Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

by William Kennedy

  Martin looked at Red Tom, and at his mustache: in the photo and the real thing. It was a mustache of long standing, brooded over, stroked, waxed, combed, pampered.

  “That mustache of yours, Fitzsimmons,” said Martin, “is outlandish. Venturesome and ostentatious.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Unusually vulgar. Splendid too, of course, and elegant in a sardonic Irish way. But it surely must be unspeakable with tomato juice.”

  “Give up and have a drink,” Red Tom said, pouring a new bourbon for Martin.

  “It’s pontifical, it’s arrogant. It obviously reflects an intemperate attitude toward humankind. I’d say it was even intimidating when found on a bartender, a mustache like that.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “Who said I liked it? Listen,” Martin said, now in complete possession of Red Tom’s attention, “what do you hear about Charlie McCall?”

  Red Tom eyed the other customers, moved in close. “The night squad was here asking your kind of question, Bo Linder and Jimmy Bergan.”

  “You tell them anything a fellow like myself should know?”

  “Only that the word’s out that he’s gone.”

  “Gone how?”

  “Disappeared, that’s all.”

  “What about Jimmy Hennessey?”

  “Hennessey? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “Maybe something.”

  “I haven’t laid eyes on Hennessey in months.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Last I heard, he was drying out. Fell down the church steps and landed in front of Father O’Connor, who says to him, Hennessey, you should stop drinking. Hennessey reaches his hand up to the priest and says, I’m waiting for help from the Holy Ghost. He’s in the neighborhood somewhere, says O’Connor. Ask him to pick you up. And he steps over Hennessey’s chest.”

  “He must be dried out by now. The McCalls put his name on a go-between list.”

  “A go-between list?”

  “It’ll be in the morning paper. Our guess is they’re trying to find an intermediary to talk with the kidnappers about the ransom.”

  Martin put the list on the bar and ran down the names: Joe Decker, a former soft-shoe artist who ran the Double Dot nightclub on Hudson Avenue; Andy Kilmartin, the Democratic leader of the Fifth Ward; Bill Shea, a Bindy McCall lieutenant who ran the Monte Carlo, the main gambling house in the city; Barney O’Hare, a champion bootlegger who served four terms as Patsy McCall’s man in the State Assembly and no longer had need of work; Arnold Carroll, who ran the Blue Elephant saloon; Marcus Gorman, the town’s best-known criminal lawyer, who defended Legs Diamond; Butch McHale, a retired welterweight and maybe the best fighter ever to come out of Albany, who ran the Satin Slipper, a speakeasy, after he quit the ring; Phil Lynch, who ran the candy store that was Bindy’s headquarters for numbers collections and payoffs downtown; Honey Curry, a hoodlum from Sheridan Avenue, who did four years for a grocery store stickup; Hennessey, an ex-alderman who was one of Patsy’s political bagmen until he developed the wet spot on his brain; Morrie Berman, the ex-pimp and gambler; and Billy Phelan.

  “Kilmartin never comes in anymore,” Red Tom said. “O’Hare comes in for a nightcap after he gets laid. Gorman hasn’t been in here since old man Becker told him and Legs Diamond he didn’t want their business. Most of the others are in and out.”

  “Lately?”

  “All but Curry. No show for a long while.”

  “Billy been in tonight yet?”

  “He’s about due.”

  “I know. I whipped him today with a parlay. I think I hurt him.”

  “He knows how to get well. You say this list is in the paper?”

  Martin told him how the coded list arrived at the Times-Union as a classified ad and was sported by a lady clerk as oddball enough to send up to Emory Jones for a funny feature story. The message was to CHISWICK, the names in scrambled numbers. Emory solved it instantly: A as 1, B as 2, the moron code. And when Martin next communicated, Emory had him check out everyone on the list. Max Rosen admitted the list was connected to the kidnapping but would say no more and didn’t have to. Martin spent an hour in the phone booth discovering that none of those listed was available. Not home. In Miami. Away for the month. Except for Hennessey and Curry, whose phones didn’t answer, and Billy and Morrie, whose recent movements Martin knew personally.

