Blind Moon Alley

by John Florio

  As I cross the street and head to the florist, I take off my fedora and let the rays singe my face. For one brief moment, I’m not hiding. The doc’s cream is in my pocket but I leave it there. Myra knows me for who I am and I’m not going to let go of her. I’ll bring her flowers tonight and we’ll leave this place for good in the morning. This is my chance and I’m taking it. The sun broils my cheeks; it burns my skin with the sting of truth. And freedom.

  I stroll up the stairs carrying a box of roses. I’m leaning on my father’s words—You got caught up in Garvey’s mess—but I still can’t help but feel responsible for Calvin’s death. I look at the flowers in my hand and remind myself I’m not just another guilty conscience seeking absolution. I’m not a cheating philanderer bringing flowers to an unsuspecting dame, nor am I a two-timing widower placing them on my dead wife’s grave. And I’m certainly not Lovely, who makes a habit of dropping full bouquets on the bleeding, mutilated bodies of the penny-ante crooks foolish enough to double-cross him. All I am is an everyday Joe letting my old classmate know that I’m done swallowing the taunts and jeers I’ve spent my lifetime choking down—and that I’m ready to prove it.

  A discarded Inquirer sits at the top of the stairs in front of my apartment. I’ll bet Garvey is still on the front page, but it doesn’t matter anymore, at least not to me. I kick the paper aside, pull out my key, and check the doorjamb. The matchstick is on the floor. Either Myra left the apartment, which she said she wouldn’t do, or Reeger’s boys paid her a visit while I was at the Ink Well. That damned construction crew. Reeger could have shot up my entire place and I wouldn’t have heard a sound over the ruckus. I toss the roses on the hallway floor, draw my gun, and slowly turn the doorknob. When I see the door isn’t locked, I cock the pistol’s hammer.

  I step into the parlor an arm’s length behind my gun. Everything seems to be in order. Then I hear a sickening wail coming from the bedroom. I’m sure it’s Myra. This is all too reminiscent of what just happened at the Hy-Hat, and I’m hoping, praying, that I won’t relive the same outcome here. Please, not with Myra.

  I stand to the side of the doorway and listen again. It’s quiet, except for the whimpering. I don’t know if it’s safer to wait or to burst into the room, so I push open the door and rush inside, ready to put a bullet into anybody other than Myra. I scan the room in a panic. The place is ransacked. There’s a hole in the wall. The window is broken. But Myra’s alone.

  “Jeeersey,” she’s moaning.

  She’s sitting on the bed—her plaid dress is ripped and hanging off her shoulder. Her eyes are puffy; mucus trails from her nose and glazes her upper lip. She’s got my sheet tied around her foot and she’s clutching it as if she’s afraid it will crumble if she lets go. The linen is stained with blood; it looks as if it’s been used to package meat at the butcher shop. I rush over to check her foot but she hugs my waist and presses her head against my stomach.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say. “Are you all right?”

  I’m still trying to get a look at her foot but she won’t let go of me. She’s squeezing so tightly she’s cutting off my breath. Saliva and tears are coming right through my shirt and wetting my stomach.

  “They broke it,” she says through sobs. “My foot. I couldn’t tell them where Garvey is, so they smashed it.”

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Myra.” My shame rushes back at me as my father’s words echo into the distance.

  “Jeeersey,” she’s sobbing.

  She leans over and heaves as if she’s going to vomit. Then she lets out a piercing cry and I’m not sure if it’s from the pain or because those scumbags knocked her back to the schoolyard.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “We’ll fix it.”

  My brain is racing, but I don’t have many options. The only way to help Myra—and stop Reeger from getting at her again—is to bring her to Doc Anders. But I can’t get her all the way to New York in this shape—and it would take the doc hours to get here. My only other choice is to call Johalis. He’s no fan of Myra’s, but he’s at his best under pressure and might know a local doctor who can keep his mouth shut.

  I run into the kitchen and dial Johalis’s number, hoping he’s home. He picks up on the third ring.

  “Yeah?”

  Oh, those golden pipes. I run through the situation and he tells me to meet him at the back entrance of Philadelphia General in Blockley. I don’t ask questions.

  “We’ll be there,” I tell him.

  When I get back to the bedroom, Myra’s still moaning; her mouth is open, but only guttural sounds are coming out.

  I stand where she can see me without having to turn her head.

  “We’ve got to get downstairs,” I tell her.

  She nods.

  “I’ll be your crutch,” I say.

  She nods again, and through her sobs she says, “It’ll never be the same again.”

  I’m worried that she’s talking about us.

  “Your foot will be fine,” I tell her, even though I haven’t looked under that ball of cloth.

  I help her off the bed, slowly. When she gets to her feet, she leans on me and we inch toward the stairs. She’s got her right knee in the air and hops forward on her left foot, yelping every time it lands. This isn’t going to work.

  When we reach the hallway, I pick her up and carry her in my arms. I make my way around the bouquet of roses and avoid the newspaper whose headline I now see is announcing a renewed effort in the hunt for Garvey. Myra puts her left hand around my neck, her right arm around my shoulder, and keeps her right knee resting on the crook of my arm. It’s slow going—I take the stairs one at a time—but eventually, I get her out of the building and into the Auburn.

  Myra leans back in the passenger seat and rests her right foot on a pillow as I hightail it over to Philadelphia General, checking the mirrors for a shadow. Through it all, she sits silently in the passenger seat beside me, her silky hair hanging in front of her face—sweaty, ragged, and limp.

