When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Chapter 9

I rode out toBrooklyn again the next day. I stayed on the train past theSunsetPark stations and got off atBay Ridge Avenue. The subway entrance was right across the street from the funeral parlor MargaretTillary had been buried from. Burial had been inGreen-WoodCemetery, two miles to the north. I turned and looked upFourth Avenue, as if following the route of the funeral cortege with my eyes. Then I walked west onBay Ridge Avenue toward the water.

AtThird Avenue I looked to my left and saw theVerrazanoBridge off in the distance, spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn andStaten Island. I walked on, through a better neighborhood than the one I'd spent the previous day in, and atColonial Road I turned right and walked until I found theTillary house. I'd looked up the address before leaving my hotel and now found it easily. It may have been one of the houses I'd stared at the night before. The cab ride had since faded some from memory. It was indistinct, as if seen through a veil.

The house was a huge brick-and-frame affair three stories tall, just across the street from the southeast corner of Owl'sHeadPark. Four-story apartment buildings of red brick flanked the house. It had a broad porch, an aluminum awning, a steeply pitched roof. I mounted the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. A four-note chime sounded within.

No one answered. I tried the door and it was locked. The lock didn't look terribly challenging, but I had no reason to force it.

A driveway ran past the house on its left-hand side. It led past a side door, also locked, to a padlocked garage. The burglars had broken a pane of glass in the side door, and it had been since replaced with a rectangle of cardboard cut from a corrugated carton and secured with metallic tape.

I crossed the street and sat in the park for a while. Then I moved to where I could observe theTillary house from the other side of the street. I was trying to visualize the burglary. Cruz and Herrera had had a car, and I wondered where they'd parked it. In the driveway, out of sight and close to the door they'd entered through? Or on the street, making a getaway a simpler matter? The garage could have been open then; maybe they stowed the car in it, so no one would see it in the driveway and wonder about it.

I had a lunch of beans and rice and hot sausage. I got to Saint Michael's bymidafternoon. It was open this time, and I sat for a while in a pew off to the side,then lit a couple of candles. My $150 finally made it to the poor box.

I did what you do. Mostly, I walked around and knocked on doors and asked questions. I went back to both their residences, Herrera's and Cruz's. I talked to neighbors of Cruz's who hadn't been around the previous day, and I talked to some of the other tenants in Herrera's rooming house. I walked over to the Six-eight looking for Cal Neumann. He wasn't there, but I talked to a couple of cops in the station house and went out for coffee with one of them.

I made a couple of phone calls, but most of my activity was walking around and talking to people face-to-face, writing down bits and pieces in my notebook, going through the motions and trying not to question the point of my actions. I was amassing a certain amount of data but I had no idea whether or not it added up to anything. I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, or if there was anything there to look for. I suppose I was trying to perform enough action and produce enough information to justify, to myself and to Tommy and his lawyer, the fee I had already collected and largely dispersed.

By early evening I'd had enough. I took the train home. There was a message at the desk for me from TommyTillary, with his office number. I put it in my pocket and walked around the corner, and Billie Keegan told me Skip was looking for me.

"Everybody's looking for me," I said.

"It's nice to be wanted," Billie said. "I had an uncle was wanted in four states. You had a phone message, too. Where'd I put it?" He handed me a slip.TommyTillary again, but a different phone number this time."Something to drink, Matt? Or did you just drop by to check your mail and messages?"

I'd been taking it easy inBrooklyn, mostly sticking with cups of coffee in bakeries and bodegas, drinking a little beer in the bars. I let Billie pour mea double bourbon and it went down easy.

"Looked for you today," Billie said. "Couple of us went out to the track.Thought you might want to come along."

"I hadwork to do," I said. "Anyway, I'm not much for horses."

"It's fun," he said, "if you don't take it serious."

THE number TommyTillary left turned out to be a hotel switchboard in Murray Hill. He came on the line and asked if I could drop by the hotel. "You know where it is?Thirty-seventh andLex?"

"I ought to be able to find it."

"They got a bar downstairs, nice quiet little place. It's full of these Jap businessmen in BrooksBrothers suits. Every once in a while they put down their scotches long enough to take snapshots of each other. Then they smile and order more drinks. You'll love it."

I caught a cab and went over there, and he hadn't been exaggerating much. The cocktail lounge, plush and dimly lit, had a largely Japanese clientele that evening. Tommy was by himself at the bar, and when I walked in he pumped my hand and introduced me to the bartender.

We took our drinks to a table. "Crazy place," he said. "Look at that, will you? You thought I was kidding about the cameras, didn't you? I wonder what they do with all the pictures. You'd need a whole room in your house just to keep them, the way they click 'emoff."

"There's no film in the cameras."

"Be a kick, wouldn't it?" He laughed. "No film in the cameras. Shit, they're probably not realJaps, either. Where Imostly been going, there's the Blueprint a block away on Park, and there's another place, a pub-type place, Dirty Dick's or something like that. But I'm staying here and I wanted you to be able to reach me. Is this okay for now or should we go somewhere else?"