  “Who’s Curry hang around with these days?”

  “He’s cozy with Maloy, used to be. But he’s always with a dame.”

  “And Maloy?”

  “I heard he was hanging out with a bunch down in Jersey. Curry too.”

  Billy Phelan came in then. Martin saw him touch Red Tom for what looked like a twenty before he even looked the place over. Then he sat down beside Martin.

  “Luckiest man in North America,” Billy said.

  “A connoisseur of horseflesh.”

  “With a horseshoe up your ass.”

  “Talent makes its own luck, Billy. Like somebody bowling two-ninety-nine.”

  “Yeah. I got a partial payment for you.” Billy signaled Red Tom for a refill for Martin and a beer for himself, and put an envelope in front of Martin. He kept his hand on it.

  “I need a bankroll for Nick’s game tonight. If I hold on to this and I win I pay you off entirely.”

  “And if you lose, I lose this.”

  “You don’t lose. Billy pays his debts.”

  “I mean this month.”

  “All right, Martin, you need the cash, take it. I’m not arguing. I just work a little longer.”

  “Keep the roll and maybe we’ll both get our dues paid. But I have a question. What do you hear about Charlie McCall, apart from what we both know about last night?”

  “Jesus, this is my big Charlie McCall day. Why the hell does everybody think I know what Charlie’s up to?”

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Some significant people in town obviously think you might be able to help find him, one way or another.”

  “Find him? He ain’t lost.”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “I heard he got snatched, but I just found out upstairs that’s not straight. Daddy Big got it right from Bindy. Charlie’s in New York. All I heard was a rumor.”

  “Your rumor was right.”

  “They took him, then? That’s it?”

  “Correct.”

  “Daddy Big and his goatshit.”

  “What goatshit?”

  “Just goatshit. What about significant people?”

  “Your name’s in the paper that comes out tonight, one of twelve names, all in a code in a classified ad, which is obviously a message to the kidnappers about go-betweens. Nobody said anything to you about this?”

  “Nobody till now.”

  “You weren’t on the original list. The ad came in about two this afternoon and I just found out your name was added about half an hour ago.” Martin told the ad story again, and Billy knew all the names. He signaled for a beer.

  “I got a message for you,” Red Tom said when he brought Billy’s beer. “Your friend Angie was in today. She’s at the Kenmore.”

  “She say anything?”

  “She said she needs her back scratched.”

  “That’s not what she wants scratched.”

  “Well, you’re the expert on that,” said Red Tom, and he went down the bar.

  Billy told Martin, “I don’t belong on that list. That’s either connected people or hoodlums. I pay off the ward leader, nickel and dime, and I vote the ticket, that’s my connection. And I never handled a gun in my life.”

  “You classify Berman as a hoodlum?”

  “Maybe not, but he sure ain’t no altar boy.”

  “You know him pretty well?”

  “Years, but we’re not that close.”

  “You know everybody on Broadway and everybody knows you. Maybe that’s why you’re on the list.”

  “No, I fi
gured it out. Daddy Big got me on it. If it come in half an hour ago, that’s all it could be. Something I said about a plan to snatch Bindy last year. You know that rumor.”

  “No. What was it?”

  “Fuck, a rumor. I’m the only one heard it? What is this? It was all over the goddamn street. Tom, you heard that rumor about Bindy last year?”

  “What rumor?”

  “Around August. Saratoga season. Somebody was gonna snatch him. You heard it.”

  “I never heard that. Who was gonna do it?”

  “How the fuck do I know who was gonna do it?”

  “It’s your rumor.”

  “I heard a goddamn rumor, that’s all. I paid no attention, nothing ever happened. Now, because I heard a rumor last August, I’m on the McCalls’ shit list?”

  “This is no shit list,” Martin said.

  When Red Tom went to serve another customer, Billy said, “They think I’m in on it.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Martin said, “but it does make you a pretty famous fellow tonight in our little community. A pretty famous fellow.”

