The Moon in the Gutter

16

As he entered the taproom he heard voices and saw faces but everything was a blur that didn’t seem real and had no meaning. His eyes were lenses going past the faces and searching for Frank. But Frank wasn’t there. He told himself to stand near the door and wait. And just then someone yelled, “Come join the party.”

It was the voice of the skinny hag, Dora. She sat with several others at a couple of tables pushed together for what seemed like a celebration. Kerrigan focused on the drinkers. Dora was seated between Mooney and Nick Andros. The other chairs were occupied by the humpbacked wino and Newton Channing. Next to Channing there was an empty chair and the person who’d been sitting on it was prone on the floor, face down and out cold. He looked at the sleeper and saw the orange hair and shapeless figure of Dora’s friend Frieda.

For some moments he stood there gazing down at Frieda. She had one arm outstretched and he saw something that glittered on her finger. It was a very large green stone and he didn’t need to be told it was artificial.

Dora said, “It cost a goddamn fortune.” She reached across the table to nudge Channing’s arm. “Go on, tell him how much it cost.”

“Three-ninety-five,” Channing said.

“You hear?” Dora screeched at Kerrigan. Then again she nudged Channing. “Now tell him what it’s for. Tell him why we’re celebrating.”

“Gladly,” Channing said. He stood up ceremoniously. He was wearing a clean white shirt and a straw-colored linen suit. His face was solemn as he bowed to the sleeping woman on the floor. Then he bowed to Kerrigan and said, “Welcome to our little gathering. It’s an engagement party.”

“You’re goddamn right it is,” Dora hollered. She reached through a maze of bottles and glasses and found a water glass containing gin. Lifting the glass, she tried to rise for a toast and couldn’t make it to her feet. She leaned heavily against Mooney, spilling some gin on his shoulder as she pronounced a toast for all the world to hear:

“Knock it off,” Nick Andros cut in. He pointed to the empty chair and shouted to Kerrigan, “Come on and sit down and have a drink.”

Kerrigan didn’t move. “I’m looking for my brother,” he said. “Anyone here seen my brother?”

“The hell with your brother,” Nick said.

“The hell with everybody,” Dora yelled. “The yellow moon may kiss the sky—”

“Will you kindly shut up?” Nick requested. He kept beckoning Kerrigan to take the empty chair.

Kerrigan looked at Mooney. “You seen him?”

Mooney shook his head slowly. His eyes were half closed and he looked drunk. But he was studying Kerrigan’s face and gradually his mouth opened, his eyes widened, and he sat up straight and stiffly. He tried not to take it further than that, but his hands were lifted and then came down hard on the table and a bottle fell off the edge and crashed to the floor. At the table all talk was stopped. The only sound in the room was the squeaky tune coming from behind the bar. Kerrigan looked in that direction and saw Dugan standing with his arms folded, his eyes closed, humming the melody that took him away from Vernon Street.

Moving toward the bar, Kerrigan said, “Hey, Dugan.”

Dugan opened his eyes. The humming slowed down just a little.

“My brother been here?” Kerrigan asked.

Dugan shook his head. Then his eyes were closed again and he picked up the tempo of the tune.

A hand touched Kerrigan’s arm. He turned and saw Mooney. The sign painter’s face was expressionless.

“Is this what I think it is?” Mooney asked quietly.

Kerrigan pulled his arm away from Mooney’s hand. “Go back to the table.”

Mooney didn’t move. He said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

“It don’t concern you.” But then he remembered the water-color portrait in Mooney’s room. He gazed past Mooney and said, “Well, I guess you got a right to know. I’ve been putting some facts together and finally got the answer.”

Mooney just stood there and waited.

Kerrigan closed his eyes for a moment. He heard himself saying, “The creep who jumped my sister was her own brother.”

“No,” Mooney said. “Don’t tell me that. You can’t tell me that.”

“But I am telling you.”

“You know what you’re saying?”

Kerrigan nodded.

“You sure?” Mooney’s voice quivered just a little. “You absolutely sure?”

“I got it all summed up,” Kerrigan said. “It checks.”

“You have proof?”

“I know what I need to know. That’s enough.” He looked down at his hands. His fingers were distended, bent stiffly, like claws.

Mooney said, “We got some hundred proof on the table. I’ll fix you a double shot.”

“No,” Kerrigan said. “I don’t want that. All I want is to see him walking in here.”

“Now look, Bill—”

But Kerrigan wasn’t looking or listening. He wasn’t feeling the urgent grip that Mooney put on his arms. He spoke in a choked whisper, saying, “Gonna wait here for him. He’ll show. And when he does—”

“Bill, for God’s sake!”

“Gonna put him where he put her. Gonna put him in a casket.”

