When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Chapter 15

At six minutes past eight, the phone on Skip's desk rang. Billie Keegan had been talking about a girl he'd met the previous year on a three-week holiday in the west ofIreland. He stopped his story inmidsentence. Skip put his hand on the phone and looked at me, and I reached for the phone that sat on top of the file cabinet. He nodded once, a quick bob of the head, and we lifted the two receivers in unison.

He said, "Yeah."

A male voice said, "Devoe?"

"Yeah."

"You have the money?"

"All set."

"Then get a pencil and write this down. You want to get in your car and drive to-"

"Hold on," Skip said. "First you got to prove you got what you say you got."

"What do you mean?"

"Read the entries for the first week of June. That's this June, June of '75."

There was a pause. Then the voice, taut now, said, "You don't give us orders, man. We're the ones say frog, you're the ones jump." Skip straightened up a little in his chair, leaned forward. I held up a hand to stop whatever he was about to say.

I said, "We want to confirm we're dealing with the right people. We want to buy it as long as we know you've got it to sell. Establish that much and we'll play out the hand."

"You're notDevoe speaking. Who the hell are you?"

"I'm a friend of Mr.Devoe's."

"You got a name, friend?"

"Scudder."

"Scudder.You want us to read something?"

Skip told him again what to read.

"Get back to you," the man said, and broke the connection.

Skip looked over at me, the receiver in his hand. I hung up the one I was holding. He passed his own from hand to hand like a hot potato. I had to tell him to hang up.

"Why'd they do that?" he wanted to know.

"Maybe they had to have a conference," I suggested. "Or get the books so they can read you what you want to hear."

"And maybe they never had them in the first place."

"I don't think so. They'd have tried to stall."

"Hanging up on somebody's a pretty good way to stall." He lit a cigarette, shoved the pack back into his shirt pocket. He was wearing a short-sleeved forest-green work shirt withAlvin 's Texaco Service embroidered in yellow over the breast pocket. "Why hang up?" he said petulantly.

"Maybe he thought we could trace the call."

"Could we do that?"

"It's hard even when you've got the cops and the telephone company cooperating on it," I said. "It'd be out of the question for us. But they don't necessarily know that."

"Catch us tracing calls," JohnKasabian put in. "We had our hands full installing the second phone this afternoon."

They had done that a few hours earlier, running wires from the terminal on the wall and hooking an extension phone borrowed fromKasabian's girl's apartment into the line so that Skip and I could be on the line at the same time. While Skip and John were doing that, Bobby had been auditioning for the role of referee in the brotherhood commercial and Billie Keegan had been finding someone to fill in for him behind the stick at Armstrong's. I'd used that time to stuff two hundred and fifty dollars into a parish fund box, light a couple of candles, and phone in another meaningless report to Drew Kaplan inBrooklyn. And now we were all five in Miss Kitty's back office, waiting for the phone to ring again.

"Sort of a southern accent," Skip said. "You happen to notice?"

"It sounded phony."

"Think so?"

"When he got angry," I said. "Or pretended to get angry, whatever it was. That bit about jump when he says frog."

"He wasn't the only one got angry just about then."

"I noticed. But when he first got angry the accent wasn't there, and when he started with the frog shit he was putting it on thicker than before, trying to sound country."

He frowned, summoning up the memory. "You're right," he said shortly.

"Was it the same guy you talked to before?"

"I don't know. His voice sounded phony before, but it wasn't the same as I was hearing tonight. Maybe he's a man of a thousand voices, all of them unconvincing."

"Guy could do voiceovers," Bobby suggested, "in fucking brotherhood commercials."

The phone rang again.

This time we made less of a thing out of synchronizing our answering, since I'd already made my presence known. When I had the receiver to my ear, Skip said, "Yeah?" and the voice I'd heard before asked what he was supposed to read. Skip told him and the voice began reading ledger entries. Skip had the fake set of books open on his desk and followed along on the page.

After half a minute the reader stopped and asked if we were satisfied. Skip looked as though he wanted to take exception to the word. Instead he shrugged and nodded, and I spoke up to say we were assured we were dealing with the right people.

"Then here's what you do," he said, and we both took up pencils and wrote down the directions.

"TWO cars," Skip was saying. "All they know is me and Mattare coming, so the two ofus'll go in my car. John, you take Billie and Bobby. What do you think, Matt, they'll follow us?"

I shook my head. "Somebody may be watching us leave here," I said. "John, why don't you three go aheadnow. Your car's handy?"

