Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

Fifteen

Billy found Martin in the news coop of police headquarters playing knock rummy with Ned Curtin, the Times-Union’s police reporter. Martin saw Billy and nodded. Then he drew a card and knocked. Ned Curtin slid a dime to him across the desk.

“How come he called you?” Billy said when Martin came out to meet him. They walked together up the stairs, Billy still smelling the pine disinfectant he always associated with this building. Billy had been here only once, five years ago, for dealing cards on Orange Street. He’d been hired by a punk who said he had Bindy’s okay to run the game, but didn’t, so they pulled everybody in and held them an hour here and then let the players go. But they kept the punk, who had to pay up and do a night in jail.

“I saw him Thursday down in Spanish George’s,” Martin said, “and I told him to call me if he needed anything.”

“You didn’t tell me you saw him.”

“He didn’t want me to. When you see him, you’ll know why.”

“Why’d you call me now?”

“It’ll be in the paper tonight, or maybe even this afternoon, who he is and used to be. You had to know before that.”

They sat down on a long, wooden bench in the empty courtroom. A white-haired man in shirtsleeves came in from the room behind the judge’s bench and sniffed at them, then went out again.

“Did you ever know why he left home?” Billy asked.

“I know the gossip. He drank, then the baby died. The one fed the other.”

“I was nine.”

“Do you remember him well? You could at nine.”

“I don’t know if I remember his face from seeing it, or from the picture. There’s one home in a box of snapshots, about nineteen fifteen, the year before he left. He’s standing on our old stoop on Colonie Street.”

“He was all done with baseball then. I can remember how he looked. He doesn’t look like that anymore.”

With a magnifying glass, Billy had studied how his father wore his sweater, the same one he wore in the rowboat, and maybe the same cap. He studied the cut of his jaw, the shape of his eyes, and his smile, the lips open and twisted a little to the left. It was a good smile, a strong smile. But Billy’s mother said it was a weak thing to leave us and drink so much. A man shouldn’t be weak like that, she said. But, oh my, how he cried, she said. How we all cried.

“Here,” said Martin, nudging Billy Through an open door they saw men entering the hallway behind the courtroom. One guard in blue shirt and policeman’s cap walked ahead of the prisoner, and one behind him. Billy was not prepared for this sight. It was Pete the Tramp without a hat, without the spiky mustache, without the comedy. When tramps came to the house and asked for a meal, Billy’s mother always fed them, and gave them coffee with milk. Now he knew why. Billy and Martin followed the procession. The tramp dragged his feet, slouched, shuffled on fallen arches, or maybe on stumps with toes frozen and gone. Billy kept his father’s dirty gray hair in sight. He did not remember hair on his father, he remembered a cap.

The white-haired man who had sniffed at them turned from the large ledger in which he was writing. Billy remembered seeing the man only last month at Foley’s pit in Troy, handling fighting cocks for Patsy McCall. His name was Kelly and he was a hell of a handler.

“What’s this?” Kelly said, pen in hand.

“Bail. Francis Phelan,” said the first policeman.

“Ah, you’re the one,” Kelly said, putting down his pen and sticking out his right hand to Francis. “Congratulations. Twenty-one, was it?” And everyone laughed.

“So they say,” Francis said.

Billy saw his father’s smile and recognized the curve of the lips, but the teeth were brown in front, and there were no teeth at all behind them. The mouth was a dark cavity. The smile was dead.

“Somebody got bail money?” Kelly asked.

“Here,” said Billy, and he weaved his way through the men. He counted out four hundred dollars and Kelly took it to the next room and put it in a box in the open safe. Billy looked at his father and received a stare of indifference.

“You a bail bondsman? I don’t remember you,” Kelly said, his pen poised over the receipt book.

“No,” Billy said. “Family.”

Kelly handed Billy a receipt, and one of the policemen gave Francis a small white envelope with his belongings. Then both guards left the corridor. Billy, Martin, and Francis stood looking at one another until Martin said, “Let’s go,” and led the way out the door. He stopped at the top of the stairs.

