Blind Moon Alley

by John Florio

  He turns to face me, the springs of his chair squeaking under his weight.

  “Here’s the situation,” he says. “Your friends are in the pen. There are ladies in there, too, and my colleagues aren’t about to extend any special privileges.”

  “I’ll take care of them,” I say.

  He shakes his head and points toward my report.

  “You’ve got your own problems,” he says. “According to your arrest sheet, you’re in worse shape than the others. You were caught taking money for the booze.”

  “True,” I say. “But I always buy back.”

  Thorndyke ignores the crack and I feel stupid for wising off to the one bull who seems like a decent Joe.

  “So how long am I going to be stuck here?” I say.

  He puts his elbows on the arms of his chair and leans toward me. “You can walk out of here without waiting to see a judge, and you can take your friends with you. But you’ve got to plead guilty and they’ve got to pay their fines. Yours is two hundred bucks. Theirs are a hundred each.”

  I had no idea it was possible to walk out tonight. Had Reeger been sitting in Thorndyke’s chair, I’d be rotting in that pen for weeks.

  “They don’t have that kind of cash,” I say.

  Thorndyke nods. “I figured,” he says. “So it’s up to you. Scrape together eight hundred bucks and you all leave.”

  “If I could raise that kind of dough, I wouldn’t have been working the bar.”

  He waves off my admission of guilt as I suspected he would.

  “I know,” he says. “But that’s the way the system works and I can’t change it. Come up with two hundred bucks and you go home. Find eight hundred and you can take the others with you. Me? I’d at least pay for the ladies. That cell is no place for them.”

  I force myself not to think about Angela or what she’s enduring. Instead, I try to figure out how I can scratch together eight hundred bucks. I don’t have that much cash at my place, so I run through the people I can call. There aren’t many. I can’t get the champ involved, not for this. The only person I can think of is Calvin. He can take the last of the cash from the Hy-Hat safe and bring it here first thing in the morning. It’ll wipe us out, but at least it’ll get my friends and me out of here.

  “Can I make a phone call?” I say to Thorndyke. “Before you lock me up?”

  He nods. “Smart move,” he says. “But take my advice and make this call count because you may not get another. The Sarge doesn’t want you paying the fine. He wants you in that cell.”

  I pick up the receiver, imagining the litany of troublemakers who’ve used this same phone to make similar calls before me. I’d like to tell Thorndyke that I’m different, that I’m here because I care about people—Garvey, Myra, Angela, the kids up in Harlem. But I’m not sure my story is all that different from anything he’s heard before. I keep my mouth shut and dial the Hy-Hat.

  As I wait for an answer, Thorndyke puts the photo of the young girl away. My guess is that it was his granddaughter, the finicky eater. I wish she were here; I’d tell her a few things I’ve learned over the years. One is to use the doc’s cream. Another is to wear the dark glasses; they really help in the sun. But most important is to hit the books. She’ll be much better off if she becomes another Wallace instead of another me.

  I wake up and the sun is streaming through the bars of my cell window, broiling the left side of my face. I feel as if I’ve been snuggling up to a frying pan. I don’t have any of the doc’s cream with me—it’s not as if Reeger let me pack an overnight bag—and I’m sure that my ear is blistering.

  I’m locked up on my own. Angela, Johalis, and the rest of the Ink Well crew are on the other side of the stationhouse. There’s nothing in my cell other than a three-inch mattress on a concrete slab, a canvas sack they call a pillow, and a ceramic toilet with no seat. My right hip feels as though it’s been welded in place. When I think of Garvey living like this for two years at Eastern State, I can understand why he’s so hell-bent on icing Reeger.

  A young, husky bull brings me breakfast on a chipped, grimy tray. The oatmeal is as thick, and about as tasty, as modeling clay. I skip it and eat the brown banana. Then I down the orange juice, wishing I could spike it into a screwdriver. When I put the tray on the floor of the cell, I hear Calvin in the main room asking for me. He’s not a second too soon.

  “In here, Calvin,” I shout. The torched side of my neck burns when the skin stretches.

