Billy Phelan's Greatest Game Page 8

  Billy eased into the water and spread his cheeks so the heat would rise up the back alley and draw some bloody attention to that oversized worm of a vein which was sticking its nose out, itching the goddamn ass off Billy. Are itchy assholes hereditary? But itchy no more right now. Now soothed. Now hot stuff. Now easy livin’. And Billy settles back against the tub and forgets about his asshole and its internal stresses and considers the evening ahead of him.

  He will wear his navy blue gabardine and the new silk shirt he got at Steefel’s through Harvey Hess. A fast half-dozen shirts for Billy and six, too, for Harv, who glommed them, wrapped them, and put them down as paid for in Billy’s name, and all Billy had to do was go in and pick up his order. How sweet. Billy gave Harvey all his legitimate clothing action, or as much as Steefel’s could handle, and why not? For wasn’t Harvey Billy’s grandest fish?

  Harvey.

  Why hadn’t Billy thought of him before this? Harvey was of the opinion he could actually beat Billy at pool. Even after maybe two hundred games and yet to win even one. Still, Harv could say, I’ll beat you yet, Billy, I’m learning and you got to admit that. Billy would admit anything to Harvey as long as he kept coughing up fivers and tenners. Such a mark. Billy remembered the night he and Tod had heavy dates with showgirls from the Kenmore and then Tod says, Billy, we can’t keep those dates tonight. Why not? says Billy Because, says Tod, it’s payday at Steefel’s.

  Billy put Harvey on his list of problem solvers. He already had $170. He would get $54 from Tod. Peg would be good for maybe $10, maybe only $5 if it was as tough with George as she said it was. And it had to be because Peg was no bullshitter. So the arithmetic comes to maybe $234. And if Billy nailed Harvey for, let’s be conservative, $25, that’s $259, say $260 round figures; which means Billy still has to come up with say $530 round figures to pay off Martin. Quite a challenge, Billy, $530, and the first time in your life you ever went out at night and absolutely had to come up with five big ones. Always a first for everything. But Billy can raise a buck, right, Billy?

  Billy saw the top half of his torso in the bathroom cabinet mirror. The vision always reduced him to a corpse, being washed and powdered in an undertaker’s basement, like Johnny Conroy He always turned the image quickly back to life, pulling chest hair to feel pain, pressing a finger against shoulder flesh to see it whiten, then return to rich redness, moving his mouth, showing his teeth, being alive in a way he wasn’t sure his father still was. Is death hereditary?

  Johnny Conroy: the corpse in Cronin’s funeral parlor, 1932, raised with Billy on Colonie Street, wild kid. Used to run with Billy after the action, any action, run to the cliff at the tail end of Ten Broeck Street and leap, leap, faaaaaaaaalllll, and lose the pursuit, faaaaaaaaalllll into the great sandpile in Hogan’s brickyard, scramble off, free.

  Johnny Conroy, free to die in the gutter over stolen booze, and they waked him at Cronin’s.

  Billy and Tod were taking Hubie Maloy home that night from Becker’s, crazy Hubie who said, Let’s stop and see Johnny, my old pal. But they’re closed now, it’s two in the morning, said Billy. I wanna go in, said Hubert, the wild filbert. And so Tod stopped the car and Hubert got out and went around the back of Cronin’s and crawled in a window and in a few minutes had opened the side door for Tod and Billy, and in they went, half drunk or Billy wouldn’t have done it. A burglary rap for sure. And there was Johnny in the open coffin with one basket of flowers, only one, ready for planting in the ay-em.

  He don’t look so bad, Tod said.

  He don’t look so bad for a corpse, Billy said.

  And that’s when Hubert undid Johnny’s tie. And Billy watched it happen because he didn’t understand Hubert’s plan. Then Hubert pulled Johnny up from the casket and for the first time Billy really understood the word “stiff.” Hubert took off Johnny’s coat and shirt, and by then Billy and Tod were out the door and back in Toddy’s car, parked safely up the street.

  Hubert’s nuts, said Tod.

  Playful, Billy said and couldn’t even now say why that word occurred to him. Maybe because he still, even now, liked Hubert, liked crazies.

