Night Life

by David C. Taylor

  Cassidy walked to the end of the bar to pull the bartender away from the drinkers farther down.

  “Help you?” the bartender asked. He kept his tone and attitude neutral in case Cassidy had wandered in by mistake looking for a drink and nothing else. He was a big man with a round, ruddy face, sloping shoulders, and big, rough hands that had seen a lot of hard work.

  “Let me have a Knick.”

  “Knick it is.” He went away and came back with the bottle of beer and a frosted glass, took Cassidy’s money, and came back with change, which Cassidy left on the bar. The bartender did not make him for a cop until Cassidy showed him his badge under his hand. Then he stiffened. “It ain’t Friday. You guys come in on Friday. You want to change that, you got to give some notice. Friday, not Monday.”

  The Mafia owned most of the fairy bars in the city. They paid off the local precincts to ignore the dancing and then overcharged the customers for watered booze knowing they couldn’t complain and had nowhere else to go.

  “I’m not a bagman for Vice. I’m working a murder, a guy named Alex Ingram. They say he used to come in here.” The beer was cold and crisp. The bartender did not warm to him.

  “Yeah? Never heard of him.”

  “What’s your name?” Cassidy’s tone was mild.

  “Griff.” He had gone sullen.

  “Griff, there are a couple of ways to do this. I can get my badge out, walk around, show it to everybody, ask questions. In about five minutes this place’ll be empty and I won’t know jack. Or I can go up the block to that diner up there and get a cup of coffee, and you can talk to your clients. Anyone wants to say anything to me, I’ll buy him a cup. No names. I’m not after anybody. I just need some information.”

  “The Greek up on Fifty-fourth?”

  “Yeah. I’ll get a booth.”

  “I’ll ask around. What’s your name, in case they have to ask?”

  “Cassidy.” He left the change and a business card on the bar and went out as a train rumbled by overhead.

  He ordered a bowl of soup and a sandwich to appease the waitress and ate them quickly. After an hour he was about to give up and leave when a man came in, looked around for a moment, and then came over to the booth. He walked herky-jerky like a robot needing oil. He was gray pallored, bone thin, hollow cheeked, with eyes sunk deep in their sockets. He was well over six feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds. He carried a black fedora in one hand. His black suit hung loose on him, and his shirt collar was sizes too big.

  “You Cassidy?”

  “Yes.”

  He folded himself onto the bench opposite and rested his hands on the table. They were big, knob knuckled, hard boned, and the first two fingers of his right hand were stained yellow-brown with nicotine. He slipped a pack of Camels from an inside pocket, shook loose a cigarette, and lit it with a kitchen match scratched on the underside of the table, inhaled, blew out a plume of smoke, and then coughed into his fist. He watched Cassidy while he did, and Cassidy watched back. The man didn’t look like anyone who might have been dancing in the back room of the Parrot, but you never knew.

  “You got a beef with the Parrot?” His voice was as dry as sand.

  “No. No beef.”

  The waitress came over, but the man shook his head and she went away. “Cassidy. You’re the guy threw a guy out the window.”

  Cassidy nodded. The man was tapped in to what went on in the department.

  “Like Griff said, Friday’s the day. You want to change that, you’ve got to talk to someone. You don’t just show up.”

  “I’m not working Vice anymore. I’m not carrying the bag for anyone. I’m not interested in your arrangements. I told Griff I just want to know about a guy who used to hang out there.”

  “It’s a fairy bar, right? You know who owns the joint?”

  “I know.”

  “There’s a problem, we take care of it. We don’t need anything, what? Like official.”

  “Alexander Ingram. He used to drink there and a couple of other places like it. Bird Alley. Someone killed him. If he had friends, I want to talk to them.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  The man stood up. “I hear anything, I’ll call you.” Cassidy offered him a card, but he waved it away. “You ain’t hard to find.”

  * * *

  There was a new name in the fourth-floor mailbox slot in Cassidy’s lobby. McCue. The woman’s name was Dylan McCue. The door to her apartment was closed and the boxes were gone from the hall.

  When he opened the door to his apartment, the lights were already on. Chairs were upended, covers ripped from sofa cushions, books pulled from the bookcases. A man was bent over the open drawer of a table near the window. As he started to turn in surprise, Cassidy pulled the pistol from under his arm. A hand clamped his wrist.

  “Take it easy, Cassidy.”

  Susdorf stood next to him. Past him Cherry waited with his gun in his hand and a grin on his face.

  “Search warrant,” Susdorf said. With his other hand he took papers from his inside pocket and offered them to Cassidy. “Put the gun up.”

  Cassidy jerked his arm away and holstered the gun.

  “Keep going, Bob.” The man near the window went back to his search.

  “What is this? What are you looking for?”

  “The warrant specifies documents and/or objects pertaining to a case of threat to national security. If you don’t have them, you don’t need to know. If you have them, you already know and I don’t have to tell you.”

  Another man came out of the bedroom. “Done in there. Nothing.”

