When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Chapter 3

There was nothing in the papers about the robbery at Morrissey's, but for the next few days you heard a lot of talk about it around the neighborhood. The rumored loss Tim Pat and his brothers had sustained kept escalating. The numbers I heard ranged from ten thousand to a hundred thousand. Since only theMorrisseys and the gunmen would know, and neitherwere terribly likely to talk, one number seemed as good as the next.

"I think they got around fifty," Billie Keegan told me the night of the Fourth. "That's the number keeps coming up. Of course everybody and his brotherwas there and saw it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean so far there's been at least three guys assured me they were there when it happened, and I was there and can swear for a fact that they weren't. And they can supply bits of color that somehow slipped by me. Did you know that one of the gunmen slapped a woman around?"

"Really."

"So I'm told. Oh, and one of the Morrissey brothers was shot, but it was only a flesh wound. I thought it was exciting enough the way it went down, but I guess it's a lot more dramatic when you're not there. Well, ten years after the 1916Rising they say it was hard to find a man inDublin who hadn't been part of it. That glorious Monday morning, when thirty brave men marched into the post office and ten thousand heroes marched out. What do you think, Matt? Fifty grand sound about right to you?"

TommyTillary had been there, and I figured he'd dine out on it. Maybe he did. I didn't see him for a couple of days, and when I did he never even mentioned the robbery. He'd discovered the secret of betting baseball, he told everybody around. You just bet against the Mets and the Yankees and they'd always come through for you.

EARLY the next week, Skip came by Armstrong's inmidafternoon and found me at my table in the back. He'd picked up a dark beer at the bar and brought it with him. He sat down across from me and said he'd been at Morrissey's the night before.

"I haven't been there since I was there with you," I told him.

"Well, last night was my first time since then. They got the ceiling fixed. Tim Pat was asking for you."

"Me?"

"Uh-huh." He lit a cigarette. "He'd appreciate it if you could drop by."

"What for?"

"He didn't say. You're a detective, aren't you? Maybe he wants you to find something. What do you figure he might have lost?"

"I don't want to get in the middle of that."

"Don't tell me."

"Some Irish war, just what I need to cut myself in on."

He shrugged. "You don't have to go. He said to ask you to drop by any time after eight in the evening."

"I guess they sleep until then."

"If they sleep at all."

He drank some beer, wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. I said, "You were there last night? What was it like?"

"What it's always like. I told you they patched the ceiling, did a good job of it as far as I could tell. Tim Pat and his brothers were their usual charming selves. I just said I'd pass the word to you next time I ran into you. You can go or not go."

"I don't think I will," I said.

But the next night around ten, ten-thirty, I figured what the hell and went over there. On the ground floor, the theater troupe was rehearsing Brendan Behan's TheQuare Fellow. It was scheduled to open Thursday night. I rang the upstairs bell and waited until one of the brothers came downstairs and cracked the door. He told me they were closed, that they didn't open until two. I told him my name was Matthew Scudder and Tim Pat had said he wanted to see me.

"Oh, sure, an' I didn't now ye in that light," he said. "Come inside and I'll tellhimself you're here."

I waited in the big room on the second floor. I was studying the ceiling, looking for patched bullet holes, when Tim Pat came in and switched on some more lights. He was wearing his usual garb, but without the butcher's apron.

"You're good to come," he said. "Ye'llhave a drink with me? And your drink is bourbon, is it not?"

He poured drinks and we sat down at a table. It may have been the one his brother fell into when he came stumbling through the door. Tim Pat held his glass to the light, tipped it back and drained it.

He said, "Ye were here the night of the incident."

"Yes."

"One of those fine young lads left a hat behind, but misfortunately his mother never got around to sewing a name tape in it, so it's impossible to return it to him."

"I see."

"If I only knew who he was and where to find him, I could see that he got what was rightfully his."

I'll bet you could, I thought.

"Ye were a policeman."

