31

New York, 1949

He awakened just before dawn. Not sure exactly where he was at first, or who was with him. Hearing only the voice repeating his name over and over again, attached to a question: “Are you O’Kane? Are you the mayor? Are you O’Kane?”

The two questions together exasperating him. Causing him to shake his head while still in his sleep, wanting to call out in his confusion, No, of course I’m not the mayor, I am O’Kane. The fog clearing only after yet another and another repetition of the question: “Are you O’Kane? Are you the mayor?”

Coming fully awake to find himself to his immense surprise in his pajamas, in the mayor’s bedroom at Gracie Mansion after all. Still wondering, How the hell did I get here?

There was a young man seated on the edge of his bed, looking down at him, and for another confused moment he thought it must be Tommy, though he looked nothing like his brother, was younger than he’d been even when he first came over. There was no sign of Slim anywhere, but for some reason he didn’t quite understand himself, he wasn’t surprised, worrying for the moment only about what the young man at his bedside might have done to poor Joe.

“Are you Mayor O’Kane?”

The pallid youth’s question insistent, almost demanding now. He wore a pair of glasses, and a gray and black sweater with a zipper, and the dungarees that the teenagers had, and that even Slim liked to wear around the house sometimes. A sexless, functional, utilitarian garment, he thought, like something they’d have in Red China . . .

“No, I’m not O’Kane. But I’ll take you to him,” he said evenly to the boy, sneaking glances at him to see if he seemed psychotic, or was carrying any kind of weapon, while he got his robe on. Trying to think what might have happened to Slim as he calmly led the young man out of his bedroom and down the second-floor corridor. In the dark, he nearly tripped over some used rags and buckets of varnish and cleaner the workmen had left in the hall, the boy wrinkling up his face as they passed it.

“How do you sleep here with that smell?” the boy asked.

“An occupational hazard, I’m afraid. They always have to polish up the mayors, they get tarnished so easily,” he said, looking up at the portraits of all his predecessors lining the walls. La Guardia, the little punk, shining the brightest of all, the rest of them fading slowly into nearly unfathomable darkness as they receded into colonial times.

It was another project of Slim’s—part of her makeover of Gracie Mansion that the newspapers were so interested in. They passed a bigger painting, an elegant Claude Lorrain seascape that she’d persuaded the Met to send over—a view of an old harbor at dusk that he always found very restful. There was a pastoral of some cows munching grass by a pond, and a nice portrait of a middle-aged O’Connell by the head of the stairs, the Liberator looking strong and vibrant, and in command—everything he wished he himself still was.

He led the young man down through the living room, where he promptly bumped into the rearranged furniture, as he did most nights. Slim had insisted upon it, telling him—and the press—Everyone wants to sit near the mayor. It was true, his visitors always seemed pleased to find themselves so close. It was just he who couldn’t stand it, as they closed in upon him.

They went into the staff kitchen, where Charlie gestured for the lad to sit in one of the Formica chairs around the small matching table and started to make some coffee. He pointed to one of the cabinets.

“Would ya get the milk an’ sugar, please?”

“What about the mayor?” the boy asked, suspicious, sitting where he was.

“We can’t very well wake ’im without taking his morning coffee to him, can we?” he asked, and the young man nodded, seeming to accept the logic of that, and got up to search through the cabinet.

When he turned his back, Charlie peered out the window at the guard booth. There he could see Joe Previtel, his special police adjutant, leaning back in his chair, his feet propped up and his head leaning back against the booth, mouth wide open.

Could be sleeping, could have his throat cut, he thought, trying to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. He pressed the button the size of a small doorbell just below the coffee percolator, and watched as Previtel bolted up, nearly cracking his spine. Charlie nodded grimly, his best guess confirmed, and went to sit down across from the boy while the coffee gurgled.

“Tell me, what did you want to talk to the mayor about, anyway?” he asked him.

“Juvenile delinquency,” the young man answered forthrightly. “I want to discuss juvenile delinquency with him.”

“Why? Are you afraid of juvenile delinquents?”

“No,” the boy said, seeming to consider the question gravely. “But sometimes I wonder if I might be one.”

“You? Banish the thought! Tell me, would a juvenile delinquent have the resourcefulness to break in to the mayor’s mansion?”

The boy shrugged. “I just climbed the fence out there,” he said, a little proudly.

“It’s six feet high, an’ made of pointed iron.”