"I'm parked two blocks from here."

"The three of you can drive out there now. Bobby, you and Bill walk on ahead and wait at the car. I'd just as soon you all didn't walk out together, just in case somebody's keeping an eye on the front door. You two wait ahead, and John,give them two, three minutes, and then meet them at the car."

"And then drive out to- where is it, Emmons Avenue?"

"InSheepsheadBay.You know where that is?"

"Vaguely.I know it's the ass end ofBrooklyn. I've gone out on fishing boats there, but somebody else drove and I didn't pay too much attention."

"You can take the Belt, theShore Parkway."

"All right."

"Get off, let me think, probably the best place isOcean Avenue. You'll probably see a sign."

"Hang on," Skip said. "I think I got a map someplace, I saw it the other day."

He found aHagstromstreet map of the borough and the three of us gave it some study. BobbyRuslander leaned in overKasabian's shoulder. Billie Keegan picked up a beer somebody had abandoned earlier and took a sip and made a face. We worked out a route, and Skip told John to take the map along with him.

"I can never fold these things right,"Kasabian said.

Skip said, "Who cares how you fold the fucking thing?" He took the map away from his partner and began tearing it along some of its fold lines, handing a section some eight inches square toKasabian and dropping the rest to the floor. "Here'sSheepsheadBay," he said. "You want to know where to get off the parkway, right? What do you need with all the rest of fuckingBrooklyn?"

"Jesus,"Kasabian said.

"I'm sorry, Johnny. I'mfuckin ' twitchy. Johnny, you got a weapon?"

"I don't want anything."

Skip opened the deskdrawer, put a blue-steel automatic pistol on top of the desk. "We keep it behind the bar," he told me, "case we want to blow our brains out when we count up the night's receipts. You don't want it, John?"Kasabian shook his head. "Matt?"

"I don't think I'll need it."

"You don't want to carry it?"

"I'd just as soon not."

He hefted the gun, looked for a place to put it. It was a.45 and it looked like the kind they issue to officers in the army. A big heavy gun, and what they called a forgiving one- its stopping power could compensate for poor aim, bringing a man down with a shoulder wound.

"Weighs a fucking ton," Skip said. He worked it underneath the waistband of his jeans and frowned at the way it looked. He tugged his shirt free of hisbelt, let it hang out over the gun. It wasn't the sort of shirt you wear out of your pants and it looked all wrong. "Jesus," he complained, "where am Igonna put the thing?"

"You'll work it out,"Kasabian told him. "Meanwhile we ought to get going. Don't you think so, Matt?"

I agreed with him. We went over it one more time while Keegan andRuslander walked on ahead. They would drive toSheepsheadBay and park across the street from the restaurant, but not directly across the street. They would wait there, motor off, lights out, and keep an eye on the place and on us when we arrived.

"Don't try and do anything," I told him. "If you see anything suspicious, just observe it. Write down license numbers, anything like that."

"Should I try and follow them?"

"How would you know who you were following?" He shrugged. "Play it by ear," I said. "Mostly just be around, keep an eye open."

"Got it."

After he'd left Skip put an attaché case on top of the desk and popped the catches. Banded stacks of used currency filled the case. "That's what fifty grand looks like," he said. "Doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Just paper."

"Itdo anything for you, looking at it?"

"Not really."

"Me either." He put the.45 on top of the bills, closed the case. It didn't fit right. He rearranged the bills to make a little nest for the gun and closed it again.

"Just until we get in the car," he said. "I don't want to walk down the street like Gary Cooper in High Noon." He tucked his shirt back into his pants. On the way to the car he said, "You'd thinkpeople'd be staring at me. I'm dressed like a grease monkey and carrying a case like a banker. Fucking New Yorkers, I could wear a gorilla suit andnobody'd look twice. Remindme, soon as we get in the car, I want to take the gun out of the case."

"All right."

"Bad enough if they pull something and shoot us. Be worse if they used my gun to do it."

HIS car was garaged onFifty-fifthStreet. He tipped the attendant a buck and drove around the corner, pulled up in front of a hydrant. He opened the attaché case and removed the pistol and checked the clip, then put the gun on the seat between us, thought better of it and wedged it down into the space between the cushion and the seat back.

The car was a Chevy Impala a couple of years old, long and low, loosely sprung. It was white, with a beige and white interior, and it looked as though it hadn't been through a car wash since it leftDetroit. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts and the floor was deep in litter.