"Not anymore."

"Ye might hear something. People talk, don't they, and a man who keeps his eyes and ears open might do himself a bit of good."

I didn't say anything.

He groomed his beard with his fingertips. "My brothers and I," he said, his eyes fixed on a point over my shoulder, "would be greatly pleased to pay ten thousand dollars for the names and whereabouts of the two lads who visited us the other night."

"Just to return a hat."

"Why, we've a sense of obligation," he said. "Wasn't it your George Washington who walked miles through the snow to return a penny to a customer?"

"I think it was Abraham Lincoln."

"Of course it was. George Washington was the other, the cherry tree. 'Father, I cannot tell a lie.' This nation's heroes are great ones for honesty."

"They used to be."

"And then himself,tellin ' us all he's not a crook.Jaysus." He shook his big head. "Well, then," he said. "Do ye thinkye'll be able to help us out?"

"I don't see what help I could be."

"Ye were here and saw them."

"They were wearing masks and they had caps on their heads. In fact I could swear they both had their caps on when they left. You don't suppose you found somebody else's hat, do you?"

"Perhaps the lad dropped it on the stairs. If you hear anything, Matt,ye'll let us know?"

"Why not?"

"Are ye of Irish stock yourself, Matt?"

"No."

"I'd have thought maybe one of your forebears was from Kerry. TheKerryman is famous for answering a question with a question."

"I don't know who they were, Tim Pat."

"If you learn anything…

"If I learn anything."

"Ye'veno quarrel with the price? It's a fair price?"

"No quarrel," I said. "It's a very fair price."

IT was a good price, the fairness of it notwithstanding. I said as much to Skip the next time I saw him.

"He didn't want to hire me," I said. "He wanted to post a reward. Ten K to the man who tells him who they are and where he can lay his hands on them."

"Would you do it?"

"What, go hunting for them? I told you the other day I wouldn't take the job for a fee. I'm certainly not going to go nosing around on the come."

He shook his head. "Suppose you found out without trying. You walked around the corner on the way to buy a paper and there they were."

"How would I recognize them?"

"How often do you see two guys wearing red kerchiefs for masks? No, seriously, say you recognized them. Or you got hold of the information, the word got out and some contact of yours from the old days put a flea in your ear. You used to have stool pigeons, didn't you?"

"Snitches," I said. "Every cop had them, you couldn't get anywhere without them. Still, I-"

"Forget how you find out," he said. "Just suppose it happened. Would you?"

"Would I-"

"Sell 'emout. Collect the ten grand."

"I don't know anything about them."

"Fine, let's say you don't know whether they're assholes or altar boys. What's the difference? Either way it's blood money, right? TheMorrisseys find thosekids, theygotta be dead as Kelsey's nuts, right?"

"I don't suppose Tim Pat wants to send them an invitation to a christening."

"Or ask 'emto join the Holy Name Society. Could you do it?"

I shook my head. "I can't answer that," I said. "It would depend on who they were and how bad I needed the money."

"I don't think you'd do it."

"I don't think I would either."

"I sure as shit wouldn't," he said. He tapped the ashes from his cigarette. "There'senough people who would."

"There'speople who would kill for less than that."

"I was thinking that myself."

"There were a few cops in the room that night," I said. "You want to bet they'll know about the reward?"

"No bet."

"Say a cop finds out who the holdup men were. He can't make a collar. There's no crime, right? Nothing ever got reported, no witnesses, nothing. But he can turn the two bums over to Tim Pat and walk with half a year's pay."

"Knowing he's aided and abetted murder."

"I'm not saying everybody would do it. But you tell yourself the guys are scum, they've probably killed people themselves, they're a cinch to kill someone sooner or later, and it's not like you know for certain theMorrisseys are going to kill them. Maybe they'll just break a few bones, just scare 'ema little. Try to get their money back, something like that. You can tell yourself that."

"And believe it?"

"Most people believe what they want to believe."