  “Know where I first heard about Charlie? From my Uncle Chick, who don’t even know how to butter bread right. How the hell did he hear about it? He asks me what I know about Charlie and all I know is last night at the alleys and then you and all your Charlie horses. You knew it then, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, my fucking noodle.”

  “Maybe, your fucking noodle then.”

  “I’m standing with Charlie horses and you know the guy’s glommed.”

  “And that explains why I won?”

  “Sure it explains why you won, you prick.”

  “I didn’t win anything yet,” and Martin pushed the envelope toward Billy.

  “Right. Poker time. Money first, Charlie later.”

  “Morrie Berman’ll be in that game, right?”

  “That’s what he said last night.”

  “Look, pay attention to what he says. Anything. It’s liable to be very important.”

  “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “That’s an intriguing question we can take up some other time, but now let me tell you very seriously that everything is important. Everything Morrie says. We’ll talk about it later when things aren’t quite so public.”

  “What are you, a cop?”

  “No, I’m a friend of Charlie McCall’s.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And so are you.”

  “Yeah.”

  And Billy drank up and stood up. He and Martin moved toward the door, which opened to the pull of Daddy Big as they reached it, Daddy in his change apron and eyeshade, questing sweet blotto at eventide. Billy grabbed his shirtfront.

  “You turned me in, you son of a bitch.”

  “What’s got you, you gone nuts?”

  “You told Bindy what I said about the snatch rumor.”

  “I asked about it. Bindy asked me where I heard it.”

  “And you finked on me, you fat weasel. And I don’t know anything worth a goddamn pigeon fart.”

  “Then you got nothing to worry about.”

  “I worry about weasels. I never took you for a weasel.”

  “I don’t like you either. Stay out of upstairs.”

  “I play tomorrow and you don’t shut me out and don’t try.”

  “I shut out people who need to be shut.”

  “Go easy, old man. There’s three things you can’t do in this world and all three of ’em are fight.”

  Daddy Big broke Billy’s hold on his shirt and simultaneously, with a looping left out of nowhere, knocked him against the front door, which opened streetward. Billy fell on his back on Becker’s sidewalk, his fedora rolling into the gutter. Martin picked him up and then went for the hat.

  “Not your day for judging talent,” Martin said.

  Billy put on his hat, blotted his lip. “He hits like he plays pool,” he said.

  “So, that’s new. Something you learned,” said Martin, brushing the dust off Billy’s suit coat.

  Martin walked with Billy up Broadway toward Clinton Avenue, thinking first he would go to Nick’s cellar and watch the poker game but not play against his own money. Yet the notion of spectating at a poker game on such an evil day seemed almost evil in itself. His mind turned to thoughts of death: closing Scotty Streck’s left eye, Charlie Boy maybe with a bullet in the head, dumped in the woods somewhere.

  And passing the United Traction Company building at the corner of Columbia Street he saw Francis Phelan, again cocking his arm, just there, across the street, again ready to throw his smooth stone; and he remembered the bleeding and dying scab, his head laid open, face down on the floor of the trolley, one arm hanging over the top step. The scab had driven the trolley down Broadway from the North Albany barns, and when it reached Columbia Street a mob was waiting. Francis and two other young men heaved a kerosene-soaked sheet, twisted and knotted into a loose rope, over the overhead trolley wire and lit it with matches. The trolley could not pass the flaming obstacle and halted. The militiamen raised their rifles to the ready, fearful that the hostile crowd would assault the car, as it had the day before, and beat the driver unconscious. Militiamen on horseback pushed the mob back from the tracks, and one soldier hit Fiddler Quain with a rifle butt as Fiddler lit the sheet. But even as this was taking the full attention of the military, even before thoughts of reversing the trolley could be translated into action, other men threw a second twisted sheet over the trolley wire to the rear of the car and lit it, trapping the trolley and its strike-breaking passengers between two pillars of flame.