"Car's like my life," he said as we caught a light atTenth Avenue.

"A comfortable mess.What do we do, take the same route we worked out forKasabian?"

"No."

"You know a better way?"

"Not better, just different. Take the West Side Drive for now, but instead of the Belt we'll take local streets throughBrooklyn."

"Be slower, won't it?"

"Probably.Let them get there ahead of us."

"Whatever you say.Any particular reason?"

"Might be easier this way to see if we're being followed."

"You think we are?"

"I don't see the point offhand, not when they know where we're going. But there's no way to know whether we're dealing with one man or an army."

"That's a point."

"Take a right the next corner, pick up the Drive atFifty-sixthStreet."

"Got it.Matt? You want something?"

"What do you mean?"

"You want a pop? Check the glove box, there ought to be something there."

There was a pint of Black amp; White in the glove compartment. Actually it wouldn't have been apint, it would have been a tenth. I remember the bottle, green glass, curved slightly like a hip flask to fit comfortably in a pocket.

"I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm kind of wired. I don't want to get sloppy, but it might not hurt to have something to take the edge off."

"Just a short one," I agreed, and opened the bottle.

WE took the West Side Drive toCanal Street, crossed into Brooklyn via theManhattanBridge, and tookFlatbush Avenue until it crossedOcean Avenue. We kept catching red lights, and several times I noticed his gaze fixing on the glove box. But he didn't say anything, and we left the bottle of Black amp; White untouched after the one short pull each of us had taken earlier.

He drove with his window rolled down all the way and his left elbow out the window, his fingertips resting on the roof, occasionally drumming the metal. Sometimes we made conversation and sometimes we rode along in silence.

At one point he said, "Matt, I want to know who set this up. It'sgotta be inside, don't you think? Somebody saw an opportunity and took it, somebody who took a look at the books and knew what he was looking at. Somebody who used to work for me, except how would they get back in? If I fired some asshole, somedrunk bartender or spastic waitress, how do they wind up prancing into my office and waltzing out with my books? Can you figure that?"

"Your office isn't that hard to get into, Skip. Anybody familiar with the layout could head for the bathroom and slip into your office without anybody paying any attention."

"I suppose. I suppose I'm lucky they didn't piss in the top drawer while they were at it." He drew a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket, tapped it against the steering wheel. "I owe Johnny five grand," he said.

"How's that?"

"The ransom.He came up with thirty and I put up twenty. His safe-deposit box was in better shape than mine. For all I know he's got another fifty tucked away, or maybe the thirty was enough to tap him." He braked, letting a gypsy cab change lanes in front of us. "Look at that asshole," he said, without rancor. "Do people drive like that everywhere or is it justBrooklyn? I swear everybody starts driving funny the minute you cross the river. What was I talking about?"

"The moneyKasabian put up."

"Yeah.So he'll cut a few bills extra per week until he makes up the five-grand difference. Matt, I had twenty thousand dollars in a bank vault and now it's all packed up and ready for delivery, and in a few minutes I won't have it anymore, and it's got no reality. You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"I don't mean it's just paper. It's more thanpaper, if it was just paper people wouldn't go so nuts over it. But it wasn't real when it was locked up tight in the bank and it won't be real when it's gone. I have to know who's doing this to me, Matt."

"Maybe we'll find out."

"I fucking have to know. I trustKasabian, you know? This kind of business you're dead if you can't trust your partner. Two guys in the bar business watching each other all the time, they'regonna go flat fucking nuts in six months. Never make itwork, theplace'll have the kind of vibe a Bowery bum wouldn't tolerate. On top of which you could watch your partner twenty-three hours a day and he could steal you blind in the hour he's got open.Kasabian does the buying, for Christ's sake. You know how deep you can stick it in when you're doing the buying for a joint?"

"What's your point, Skip?"

"My point is there's a voice in my head saying maybe this is a nice way for Johnny to take twenty grand off me, and it doesn't make any sense, Matt. He'd have to split it with a partner, he has to put up a lot of his own cash to do it, and why would he pick this way to steal from me? All aside from the fact that I trust him, I got no reason not to trust him, he's always been straight with me and if he wanted to rip me off there's a thousand easier ways that pay better and I'd never even know I was being taken. But I still get this voice, and Ifuckin ' bet he gets it, too, because I caught him looking at me a little different earlier, and I probably been looking at him the same way, and who needs this shit? I mean this is worse than what it's costing us. This is the kind of thing makes a joint close up overnight."

