by John Florio
When Wallace’s crew is ready to leave, I open the door, let them out, and slide the deadbolt back into place. Angela and I are alone but I’m not sure she notices. She cleans the table and gets ready to leave for the night as Nat Shilkret’s orchestra plays “You Can’t Stop Me from Loving You” on the radio. I wonder if she hears the song quite the same way I do.
I open the trapdoor and make my way down the spiral stairway—the cool, dark air feels good against my damp neck. It’s late, but if I can restock the bar quickly enough, I’ll walk Angela home. I pull the chain and light the room. I nearly trip off the final step when I see I’m not alone.
“Hiya, Snowball.”
Sitting on a stack of liquor boxes is Garvey. He gives me a weary grin but then spots the metal plate guarding my nose and winces. “Jesus.”
I don’t stop to explain—I just run to the hatch to make sure it’s locked. It is.
Garvey is dirty and banged up. The acrid smell of his sweat reaches all the way across the room. His prison duds are so soiled they look more like a grease monkey’s outfit than a state-issued jumpsuit. He’s got an unruly beard, a swollen lip, and a crusty purple scab along the top edge of his left ear.
“How the hell did you get here?” I ask him in a hoarse whisper.
“Easy,” he says, flashing one of his old schoolyard grins. “That whiskey you gave Milmo really got him going. After you left, he ransacked the cellblock looking for more. He found a bottle of rye—I think he took it off some bank robber—and polished it off with Flanagan in my cell. Those boys were sloshed. In the back of the wagon, I palmed Milmo’s keys right off his belt, then undid my cuffs while the two of them sat there yakkin’ about the good ol’ days. The minute the truck slowed down, I made a break for it. Flanagan was already out cold, but Milmo still had an eye open. He went for his gun, but one punch put him down. I made it out of the truck and the driver never even knew I’d slipped out.”
“But how’d you find the Ink Well? It’s not as if we’ve got a sign hanging outside,” I say, still keeping my voice down in case Angela gets too close to the bar. Then I add, “I thought you were in Harrisburg.”
“Harrisburg?” he whispers, a faint whistle coming from that broken brown tooth. “Is that what they’re sayin’?”
I nod. “That’s the word on the radio.”
“Not true,” he says, shaking his head. “I ran at night, covered my duds with grease, and asked an old hobo if he knew an albino bartender. Y’know, there aren’t many. It didn’t take all that long to find the place.”
He smiles but I can’t do the same. My mind is racing and all I’m seeing are bad endings.
“So what now?” I say. “You can’t stay here. You want to know what happened to my nose? Reeger came here with a bunch of questions and didn’t like my answers.”
“Reeger,” Garvey says, his voice no louder than the rustle of a leaf. “I’ll handle him.”
“That’s not gonna be as easy as you think. He’s got a whole squad out looking for you. His boys are tailing me day and night.”
Angela calls my name. I motion for Garvey to be quiet. She opens the trapdoor and I pray I don’t hear the click of her heels on the hard wooden steps.
“G’night, Jersey,” she shouts down.
“G’night,” I say, hoping Garvey’s sweaty smell doesn’t make it all the way up the stairs. “Remember to lock the door behind you.”
I hold my breath, braced for the worst.
“Okay, see you tomorrow,” she says. She shuts the trapdoor and I let out a sigh of relief. Then I put my finger in the air to keep Garvey from speaking until I’m sure Angela is well out of earshot. When I hear the front door close, I turn back to him.
“Tell me you have a plan,” I say.
“Who’s she?” he asks.
“Never mind her. Start talking.”
“Do you have anything to eat?”
I must look annoyed because he says: “Please, Snow. I’m starving.”
I can’t turn him down, so I bring him upstairs into the kitchen and make him a cold meatloaf sandwich. He eats it like the starving man he claims to be—taking big bites and barely chewing. I pour him a glass of milk but can see he’d like something stronger, so I spike it with a shot of scotch. Then I make him another sandwich and tell him to slow down, that I’m not kicking him out.
Leaning on the fridge, I watch him eat and wait for him to fill up. Halfway into the second sandwich, he starts to talk.