  Well, I don’t play with him no more, said Toddy. He’s got no respect.

  And Billy said, You could say that. Because he had to admit it was true. Five minutes go by and Hubert puts out the light in Cronin’s and comes out with all Johnny’s burial clothes under his arm, suit, tie, even the shoes. He owed me, the bastard, Hubert says, and if I waited any longer I’d never even collect this much. And Hubert kept the shirt and tie for his own and sold the suit and shoes for twenty bucks the next afternoon at The Parody Club, to a grifter passing through with a carny. On Broadway they laughed for weeks over poor Johnny and, worse, poor old Cronin, who had an attack and damn near died when he walked in and saw the naked corpse, standing with his back against the coffin, all his bullet holes showing. For Hubert didn’t tell folks he also took Johnny’s underwear. Always said he wasn’t wearing any.

  Billy shaved and wet his straight black hair, brushed it back with the little part at the left, and was padding barefoot toward his bedroom, wrapped in a towel, when the phone rang. He waited and listened while Peg got it again. Ma. Billy stayed at the top of the stairs.

  “We’re fine, Mama, and how are things there? Good. Yes, everything is all right. Billy is getting dressed to go out, and George won’t be home for an hour. The office is quite busy, yes, which is a nice change. You what, made an apple pie? Oh, I wish I had some. But it burned? Oh that’s too bad. But it tastes good anyway. And now Minnie and Josie want to bake pies, too. Well, I hope I get a piece of somebody’s pie. I bet yours’ll be the best. Yes, Mama, Billy’s working. He’s going out tonight and pick up some money. Yes, it is nice . . .”

  In his room Billy took out the navy blue gabardine and the silk shirt and the newest blue bow tie with the white polka dots. He fished in the drawer for the pair of solid blue socks with the three blue dots on the sides and took his black shoes with the pointed toes out of the closet. Billy never went out without being really dressed. But really. George was the same, and Peg and Ma, too. But George was too flashy. Dress conservative and you’ll always be well dressed. George always imitated Jimmy Walker, ever since he worked for him up at the Capitol. He’d see Walker’s picture in the paper in a sport coat with patch pockets and he’d be downtown buying one the next day. I never imitated anybody, was Billy’s thought. I never even imitated my father. They couldn’t even tell me how he looked dressed up, except what Ma said, he was so handsome. George is all right. George is a father. A good one. Billy hoped George would get the new book from Muller, but he didn’t know who the hell Muller was.

  Billy took his trig gray fedora out of the hatbox and thought: pies. And pictured Pete the Tramp stealing two steaming pies off a kitchen windowsill, then running off and eating them behind a fence.

  Billy looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. He looked good. Maybe handsome to some. Not like a man who owed seven eighty-eight to anybody. Whataya think, because Billy owes a few bucks he can’t look good?

  “Aren’t you eating anything?” Peg said when he went downstairs.

  “I’ll grab something downtown.”

  She didn’t make him ask. She fished in the apron pocket and handed him the bill, folded in a square. A twenty. He kissed her quick and parted her corset.

  “That’s all I can give you,” she said.

  “I didn’t expect so much. You’re a classy dame.”

  “Class runs in this family,” she said.

  Billy got off the Albany-Troy bus at Broadway and Clinton Avenue and walked up Clinton, past Nick Levine’s haberdashery, where the card game would be. He walked toward the theaters, three of them on Clinton Square, and stopped at The Grand. Laughton in his greatest role. As Ginger Ted. Ragged son of trouble. A human derelict on the ebb tide of South Sea life. Surpassing such portrayals as Captain Bligh, Henry VIII, Ruggles of Red Gap. An experience definitely not to b
e missed. The Beachcomber. Billy made a note to avoid this shit. Fats Laughton in a straw hat on the beach. He walked around the box office to check the coming attractions in the foyer. A Warner Baxter thing. Costume job with that lacy-pants kid, Freddie Bartholomew. Billy had already avoided that one at the Palace, coming back for a second run now. The Grand, then, a wipeout for two weeks. Billy headed for the restaurant.