  Nobody answers, but Calvin shows up a minute later. Judging by the way he looks, he must have left the Hy-Hat in the middle of the night and slept on the train. His greased hair sprouts awkwardly from the side of his head and his soiled shirt is wrinkled and untucked. I’m sure I look no better. And I stink. I need a shower so badly I can smell my pits without lifting my arms.

  “Calvin, this counts as overtime,” I say.

  He looks at my face through the bars of the door and his eyes widen. The burn must be worse than I thought.

  “That bad?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer, so I take that as a yes.

  “You got the money?” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “But we got a problem.”

  From where I’m standing, anything Calvin is worried about can’t be that bad.

  “What’s the matter?” I say.

  “I couldn’t scrounge up eight hundred,” he says. His jowls seem to droop along with the corner of his eyes in apology. “We just had the exhaust fans fixed, so we only had six hundred and sixty bucks in the safe. I can throw in forty of my own, so that gets us to seven hundred. But then we’re tapped.”

  We’re short a hundred bucks; one person will need to be left behind. A number of possibilities go through my mind. The one I like most is leaving Wallace here, but that wouldn’t be fair to him or to Angela. It also wouldn’t change anything. Keeping him in that cell wouldn’t tan my skin, gel a hank of straight black hair off my forehead, or make me the hero Angela once thought I was.

  “Take the others,” I tell Calvin.

  “Take who?”

  “Use the six hundred to pay the fines for the gang. Leave me the extra sixty. I’ll take care of myself.”

  I can see Calvin doesn’t like what he’s hearing, but it’s the only fair option on the table. “You sure, Jersey?” he asks, his furry eyebrows scrunching together.

  “Yep, I’m sure. But do me a favor. There’s a bull up front named Thorndyke. Tell him I need to make another phone call. If he’s not here, then get him when his next shifts starts. You got me? Nobody but Thorndyke.”

  Calvin nods. “I got it.”

  “Good,” I say. “Because if you ask anybody else, I’ll be in here forever.”

  My ear itches, but if I scratch it I’ll make it worse. I can’t help but feel that the sting is a punishment, a comeuppance for the havoc I’ve wreaked on my friends’ lives. I’m about to ask Calvin to go back to my apartment and bring me my cream, but the sun has already radiated my neck. I don’t need a medicine that heals skin; I need a potion that reverses time.

  Calvin reaches through the bars and hands me his forty dollars along with the other sixty. I’m sure he’s giving me every penny he’s got to his name. I want to get the hell out of here, but I can’t take the man’s life savings.

  “Don’t worry about me, Calvin.” I hand him back his forty bucks. “Just pay the fines for the gang and make sure everybody gets home.”

  He looks like he’d rather join me in the cell than leave the stationhouse.

  “Go,” I tell him. “They’re waiting. And they’re hungry. Get them to the Ink Well so Doolie can put some real food in their stomachs.”

  Calvin leaves and I wait for Thorndyke. I need to make one more call, and it’s got to be good for a hundred and forty bucks. Again, I consider calling the champ, but he’d never understand that I’ve been locked up for no good reason. I need to call somebody who won’t question me, somebody who doesn’t get caught up in the shades of gray betwee
n crook and cop, somebody who loves me for who I am, warts and all. I think that’s Myra—and I’m screwed if I’m wrong.

  I lie down on the cot and block the sun from my face with the pillow. Thankfully, I fall asleep again, and by the time Thorndyke comes to get me, the moon is out. I’m guessing he started his shift at eight o’clock, but I have no sense of what time it is now. Going by the bags under his eyes, I’d say it’s two in the morning.

  He grimaces when he sees the burn on my face. “Sun?”

  “I dozed off,” I say, as if everybody grows blisters after a good night’s sleep.

  “Sorry about that,” he says and sounds like he means it.

  He steps into the glow of the ceiling fixture and I can see that he, too, has been in the sun. Unlike me, he’s been left with bronze cheekbones. Maybe he was teaching his granddaughter how to fly a kite in the park. And maybe she thanked him with a kiss on the cheek, crinkling up her face when she felt his gray bristly beard on her lip. And maybe she’ll grow up like every other five-year-old kid, and nobody will care that she’s short a chromosome or two. And maybe if I scratch my ear, my finger won’t feel like an industrial soldering iron.

