Now Jackie was not so sure about apparently irresistible forces or the march of history. Instead of marching, history seemed to lurch through time like a drunk with the blind staggers. Vietnam had turned into another boring communist dictatorship. Four or five million Cambodians were dead, thanks to a communist maniac. Russia was revealing the horrors of Stalinism, and China was confessing Mao was a first cousin to a monster.
It was time to disengage from history, Jackie had decided. That was what she was trying to do in Paradise Beach. Find her personhood, her individual soul, and nurture it for a while.
Still, she was tempted. Belfast. Bombs and gunfire in the night. It would be interesting, even if the rest of Atlantic City was a bore. It would be a break from another evening in front of the television in Paradise Beach.
“Is Kilroy for real?”
“You bet he’s for real. He’s killed more limeys than George Washington. Wait’ll you hear his stories.”
“Okay.”
She almost changed her mind when she got a look at Kilroy. It was hard to believe this prematurely wizened little man was a hero. She sat in the back of Mick’s car and listened to him chirp about birdies in Atlantic City.
“Yah, we heard all about’em in Belfast. They say it’s better than New Yawk,” he said in an accent that did not sound Irish to her. “They say you can pick’em off the boardwalk as you please. You can’t do nothin’ like that in Belfast with the fookin’ Prods on your back all day and night. They wouldn’t know a good time if it ran over them like a fookin’ locomotive.”
“Tell her how good you are at pickin’ off the paratroopers, Billy,” Mick said.
Billy aimed an imaginary rifle ahead of them down the Garden State Parkway. “I can knock the head off a para at thousand yards. I done it more times than you can count.”
“Than you can count, anyway, champ,” Mick said.
“What’s with this boyo? He’s always full of back talk.”
“I’m just kidding, birdbrain,” Mick said.
“We dawn’t kid that way in Belfast.”
“Tell me more about Belfast,” Jackie said.
Billy told Jackie the way the IRA operated. They were a real army, with generals, colonels, majors. They issued orders for operations. Nothing was done accidentally or on impulse. It was all controlled and planned, all aimed at the expulsion of the British and creating a united Ireland.
“Once that’s done, we get rid of the fookin’ Catholic Church and start enjoyin’ ourselves,” Billy said. “We’ll have a socialist paradise, where nawbody has to do a lick of work if he dawn’t feel like it, and a man can enjoy a woman without havin’ to get a bloody marriage license.”
“Hey, I’m gonna emigrate,” Mick said. “Want to come with me, Jackie?”
“Sure. Make me an offer.” She always tried to get in the spirit of a party, though it was not easy to join this one, with Kilroy as master of ceremonies.
“Jackie’s big on revolution,” Mick said. “She helped North Vietnam win the war. Set off bombs, marched to Washington, balled fellow revolutionaries. Even went to Hanoi. Did you ball anyone there?”
“Yes,” she said, old anger stirring. She could easily learn to dislike Mick O’Day.
“Naw kiddin’, you got to Hanoi?” Billy said. “I’ve been to Sofia. I was gawn to Moscow but they quit the revolution business. How’d you like Hanoi?”
“Nice,” Jackie said, deciding not to describe the atrocious food and worse service at the former Imperial Hotel.
In Atlantic City, the casinos blinked their neon invitations on the boardwalk’s skyline. They headed for Caesars, easily the gaudiest of the bunch. In the lobby, a black bellman grinned when Mick slipped him $5 and asked for Arlene. The bellman led them to a corner where a blonde with her hair teased into a birdcage was waiting. She was wearing a gold lame dress with a slit skirt; on her face was a pound of rouge and a quart of eye shadow. “Hi,” she said.
“Let’s go for the Bacchanalia,” Mick said. It was the most expensive of the casino’s eight restaurants. The interior was an orgy of mirrors and gilt and silver glitz. A dwarf in a toga escorted them to their table. “Hey, Billy,” Mick said. “Why don’t you hire that midget for the IRA? Then you wouldn’t be the shortest guy in the army.”