"This is fine."

"You sure?I never had a detective work for mebefore, I want to make sure I keep him happy." He grinned,then let his face turn serious. "I was just wondering," he said, "if you were, you know, making any progress.Getting anyplace."

I told him some of what I'd run into. He got very excited when he heard about the barroom stabbing.

"That's great," he said. "That ought to wrap it up for our little brown brothers, shouldn't it?"

"How do you figure that?"

"He's a knife artist," he said, "and he already killed somebody once and got away with it. Jesus, this is great stuff, Matt. I knew it was the right move to get you in on this. Have you talked to Kaplan yet?"

"No."

"That's what you want to do. This is the kind of stuff he can use."

I wondered at that. For openers, it struck me that Drew Kaplan should have been able to inform himself ofMiguelito Cruz's no-bill for homicide without hiring a detective. Nor did it seem to me that the information would weigh heavily in a courtroom, or that you could even introduce it in court, for that matter. Anyway, Kaplan had said he was looking for something that would keep him and his client out of court in the first place, and I couldn't see how I'd uncovered anything that qualified.

"You want to fill Drew in on everything you come up with," Tommy assured me. "Some little bit you hand him, might not look like anything to you, and it might fit with something he already has and it's just what he needs, you know what I mean?Even if it looks like nothing all by itself."

"I can see how that would work."

"Sure. Call him once a day, give him whatever you got. I know you don't file reports, but you don't mind checking in regular by phone, do you?"

"No, of course not."

"Great," he said. "That's great, Matt. Let me get us a couple more of these." He went to the bar, came back with fresh drinks. "Soyou been out in my part of the world, huh? Like it out there?"

"I like your neighborhood better than Cruz and Herrera's."

"Shit, I hope so. What, were you out by the house?My house?"

I nodded."To get a sense of it. You have a key, Tommy?"

"A key?You mean a house key? Sure, I'd have to have a key to my own house, wouldn't I? Why? You want a key to the place, Matt?"

"If you don't mind."

"Jesus, everybody's been through there, cops, insurance, not to mention the spics." He took a ring of keys from his pocket, removed one and held it out to me. "This is for the front door," he said. "You want the side door key too? That's how they went in, there's cardboard taped up where they broke a pane to let themselves in."

"I noticed it this afternoon."

"So what do you need with the key? Just pull off the cardboard and let yourself in. While you're at it, see if there's anything left worth stealing and carry itoutta there in a pillowcase."

"Is that how they did it?"

"Who knows how they did it? That's how they do it on television, isn't it? Jesus, look at that, willya? They take each other'spictures, they trade cameras and take 'emall over again. There's a lot of 'emstay at this hotel, that's why they come in here." He looked down at his hands, clasped loosely on the table in front of him. His pinkie ring had turned to one side and he reached to straighten it. "The hotel's not bad," he said, "but I can't stay here forever. You pay day rates, it adds up."

"Will you be moving back to Bay Ridge?"

He shook his head. "What do I need with a place like that? It was too big for the two of us and I'd rattle around there by myself. Forgetting about the feelings connected with it."

"How did you come to have such a large house for two people, Tommy?"

"Well, it wasn't for two." He looked off, remembering. "It was Peg's aunt's house. What happened, she put up the money to buy the place. She had some insurance money left after she buried her husband some years ago, and we needed a place to live because we had the baby coming. You knew we had a kid that died?"

"I think there was something in the paper."

"In the death notice, yeah, I put it in. We had a boy, Jimmy. He wasn'tright, he had congenital heart damage and some mental retardation. Hedied, it was just before his sixth birthday."

"That's hard, Tommy."

"It was harder for her. I think itwoulda been worse than it was except he didn't live at home after the first few months. The medical problems, you couldn't really cope in a private home, you know what I mean? Plus the doctor took me aside and said, look, Mr.Tillary, the more your wife gets attached to the kid, the rougher it'sgonna be on her when the inevitable happens. Because they knew he wasn'tgonna live more than a couple of years."

Without saying anything he got up and brought back fresh drinks. "So it was the three of us," he went on, "me and Peg and the aunt, and she had her room and her own bath an' all on the third floor, an' it was still a big house for three people, but the two women, you know, they kept each other company. And then when the old woman died, well, we talked about moving, but Peg was used to the house and used to the neighborhood." He took a breath and let his shoulders drop. "What do I need, big house, drive back and forth or fight the subway, whole thing's a pain in the ass. Soon as all this clears up I'll sell the place, find myself a little apartment in the city."

"What part of town?"

"You know, I don't even know. AroundGramercyPark is kind of nice. Or maybe theUpper East Side. Maybe buy a co-op in a decent building. I don't need a whole lot of space." He snorted. "I could move in withwhatsername. You know. Carolyn."

"Oh?"

"You know we work at the same place. I see her there every day. 'I gave at the office.' " Hesighed. "I beensort ofstayin ' away from the neighborhood until all of this is cleared up."