  Thorndyke leans on the cell door. “Your friend told me you need the telephone.”

  “I need a lot of things,” I say. “But that’s the main one right now.” I gingerly touch my index finger to my ear hoping to make the itch go away.

  “You already used your call,” he says as he takes out his keys. “Next person you’re supposed to be talking to is a judge.”

  He unlocks the door and pulls it open to the screech of metal against metal. Then he motions for me follow him. I do it, following his lead down the dimly lit corridor, stepping in and out of his shadow as his shoes squeak against the granite floor and his keys jingle on the hook of his belt.

  “You’re lucky I’m here,” he says. “I’m usually working the docks.”

  I’m not sure what to say. “Thanks,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t answer and I take that to mean he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s doing me a favor.

  We get to his desk; he sits me down and points to the phone. “Make it fast,” he says. His tone is edgier than it was when we were alone.

  I’m about to grab the receiver when a hooker sitting across the room starts yelling at the bull typing up her paperwork. He tells her to calm down, but she’s really lathered up.

  “Fuck you,” she barks. Her hands are cuffed to her chair so she kicks her feet up on the bull’s desk, swinging her heels at him and knocking his typewriter to the floor.

  Another cop comes over to help drag her to the pen. The three writhe in a sweaty dance; whenever the bulls have her down, the hooker wriggles free of their grip.

  “Goddamn fucking bulls,” she spits as she gyrates her body and twists herself free.

  As they pull her by the arms across the room, I see that the moll is Madame Curio. Her face is soaked with sweat and covered with bruises—her right cheekbone has ballooned into a ripe tomato and her eye is nearly shut. My guess is that Reeger brought her here hoping she’d cough up some dirt on Garvey’s whereabouts. Even if the Madame were the type to sing—and she’s not—Reeger would have been barking up the wrong tree. The Madame doesn’t have any better idea of where Garvey is than I do.

  Thorndyke sees me eyeing the Madame.

  “Know her?” he asks.

  “Family friend,” I say.

  “You’ve got interesting friends.”

  “My friends have interesting bruises.”

  “Listen,” Thorndyke says, leaning toward me and lowering his voice. “If you start opening your mouth and making trouble, you’ll never get out of here. Take my advice. Use the phone and save your fucking neck.”

  It’s good advice. I pick up the grimy receiver, but before I dial, I ask Thorndyke how much it would cost me to pay the Madame’s fine.

  “No fine,” he says. “She’s a regular here. She’s gonna have to see the judge. You’re not gonna get her out of this one.”

  I’m sure that somewhere in this town is a bull that disagrees—I’ve just got to find one with empty pockets. I can’t let the Madame rot in here alone.

  I dial the Red Canary and wait to speak with Myra. I’ll tell her where she can find the hidden key to my apartment; then I’ll ask her to take a hundred and forty dollars out of Angela’s shoebox and bring it me. She’s the one who said friends help each other. I sure hope she meant it.

  Starting with my mother, who left my father and me right after I was born, the women in my life have routinely cut out when I needed them most. I’m sure Johalis is still expecting to put Myra on that list, but he’s going to be disappointed. Myra came to the stationhouse straight from the Red Canary, chewed off a piece of Thorndyke’s ear, and paid my fine with her own money. I’ll bet I’m the only albino bartender who’s ever been sprung from this place by a hazel-eyed knockout in a lavender evening dress.

  Once we were safely outside the building’s steel doors, she told me she felt guilty. This was all her fault, she said. I’m sure Johalis would have agreed had he been with us, but I shrugged it off. I told her I knew what I was getting into when I took that envelope. She hugged me for absolving her of her guilt, pulling me so close I could smell the scent of her skin underneath her perfume. I could see the burden of self-hate lift from her shoulders, and her smile took the same albatross off mine. We flagged a taxi and I had the cabbie take us past Rittenhouse Square. Myra didn’t care how badly I stunk—she snuggled up to me, handed me a flask of gin, and put her head on my shoulder. I cranked down the window and sucked in the hot, humid, smog-filled air, rinsing it down with a swig or two of Gordon’s. The mix of smells and flavors—Myra’s hair tonic, the exhaust fumes from late-night delivery trucks, the juniper-laced alcohol—somehow tasted of home.