“It was easy enough. I’ve been here for hours already, wandering around the lawn, an’ inside. I couldn’t find the mayor’s bedroom anywhere, though.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

At that moment, a squad of cops led by Joe Previtel came barreling through the kitchen door, knocking it flat off its hinges. They paused for a moment, blinking at the two of them, then threw themselves on the boy, shoving him to the ground, beating him with their nightsticks in the ribs and along the side of his head, twisting his arms behind his back until he yowled in pain.

“Stop now!” Charlie snapped, yanking one of the cops off him. “You already put my door down for the count.”

“Jesus, Your Honor, I thought he’d snuffed ya for sure,” Previtel huffed, his broad face glowing red and his chest heaving.

“Funny, I feared the same for you. But fortunately, the both of us were only asleep.”

He helped the boy back up to his chair. He was crying now and trying not to, sniffling and taking deep, frightened breaths of air. Closer up, Charlie could see that his face was blotched with pimples like small volcanoes. Such an unpromising boy, in every way, he thought regretfully. How quickly our paths are set for us.

“Take a breath, son,” he said, not unkindly, going to fetch the coffee, which was ready now. He poured the boy some and got out more cups for the cops, who sat or leaned around the table and the cabinets.

“Press’ll be here any minute. You know how Arthur is with that radio,” Previtel warned.

“Yes, well, I’m afraid it’ll be much less dramatic than his usual murders—at least now that we know you’re alive, Joe,” Charlie snapped. “Take a sip, boy—not too much at first, you don’t want to burn your mouth. Thaaat’s it.”

The boy drank tentatively, seeming to feel better and better able to control himself. Charlie smiled at him.

Slim—where is she?

“Now, boy-o, tell me if you encountered anyone else on your rambles around this fine home and grounds?”

The boy blinked at him, shook his head, and took another sip of the coffee.

“You’re sure now? Nobody at all? Not a very beautiful lady, say, one who looks like the faerie queen?”

He shook his head again. “No, sir.” He looked closer at Charlie. “Say, are you the mayor?”

“Bright boy! Figured that out all on yer own, did ya?”

“Why’d ya lie to me?”

“Because that’s what I do for a living, son.”

Slim, where is Slim?

He looked up at Previtel and the rest of the cops.

“Joe, the rest of you, I want you to go through the whole place. Inside, outside, even check the basement and the attic. Make sure that Mrs. O’Kane isn’t here.”

“Yes, Boss!” Previtel said, looking slightly embarrassed.

“What is it, Joe? Did you see her come in last night? Speak up, there’s no terrible scandal here. You know as well as I do she likes to break the dawn with her café society pals.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “That is, no, I don’t think she did come in last night . . .”

The sense of alarm heightened in Charlie again, threatening to blow the roof off his head.

“No? But then she would’ve had to enter through a dream, wouldn’t she?”

“I . . . I really don’t know, sir. She might’ve come in very late—”

“Never mind. All the more reason to search the house and grounds. Whattaya doin’ with this one here?”

“Off to Bellevue, I think, for a little observation,” one of the cops said, lifting the boy out of his seat by his belt. The young man looked as if he were about to start bawling again.

“You’re takin’ me to the nuthouse? Where all the maniacs are?” he asked in terror.

“Hush, hush now. It’s nothing so bad. This is a separate ward for juveniles who aren’t yet delinquents,” Charlie said, trying to reassure him. “You’ll be outta there in no time. Just give the nice policeman your phone number here, so he can call your poor mother.”

Looking up to the big cop, already manhandling him to the door, Charlie made a cutting expression at his throat. “I don’t want him bein’ roughed up anymore, he’s just a kid. You hear me? Joe can stand the embarrassment. He’s earned it.”

At that very moment a gnomish little man with a huge camera appeared at the door, like an apparition from a gory German fairy tale. He held a long cigar in the corner of his mouth, seemed to have nicotine inscribed deep in each and every fold of his aged skin, and wore a raincoat that looked as though it had just been caught in a scrimmage. He immediately snapped a blinding flash, catching perfectly the whole story of the terrified boy, the menacing cop, the mayor making his slashing motion.

“Good mornin’ to you, too, Arthur,” Charlie told him, motioning toward the table. “Would you like a coffee?”

“Big story here? Mayor catches major crime boss?” the photographer cracked without removing his cigar. He waddled over to the table and indiscriminately picked up the first used coffee cup he saw, drinking its contents down.

“A little light on the bourbon, Chief,” he chastised Charlie.