Billy glared. Jackie wondered if Mick was being indiscreet, but there was no need to worry. Arlene had never heard of the IRA. She had barely heard of Ireland. She was Polish, from Camden, and had been “working” in Atlantic City for three years. She was twenty-three and was not a little pleased that Jackie was fifteen years older.
Arlene watched a lot of television. She treated them to a long appreciation of Dallas, her favorite TV show. She adored Lucy Ewing, who specialized in seducing cowboys. She even liked old J.R., the ruthless patriarch. Meanwhile they ate and drank. The courses all had Roman names but it was basically American meat and potatoes. The Bacchanalia served a different wine with each course and Billy drank plenty of it, as well as most of a bottle of Irish whiskey Mick had ordered when they sat down.
What the hell, Jackie thought as the wine began to hit her. It was only one evening. It was funny. Arlene talked about Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Billy said he had seen it at the Monahans and thought it sucked. “Who gives a fook about a lot of capitalist assholes?” he said.
“Hey, what is this guy, some sort of communist?” Arlene asked.
“He’s a revolutionary,” Mick said. “But only in Ireland. Here he just wants to get laid.”
“I don’t like communists,” Arlene said.
“Come on, relax,” Mick said.
Arlene gave them a lecture on politics. The communists were against the Americans because they were rich. “That’s right,” Billy said, amazed at her perspicacity. “It’s a fookin’ British idea, one percent of the fookin’ realm drinkin’ champagne and the rest fookin’ swill.”
“Hey, this guy really is a goddamn communist,” Arlene said.
“Have another drink,” Mick said.
“I’m not lettin’ any goddamn communist touch me,” Arlene said. “I got my principles, you know.”
“We’ll play switchees,” Mick said. “You and me. Jackie here can swing with Billy. She goes for revolutionaries, right, babe?”
He was needling her about Vietnam. It was a fairly serious needle, Jackie thought, finishing her fifth glass of wine.
“That sounds good to me,” Arlene said. “Is it okay with you, honey?”
“You bet your fookin’ capitalist ass it is,” Billy said. His hand crept up Jackie’s thigh. She shoved it away.
“How about some dessert?” Arlene said. She took a packet of cocaine out of her purse and poured it on a plate, along with a silver sniffer.
No, Jackie thought. She had vowed not to touch that stuff again. But Mick’s needle was under her skin. She really did care about the revolutionaries of this world, even if they were no longer the unblemished heroes of her youth. She was not going to let Billy Kilroy touch her, but maybe some cocaine would make him more tolerable for the rest of the evening.
Wham, it was good stuff and it hit her like a blast from Cape Canaveral. Smooth, spacey soaring into a high that made even Mick look enticing. They drank some more wine and Billy persuaded Jackie to try Irish whiskey. They went downstairs and gambled away most of Joey Zaccaro’s $1,000. Jackie had a run at the blackjack table that almost doubled it for a while, but it did not last. Billy was a disaster at everything, roulette, craps, the slots. He must have put $100 into the slots, with Mick laughing at him.
“I’m beginnin’ to think O’Gorman’s right. You’ve got bad luck comin’ out your ears. No wonder he wants to ditch you.”
“He told you that?” Billy said.
“He said he’d pay me a year’s salary if I blew you away. Where would he get that kind of money? Anyway, I told him you were too small to hit in the dark.”
It was rotten, the job the marine hero did on Billy. Mick never let Billy forget he was hal
f Mick’s size and could barely read and write. After they ran out of money Jackie charged everything on her American Express card. They adjourned to a bar and Arlene passed around the cocaine again. Mick said no, which only made him more contemptible. When Billy’s hand crept up her thigh, Jackie did not push it away.
In the bar’s half-light Billy looked small and pathetic; he was one of the little Vietnamese whom the huge Americans thought they could step on the way the Russians had stepped on the Jews. The way the Americans had stepped on the Indians and the Mexicans.
Wham, Jackie was really flying now. They were all in a bedroom somewhere in Caesars’ stratosphere. Billy was on top of her but he couldn’t do anything, and Mick was in the other twin bed making Arlene squeal like a Miura cornering at 105 miles an hour. Mick was laughing at Billy, telling him O’orman said he couldn’t get it up, and Billy was cursing until Jackie offered to play Lucky Pierre and Mick took her from behind while she sucked Billy off, and Arlene watched saying that was the most fun she had ever seen, and she insisted on doing it while Jackie watched and then there was more coke and more booze until everything blurrrrrred.