  That was last night, and Myra’s still here today.

  She’s sitting on the couch, wearing one of my shirts with her legs folded beneath her. This is the first time I’ve seen her without makeup, and she looks more beautiful, and more mine, than I would have ever dreamt. I’m enjoying this and I’m not about to ruin it by speaking with Johalis. I’m also not going to look at the mirror—or out the window at Ronnie’s Luncheonette.

  I’ve got a chicken roasting in the oven; the smell is wafting through the apartment. The radio is playing Rudy Vallee, I’m pouring martinis, and Myra is telling me the lies I love to hear.

  “The burn on your neck is looking better,” she says. “It’s just your ear now.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “When I go by the Hy-Hat on Monday, I’ll stop at the doc’s and have him take a look.”

  I hand her a martini and we clink glasses. We don’t need to talk about how we feel—the fear, the helplessness, the uncertainty. Once you’ve seen somebody tormented in grade school, it’s easy enough to fill in the blanks.

  “So things are okay now?” she asks.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “Doolie’s shutting the Ink Well for a couple of weeks. He wants to lay low until the heat dies down. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m done there. He says he doesn’t feel safe as long as I’m around. And I can’t say I blame him.”

  I take a slug of my martini and give it a second to land before talking again.

  “But getting rid of me isn’t going to help,” I say. “Reeger will still be hunting down Garvey, and he’ll still be nailing the Ink Well to do it. I’ve got to find Garvey before Reeger does. I’ll give him all the cash I’ve got—including whatever you give me in your envelopes—then I’ll get him the hell out of the country. I’ll tell the cops he died. Reeger won’t believe me, but he’ll have no proof otherwise. Then I’ll start passing your envelopes on to Reeger and everybody will be happy. It’s still the only way I can see getting out of this.”

  “It might work,” she says. “But if it does, promise me you’ll be the one giving Reeger the money. I’m done dealing with him. I’m tired of getting pushed around.”

&nbs
p; She should only know how I feel.

  “Fine,” I say. “Just stay the hell out of his way until I find Garvey. That means disappearing from the Canary for a while. You’re no safer there than I am. Reeger’ll come down on you as hard as he’s hammering me.”

  “Where else can I go?”

  I don’t have an answer. The Ink Well sure isn’t safe. And Madame Curio’s is no longer a secret.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “Maybe you’re already there,” I say and wave my hand at my parlor.

  Myra doesn’t say anything but she looks relieved, as if she no longer has to fake being the beautiful woman that she is.

  “I can’t hide forever,” she says.

  “Neither can I,” I say.

  I sit next to her on the sofa and neither one of us speaks as we finish our martinis, content to enjoy the comfort of each other’s company in silence. When dinner is ready, we saddle up to the counter, eat chicken and green beans, and chat about the old days as we listen to the radio. Then I take out the orange sherbet I’d brought up from the Ink Well and set aside for Angela. I fill two bowls, give one to Myra, and lead her back into the parlor. She’s too beautiful at twilight to miss, so I raise the window shade and let the evening do its work. The glittering pink and blue light coming from Ronnie’s sign wraps her in a lavender halo.

  “Maybe it’s time,” she says. Her almond-shaped eyes are wide open, sparkling like a flute of bubbly.

  “Time for what?”

  “To take off,” she says. “To disappear. Maybe it’s time for the two of us to run off to Hollywood. Leave this mess behind us.”

  I’m stunned that she still remembers. And I can see she’s serious. My ears turn as hot as andirons. I figured the day would come she’d walk away from the Canary, but I never expected that she’d still want to leave with me.

  “We could do it,” she says, her voice is now gushing with the childlike excitement she was robbed of back at Elementary School Four. I’m trying to keep a level head but her energy is intoxicating, her buzz infectious. “We’ll just go. You don’t have to find Garvey. Let your friends track him down. They can pass him the money. Screw Reeger.”