“Sorry, Arthur. And I’m afraid there’s not much of a scoop here—any chance we could keep the poor boy’s picture out of the paper? Spare his parents, and his future prospects?” Charlie asked, but Arthur only looked at him as if it were he the police were carting off to Bellevue.

“Forgive me, I guess I’m not fully awake yet,” he told the photographer, and walked out onto the lawn in his robe and his slippers, anxious to avoid any further questions from the little man. He walked over toward the fence and stood there, looking out across the river, while he tried to ignore the police rummaging through the house behind him, and searching the magnolia bushes for the most famous model in New York.

Where was his wife?

He turned back—and saw her coming across the lawn toward him like a furtive Cinderella slipping in from the ball. She was walking barefoot in the wet morning grass, holding her heels in one hand. She had on the same midnight-blue designer gown she had worn out the night before, one more glorious concoction of lace and sequins and ruffles. She had no makeup on anymore, and her blond hair fell loose around her shoulders, looking delectably tousled, but he didn’t think she had ever looked quite so beautiful.

She looked up and spotted him. Smiling instantly and making her way toward him without breaking stride.

“What’s with the Easter egg hunt?” she asked, looking around at the cops on their hands and knees in the shrubbery.

“We had an intruder,” he told her casually, kissing the cheek and the neck she offered. Smelling her usual smell, her perfume, the delicious scent of her young skin. But something else as well, maybe—something familiar but unplaceable.

“My God!” she said, her mouth dropping open, putting her arm through his to draw him closer. “Are you all right?”

“With a crack police guard like mine?” he told her, smiling and looking into her eyes. “I was just worried when you weren’t back.”

“Oh, it was only the usual nonsense,” she said in slightly too quick a rush of words, while trying to restrain a yawn. “The dinner went on forever, and then afterward Ann and Billy insisted we all go down to the Village and hear some Dixieland. I think they just wanted a better venue for their fight.”

“Just as well, then,” he said, unable to keep the sadness from creeping into his voice.

“Yes, just as well.”

Still arm in arm, they turned back to the view of the river. It was just beginning to come alive, its long barges and scows pushing their way south against the current.

“Y’know, it’s a shame Clairey never liked this place better,” he said. “I think she would’ve enjoyed being the lady of the manor, if she’d been well.”

He himself had loved so much to stand out on the back lawn in the evening and watch the end of day. Staring at the gleaming white Triborough, and Hell Gate bridge in the distance. Enjoying the way the ships’ lights twinkled in the dusk, the red and blue streaks across the sky. Indulging the furtive fantasy that he had never shared with anyone else, not even with her. That he was the poor boy who had risen not to the people’s mansion but to the manor house. She nuzzled closer to him, and he felt lightheaded.

“I’m sure she would have,” she said in a low voice. “I know I do.”

“Y’see that bay there?” he said, pointing to a strip of desolate, industrial waterfront. “That’s Pot Cove, over in Astoria, where they used to smuggle the fugitive slaves to freedom.”

“Why did they have to hide them? They were already in the North,” she asked, indulging him, he knew, her head still on his shoulder.

“Because that was the big political compromise of that day. They passed the Fugitive Slave Act to keep the Union together. Because, you know, it was very important to keep together a country that still believed in dragging innocent men and women halfway across the world an’ sellin’ ’em into bondage.”

She looked up at him oddly.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Your face looks awfully flushed,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he told her, turning away from the fence to face her. “How was the benefit?”

“Oh, it was the usual bore, put on for the unusually boring,” she told him, though he knew she didn’t mean a word of it, thrilled as she was for any chance to appear again before an audience.

“And did you sparkle, an’ give them all a thrill, the way you always do? The way you did for me?”

“Stop it! You’ll make me blush in front of the NYPD!” she protested, smiling. “How did he get in?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“What?”

“Sorry—who?”

“The intruder, of course! Charlie?”

He realized that she’d had to repeat herself, his mind drifting somewhere.

“Sorry. Seems he jumped the fence. Wanted to talk with me about . . . juvenile . . . ” He fumbled, the conversation receding all of a sudden in his mind, distracted by how it could be that someone had placed an enormous stone on his chest, forcing him down.

“We were lucky, then,” she said, looking up at him sharply, her eyes wondering.

“Yes, very lucky,” he said faintly as he collapsed, bringing her over with him as she tried to break his fall. Grateful for the softness of the well-tended lawn.

“We were so lucky,” he said just before losing consciousness, feeling strangely happy to see her beautiful face hovering over him.