  There were four restaurants within a block of each other on Clinton Square but Billy, as always, went to the Grand Lunch next door to The Grand, for it had the loyalty of the nighttime crowd, Billy’s crowd. Dan Shugrue, well liked, ran it, and Toddy Dunn worked the counter starting at six, an asset because he spoke the language of the crowd, which turned up even in daylight for the always-fresh coffee and the poppy-seed rolls, the joint’s trademark, and because since Prohibition the place never closed and nobody had to remember its hours. Also there was Slopie Dodds, the one-legged Negro cook, when he worked, for he was not only a cook but a piano player who’d played for Bessie in her early years, and he did both jobs, whatever the market dictated. Nobody believed he’d played for Bessie until it came out in a magazine, but Billy believed it because you don’t lie about that kind of thing unless you’re a bum, and Slopie was a straight arrow, and a good cook.

  The place was brightly lighted, globes washed as usual, when Billy walked in. Toddy, behind the counter, gave him half a grin, and Slopie gave him a smile through the kitchen door. Billy didn’t expect the grin from Tod. Billy also saw his Uncle Chick sitting alone at one of the marble-topped booth tables, having coffee and doughnuts before going to work at the Times-Union composing room. It was the first time Billy had seen Chick in months, six, eight months, and even that was too soon.

  “Hello, Chick,” he said, said it aloofly from the side of his mouth, that little hello that hits and runs.

  “Howsa boy, Billy, howsa boy? Long time no see.”

  “All right, Chick.”

  Billy would have kept walking, but his uncle’s gaze stayed on him, looking at those clothes, so spiffy, so foreign because of that; and so Billy spoke compulsively. “How you been?” A man’s got to be civil.

  “Fine and dandy. Sit down.”

  “I got some business here a minute,” and Billy’s hand said, I’ll be back, maybe. He walked to the counter, where Tod was already drawing a coffee, dark. Tod also shoved a spoon and an envelope at him.

  “Forty there,” Tod said, jaunty in his counterman’s white military cap of gauze and cardboard. “All I can come up with.”

  Billy didn’t touch the envelope.

  “That phone call,” Billy said.

  “Forget it. Peg called me.”

  “She tell you what happened?”

  “All but the numbers.”

  “Seven eighty-eight eighty-five. How do you like that, doctor?”

  “You got a reason to be edgy.”

  “I’m through till I pay it off and get another bankroll.”

  “You got no reserve at all?”

  “A wipeout.”

  “Then what’s next?”

  “I thought I’d look up Harvey. You want to make the call?”

  “For when?”

  “When, hell. Now. I’m there if he wants me.”

  Tod looked at his watch. “Five to six. He’s home by now. Shit. I got to work. I’ll miss it.”

  “I’ll tell you about it. But I wanna make the game at Nick’s.”

  “How you gonna play with no money?”

  “I got almost two bills.”

  “And you got this forty,” and Tod shoved the envelope closer.

  “Two-thirty then. I play with half that. I can’t afford to lose more than that. I got to save something for Martin, unless I can swing him.”

  “I’ll call Harvey, good old Harv.”

  “Hey, you hear I rolled two-ninety-nine last night? I beat Scotty Streck and the son of a bitch dropped dead from shock.”

  “I saw the obituary in the afternoon paper. It didn’t mention you. Two-ninety-nine? What stood up?”

  “The four pin. Gimme a western.” Billy pocketed the envelope and carried the coffee to Chick’s table, thinking: I could grunt and Toddy’d get the message. Talk to Chick all week and he’ll ask you is this Thursday. Chick wasn’t dumb, he was ignorant. Anybody’d be ignorant living in that goddamn house. Like living in a ditch with a herd of goats. Years back, Chick got baseball passes regular from Jack Daley, the Times-Union’s sports editor. The Albany Senators were fighting Newark for first place and Red Rolfe was with Newark, and George McQuinn and others who later went up with the Yankees. Chick gave the passes for the whole Newark series to young Mahan, a tub-o’guts kid whose mother was a widow. Billy always figured Chick was after her ass. Chick gave Billy a pass two weeks later to see Albany play the cellar club. Who gave a damn about the cellar club? Billy can’t even remember now which club it was. Shove your pass, Nasty Billy told his uncle.

  “You’re all dressed up,” Chick said, chuckling. “Are you going to work?”