“Martin, thanks for fixing it up,” Francis said.

“Not at all. I told you to call me.”

“You know a lawyer who’ll take me on?”

“I do. Marcus Gorman, the best in town. I already talked to him.”

Francis looked at Billy and nodded his head. “You’re Billy, ain’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Billy.

“Thanks for that dough.”

“My pleasure.”

Francis nodded again. “How you been?”

“Not bad,” Billy said. “How about yourself?”

“Well, I ain’t in jail.” And Francis cackled a throaty laugh, showing his brown teeth and the cavity of his mouth, and fell into a cough that twisted his whole body.

Billy offered him a Camel.

He took it.

They went down the stairs and out the front door onto Eagle Street, confronting a golden October afternoon, the bright sun warming the day with Indian summer’s final passion. Men were walking the street in shirtsleeves, and women’s dresses still had the look of August about them. The black mood that had fallen on Billy when he first saw his father faded into a new and more hopeful coloration under a sky so full of white, woolly clouds.

The bail almost wiped out Billy’s bankroll, but he still had sixty-two dollars and change. It was enough to get the old man a new outfit: shoes, suit, shirt, and tie. Make him look like an American citizen again.

When Martin told Billy about the bail, Billy had immediately said, I got it, I’ll go for it. I know it’s your money, Martin, but I’ll get more. I don’t want that money, Martin had said. Forget I ever won that bet. No, I don’t forget that, Billy said. What do you do when you lose? You pay.

“I gotta get something in my stomach,” Francis said. “I ain’t et in two days.”

“Didn’t they feed you out there in the can?” Billy asked.

“Nothin’d stay down. I still ain’t right.”

“We can go home. I’ll call Peg at the office and have her whip up a meal. She cooks good.”

“No,” Francis said. “No thanks, no. No.”

“Then what do you want?” asked Billy.

“Garlic soup,” Francis said. “You know an Italian place? They always got garlic.”

“Garlic soup?”

“Lombardo’s,” Martin said. “First-rate place.”

“I don’t want no meal,” said Francis. “Just garlic soup. Fixes up the stomach. A Mexican bum taught me that in Texas.”

“They’ll make whatever you want at Lombardo’s,” said Martin. “But listen, I’ve got appointments. I’ll leave you all to solve the garlic problem.”

“No, stick around,” Francis said.

“I’ve got work to do, Fran.”

“Nah, nah, nah,” said Francis and he grabbed Martin’s arm and started to walk with him. “Nah, nah. Stick around a while. It ain’t gonna kill you to be seen with an old bum.”

“Some of my best friends are bums,” said Martin. “The newspaper specializes in them.”

“So stick around, stick around.”

Billy followed the two men as they all walked down Eagle Street, his father’s slouch not so pronounced now, but his shuffle clearly the gimp’s gait, left leg dragging. Billy remembered somebody in the family saying Francis was lame, very lame, when he came back to Albany in thirty-five. Whatever it was, he’s still got a little of it.

They turned down Hudson Avenue and walked toward the Italian neighborhood, through the farmers’ market with its half a hundred trucks, and a scattering of horses and wagons. This had been the city produce market since the days before Francis was born, when everything here was horses and wagons. Billy was maybe six or seven when he gripped his father’s hand as they walked among the animals here, smelling the fresh and decaying produce, the fresh and decaying manure, a fluid stench Billy remembered now as clearly as he’d remembered the pine disinfectant. They walked past a spavined animal in its traces, chomping at the feed bag, mashing its leavings with its hind feet, and Billy looked at his father’s right hand, the back of it bulging with blue veins and scars Billy did not remember. Then he saw the first two joints were gone from the first finger. Billy pictured them curving around the hand-sewn and soap-rubbed seams of a baseball when his father was instructing him in the ways of an outcurve.

“What happened to your finger?” Billy asked. They were three abreast and he was beside his father.

“What finger?”

“The one that ain’t there.”

“Oh, that. Some wine bum went nuts and chopped it off. Tried to cut my feet off with a cleaver, but all he got was a piece of the finger.”