Jackie woke up with someone snoring in her ear. She was back on Leeds Point. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas was on the night table, only inches from her head. She turned over and there lay Billy Kilroy with his mouth a round O, looking like Popeye the Sailor. Snores came out of the mouth. In a fury, Jackie pushed him out of bed onto the floor.
Billy struggled to eye level. “How did you get here?” she cried.
“Fooked if I know. But it’s all right anywhere with you, Jackie me darlin’.”
“It’s not all right with me,” cried the new Jackie, clutching the sheet around her bare breasts like a Victorian maiden. “Get out of here before I call the police.”
“What the fook are you sayin’? I thought we was good for another roll or two.”
Mick appeared in the doorway, looking as fresh as a man who had slept at a spa for the previous week. “Hey, what’s wrong with the lovebirds? Has the revolution gone sour?”
“You get out of here too, you bastard,” Jackie said. She was crying and shaking all over as memory restored last night. She picked up Dylan Thomas and threw it at Mick. She threw an ashtray, her slippers, the lamp, at Billy.
Billy could not figure it out. “What’d we do wrong?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, champ,” Mick said. “I think you can chalk it up to your friend O’orman. He’s put the knock on you with her. She forgot it for a while with some help from Monsieur Cocaine.”
Kilroy looked ready to murder Jackie along with O’orman. Was Mick trying to get even with her? What else explained the way he was acting? Mick hated her now. He hated her for Vietnam, for playing games with Billy. He knew exactly why she had done it. She wondered, as she saw the contempt hardening his mouth, if he was measuring her against someone else, someone she could never match. Who could it be?
“Get out,” Jackie sobbed. “Get out of my life!”
PILGRIMAGE
“We gotta go see him,” Bill O’Toole said. “There’s no other way.”
“I’m not going,” Desmond McBride said. “I refuse to have anything to do with it.”
“We’re all in this together, Desmond old friend,” Dick O’orman said.
“Stayin’ away might be a lot more dangerous than comin’,” O’Toole said
“What’s the fooker gonna do, kneecap us?” Billy Kilroy said.
O’Toole ignored him. “We’ll take Sunny Dan with us. He knew him in the old days. And Mick, for some muscle. And Melody and Leo to let him know how high we go in Washington.”
They were back in the locker room of the Surf Club where the nightmare had begun a week ago. O’Toole had called Nick Perella and told him they were ready to go see Tommy the Top Giordano. Now O’Toole was laying it on the rest of them. Mick’s trip to Atlantic City with Kilroy had produced a lot of expletives on O’Toole’s bugging tapes, but O’Gorman had managed to convince the shrimp that he knew nothing about the money.
O’Toole could see Mick was still against going anywhere near Giordano. Was it possible that Mick had the money? For a few seconds, O’Toole thought about throwing him to Giordano. Tommy had ways to make people talk. But O’Toole decided against it. Mick was straight, as straight as you could expect anyone to be after what the marines had done to him in Vietnam. If anyone was guilty, it was the Jewish broad or Tyrone Power.
O’Toole had already gone to Sunny Dan and told him what they were going to do. Sunny Dan had gotten the general idea. That was all he needed to get. He said sure, he’d be glad to go see Giordano. He knew him when he was a numbers runner after World War I. Ho ho ho.
It was like digging up the centuries, talking to Sunny Dan. He was a walking history book. Too bad he was a talking one too. He talked almost as much as his daughter, Mrs. O’Toole, and said about as little.
Nick Perella gave O’Toole a number to call. It went through about six dummy companies and guys in phone booths in Jersey City before he finally got Tommy on the telephone. “What the fuck’s happened to Joey?”
“I want to talk to you about it.”
“Is it bad?”
“Very bad.”
“You know who did it?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Where’s the fuckin’ money?”
“I wanna talk to you about that too.”
“You better have a lot to say.”
“Maybe you can tell us somethin’ too, Tommy.”