  “Not to give you a short answer to a snotty question, but what the hell is it to you? What am I supposed to do, dress like a bum? Look like you?”

  “All right, Billy, I was only kidding.”

  “The hell you were.”

  “Dress any way you want. Who cares?”

  “I do what I want, all right.”

  “Calm down, Billy, and answer me a question. You seen Charlie McCall lately?”

  “I saw him last night. He bet against me in a bowling match.”

  “You hear anything about him?”

  “Since last night? Like how he slept?”

  “No, no.”

  “What the hell you asking then?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “I’d be dead if I couldn’t.”

  “I hear Charlie’s in bad trouble. I hear maybe he was kidnapped last night.”

  Billy stared Chick down, not speaking, not moving except to follow Chick’s eyes when they moved. Chick blinked. Kidnapped. With Warner Baxter.

  “You heard what I said?”

  “I heard.”

  “Don’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah, it means something. It means I don’t know what the hell it means. You got this straight or you making it up?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s a secret. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I know you know Charlie and thought maybe you heard something.”

  “Like who kidnapped him?”

  “Hey, come on, Billy. Not so loud. Listen, forget it, forget I said anything.” Chick bit his doughnut. “You heard any news about your father?”

  “Wait a minute. Why is it a secret about Charlie?”

  “It’s just not out yet.”

  “Then how come you know?”

  “That’s a secret, too. Now forget it. What about your father?”

  “Nothing. You know any secrets about him?”

  “No, no secrets. Nothing since he came to see us.”

  “And you kicked him out.”

  “No, Billy, we wanted him, I wanted him to stay. Your Uncle Peter and I went all over town looking for him. You know it was your Aunt Sate had the fight with him. They always fought, even as kids. He was gone before we even knew he was out of the house.”

  “Bullshit, Chick.”

  “Nobody can talk to you, Billy. Nobody ever could.”

  “Not about him they can’t.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “I know how he was treated, and how I was treated because of him.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Somebody said, “Haw! My mother just hit the numbers!” And Billy turned to see a boy with a broken front tooth, about fifteen, brush cut, sockless, in torn sneakers, beltless pants, and a ragged cardigan over a tank-top undershirt with a hole in the front. His jackknife, large blade open, danced in his hand, two tables away.

  “Saunders kid,” Chick said softly.

 
“Who?”

  Chick whispered. “Eddie Saunders. Lives up on Pearl Street near us. He’s crazy Whole family’s crazy His father’s in the nut house at Poughkeepsie.”

  “She had a dollar on it,” Eddie Saunders said. “Four forty-seven. Gonna get five hundred bucks. Haw!” With his left foot he nudged a chair away from a nearby table, then slashed its leatherette seat twice in parallel cuts.

  “Gonna get me some shoes,” he said. “Gonna go to the pitchers.”

  A lone woman in a corner made little ooohing sounds, involuntary wheezes, as she watched the boy. Billy thought the woman looked a little like Peg.

  “Who’d she play the numbers with, Eddie?” Billy asked the kid.

  The boy turned and studied Billy. Billy stood up. The boy watched him closely as he moved toward the counter and said to Tod, “Where’s my western? And gimme a coffee.” And then he turned to the kid.

  “I asked who she played the numbers with, Eddie.”

  “The grocery.”

  “That’s big news. Bet your mother feels good.”

  “She does. She’s gonna buy a dress.”

  Eddie tapped the knife blade on the marble table top and let it bounce like a drum stick. Billy took the ironstone mug of coffee and the western off the glass counter and moved toward the boy. When he was alongside he said, “You oughta close that knife.”

  “Nah.”

  “Yeah, you should.”

  “You won’t make me.” And Eddie made little jabs at the air about two feet to the right of Billy’s stomach.

  “If you don’t close it,” Billy said, “I’ll throw this hot coffee in your eyes. You ever have boiling hot coffee hit you in the eyes? You can’t see nothing after that.”

  Eddie looked up at Billy, then at the mug of steaming coffee in his right hand, inches from his face. He looked down at his knife. He studied it. He studied it some more. Then he closed the blade. Billy set his western on the table and reached out his left hand.