“Why’d he come after you?”

“He wanted my shoes. I had good-lookin’ shoes on and he didn’t have none.”

“What’d you do to him?”

“I think he went in the river. Somebody told me that.”

“When was all this?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Ten, twelve years ago. Colorado, I think. Or maybe Idaho.”

“You got around some.”

“Yowsah. Trains go everywhere.”

“Lunch is on me,” Billy said.

“Okay by me, Bill.”

Bill. That didn’t sound right to Billy. People who didn’t know him called him Bill. But that’s the way it is. He don’t know me at all. It then occurred to Billy that he’d known for a day and a half that his father was in town and that he’d made no effort to find him. No effort. None.

“I was never here,” Francis said when they walked into the bar of Lombardo’s restaurant. “How long’s it been here?”

“Must be twenty years,” Martin said. “You shouldn’t stay away so long.”

“Got great Italian roast beef, best in town,” Billy said.

“No beef, just soup,” Francis said.

They sat in a booth in the bar area, Martin seating himself first, Francis sliding in beside him. At the bar, three young men with black hair and pure white shirts were talking to the bartender. The bar mirror was spotless, and so were the white floor tiles. Only thing old man Lombardo don’t have in the joint is dirt. Billy, in his gray gabardine, new last month, and a fresh silk shirt, felt clean to the skin. His father looked dirtier now than he had on the street.

Francis told the chubby waitress the way to make the soup. Boil two garlic cloves in water for five minutes. That’s all? No salt, no oregano? No, nothing but the garlic, said Francis.

“You want something to drink?” the waitress asked.

“A double scotch,” Billy said.

“I’ll have a glass of port,” said Martin.

“In that case, muscatel, large,” said Francis.

Martin gave Francis the phone number of Marcus Gorman and explained why the best trial lawyer in town might take his case: because the McCalls, up against the wall from the Dewey attack, would be looking for scapegoats, and who’d care if a drifter and runaway husband took the fall? And Gorman would take any case that needled the McCalls, because they had dumped him as their candidate for Congress after a photo of him vacationing in Europe with Legs Diamond appeared in the local papers.

“The McCall people still owe me money,” Francis said. “I could pay the lawyer something. I only collected fifty of the hundred and five I got coming.”

“Hundred and five,” Billy said. “That ain’t a bad day’s work at the polls.”

“I didn’t work the whole day,” Francis said.

“I doubt they’ll pay you that,” Martin said. “They’ll be afraid of a setup now.”

“If they don’t, I’ll sing to the troopers and take some of them two-bit sonsabitches to jail with me.”

“So we both got our problems with the McCalls,” Billy said.

“What’s your problem?”

“Did you know Bindy’s son, Charlie, was snatched?”

“I heard that out in jail.”

“So Bindy and Patsy want me to shadow a guy they think might be mixed up in it. Spy on him, pump him, then tell them what he says.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“The guy’s a friend of mine.”

“Yeah, Bill, but don’t forget the McCalls got the power. You do a favor for a guy in power, chances are he’ll do you one back. That’s why I think they won’t do nothin’ to me after what I done for them.”

“I look at it different,” Billy said.

“Did anybody hit on you, or anything like that?”

“Not yet, but I’m waiting.”

The waitress brought the drinks and Francis drank half of his wine in one draught. He motioned to her for another and fished in his pocket for the white envelope. He took a crisp five dollar bill from it and put it on the table.

“Not a chance,” Billy said. “I told you this was on me.”

“You said lunch.”

“That’s everything.”

Francis held the fiver up. “The troopers found I had ten of these and they said, How come a bum like you has fifty bucks in new bills? They was old ones, I said. I just sent ’em out to the Chink’s to get ’em washed and ironed.” He laughed and showed his cavity.

“You didn’t ask about my mother,” Billy said.

“No, I didn’t. How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“Good.”

“You didn’t ask about my sister, either.”

“No. How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“I’m glad they’re all right.”

“You really don’t give a shit about them, or me either, do you?”