“I need the money,” he tells me, his cheek bulging from a lump of meatloaf.
“The money?”
“The twenty large. I need Myra to pay me back.”
“I thought you said she gave it to Lovely.”
“She did,” he says, nodding. “But now I need her to pay it back. How else’m I supposed to live? If I’m gonna run, I’m gonna need that dough.”
I’d like to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not.
He takes a slug of the spiked milk. “What’d she say about Reeger?” he says. “He still on her back?”
“I never met with her, Garv,” I say, shaking my head. “And I never said I would.”
He looks disappointed in me; as if they’d fried him up at Rockview and he came back to find out I hadn’t fought for his honor. I try not to let it eat at me.
He’s still looking around the kitchen so I toss him an apple. It’s barely in his hand when he bites into it.
“I’m gonna have to get out of the country,” he says as he chews. “Got no choice.”
He’s right. He can’t fight that murder charge. He’s already lost his appeals, and that was when he was given a chance to speak. Now he’s a marked man, a breathing bull’s-eye.
I can’t send him back out on the streets; everybody in Philadelphia wants him dead. He’ll be gunned down within days. Or, if he’s lucky, the cops will bring him in alive and fry him before the week is out. But what he wants—my help in dodging a statewide dragnet—could land me in the chair next to his.
I look at my old friend as he munches on the apple. I want to give him a bushel of fruit, and sandwiches, and dinners. And I’d like to see him get the hell out of the country. But if I’m going to help, there are some things I have a right to know.
“Garv,” I say.
He looks up at me, his right hand holding the apple and poised in midair. I speak slowly, as if that makes the question any easier to say, or to hear.
“What exactly happened that night?” I ask him. “At the Canary?”
“You think I’m a killer, too?” He looks down toward his feet, which are bare, bruised, and swollen. The nails are caked with dirt and dried blood. I can’t imagine how he ran on them all the way from Eastern State.
“It’s not about what I believe,” I say. “I just need to know the truth.”
He nods as if he understands, and starts talking, slowly.
“The whole thing started long before you read about it in the papers,” he says. “Myra chased some guy here from New York—a thug, small-time stickup artist, did some time in Pittsburgh over at West Pen. Anyway, she came here for him but wound up at the Red Canary. She’s a singer—y’know, a nightclub act—at least she is now. Gorsky, I mean, Lovely, liked her, so he sold her a piece of the place.”
“So how’d it wind up with you shooting a bull?”
His eyes go cold and the corners of his lips turn downward. “Joe Connor,” he says. “Reeger’s partner.”
He’s staring at the oven door as if he’s watching the scene play out in front of him.
“I had an arrangement with Myra. I gave her the money, and she was gonna give me a hundred bucks a week until it was paid off.”
I imagine he charged Myra some kind of vig, but that’s not the point. “And?”
“And Connor wanted Myra to start paying him instead of me. He’d been badgering me for months, bringing me in, arresting me, but I always told him the same thing—he could jam his badge up his ass, I wouldn’t let him or anybody
else muscle in on me. Well, his boys came down on me, Snow, and they came down hard. I gave as good as I got, but that night at the Canary I couldn’t keep up with them. They banged me up all over. I couldn’t even stand up on my own. Connor, he puts one live round in his cylinder, spins it, and jams it in my mouth. He sticks the fuckin’ barrel so hard down my throat he breaks my tooth. Then he puts my hand on the trigger and tells me to squeeze. And all the time he’s laughing, telling me he’s the law, he’s the boss, how if I don’t like it I could call the cops. I’m tasting metal, Snow, and his boys got their guns on me, and I’m so damned scared I peed my pants. I prayed dear God for my life, not for the one I’d lived, for the one I’d never had. I prayed for the wife I never found, for the boy I never raised.”
Garvey stops talking for a moment. He stares into the musty air in front of him and his eyes well up.
