He crushed out his second cigarette viciously and said, “Oh yes, my boy, he is real. He was real twenty years ago, and he’s real now. He’s still out there, somewhere, and he’s real—and I am going to get him, one day.”
“Dick, it’s all over.”
He shook his head.
“It will never be over, Jack. I don’t forget my family that easy, not even after twenty years. If it takes another twenty years, this man will surface again, and I’ll find him and pay him back.”
I looked at Dick Gallaghen, and even allowing for the extra weight, which made guessing his age correctly difficult, he still wasn’t old enough to have been the dead boxer’s father.
Yet, he had mentioned “family.”
“Dick, what is this obsession you have with Trelayne?” I asked him.
“You know the story by now, Jack. You must.”
“I know about a young boxer who was killed when Trelayne refused to let his man go in the tank. Those things happen, Dick. That’s boxing.”
He shook his head.
“Those things don’t happen to Ray Gallaghen,” he said through his teeth. I had never seen Dick Gallaghen so passionate about anything before.
“Was that the boxer’s name?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And then his father had the other boxer killed?”
He nodded again.
“He let some people he worked for know that he wanted that to happen,” he told me, “and it did.”
“And what about Trelayne?”
“Trelayne knew that he was next on the list, and he started running. We looked for him for a while, but then those people my father worked for forgot about him. Even the old man forgot about him after a while. But I didn’t forget. I never forgot, and I never will forget.”
I waited for him to go on and finish, and when he did he explained it all.
“You don’t forget your only baby brother.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Johnny Ricardi punched the shit out of me, which was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me. The ref stepped in at 1:26 of the third round and called it a draw—at least, that’s what I’ll tell my grandchildren.
So I retired from the ring with a 12-4 record and all of my marbles, which is more than I can say for a lot of ex-pugs.
Like Packy, who was just setting another beer down in front of me.
“Packy, you ever think that maybe you retired a few fights too late?” I asked him.
“Sure I did, Jack,” he answered. “That’s why I jump at shadows and still hear the bell for the fifteenth round once in a while. I’m glad you’re getting out early, Kid. There’s a lot of things you could do.”
“Sure, Packy. Thanks.”
A lot of things I could do, he said. Sure. Should I tell him what I had, now that my ring career was over? I had just been thinking about that a few hours ago, in the offices of Waters & Jacoby, Private Investigators, when Missy buzzed me and told me that Detective Hocus was there to see me.
“Send him in, Missy,” I told her.
Hocus came in and sat down, wincing at what Johnny Ricardi had done to my face.
“Some things never change, huh?” he asked.
“Some things do,” I countered, pointing to the wall where I’d hung up my gloves.
“You’re going to do this for a living from now on?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“You’re crazy. This is almost as bad as police work.”
I shrugged and said, “A man’s got to eat.”
“I guess so,” he agreed.
There was an awkward kind of silence for a few seconds, and then he said, “I understand your brother’s coming home today.”
“About time, too,” I told him.
“Ah, red tape, technicalities,” he said. “At least he’s getting out—and he’s dry.”
“That won’t last long,” I said.
He didn’t say anything to that.
“What about the others?” I asked.
“Well, with Willy Wells’s testimony, and the old man—”
“Who was that old man, anyway?” I interrupted.
“He was just hired to make calls and then meet you at Grand Central. With his testimony as well, we got Max the Ax put away for a while.”
“What’s a while?’
“Well, we couldn’t really get him on murder.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Nobody saw him do the junkie, the hooker, or the old man in the hotel. You can’t identify him because you didn’t get a good look at the man in the hotel or under the highway.”
“What about his assaulting me at the Forum? Don’t you need me to testify—”
He shook his head and waved me off.
“That wouldn’t have added significantly to his sentence,’’ he told me. “You assaulted him, too, if you remember.”
“In self-defense.”
“Or vice versa. Better not to even bring it up,” he assured me.
“What about Dick Gallaghen.”
“We’ve got him on some conspiracy charges. He’s confessed to hiring Max the Ax to find and kill Trelayne but insists he knows nothing about the other murders. He’ll be away for a while, too.”
“And the real Trelayne is still out there, running.”
“The real one never called you after that first time?”
I shook my head.
“He must have gotten to the West Side Highway late, but in time to see Max the Ax. After that he couldn’t bring himself to trust me again, I guess. I wish there was some way to get word to him.”
He shrugged and stood up.
“I just figured you’d like to know what was going on,” he told me.
“Thanks.”
“Good luck with your new business. Try and stay out of my hair, okay?”
“Yeah.”
He looked out toward the outer office, where Missy was, and said, “Well, at least you’ve got a good-looking secretary.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
When he left I put my feet up on the desk and stared at the ceiling. Eddie was gone, my boxing career was gone, Benny was coming home, but would we ever really be brothers again?
And then there was Julie, who, as I had discovered, was not what she pretended to be. I had been about to get up and leave the office to go and see her when Missy came in.