"I think that'sOcean Avenue coming up."

"Yeah?And to think we've only been driving for six days and six nights. I hang a left at Ocean?"

"You want to turn right."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"I'm always lost inBrooklyn," he said. "I swear this place was settled by the Ten Lost Tribes. They couldn't find their wayback, they broke ground and built houses. Put in sewer lines, ran in electricity. All the comforts of home."

The restaurants onEmmons Avenue specialized in seafood. One of them, Lundy's, was a great barn of a place where serious eaters would tuck themselves in at big tables for enormous shore dinners. The place we were headed for was two blocks away at a corner. Carlo's Clam House was its name, and its red neon sign winked to show a clam opening and closing.

Kasabianwas parked on the other side of the street a few doors up from the restaurant. We pulled up alongside him. Bobby was in the front passenger seat. Billie Keegan sat alone in the back.Kasabian, of course, was behind the wheel. Bobby said, "Took you long enough. If there's anything going on, you can't see it from here."

Skip nodded. We drove a half-block farther and he parked next to a hydrant. "They don't tow you out here," he said. "Do they?"

"I don't think so."

"All we need," he said. He killed the engine and we exchanged glances, and his eyes moved to the glove compartment.

He said, "You see Keegan?In the back seat there?"

"Uh-huh."

"You can bet he's had a couple since they left."

"Probably."

"We'll wait, right? Celebrate after."

"Sure."

He shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants, draped his shirt to conceal it. "Probably the style here," he said, opening the door, hefting the attaché case."SheepsheadBay, home of the flapping shirttail.You nervous, Matt?"

"A little."

"Good. I don't want to be the only one."

We walked across the wide street and approached the restaurant. The night was balmy and you could smell the salt water. I wondered for a moment if I should have been the one to take the gun. I wondered if he'd even fire the pistol, or if it was just there for comfort. I wondered if he'd be any good with it. He'd been in the service, but that didn't mean he was proficient with a handgun.

I'd been good with handguns.Barring ricochets, anyway.

"Catch the sign," he said. "Clam opening and closing, it's a goddamned obscenity. 'C'mere, honey, let's see you open your clam.' Place looks empty."

"It's Monday night and it's getting late."

"Midmorning's probably late out here. Gun weighs a ton, you ever notice? My pants feel like they'regonna get dragged down around my knees."

"You want to leave it in the car?"

"Are you kidding? 'This is your weapon, soldier. It could save your life.' I'm all right, Matt. I'm just running on nerves isall. "

"Sure."

He reached the door first and held it for me. The place wasn't much more than a glorified diner, allformica and stainless steel, with a long lunch counter on our left and booths on the right and more tables in back. Four boys in theirmidteens sat at a booth near the front, eatingfrench fries with their fingers from a communal platter. Farther back, a gray-haired woman with a lot of rings on both fingers was reading a hardcover book in a lending library's plastic cover.

The man behind the counter was tall and fat and completely bald. I suppose he shaved his head. Sweat was beaded on his forehead and had soaked through his shirt. The place was cool enough, with the air conditioning running full blast. There were two customers at the counter, one a round-shouldered man in a short-sleeved white shirt who looked like a failed accountant, the other a stolid girl with heavy legs and bad skin. At the rear of the counter the waitress was taking a cigarette break.

We took seats at the counter and ordered coffee. Someone had left that afternoon's Post on an adjoining stool. Skip picked it up, paged through it.

He lit a cigarette, smoked it, glancing every few seconds at the door. We both drank our coffee. He picked up a menu and ran his eyes over its listings. "They got a million different things," he said. "Name something, it's probably on here. Why am I looking? I couldn't eat."

He lit anothercigarette, put his pack on the counter. I took one from it and put it between my lips. He raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything, just gave me a light. I took two, three puffs and put out the cigarette.

I must have heard the phone ring, but it didn't register until the waitress had already walked back to answer it and come forward to ask the round-shouldered man if he was ArthurDevoe. He looked astonished at the idea. Skip went to take the call and I tagged along.

He took the phone, listened for a moment,then began motioning for paper and pencil. I got my notebook and wrote down what he repeated to me.

A whoop of laughter came at us from the front of the restaurant. The kids were throwingfrench fries at each other. The counterman was leaning his bulk onto theformica, saying something to them. I turned my eyes from them and concentrated on writing down what Skip was saying.