  It was then that Francis uncocked his arm and that the smooth stone flew, and the scab fell and died. No way out. Death within the coordinates. And it was the shooting of the innocent onlookers which followed Francis’s act that hastened the end of the strike. Violence enough. Martin saw two of the onlookers fall, just as he could still see the stone fly. The first was spun by the bullet and reeled backward and slid down the front of the railroad station wall. The second grabbed his stomach as the scab had grabbed his head, and he crumpled where he stood. Fiddler Quain lay on the granite blocks of Broadway after his clubbing, but the mob swirled around that horseman who hit him, an invasion of ants, and Fiddler was lifted up and swept away to safety and hiding. Like Franny, he was known but never prosecuted. The hands that carried the violence put honest men back to work. Broadway, then and now, full of men capable of violent deeds to achieve their ends.

  “Listen, Billy,” Martin said as they walked, “that business between you and Daddy Big, that’s not really why the McCalls put you on the list. There’s something else going on, and it’s about Morrie Berman.”

  Billy stopped walking and faced Martin.

  “What Morrie says could be important, since he knows people who could have taken Charlie.”

  “So do I. Everybody does on Broadway.”

  “Then what you or the others know is also important.”

  “What I know is my business. What Berman knows is his business. What the hell is this, Martin?”

  “Patsy McCall is making it his business, too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I talked to him this morning.”

  “Did he ask you to snoop around Morrie Berman?”

  “No. He asked me to ask you to do that.”

  “Me? He wants me to be some kind of stoolie? What the hell’s the matter with you, Martin?”

  “I’m not aware that anything’s the matter.”

  “I’m not one of the McCalls’ political whores.”

  “Nobody said you were. I told him you wouldn’t like the idea, but I also know you’ve been friendly with Charlie McCall all your life. Right now, he could be strapped to a bed someplace with a gun at his head. He could even be dead.”

  Billy made no response. Martin looked at him and saw puzzlement. Martin shaped the picture of Charlie Boy again in his mind but saw not Charlie
but Edward Daugherty, tied to a bed by four towels, spread-eagled, his genitals uncovered. Why such a vision now? Martin had never seen his father in such a condition, nor was he in such a state even now at the nursing home. The old man was healthy, docile, no need to tie him to the bed. Naked prisoner. Naked father. It was Ham who saw Noah, his father, naked and drunk on wine, and Noah cursed Ham, while Shem and Japheth covered their father’s nakedness and were blessed for it. Cursed for peering into the father’s soul through the pores. Blessed for covering the secrets of the father’s body with a blanket. Damn all who find me in my naked time.

  Billy started to walk again toward Clinton Avenue. He spoke without looking at Martin, who kept pace with him. “Georgie the Syph knocked down an old woman and took four bucks out of her pocketbook. I came around the corner at James Street and saw him and I even knew the old woman, Marty Slyer the electrician’s mother. They lived on Pearl Street. Georgie saw me and ran up Maiden Lane and the old lady told the cops I saw him. But I wouldn’t rat even on a bum like Georgie. What I did the next time I saw him was kick him in the balls before he could say anything and take twenty off him and mail it to Mrs. Slyer. Georgie had to carry his balls around in a basket.”

  “That’s a noble story, Billy, but it’s just another version of the code of silence. What the underworld reveres. It doesn’t have anything to do with morality or justice or honor or even friendship. It’s a simplistic perversion of all those things.”

  “Whatever it is it don’t make me a stool pigeon.”

  “All that’s wanted is information.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they want Morrie for something particular.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “How the hell do you know what they want, Martin?”

  “Suit yourself in this, Billy. I was asked to put the question to you and I did.”

  “I don’t get it, a man like you running errands for the McCalls. I don’t figure you for that.”

  “What else can I tell you after I say I’m fond of Charlie, and I don’t like kidnappers. I’m also part of that family.”

  “Yeah. We’re all part of that family.”

  “I’ll be around later to root for our money. Think about it.”

  “What exactly did Patsy say?”

  “He said to hang around Berman and listen. That’s all he said.”