“Jack?” she called from the door. I dropped my feet and sat up.
“Yes, Missy?”
She came into the room carrying her purse, which I thought was odd since it wasn’t even noon yet.
“Jack, I can’t stay anymore,” she told me. “I hope you understand. There’s just too much of Eddie here.”
“I understand, Missy,” I told her. “You go ahead.”
“I put the files in order, Jack—what’s left of them.”
“What is left of them, Missy?” I asked.
“Not much, Jack. What you’ve got left are a lot of closed cases. It took you too long to decide to keep the office open. Even the regular retainers have gone elsewhere.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to build up my own clients’ list, won’t I?”
“Good luck, Jack—and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Missy. Just remember where to come if you ever need anything.”
“I’ll remember,” she promised. “Bye.”
I looked over at the wall where I had hung up my gloves that morning. An office and a pair of old boxing gloves—that was all I had.
And then again, I thought of Julie. I guess she could have been mine, if I could ignore the facts that had presented themselves to me when I had really sat down and thought the whole affair over. As a result of that, I knew that she would never be mine.
I also knew that she would never again be Benny’s either.
I signaled Packy for another beer and thought over my last meeting with Julie, which had been a scant half hour ago.
I had left my office and gone straight to
her apartment. I wanted to get there ahead of Benny, and I wanted to get her out of there before he got home.
“Jack,” she said breathlessly when she answered the door. She tried to put her arms around me, but I couldn’t afford that. If I had let her, then I might have changed my mind.
She looked at me, puzzled, but she said, “I’m glad you’re here, darling, we can tell Benny together.”
“I’m here, all right, but you won’t be for very long. Pack a bag, Julie. I don’t want you to be here when Benny comes home.”
“Oh, darling, I think we should tell him together—”
“I’ll tell him everything he needs to know,” I assured her, “like what a cheap, two-timing, conniving bitch he married.”
“Miles!”
“Don’t look so shocked, Julie. You probably didn’t think I would be smart enough to figure it out, but I did. Part of it, anyway. You’re going to explain the rest.”
“Miles, I—”
“Let’s go,” I said, taking her arm and leading her to the bedroom. “I’ll tell you what I figured out while you pack, then you can tell me the rest.”
I got a bag out of her closet for her and put it on the bed, open.
“Start packing.”
She looked at me helplessly, then began to throw odd pieces of clothing into it while I talked.
“The big thing I couldn’t understand was how Max the Ax could have been waiting for me under the West Side Highway that night. I knew he hadn’t followed me, and I’d assumed that he followed the real Trelayne. But the real Trelayne had got there late, and Max was already there. He’d gotten there ahead of both of us. Now, I’d told only one person about that meeting, the only person I thought I could trust—you! Don’t try and tell me I’m wrong, Julie. I even sensed, while I was talking to Dick Gallaghen, that he was protecting someone. A couple of times he almost gave it away, but he caught himself. He had been about to tell me at one point that someone had demanded that I not be hurt. That would have been you, too. Keep packing,” I snapped as she turned to face me, “and tell me why. Tell me why Eddie Waters had to be killed. What did he have to do with it all?”
After Gallaghen had been taken into custody by Hocus at his office, I had asked him that same question, and he’d refused to answer. Now I’d find out why.
“C’mon!” I shouted, and she jumped.
“Miles, I love you—” she started, with tears in her eyes.
“That’s bullshit!”
“It’s true!” she shouted at me. “I love you and I hate Benny!”
“That’s why Eddie had to be killed?” I demanded. “You’re not making sense, Julie.”
“All right!” she shouted. Then again, quietly, she said, “All right. The—the day that Benny went to see Eddie, I saw him at Packy’s. He never mentioned it, but I saw him outside and he told me where he was going.”
If that was true, Benny had probably never mentioned it because he didn’t remember.
“I knew where he was going, and I called Dick and told him.”
“Why Dick?”
“He had called me, after you went to see him. He—he wanted me to help him keep tabs on you while you were looking for Trelayne. At first I said no, but then when Benny told me where he was going, I saw a way out. I saw a way to get rid of Benny so I could be with you.”
“Keep going!” I told her.
“You know what happened. Benny beat Eddie up, and then Dick’s man went in and killed him. Benny would be convicted of Eddie’s killing, and I’d divorce him and marry you. Benny would never give me a divorce otherwise. I knew that.”
“So you helped frame Benny?”
“I did it so I could be with you.”
“With me?” I asked. “You disgust me, Julie! You did that to my brother, to be with me?”
“I never thought you’d find out,” she explained.
“So you agreed to help Dick if he would help frame Benny. That’s why you called him and told him I’d be meeting Trelayne under the bridge.”
“Yes.”
“You almost got me killed, Julie,” I reminded her.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, Miles, I swear.”
“And what about the Felt Forum? That wasn’t supposed to happen either?”
“I saved your life at the Felt Forum!” she shouted. “When I knew that you were going there half an hour before the police, I called Hocus and told him.”