“Keep it cool now, Billy,” Martin said.

“I’m not anybody you know any more,” Francis said. “It ain’t personal. I always liked the family.”

“That’s why you left us?”

“I been leavin’ home ever since I was a kid. Martin knows some of that. And I woulda been long gone even before that if only they’da let me. I wanted to go west and work on the railroad but Ma always said the railroad killed my father. He was a boss gandy dancer, and an engine knocked him fifty feet. But what the hell, he couldn’ta been payin’ attention. Maybe he was gettin’ deef, I don’t know. You can’t blame the railroad if a man backs his ass into a steam engine. But Ma did and wouldn’t let me go.”

“Did you hate my mother?”

“Hate her? No. I liked her fine. She was a great girl. We had good times, good years. But I was one of them guys never shoulda got married. And after I dropped the kid, I knew nobody’d ever forgive me, that it was gonna be hell from then on. So I ran.”

“You dropped Gerald? I never knew that.”

“No?”

“No. Whataya mean dropped?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I told you I didn’t.”

“Somebody knew.”

“Peg never knew it, either. Nobody knows it.”

“Somebody knows it. Your mother knows it.”

“The hell she does.”

“She saw it happen.”

“She saw it? She never told none of us if she did.”

“Nobody?”

“Not even me and Peg, I’m telling you.”

“She musta told somebody. Her brother, or her screwball sisters.”

“They all talked about you and still do, but nobody ever mentioned that, and they don’t keep secrets.”

“That’s the goddamn truth.”

Francis drank the rest of his wine. When the waitress set a new glass in front of him, he immediately drank half of that and stared at the empty seat beside Billy.”

“She never told,” he said. “Imagine that.” He glugged more wine as tears came to his eyes. “She was a great girl. She was always a great girl.” Tears fell off his chin into the muscatel.

“Why don’t you come home and see her?” Billy said. “Whatever you did, she forgave you for it a long time ago.”

“I can’t,” Francis said and finished the wine. “You tell her I’ll come back some day when I can do something for her. And for your sister. And you, too.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Something. Maybe I’ll come by of a Sunday and bring a turkey.”

“Who the fuck wants a turkey?” Billy said.

“Yeah,” said Francis. “Who does?”

“Come on home and see them, even if you don’t stay. That’s something you can do. Never mind the turkey.”

“No, Bill, I can’t do that. You don’t understand that I can’t do it. Not now. Not yet.”

“You better do it soon. You ain’t gonna live forever, the way you look.”

“I’ll do it one of these days. I promise you that.”

“Why should I believe your promises?”

“No reason you should, I guess.”

Francis shoved the empty wine glass away and pushed himself sideways out of the booth.

“I gotta get outa here. Tell her I don’t want the soup. I gotta get me down to George’s and get the rest of my money.”

“You’re goin’?” Billy said. “You’re leavin’?”

“Gotta keep movin’. My bones don’t know nothin’ about sittin’ still.”

“You’ll get in touch with Gorman yourself, then?” Martin said.

“I’ll do that,” Francis said. “Righty so.”

“That bail money,” Billy said. “Don’t worry about it. You wanna skip, just skip and forget it. It don’t mean anything to me.”

“I ain’t figurin’ to skip,” Francis said. “But okay, thanks.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to skip,” Martin said. “You won’t do any time with Gorman taking your case. Nobody wants to go to court with him. He turns them all into clowns.”

“I’ll remember that,” Francis said. “Now I gotta move. You understand, Martin.”

“I was gonna buy you some new clothes,” Billy said.

“Hell, they’d just get dirtied up, the way I bounce around. These clothes ain’t so bad.”

When he got no response to that, he took a step toward the door and stopped. “You tell the folks I said hello and that I’m glad they’re feelin’ good.”

“I’ll pass the word,” Billy said.

“Wish you’d let me pay for the drinks. I got the cash.” He was halfway into another step and didn’t know where to put his hands. He held them in front of his stomach.

Billy just stared at him. Martin spoke up.