“You bet I can.”
“Where do you want to see us?”
“There’s a guy who’ll meet you on the corner of Arlington and Carteret in Jersey City. You still know where that is?”
“Sure,” O’Toole said.
“I thought you might have so much fuckin’ sand between your ears by now, you forgot.”
“I remember all right. I grew up a block away.”
“Yeah? Nothin’ but niggers there now. The guy’ll be wearin’ a tan coat and readin’ a newspaper. The coon can’t read but that don’t matter. Don’t talk to him. Just listen. He’ll tell you where to go.”
“Okay. I’m bringin’ along the IRA guys. And Sunny Dan. And my nephew Mick. He saw what happened. And our Washington contacts.”
“Bring along the whole fuckin’ town if you want to. They probably won’t even fill my livin’ room. How many people you got down there in the winter? Twenty?”
“A few more than that.”
“Joey’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Make sure you’re here tomorrow.”
They drove north up the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike in Desmond McBride’s Cadillac. Leo McBride and his wife rode in the back with Sunny Dan. Mick rode up front with O’Toole and Desmond McBride, their designated driver. O’Gorman and Kilroy occupied the jump seats, which was fine with Billy. It gave him easy access to the bar.
Melody had wanted to know why she and Leo couldn’t drive their own car. “Because I say you can’t,” O’Toole snarled, barely controlling his hatred. He got the underlying message—the WASP bitch was horrified at the thought of spending four or five hours in a car with her Irish in-laws.
As they rolled along, O’Toole could sense every square inch of Melody Faithorne’s treacherous flesh. His hands opened and closed in his lap, imagining themselves around her throat. He wanted to do unspeakable things to her while she died.
Sunny Dan told them what a wonderful road system New Jersey had. He told them how much the Big Man, Frank Hague, got under the table to build it. He told them jokes. Like the line his Irish mother, Lord rest her soul, had unleashed as they passed Moscato’s Dump on the outskirts of Newark Airport. “Me nose is in Jersey City.”
Ho ho ho. Sunny Dan laughed alone. He was in his own world most of the time. A wonderful world where being Irish meant something in New Jersey. Where money jumped into people’s pockets because they we
re Irish.
O’Toole debated one last time whether to tell Giordano about Mick and the $1,000 bill. No, he told himself, a thousand times no. But it was tempting.
Soon they were twisting through the westside streets of Jersey City, which still had a few traces of civilization. Over the hill they went to Carteret and Arlington. “By God, it’s the old neighborhood,” Sunny Dan said.
That was all he said. That was all anybody said. There wasn’t a white face in sight. The porches were falling off half the houses. Blacks hung out windows and yelled messages and insults. There was Sunny Dan’s house on the corner. The big bay windows were still intact. But the place had not been painted in twenty years. Someone had sprayed MALCOLM along one wall in six-foot letters. The lawn was littered with beer bottles and milk cartons and broken toys.
“Me nose—and me eyes—is in Belfast,” O’Gorman said.
“You sure these fookers aren’t RCs?” Billy said.
On the corner, the big black in the tan coat was pretending to read a newspaper. He opened the back door and jammed onto the jump seat beside Kilroy. “Follow them guys,” he said.
Halfway up the block, a gray Mercedes pulled away from the curb and headed north. In an hour they were in Bergen County. They drove down winding roads lined with budding trees. “There’s where shitface Nixon lives,” said their guide.
“Hey, I voted for him twice,” O’Toole said. “First time I ever voted Republican. But not the last.”
“A shame, a shame,” Sunny Dan said as if he were lamenting the fall of Rome. In a way he was.
The Mercedes slowed and the driver blew the horn. A set of gates opened, revealing a winding road that seemed to vanish over the horizon. “Looks like the Oregon Trail,” O’Toole said.
Eventually they reached a house that seemed to be mostly gray fieldstone. It hugged the ground and spread up a hill and down a slope. O’Toole had never seen a house quite like it. He had never been to Saddle Brook before. In the back, Melody Faithorne was telling everyone how many parties she and Leo had attended around here. She claimed Giordano’s house was small compared to some of the mansions of the top political moneymen.
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