pleased to show me the few things left in Mr. Turtle’s room at the time of his passing.

“You know, I always thought it was interesting how Heywood never talked much about his past. I knew there had to be some kin of his somewhere in the world. Isn’t it just the goddamnest thing! Your grandpa dies just a week or so before you find him?”

“Yes sir it is.” I sniffled once and wiped at an elephant tear.

“He was a pretty peculiar man, that’s for sure. To this day I don’t know where he was most of that week before he died. He’d paid his rent, but don’t look like he barely ever slept at home.”

“Well, you know musicians. I’m sure he had a reason.”

“Another thing,” Mr. Reardon added. “I always asked your grandfather why he didn’t buy a bed. Said he preferred that old cot.” And he nodded toward the nasty thing. “Course it’s yours if you want it. It’s only right, you being kin. But I just thought somebody might be able to use it.”

“Keep it with my blessing, Mr. Reardon.”

He showed me the other pitiful things Wild Bill had possessed: a shaky bureau with the bottom drawer missing, the other drawers filled with scratchy towels, toiletry items, a couple of white shirts and an extensive collection of buttons.

Opening the last drawer it occurred to me that if Wild Bill had owned anything of value—a clock radio, a cassette player—the chances were that Mr. Reardon had already confiscated it. I didn’t care about those kinds of things, of course. I was only concerned that Reardon, who’d stepped outside to give me a minute alone with my granddad’s belongings, had accidentally taken something that might have held a clue to the Wild Bill-Valokus connection.

Oh well. I could hardly question Reardon about that. It would sound as though I was accusing him of stealing.

In the top drawer I found a single yellow pencil and a packet of old yellow index cards fastened by a thick rubber band twisted so tightly it had eaten into the sides of the cards. I undid the band.

That was peculiar. It was a series of lined yellow 5 × 8 index cards. On each one was written a name in some kind of crayon. Mostly black crayon, but sometimes red or purple. They looked like the name cards teachers fasten on young children when they take them as a group to the zoo or museum, to identify them if they are lost.

At first I thought there were names written on all of the fifty cards. But then I realized that only the first five or so contained any writing. No more. The names were:

JOHN SCULLY

LEWIS GIACOMO

BILLY NEVINS

EVAN CONNELL

JACKDUNN

Hmm. A good bet it wasn’t a Dixieland band.

That was it. I turned off the light and beat it out of that cellar, knowing that sooner or later there was going to be a rat who could take those half blind cats.

Mr. Reardon was waiting for me outside. He seemed perfectly at ease on that little island, surrounded by the incessant noise of hysterical automobiles. I could see the grime imbedded in his exposed neck.

“You gonna take that stuff away?”

“Look,” I said, “I think my grandfather would have liked you to have his stuff. Why don’t you take anything you can’t use and give it to the thrift shop. It all goes to charity, doesn’t it?”

He started to mumble that he didn’t believe the thrift shop would pick it up and maybe he was better off just dumping it on the street.

“Whatever you think is best, Mr. Reardon. You’ve been so nice to help me this way. If I could just ask you one other favor—I don’t suppose you could tell me what these are?”

I placed the index cards into his hands. He studied all five of them carefully, miraculously rotating the stump of a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other without using his hands.

“Where’d you find these?” he asked.

“In my grandfather’s bureau. Any idea who these people are?”

He flipped through the cards once more.

“Sure I do.”

“You do?”

“John Scully lived two houses down. Died last year. And I’ve known Jack Dunn since we were boys. He used to live on Eleventh Avenue. He’s in a home up in the Bronx now. And, hell, Bill Nevins was shot to death more than twenty years ago in his candy store on Fifty-first.”

“You mean you can remember the men attached to those names from all those years ago?” I asked.

“’Course I can. Hell’s Kitchen was like a small town once upon a time. People knew their neighbors, you grew up and married some girl from the neighborhood, lived on the next block. We felt this place belonged to us. There’s nothing left of that now. But in those days that’s how it was.”

“Any idea why Wild—my grandfather would have those names written down?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“All those men worked on the docks years ago. But your grandad never knew them.”

Oh, no? thought I. I wouldn’t count on that.

The old New York docks had come back into the picture. There was the collection of books at Inge and Sig’s place; what appeared to be outdated sailing information in Henry’s abandoned apartment; and now this.

“What makes you so sure he didn’t know them?”

“Nah. These men were all members of St. Anne’s Church, forty years ago, when Father Hogarth was alive. You know St. Anne’s Parish?”

“No,” I admitted.

“On Forty-fourth Street. It was in a movie once. They used to call it the longshoremen’s church. But that was when the docks were a place to work. That was a long time ago.”

He handed the cards back to me, shrugging. He had no idea why Wild Bill would make and keep such a list. Unhappily, neither did I.

“Did my grandfather have any close friends?” I asked.

“Just one,” Mr. Reardon replied, “if you can call a rummy a friend. His name is Coop. You’ll find him at the Emerald Bar, on Ninth. He cleans up there. And for all anybody knows, he lives there.”

The Emerald was a long, narrow place sandwiched between a thrift shop and a bodega. A single small glass window looked out onto Ninth Avenue.

At the bar sat eight old white men drinking Bud from long necked bottles in synchronized swigs. I watched them for quite a while, waiting for one of them to mess up. But nobody did.

There was a jukebox at the rear of the place. Tony Bennett was singing something, Stranger in Paradise, my pop had once had the sheet music for. I distinctly remember seeing it in the flip-open piano bench.

At the end of the long bar the room turned left, into an L. There at one of two tables was another old man, reading the News in the dim light. He was the only black man in the bar. I assumed this was Coop.

Not one of the drinkers turned around as I walked past. Only the bartender glanced my way, probably deciding whether I looked like a genuinely distressed down and outer who needed to use the ladies room or a junkie looking for a place to fix.