“He made me pull that fucking trigger, Snow, but the chamber was empty. And God help me, he made me pull it a second time. And the chamber was empty again. So I took the fucking thing out of my mouth and aimed it at Connor—and pulled the trigger a third time. I got lucky. I nailed him right under his jaw, and goddammit, it felt good. It felt great. That bullet was meant for me, Snow, but it hit him. His boys were on me right away, but they couldn’t do nothin’. The place was flooded with cops—clean ones—right after the shot went off.”
“Jesus, Garv.”
“If I didn’t nail him, I’d a blown my own head off.”
“So why didn’t you say that in court?”
Garvey gives me a look that says the courts are as corrupt as the cops, and I know he’s right. “They brought in two witnesses,” he says. “Reeger and Myra. Reeger nailed me. Big surprise. Myra was so damned scared she barely opened her mouth. They’d a killed her if she talked.”
He says it as if cold-blooded murder is logical and I suppose, in some worlds, it is.
I look at my old friend, a small-time crook caught in a street war with hardened bulls. I’m in debt to the guy he used to be and the best I can do is pay back the man he has become. No, I can’t get the cops off his back, but with a little luck, I can get him out of the country before Reeger or the state police nail him.
“I figured something like that happened,” I tell him. “That you had no choice.”
His tired eyes wake up. “So you’re in?”
“Damn straight,” I say. “I can’t let you out there alone. Not like this.”
“Swell,” he says and breathes a sigh of relief. Then he adds, “You know I’ll have to stay here.”
I shake my head. “Can’t do that,” I say. “But I’ve got a place where you can lay low. You’ll hide out there while I sort the money stuff out with Myra. We’ll need to get you cleaned up, some new clothes.”
“Snowball,” he says. “Thanks.”
I think that’s the first time I ever heard Garvey thank me, probably because he’s never owed me anything before.
“Glad to help,” I say and I mean it. How many people get a chance to save the Joe who fought for them as kids? Not many, I’d imagine.
There is a difference, though, and I’m sure Garvey realizes it. At Elementary School Four, he was fending off a bunch of wisecracking sixth-graders. Me, I’m about to take on a city’s worth of bloodthirsty, law-bending cops.
CHAPTER 4
It’s the Fourth of July and I’m celebrating Independence Day by helping my old buddy find freedom. It’s a scorcher; the sun is coming through the Auburn window and toasting the side of my neck. I slip on a pair of dark glasses—those rays are murder on albino eyes—but the damned things make it even harder for me to see the road in front of me.
I haven’t been back to New York since I drove to Philly months ago. The night I left, I walked out of a speakeasy overrun with gangsters and packed my things for what I thought would be a quieter life at the Ink Well. But now, as I cruise up New York’s West Side, it hits me that my life hasn’t changed at all. I’m on the run, I’m ducking the cops, and to make matters worse, I’ve got an escaped convict crouching behind me in the backseat.
“Almost there,” I tell Garvey as we pass 86th Street.
“Swell,” he says. He’s sitting on the floor with his knees to his chin. His legs must be cramping up, but if he lived through two years at Eastern State, he’ll make it through this.
We left Philly just before dawn. I snuck Garvey into the Auburn on Blind Moon Alley; we couldn’t have been in the open air for more than fifteen seconds. He still needs a bath, but at least he’s out of his prison grays. He’s wearing some of my old clothes. They’re far from tailored—the pants are too short and the shirt collar is too tight—but they’ll have to do until I find him something better.
My plan is to set him up in the back room of the Hy-Hat, where he’ll have food and a place to sleep. While he’s hiding out, I’ll head back to Philly and get in touch with Myra—maybe she can give Garvey some of his money back. The only question is my father. The champ has no idea I’m coming, and considering how he feels about me bartending at a juice joint, he might have a problem helping out a convicted cop killer.
I drive through Harlem and turn onto 127th Street. As I approach the Hy-Hat, I can see something’s not right. Three teenaged boys are standing outside the club clutching pool cues and looking toward Seventh Avenue. They seem rattled, as if the town bully just spotted them on their way home from school. I toss the sunglasses onto the passenger seat to get a better look. A young girl is leaning against a fire hydrant; she can’t be more than twelve. All four kids are colored, but the young girl’s skin is as light as a coffee with two creams. Her dress is a size too big and her kinky hair is gunked up with grease; it looks like she tried to wax it into Shirley Temple ringlets but quit before finishing. She’s bawling and rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.