  Cassidy went into the kitchen and found a bottle of bourbon. The kitchen was a chaos of spilled canisters and overturned drawers. Broken glass crunched underfoot. He poured a drink and tried to hold down his rage.

  “I told you I didn’t find anything in Ingram’s apartment.”

  “We asked around. People say you’re a little too independent for your own good. That appears to be true. I told you to keep us informed of your investigation. You have not done that. So I thought we better come down here and take a look around.”

  Maybe there was some truth in that, but Cassidy knew the real reason for the search was to show him that they were powerful and he was not, and that enraged him more. For a moment he savored the giddy pleasure of shooting one or two of them, but then he let reality intrude.

  Ten minutes later they were gone.

  He swept up the broken glass in the kitchen. He righted the canisters and brushed their spills into the trash can. Ice cream melted in the sink. Someone had probed the container for anything hidden. He ran hot water to wash it away.

  Someone knocked on the door. They were back. What had they forgotten? He went to answer it with his fist knotted. At least he would have the satisfaction of punching one of them in the mouth.

  He opened it and found Dylan McCue in the hall. She had a glass in her hand. “Hey, neighbor, can I borrow a cup of gin? And maybe some ice?” She stepped past him into the apartment. “Whoa. You have got to fire your cleaning lady.”

  Cassidy took the glass from her hand and went into the kitchen. “Come on in.”

  “What happened, a burglar?”

  “No.”

  He levered cubes from an ice tray into her glass, took a bottle of gin from under a cupboard, and put it next to the glass on the counter. “Tonic?”

  “Vermouth?”

  He found a bottle of vermouth, picked up a lemon from the floor and a knife from near the stove and put them next to the gin. “Help yourself.”

  She made her drink and stirred it with her finger. “Aren’t you going to call the cops?”

  “I am the cops.”

  “Come on.” She reached over and opened his jacket and saw the gun under his arm. “Huh. Never would’ve guessed. I would’ve said ball player, maybe, or teacher.” She studied him for a moment. “No, not teacher. You’d spook the kids.
” She looked around. “So who were they and what were they after?”

  “I don’t know what they were after, but they were FBI agents.” He liked her lack of surprise and concern and wondered what she had been through that taught her that calm.

  “FBI? Really? Have you been a bad boy?”

  “Not in any way that should interest them. I’m working a murder. They think the man who was killed might have had something that got him killed. They were just making sure I hadn’t taken it home for safekeeping.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Who’s the dead guy?”

  “A Broadway gypsy name Ingram.”

  “A Broadway gypsy? What’s that?”

  “A guy or girl who sings and dances in the chorus of Broadway shows.”

  “Why does the FBI care about a chorus boy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The FBI is cops. You’re a cop. Cops don’t talk to cops?”

  “Only when it suits them. Like everyone else, cops protect their turf. If they don’t think I have to know what this is about, they are not going to tell me. Do you know what a check valve is?”

  “No. What?”

  “It’s a valve plumbers put in a pipe so that the water can only flow in one direction. The Feds are like that with information. They want it to come to them. They’re not interested in sending it back the other way.”

  She studied him. “So you really don’t know what they were looking for? Or if you do, you’re not going to tell me. The secrets of men. Don’t tell the women.”

  “No. I really don’t know.”

  She finished her drink and put the glass on the counter. “Do you want some help cleaning up? Hey, don’t look so surprised. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

  “In New York?”

  “I’ll start in here. How do you want the books put back?”

  “Alphabetized by author.”

  “Don’t push your luck. And I get dinner afterward. I haven’t eaten yet.”

  “Deal.”

  She turned away, and when she crouched by the bookcase, her shirt pulled up from her jeans and he could see smooth skin of her back and the top of the cleft of her butt.

  * * *

  Only three tables at Minetta Tavern were occupied, but the bar crowd was two deep, loud, and mostly men, and most of them turned to look at Dylan when they came in. Cassidy knew it had happened to her many times, because she walked through them without concern, as if it was her due, as if it did not matter.

  Cassidy watched Dylan attack her steak.

  “Do you want a bite?” She offered a piece speared on her fork.

  “No, thanks. But I do admire the way you eat.”

  “My mother always said I ate like I was afraid someone was going to steal my plate.”

  “Brothers and sisters?”

  “You mean stealing the food? No. No brothers, no sisters. She just meant the way I went at it. Like I had to get it done as fast as possible. “Impatience. Dylan, slow down.” That’s what she used to say all the time. I never learned how.” She raked her fingers through her copper hair and smiled so open and free that he wanted to reach across the table to her.

  “Do you see her much?”

  “She’s dead. Cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. I was eleven when she died. I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t sick.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  She shook her head. “I was a kid. When you’re a kid, what you have is all you know. Hard? Easy? That doesn’t enter into it. It just was.” She drank some wine. “You ask a lot of questions. How much do you want to know?”

  “Enough to get started.” Where did that come from?