“Mr. Cooper?”

He looked up from the paper but didn’t speak.

“Mr. Cooper, I was related to Heywood Tuttle. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes and answer some questions about him. Someone told me you were his friend.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down across from him, even though he had yet to speak a word to me.

“Mr. Cooper, I said—”

“Don’t know no Heywood Tuttle.”

“Oh. Well, his friends called him Wild Bill.”

“Then why didn’t you say Wild Bill?”

“Sorry. I’m saying it now. You were a friend of Wild Bill’s?”

“Bill’s dead.”

“I know.”

“He dropped dead, on the street. Just fast as that. Stroke, they said. On his way here, I reckon. Said he just fell down dead. Just like that. It just go to show you, when you think you on top of the world, that bastard’ll lay in wait for you, throw a big ole brick down from the roof on you. Fore you know it, you dead.”

“You mean someone threw a brick at Wild Bill?”

“No, girl. I mean God. I’m just usin’ ah example.”

“Listen, Mr. Cooper, did you know Wild Bill long?”

In answer, he let go of the newspaper and held up his two hands, at a great distance from one another, presumably to mean the friendship had stretched over many a year.

“Did Wild Bill ever mention a Rhode Island Red?” I asked.

“A red what? … Oh, yeah. He mention it.”

“Can you tell me what he said?”

Coop leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

I repeated my request, but he remained as he was, eyes closed.

At length, it occurred to me what he was doing. Waiting for me to offer to buy him a drink. I got up and went to the bar. The bartender didn’t wait for me to order. He placed a bottle of Amstel Light on the bar. Next to it he placed a glass and filled it halfway up with rotgut wine from a gallon jug. I paid for the drinks and brought them back to Coop.

He sipped daintily at the wine but finished the beer in practically a single gulp. Then he smiled and gestured for me to come closer. I moved right next to him.

He put his mouth against my ear and screeched: “Burrk! burrk! burrk!”—an earsplitting rendition of barnyard fowl. Then he added, “Girl, you think Bill ain’t had nothing better to talk about than chicken.”

I controlled my anger and wiped at my ear.

Then I pulled out the index cards and spread them over the table.

“Did he ever talk to you about these men?” I asked.

He drank more wine, surveying the names, shaking his head.

I stood up and started to leave.

“You know,” he said slyly, “you look like Bill about as much as old Eleanor Roosevelt do. Least the police and the white man come around here ain’t tried to lie and say they related to Wild Bill. Least they don’t try to play me for a fool.”

I sat down quickly. “I didn’t mean to play you for a fool, either,” I said. “The police have talked to you—a black cop? Big and mean looking. And a white man who wasn’t with the police?”

“That’s right.”

“When? When did this white man ask you about Bill?”

“About a week before Bill die, maybe less.”

“Do you know what his name is? Did he give you his address or his phone number?”

“He give me some of that good brandy is what he give me. And tell me there’s a hundred dollars in it if I can tell him where to find Wild Bill.”

“And did you?”

“No. Couple of weeks before Bill die ain’t nobody much see him. He was acting mighty peculiar. Might as well have been a shadow for all the time he spent around here. And then, next thing we hear, he dead.”

“What did he look like?”

“You don’t know what Bill even look like?”

“Not him, not Wild Bill,” I said, almost out of patience. “The white man!” I signaled the bartender to fix Coop up again.

So Henry Valokus—and, it sounded like, Leman Sweet—had been looking for Wild Bill a week or less before he died. Valokus and Wild Bill had more than Providence in common. That was for sure. But who really had been hunting who? And which one knew the secret of Rhode Island Red?

I headed north and west, toward St. Anne’s Church.

It was easy to find: half the block had been razed. The gray stone church, its steeple rising high and alone, stood sad watch over the street, brooding and yet somehow hopeful. Next to the church was the decrepit building, now all boarded up, that had once been the school.

The youngish, flaxen-haired Finn who turned out to be the current priest at St. Anne’s couldn’t have been nicer to me. But he could be of very little help.

He took the index cards from my hand and went through them slowly, asking me at one point if I was planning to write a parish history.

“Why do you ask that?” I replied.

“Well, some of these names sound vaguely familiar. But it’s probably from the records I’ve been going over lately. Probably their children went to school here, when we had a school, that is. But this generation is all gone.”

The father had no recollection of ever seeing a man who fitted Wild Bill’s description either. And no, there had been no gentleman, about so high, with a European accent, inquiring about old parishioners lately.

Everybody in this scenario was mighty interested in ships, in the docks of New York, way back when. That strange roster of longshoremen intersected with a talented jazz trumpeter who ended up a desperate drunk, a mobster who had informed on and then become a laughing stock to his confederates and a crooked undercover policeman. But I had no idea why.

I’d been sitting on the church steps for a good twenty minutes, weary and craving a cigarette, when I noticed the white van across the street. At the wheel was the woman who’d held the gun to my head.

I stood suddenly and beat it back into the doorway of the church. But that prompted no movement from the van. They continued to sit there.

How long, I wondered, had they been following me. All day? And if they were going to try to snatch me again, what were they waiting for? Clearly, if they’d wanted to kill me they could have done so at any time during the last twenty minutes. But they’d chosen to do nothing. Why?

We had a real stand-off going. I wasn’t budging from the doorway. And they weren’t budging from the curb.

And then, without ceremony, they left. Just drove away.

I spotted the van again near the supermarket. The folks inside never said a word and never made a move toward me.

I walked into D’Agostino and bought three prime lamb chops, some fresh spinach, and a head of garlic. I went home and put the groceries on the kitchen table. But the moment I opened the bag I realized that I didn’t want to eat. I just wanted to sleep. I walked out of the kitchen and collapsed on the divan.