"Sure."

And then we got on the subject of churches, and I don't remember how. Something to the effect that bars kept better hours thanchurches, that churches closed early. "Well, they got to," he said, "on account of the crime problem. Matt, when we were kids, who ever heard of somebody stealing from a church?"

"I suppose it happened."

"I suppose it did but when did you ever hear of it? Nowadays you got a different class of people, they don't respect anything. Of course there's that church inBensonhurst, I guess they keep whatever hours they want to."

"What do you mean?"

"I thinkit'sBensonhurst. Big church, I forget the name of it. Saint Something or other."

"That narrows it down."

"Don't you remember? Couple of years ago two black kids stole something off the altar. Gold candlesticks, whatever the hell it was. And it turns out DominicTutto's mother goes to mass there every morning. The capo, runs half ofBrooklyn?"

"Oh, right."

"And the word went out, and a week later the candlesticks are back on the altar. Or whatever the hell they were. I think it was candlesticks."

"Whatever."

"And the punks who took 'em," he said, "disappeared. And the story I heard, well, you don't know if it was anything more than a story. I wasn't there, and I forget who I heard it from, but he wasn't there either, you know?"

"What did you hear?"

"I heard they hauled the two niggers toTutto's basement," he said, "and hung 'emon meat hooks." A flashbulb winked two tables away from us. "And skinned 'emalive," he said. "But who knows? You hear all thesestories, you don't know what to believe."

"YOU should've been with us this afternoon," Skip told me. "Me and Keegan andRuslander, we took my car and drove out to the Big A." He drawled in imitation of W. C. Fields: "Participated in the sport of kings, made our contribution to the improvement of the breed, yes indeed."

"I was doing some work."

"I'd have been better off working. Fucking Keegan, he's got a pocket full of miniatures, he's knocking 'emoff one a race,he's got his pockets full of these little bottles. And he's betting horses on the basis of their names. There's thisplater, Jill the Queen, hasn't won anything since Victoria was the queen, and Keegan remembers this girl named Jill he had this mad passion for in the sixth grade. So of course he bets the horse."

"And the horse wins."

"Of course the horse wins. The horse wins at something like twelve-to-one, and Keegan's got a ten-dollar win ticket on her, and he's saying he made a mistake. What mistake? 'Her name was Rita,' he says. 'It was her sister's name was Jill. I remembered it wrong.' "

"That's Billie."

"Well, the whole afternoon was like that," Skip said. "He bets his old girlfriends and their sisters and he drinks half a quart of whiskey out of these little bottles, andRuslander and I both lose I don't know, a hundred, hundred and fifty, and fucking Billie Keegan wins six hundred dollars by betting on girls' names."

"How did you andRuslander pick horses?"

"Well, you know the actor. He hunches his shoulders and talks out of the side of his mouth like a tout, and he talks to a couple ofhorsey -looking guys and comes back with a tip. The guys he talks to are probably other actors."

"And you both followed his tips?"

"Are you crazy? I bet scientific."

"You read the form?"

"I can't make sense out of it. I watch which ones have the odds drop when the smart money comes in, and also I go down and watch 'emwalk around, and I notice which one takes a good crap."

"Scientific."

"Absolutely.Who wants to invest serious money in some fucking constipated horse? Some steed wracked with irregularity? My horses"- he lowered his eyes, mock-shy- "are M/O-kay."

"And Keegan's crazy."

"You got it. The man trivializes a scientific pursuit." He leaned forward, ground out his cigarette. "Ah, Jesus, I love this life," he said. "I swear to God I was born for it. I spend half my life running my own saloon and the other half in other people's saloons, with a sunny afternoon away from it now and then to get close to nature and commune with God's handiwork." His eyes locked on mine. "I love it," he said levelly. "That's why I'mgonna paythose cock-suckers."

"You heard from them?"

"Before we left for the track.They presented their nonnegotiable demands."

"How much?"

"Enough to make my bets seem somehow beside the point.Who cares if you win or lose a hundred dollars? And I don't bet heavy, it's not fun once it gets into serious money. They want serious money."

"And you're going to pay it?"

He picked up his drink. "We're meeting with some people tomorrow. The lawyer, the accountants. That's ifKasabian stops throwing up."

"And then?"

"And then I suppose we try to negotiate the nonnegotiable, and then we fucking pay. What else are the lawyers and accountants going to tell us? Raise an army? Fight a guerrilla war? That's not the kind of answer you get from lawyers and accountants." He took another cigarette from the pack, tapped it, held it up, looked at it, tapped it again,then lit it. "I'm a machine that smokes and drinks," he said through a cloud of smoke, "and I'll tell you, I don't know why I fucking bother with any of it."

"A minute ago you loved this life."

"Was I the one who said that? You know the story about the guy bought a Volkswagen and his friend asks him how does he likeit? 'Well, it's like eating pussy,' the guy says. 'I'm crazy about it, but I don't take a whole lot of pride in it.' "