  She smiled at him. “That’s it, isn’t it? Enough to get started. Who the hell knows what happens after that? What about you? Family?”

  “An older brother, a younger sister, a father.”

  “Mother?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “An accident.” He let it go at that. There was too much to explain.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The waiter brought another bourbon and he drank it while she finished. She pushed her plate back and poured the last of the red wine from the half bottle she ordered with the steak. She took a sip while she watched him from across the table with steady green eyes. “You know what I like about you, Michael Cassidy? You don’t talk all the time. Most men spend the first hour puffing up their feathers and singing their song. You just let it go.”

  She reached across the table to take a cigarette from the pack next to his plate. He took her hand and turned it over and back. There were little flecks of white scar scattered on both sides, heavier on the back up into the forearm. “Where’d these come from?”

  She looked at her hands, turning them to the light. “Welding. No matter how careful you are, you burn yourself.”

  “Welding?” He could not keep the surprise out of his voice.

  “I know, I know. Girls don’t weld. Dad told me I should find a skill that would let me work no matter where I went. He had in mind typing and shorthand. That’s what girls did, but I never wanted to do what everyone else did. Or maybe I just didn’t like doing what was expected or what I was told. I wanted to learn how to make things, how to fix things. Dad was struggling after Mom died. He didn’t know what to do with me, so he pretty much let me do what I wanted. There was an old welder in town who thought it was funny to teach a girl. Now I work whenever I want. I go into a place to ask for a job, all the guys laugh and spit and do that thing that men do when they shift their balls around, and then they ask me to do something they think is really hard, no girl can do, and I do it better than any of them can, and I have a job. Every time.”

  He had never met a woman who talked the way she did, straight out with no filters, as if she did not give a damn about what other people thought, as if she had given up the customs of reticence that kept people in check.

  “Where are you working now?”

  “A place south of Houston Street.”

  “You said you work nights.”

  “I do, but it’s not like a regular job. I do the work pretty much on my own time.” She drank some more wine. “So what are you going to do about your gypsy killer? Are you going to just let the FBI handle it?”

  “The FBI’s better at recovering stolen cars than they are at solving a homicide. I’ll work it. The killer will be someone Ingram knew. He’ll have made some mistakes. Someone will have seen him with blood on his clothes. Someone will remember seeing them together or know that they were supposed to have dinner that night. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I’m looking for someone who did something stupid on the spur of the moment and now is scrambling to cover his tracks.”

  “That’s how it works?”

  “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

  He paid the bill and they left, followed by the envious eyes of the men at the bar.

  * * *

  On the sidewalk she said, “Come on,” and turned south.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Do you always have to know first?”

  “No.”

  “Then come on.”

  She put an arm through his. The easy intimacy surprised and pleased him. Who was this woman and where had she been all his life? Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t count on things. You’ve learned that by now.

  She drew him south along the crowded, brightly lighted streets of the Village and across the broad divide of Houston Street and into the dark grid of unpopulated streets that lay south of Houston. Here there were blocks of six- and seven-story industrial buildings that had been put up in the mid- and late-nineteenth century when materials and labor were cheap, when modern industry was starting to boom, and the men who rode its wave had a muscular pride in the structures that held their businesses. Now their elaborate cast-iron fronts peeled paint, and the
windows were black with grime. They held sweatshops and light manufacturing, and at that time of night the streets were empty except for a few delivery trucks.

  Dylan keyed open the door to a building on Prince Street and they went into a wide entry hall. She found a light switch whose dim bulb barely contradicted the dark. She pulled the big door and gate of an industrial elevator shut behind them and they rode up. She pushed the doors open and they stepped out into the top floor. Big windows on two sides let in enough city light for Cassidy to tell that they were in a cavernous space. Dylan moved away from him in the dark, and a moment later bright lights came on in fixtures in the high ceiling.

  The room had been a manufacturing space and it ran a hundred feet by forty. A scarred wooden counter ran the length of the room under the windows on the north side. It was littered with pieces of metal and wood, stretched canvases, rolls of paper, broken easels, paintbrushes, boxes of colored chalk, hammers of different sizes, metal cutting shears, chisels, and tools Cassidy could not identify. There were six small anvils of varying sizes screwed to the counter and three bigger anvils were bolted to blocks of wood on the floor.

  “What’s that?” He pointed to a big metal pot set on three feet of firebrick. There was a door in the front with a heavy glass window, and tubes ran out of it to tall, green gas cylinders against the wall.

  “A forge.”

  Cassidy walked around a sculpture in the middle of the floor. It was a tangle of metal rods and spikes higher than his head and six feet in diameter, and trapped deep inside was a bronze piece that might have been a heart or a bird or a fist, depending on your slant. An easel near it held a charcoal sketch of the sculpture and next to that another easel held a meticulous diagram for the intricate placement of the metal rods. A big welding rig stood nearby, the acetylene and oxygen tanks side by side on a dolly. Tubes ran from the tanks to a welding gun hanging on the dolly handle.