"Yeah," he said."Can't argue with that."

YOU decide something in your mind and then your body goes and decides something else. I wasn't going to have anything to do with Tim Pat's problem, and then I kept finding myself sniffing around it like a dog at a lamppost. The same night I assured Skip I wasn't playing, I wound up onSeventy-secondStreet at a place calledPoogan's Pub, sitting at a rear table and buying iced Stolichnaya for a tiny albino Negro named Danny Boy Bell. Danny Boy was always interesting company, but he was also a prime snitch, an information broker who knew everyone and heard everything.

Of course he'd heard about the robbery at Morrissey's. He'd heard a wide range of figures quoted for the take, and for his own part guessed that the right number was somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars.

"Whoever took it," he said, "they're not spending it in the bars. My sense of it is that it's an Irish thing, Matthew. IrishIrish, not the local Harps. You know, it went down right in the middle ofWesty country, but I can't see theWesties taking off Tim Pat like that."

TheWesties are a loosely organized mob of toughs and killers, most of them Irish, and they've been operating in Hell's Kitchen since the turn of the century.Maybe longer, maybe since the Potato Famine.

"I don't know," I said. "With that kind of money involved-"

"If those two wereWesties, if they were anybody from the neighborhood, it wouldn't be a secret for more than eight hours. Everybody onTenthAvenue'd know it."

"You're right."

"Some kind of Irish thing, that's my best guess. You were there, you'd know this. The masks were red?"

"Red handkerchiefs."

"A shame.If they were green or orange they'd be making some sort of political statement. I understand the brothers are offering a generous reward. Is that what brings you here, Matthew?"

"Oh, no," I said."Definitely not."

"Not doing a bit of exploratory work on speculation?"

"Absolutely not," I said.

FRIDAY afternoon I was drinking in Armstrong's and fell into conversation with a couple of nurses at the next table. They had tickets for an off-off-Broadway show that night. Dolores couldn't go, and Fran really wanted to but she wasn't sure she felt like going by herself, and besides they had the extra ticket.

And of course the show turned out to be TheQuare Fellow. It didn't relate in any way to the incident at Morrissey's, it was just coincidentally being performed downstairs of the after-hours joint, and it hadn't been my idea in the first place, but what was I doing there? I sat on a flimsy wooden folding chair and watched Behan's play about imprisoned criminals inDublin and wondered what the hell I was doing in the audience.

Afterward Fran and I wound up at Miss Kitty's with a group that included two of the members of the cast. One of them, a slim red-haired girl with enormous green eyes, was Fran's friend Mary Margaret, and the reason why Fran had been so anxious to go. That was Fran's reason, but what was mine?

There was talk at the table of the robbery. I didn't raise the subject or contribute much to the discussion, but I couldn't stay out of it altogether because Fran told the group I was a former police detective and asked for my professional opinion of the affair. My reply was as noncommittal as I could make it, and I avoided mentioning that I'd been an eyewitness to the holdup.

Skip was there, so busy behind the bar with the Friday-night crowd that I didn't bother to do more than wave hello at him. The place was mobbed and noisy, as it always was on weekends, but that was where everyone else had wanted to go, and I'd gone along.

Fran lived on Sixty-eighth betweenColumbus andAmsterdam. I walked her home, and at her door she said, "Matt, you were a sweetheart to keep me company. The play was okay, wasn't it?"

"It was fine."

"I thought Mary Margaret was good, anyway. Matt, would you mind awfully if I don't ask you to come up? I'm beat and I've got an early day tomorrow."

"That's okay," I said. "Now that you mention it, so do I."

"Being a detective?"

I shook my head."Being a father."

THE next morning Anita put the kids on theLong Island Rail Road and I picked them up at the station inCorona and took them to Shea and watched the Mets lose to theAstros. The boys would be going to camp for four weeks in August and they were excited about that. We ate hot dogs and peanuts and popcorn. They hadCokes, I had a couple of beers. There was some sort of special promotion that day, and the boys got free caps or pennants, I forgot which.