“No need for that, Fran. Billy said it was his treat.”

“Well, I enjoyed it,” Francis said. “Be seein’ ya around.”

“Around,” Billy said.

Billy and Martin sipped their drinks and said nothing.

“He thinks it’s all right to fink,” Billy said finally, staring at the empty seat.

“I heard what he said.”

“He’s nothin’ like I thought he’d be.”

“Who could be, Billy?”

“How could he tell me to rat on a friend?”

“He doesn’t understand your situation. He knows better. When he got in trouble in the trolley strike. . you know about that?”

“He killed a guy.”

“Not too many knew, and it never got in the papers who did it. Three of us helped him look for round stones that morning. Patsy McCall, your Uncle Chick, and myself. We were twelve, fourteen, like that, and your father was seven or eight years older and on strike. But we hated the scabs as much as he did and we all had stones of our own. Any one of us might have done what he did, but your father had that ballplayer’s arm. He had the fastest throw from third to first I ever saw, and I include Heine Groh. We were down on Broadway in front of the Railroad Y, standing at the back of the crowd. People collected there because they thought the strike talks were going on in the Traction Company building across the street.

“Just then the scabs and the soldiers came along with a trolley and tried to drive it straight through that crowd. It was a bad mistake. There were hundreds ready for them, women too. The women were warriors in the street during that strike. Well, the crowd trapped the trolley between two fires and it couldn’t move either way, and that’s when the stones flew. Everybody was throwing them, and then Francis threw his. It flew out of his fist like a bullet and caught the scab driver on the head. People turned to see who threw it, but your father was already on the run down Broadway and around the corner of Columbia toward the tracks. The soldiers fired on the crowd, and I saw two men hit. We ran then, too, nobody chasing us, and we saw Francis way off and followed him, and when he saw it was us, he waited. We all thought somebody must’ve seen him make the throw, so we started running again and went up to the filtration plant in North Albany, about three miles. Your grandfather, Iron Joe Farrell, was caretaker up there then, and he hid Francis in a room full of sinks and test tubes for two hours.

“We all hung around the place while Iron Joe went back up to Broadway and hitched a ride downtown to find out what was up. He learned from a cop he knew that the soldiers were looking for a young man wearing a cap. The cops didn’t care about catching your father, of course. They were all with the strikers. But the Traction Company bosses forced them into a manhunt, and so we all knew your father couldn’t go back to Colonie Street for a while. Chick went home and packed your father a suitcase and brought it back. Francis said he might head west to play ball somewhere, and if he got a job in a few months, he’d write and tell us.

“He cried then. We all did, over the way he had to go, especially Chick, who worshipped your father. Even Patsy cried a little bit. I remember he wiped his eyes dry with a trainman’s blue handkerchief. And then your father walked across the tracks and hopped a slow freight going north to Troy, which was the wrong direction, but that’s what he did. And Iron Joe said solemnly that none of us should ever say what we knew, and he told us to go home.

“On the way home, Chick said we should take a blood oath not to talk. Patsy and I said that was okay with us but we didn’t know where to get the blood. Patsy wanted to steal a kid from old man Bailey’s herd, but Chick said that was against the Seventh Commandment and he suggested Bid Finnerty’s one-eyed cat, which everybody on Colonie Street hated as a hoodoo anyway. It took us an hour to find the cat, and then Patsy coaxed it with a fish head and brained it with a billy club so it’d lay still. Chick sliced it open and pulled out its heart and made the sign of the cross in blood on the palms of each of our hands. And I made the oath. We swear by the heart of Bid Finnerty’s cat that we won’t say what we know about Francis Phelan as long as we live, and that we won’t wash this sacrificial blood off our hands until it’s time to eat supper.

“The blood was all gone in half an hour, the way we sweated that day As far as I know, none of us ever said anything until your father came back to town by himself months later, when the baseball season was over in Dayton. He called my father from out there to find out whether it was safe for him to come home to Colonie Street. And it was. And he came home and stayed fifteen years.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “He stayed until he killed somebody else.”