And then again everything was a blur. He heard a jumble of noises coming from the table where Nick Andros was telling Dora to shut up and Newton Channing laughed lightly at some comment from the humpbacked wino. From behind the bar the humming sound of Dugan’s tune provided vague background music for the clinking of glasses and the drinkers’ voices. It went on and on like that, with Mooney’s voice begging him to come to the table and have the double shot, and his own voice telling Mooney to leave him alone. Then suddenly he heard a sound that wasn’t glass on glass or glass on tabletop or anyone’s spoken words. It was the sound of the door as someone came in from the street.

He turned his head and saw his brother.

He heard himself making a noise that was like air coming out from a collapsed balloon.

And after that there was no sound at all. Not even from Dugan.

The quiet stretched as a rubber band stretches and finally can’t stretch any more and the fibers split apart. In that instant, as he moved, he sensed Mooney’s hands trying to hold him back and his arm was a scythe making contact with the sign painter’s ribs.

Mooney sailed halfway across the room, came up against a table, sailed over it, and took a chair with him as he went to the floor. Then Mooney tried to get up and he couldn’t get up. He was resting on his side with all the breath knocked out of his body. He saw Kerrigan lunging at Frank, and Kerrigan’s hands taking hold of Frank’s throat.

“I can’t let you live,” Kerrigan said. “I can’t.”

Frank’s eyes bulged. His face was getting blue.

“Your own sister,” Kerrigan said. “You ruined your own sister.” And then, to everyone in the room, to every unseen face beyond the room, “How can I let him live?”

He squeezed harder. There was a gurgling noise. But it wasn’t coming from Frank. It came from his own throat, as though he were crushing his own flesh, stopping the flow of his own blood. He told himself to close his eyes, he didn’t want to watch what he was doing. But his eyes wouldn’t close and he was seeing the convulsive movement of Frank’s gaping mouth. He realized that Frank was trying to tell him something.

His fingers reduced the pressure. He heard Frank gasping, “I didn’t do it.”

He released the hold. Frank was on his knees, trying to cough, trying to talk, making gagging sounds that gradually gave way to sighs.

“Talk,” Kerrigan gritted. “Talk fast.”

“I didn’t do it,” Frank repeated. “I swear I didn’t.”

For some moments there was no sound in the room. Yet in the stillness there was the feeling of something racing through the air, whirling around and around to turn everything upside down.

Frank was lifting himself from the floor. He staggered sideways and leaned heavily against the bar. His eyes were shut tightly and he had his knuckles pressed against his temples.

“You gonna talk?” Kerrigan demanded.

But Frank didn’t hear. He seemed to be alone with himself. Then gradually his eyes opened and he was staring up at the ceiling. His hands were lowered, his arms loose at his sides. He spoke to whatever he saw there on the ceiling. “It’s straight now,” he whispered. “I finally got it straight.”

Then it was quiet again. Kerrigan had his mouth open but he couldn’t speak. He was trying to get hold of his thoughts, the hollow thoughts that wouldn’t add and wouldn’t fit and had him trapped somewhere between icy rage and the misty abyss of puzzlement.

And finally he heard Frank saying, “It comes back. All of it. Comes back on all four wheels.”

“Spill it.”

Frank’s voice was level and calm. “The night it happened I was plastered. Couldn’t remember where I went or what I did. And all these months it’s been like that, getting worse and worse until it reached the point where I gave up trying. I told myself it was me who did it. I really believed it was me.”

Kerrigan spoke slowly, the sound edging through his tightened lips. “You sure it wasn’t you? You absolutely sure?”

“It couldn’t be me,” Frank said. And then, completely certain of what he was saying, not trying to force it, just saying it because it was true, “I spent that night in a joint on Second Street. Went in before dark and didn’t come out till the next afternoon.”

Kerrigan’s eyes narrowed. He was studying Frank’s face.

Frank said, “I been sick with this thing a long time. It’s been like a spike jabbing into my head. I ain’t been able to sleep, and couldn’t eat, and there were times I could hardly breathe.”

Kerrigan didn’t say anything. He could feel the truth coming out of Frank’s eyes.

He heard Frank saying, “A spike in my head, that’s what it was. And every time you looked at me, that spike went in deeper. As if you were telling me what I was telling myself. It got so bad I couldn’t take it any more.”

“Is that why you hired the gorillas?”

Frank nodded. “I musta gone haywire, just crazy enough to want you out of the way. Musta figured the only way to get rid of that spike was to use it on you.”

Kerrigan took a deep breath. It was more like a sigh, as though a tremendous weight had been eased off his chest.

Frank said, “You sure as hell choked it outta me.” He grinned weakly and rubbed his throat. “You squeezed just hard enough to loosen that spike. So now it’s out.”

Kerrigan smiled. He put his hand on Frank’s shoulder. Frank grinned at him with a mouth that didn’t twitch and eyes that weren’t glazed.

“I’m all right now,” Frank said. “You see the way it is? I’m really all right now.”

Kerrigan nodded. He gazed past Frank. The smile gradually faded from his lips as he thought of Catherine. And he was saying to himself, You still don’t know who did it.

And then, very slowly, he felt the answer coming.