Afterward I took them back to the city on the subway and to a movie atLoew's 83rd. We had pizza on Broadway after the film let out and took a cab back to my hotel, where I'd rented a twin-bedded room for them a floor below mine. They went to bed and I went up to my own room. After an hour I checked their room. They were sleeping soundly. I locked their door again and went around the corner to Armstrong's. I didn't stay long, maybe an hour. Then I went back to my hotel, checked the boys again, and went upstairs and to bed.

In the morning we went out for a big breakfast, pancakes and bacon and sausages. I took them up to the Museum of the American Indian inWashingtonHeights. There are a couple dozen museums in the city ofNew York, and when you leave your wife you get to discover them all.

It felt strange being inWashingtonHeights. It was in that neighborhood a few years earlier that I'd been having a few off-duty drinks when a couple of punks held up the bar and shot the bartender dead on their way out.

I went out into the street after them. There are a lot of hills inWashingtonHeights. They ran down one of them and I had to shoot downhill. I brought them both down, but one shot went wide and ricocheted, and it killed a small child namedEstrellita Rivera.

Those things happen. There was a departmental hearing, there always is when you kill someone, and I was found to have acted properly and with justification.

Shortly thereafter I put in my papers and left the police department.

I can't say that one event caused the other. I can only say that the one led to the other. I had been the unwitting instrument of a child's death, and after that something was different for me. The life I had been living without complaint no longer seemed to suit me. I suppose it had ceased to suit me before then. I suppose the child's death precipitated a life change that was long overdue. But I can't say that for certain, either. Just that one thing led to another.

WE took a train to Penn Station. I told the boys how good it had been to spend some time with them, and they told me what a good time they'd had. I put them on a train, made a phone call and told their mother what train they'd be on. She assured me she'd meet it,then mentioned hesitantly that it would be good if I sent money soon. Soon, I assured her.

I hung up and thought of the ten thousand dollars Tim Pat was offering.And shook my head, amused at the thought.

But that night I got restless and wound up down in the Village, stopping in a string of bars for one drink each. I took the A train toWest Fourth Street and started atMcBell's and worked my way west. Jimmy Day's, the 55, the Lion's Head, George Hertz's, the Corner Bistro. I told myself I was just having a couple of drinks, unwinding after the pressure of a weekend with my sons, settling myself down after awakening old memories with a visit toWashingtonHeights.

But I knew better. I was starting some half-assed purposeless investigation, trying to turn up a lead to the pair who'd hit Morrissey's.

I wound up in a gay bar calledSinthia's. Kenny, who owned the place, was minding the store, serving drinks to men in Levi's and ribbed tank tops. Kenny was slender, willowy, with dyed blond hair and a face that had been tucked and lifted enough to look no more than twenty-eight, which was about half as many years as Kenny had been on the planet.

"Matthew!" he called out. "You can all relax now, girls. Law and order has come toGrove Street."

Of course he didn't know anything about the robbery at Morrissey's. He didn't know Morrissey's to begin with; no gay man had to leave the Village to find a place where he could get a drink after closing. But the holdup men could have been gay as easily as not, and if they weren't spending their take elsewhere they might be spending it in the joints around Christopher Street, and anyhow that was the way you worked it, you nosed around, you worked all your sources, you put the word out and waited to see if anything came back to you.

But why was I doing this? Why was I wasting my time?

I don't know what would have happened- whether I would have kept at it or let go of it, whether I would have gotten someplace or ultimately turned away from a cold trail. I didn't seem to be getting anywhere, but that's often the way it is, and you go through the motions with no indication of progress until you get lucky and something breaks. Maybe something like that would have happened.Maybe not.

Instead, some other things happened to take my mind off Tim Pat Morrissey and his quest for vengeance.

For openers, somebody killed TommyTillary's wife.