I remembered Hocus saying something about getting there in time because of an anonymous phone call, but I’d never let him finish.
“That doesn’t excuse everything else you’ve done,” I told her. “And it doesn’t explain it all. Why the hell did Dick Gallaghen think that you would help him in the first place?”
Her shoulders slumped, and she sat on the bed.
“He knew I wanted Trelayne dead, too,” she told me.
“You wanted Trelayne dead?” I asked, surprised. “What the hell connection could you have had with him?”
She tried to blink back the tears as she looked at me.
“Miles, Dick Gallaghen is my uncle.”
“What? That means—”
She nodded.
“Ray Gallaghen, the boxer who was killed in the ring twenty years ago,” she said, sobbing, “he was my father!”
Epilogue
So I let her go.
Actually, I gave her a choice. Either leave New York and never come back, or I’d tell Benny the whole story.
Turning her over to the police had never occurred to me, especially after I learned that Ray Gallaghen had been her father. Not that I condoned what she had done because of that. The simple truth was that I still loved her too much to send her to jail.
She had finished packing and without another word, without a good-bye and—above all—without our touching each other, she had left.
And I had come to Packy’s to get roaring drunk. Later, I’d explain it to Benny, somehow.
Much later.
“You’re really throwing it down tonight, Jack,” Packy observed. “I thought you’d be out celebrating, what with Benny getting out and all.”
“What makes you think I’m not celebrating?” I asked him.
“Jack, this is me, remember? I know the diff between celebrating drinking, and down-in-the-dumps drinking. This,” he added, putting another beer down in front of me, “is down-in-the-dumps drinking.”
“If you’re so smart,” I said to him, “tell me something.”
“What?”
“There’s a man out there who’s running for his life and has been for twenty years, and now he doesn’t have to do it anymore. How do I let him know?”
“You mean Trelayne?”
“Yeah, I mean Trelayne.”
“He’s in the clear?” he asked, studying my face intently.
“Yeah, he’s in the clear. Gallaghen’s in the can, and Trelayne’s in the clear. But I don’t know where the hell he is, so he’s still running.”
He hesitated a moment, then he said, “I know where he is.”
I looked at him and asked, “You know—”
“I’ve known all along, Jack, but I promised not to tell.”
“Well, shit,” I said, putting my beer down. “Where’s he been all this time?”
“Here,” he said, then pointing upstairs toward his apartment he added, “my place. I’m the one who got him to call you that time, but I couldn’t get him to do it again.”
“Well, shit,” I said again.
“I’m sorry, Jack, but I promised. See, he used to train me—”
“That’s all right, Packy. You had to keep your promise. Do you know where he is now?” I asked.
“I sure do.”
“Well, then you can tell him for me,” I began, “tell him he can stop running.”
“Tell him yourself,” Packy said, pointing behind me. “He’s sitting in the last booth over there.”
I turned around and saw the back of a man’s head. I looked bac
k at Packy and he nodded, so I picked up my beer and walked over to meet my man from the fifth row.
Afterword
In 1981 I was walking through the theater district in New York and noticed that Derek Jacobi—who much later became Brother Cadfael on TV—was appearing. It’s been a long time, I don’t remember the show or the exact theater, but none of that is important. It’s the name.
In 1980 my first book, The Disappearance of Penny, had been published. A private eye novel about a guy who worked in the horse racing business. My plan was to become the American Dick Francis. However, due to the vagaries of the publishing business, there was never another Henry Po book. So I was looking for a new series P.I. I had come up with an ex-fighter turned P.I., but had no name. The instant I saw Jacobi’s name I had it. I liked the way it sounded but didn’t want to spell it the same way. So I changed it to Jacoby, but knew people would say Jay-co-bee. I thought having my guy correct people’s pronunciation would make him more human (it’s Jack-u-bee!). I mean, we all want our names pronounced correctly, right? (For some reason, all my life people have been trying to put a G or a B in front of my last name, until I say, “It’s RAN-disi!”)
Now I needed a first name, and I got the same one from two sources. First, Dashiell Hammett, and next, Robert Forster. In Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon Spade’s partner’s name is Miles Archer. Well, if Ross Macdonald could call his private eye “Archer” I could call mine “Miles.” I was also a big fan of the short-lived 70’s P.I. television series Banyon, which starred Robert Forster as Miles Banyon. And so Miles Jacoby was born. I went on to try to make him as little like me as I could, whereas my later P.I., Nick Delvecchio, was as much like me as I could make him.
As I said, my first P.I. book had involved horse racing. I also had an interest in boxing. My own amateur boxing career had lasted four and a half minutes. I won by a second round TKO and retired (Jacoby’s record is much better). I put this vast fount of knowledge to work and proposed to combine my love of P.I. fiction and boxing in a new series. The book was to be called Eye in the Ring, and the P.I. was Miles Jacoby.
Eye in the Ring Page 21