The closer I get, the more obvious it becomes that these kids are in trouble. And the champ is nowhere in sight.
“Stay down,” I tell Garvey.
He doesn’t answer, but I hear rustling in the back. I gave him an old cotton blanket as a cover; he’s probably pulling it over his back.
I guide the Auburn to the curb in front of the Hy-Hat and park. Then I duck down and grab my pistol from under the seat. I slip it into the back waistband of my pants and loosen my shirt so it drapes over the metal.
When I walk toward the teens, they don’t greet me with the usual handshakes and pats on the back. They seem frozen in fear. The young girl has stopped crying and is gawking at my nose guard and raccoon eyes.
“I’m Jersey,” I say and extend my hand.
She’s never met me before, but all the kids at the Hy-Hat know who covers them when they can’t meet their dues. The fear leaves her face and she shakes my hand with her tear-moistened fingers.
I recognize the tall, gangly boy. He’s Billy Walker, a big-hearted fifteen-year-old who has been coming here for years. I’m about to ask him what’s going on, but the girl grabs my wrist and starts jabbering. The top of her head barely reaches my chest.
“We called the police,” she says, her round cheeks glistening. She points inside. “It’s Mr. Leo.”
I don’t know what I expected but this isn’t it. I run into the Hy-Hat and find my father slumped on the floor at the far end of the game room. I rush over to him. He’s leaning on the wall; he’s got a cut above his eyebrow and another along the cleft of his chin. His starched white shirt is ripped across his left shoulder and he has a nasty scratch along his collarbone. If I didn’t know better, I’d think a tiger jumped him to get at his meaty brown neck.
He looks at my black eyes and bandaged nose. “What the hell happened?”
“Let’s start with you.” I say, nodding toward the room. One of the ping-pong tables has been smashed in two. There’s a broken bottle of pickles at my feet and a tray’s worth of sandwiches strewn across the room.
“Some thugs showed up lookin’ for Aaron Garvey,” he says. “Why in God’s name would they think he was h
ere?”
The answer is sitting on my tongue—Because he’s right outside, Champ—but the words won’t leave my lips.
My father looks around the room, at the old ping-pong table we’d spent so long repairing, at the empty booths usually filled with kids. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I guess he thinks he let me down, that he failed at protecting the club even though the kids are all still standing. I know failure, and this isn’t it.
“They started badmouthin’ you, too,” he says. “That’s when I went at ’em. Busted my hand and my knee.” He holds up his calloused right hand and shows me a row of puffy, swollen knuckles.
There are a dozen kids standing in a circle around us. I’m hoping they’re too young to read the papers. If they do, they’re bound to recognize Garvey.
“There’s a man in the car out front,” I say to a shirtless boy sitting on his knees next to me, crying. The kid’s got purple jam on his chin and smells of grapes.
“Tell him Snowball says to get in here right away.”
As the kid runs off, I loosen my father’s tie and unbutton his collar. I try to help him to his feet, but I can’t lift him.
“In here,” I call out, hoping Garvey can hear me.
Instead of my friend’s raspy voice, I hear a young girl’s high-pitched sobs coming from a few feet behind me. It’s the kid with the Shirley Temple curls.
“He had a gun,” she says, her bawling now coming in bursts. She sounds more like she’s hiccupping than crying.
“A gun?” I ask the champ.
My father’s got his arm around my back. He leans toward my ear and keeps his voice low. “Two thugs. One roscoe.”
I curse myself for not coming here sooner, and for not bringing Homer with me. It also occurs to me that I’ve got to get Garvey a pistol.
The girl starts talking through her sobs again—she’s speaking at top speed, as if she needs to get the whole story out in a single breath. “They came in here and were arguing with Mr. Leo in the game room and he beat them up and then one of them took out a gun and Mr. Leo kept punching but they hit him on the head with the gun and he fell on the floor.”