  I swing the Auburn around the back of the hospital and Johalis is right where he said he’d be: by the back entrance off University. The sun has set but the lamps have yet to be lit. I’m thankful for the cover.

  I walk around the car and help Myra get out. She puts her arms around my neck and looks at me through teary eyes.

  “I hate them,” she says as I pick her up again.

  Johalis comes over. The afternoon heat hasn’t lifted and his cheeks are glazed with perspiration. I’m grateful he’s helping and not asking any questions—of me or of Myra.

  “We can go in here,” he says. “There’s a doc waiting upstairs.”

  I carry Myra through the double doors. The place has that medicinal odor—half grade-school cafeteria, half science lab—that I now recognize as the scent of late hours and broken lives. When we reach the third floor, a doctor is walking the hall. He’s about the champ’s age; he’s got a shock of curly black hair piled on his head, two days’ growth on his cheeks, and a look of concern in his dark eyes. A white lab coat is draped over his full, round stomach. On the pocket, a name tag reads Dr. Dailey.

  He shakes Johalis’s hand and then turns to me. “You, umm, must be Jersey.” He speaks slowly, like a gramophone that needs to be wound.

  “I am,” I say. I’m about to tell him Myra’s name but decide to keep it off the paperwork, just in case Reeger comes calling. “This is Betty Blake. She was in a car accident off Market.”

  Dailey gives me a look that says he knows I’m lying.

  Myra is leaning on Johalis and lets out a low groan. Her pain is palpable.

  “Let’s get her into room three-eleven,” Dailey says.

  Myra puts her free arm around my shoulder and the three of us hobble into the room. Once she’s sitting on the bed, Dailey walks Johalis and me to the door.

  “I’ll take it from here,” he says.

  I want to tell Myra I love her but stop myself because I don’t want Johalis to hear me. As I turn to leave, Myra
shouts out to me.

  “Promise me we’re still leaving.”

  She’s cried her voice raw and sounds more like a chain-smoking sailor than a nightclub singer.

  “Promise,” she insists.

  I bite my lip, hard, to stop my eyes from welling up.

  “Nothing can stop us,” I tell her, but I’m afraid we both know our moment is flittering away. She forces her trembling lips into a smile and I try to do the same.

  When Johalis and I walk out into the hall, I shut the door behind us. I can tell Dailey has begun examining Myra’s foot because her howls penetrate the wall. The screams cut through me like a surgeon’s knife.

  This is it, I tell myself. I’ve had years of tomorrows taken away from me and I’m not going to let my calendar get any shorter. I don’t care what Johalis thinks of Myra, and I don’t care what the champ says about Reeger. To hell with the cops—and to hell with the fucking electric chair. I’m going to settle this score with Reeger. And when I serve him his bullet, I’m going to make sure he knows it’s from Myra’s old classmate, the albino freak the kids used to call Snowball.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dark clouds are rolling over Eastern State and I wonder if the inmates see enough sky to notice. Me, I welcome the shadows. At least I won’t have to walk the prison grounds with a scarf wrapped around my cheeks.

  I’m here for Madame Curio. According to Thorndyke, she’ll be stuck inside this granite fortress, locked up alongside gangsters and killers, until she appears in court a few weeks from now. I’d bet my bottom tube of skin cream there’s a law against holding the Madame here—she’s yet to be found guilty of anything—but there was a gas explosion at the women’s detention center, which is all Reeger needed to push her paperwork through the broken system.

  A gust of hot, humid air blows down Fairmount Avenue—a storm is coming—and I hold my fedora to my head as I get out of the Auburn. The place is no cozier than when I came to visit Garvey. When I reach the main entrance, an old-timer named Driscoll puts me through the standard drill. I can see his heart isn’t in it; he frisks me for metal but doesn’t comment on the flask in my back pocket.

  He walks me toward cellblock five, telling me how much fun he had when Capone was here in ’29, how he’s the one who helped the boss sneak in the desk, the cushy mattress, the oriental rugs, and the telephone. When I ask him if he could do the same for the Madame, he drops the patter and calls me a wisenheimer. I don’t let on that I was serious.

  The visitor center is a big square room with cavernous ceilings, long tables, and barred windows. It smells like a locker room and has four large fans that buzz loudly as they blow the rancid air in circles. There must be fifty people in here. It’s not hard to spot the inmates—their faces are nearly as colorless as mine, their expressions as gray as their state-issued coveralls. This entire block of prisoners was bussed from the detention center, and they’re all probably guilty of the same crime: they won’t sing.

  Unlike Milmo and Flanagan, who wanted to squeeze every bit of life out of Garvey’s last meal, the guards in this block are relaxed and quiet. Maybe they figure it would be bad form to hammer women, or maybe they wait until the outsiders are home, listening to the radio and tucking their kids into bed, before taking out their nightsticks. Either way, the guards must know they’re not at risk. There’s a watchman at the end of the rotunda who’ll shut the entire cellblock down if things get out of hand. Yes, the women outnumber the guards, but the odds are stacked in the other direction.

  Driscoll tells me to sit at the center table, that the Madame will be out shortly. I take off my hat and wipe my forehead as a pair of twin boys race across the room to hug a skinny woman in state grays. It seems that their dad, despite his wife being locked away in a stone fortress, has more of a home life than I do. I can only hope he appreciates it.

  Ten feet behind him, at the table near the end of the cellblock, a woman dressed like a secretary and wearing wireframe glasses is whispering to a bleached blonde inmate who’s got a cigar planted between her painted lips. The secretary’s got her mouth to Blondie’s ear and her left hand underneath the table. Her elbow is working overtime. The blonde is staring up at the clock as if it’s going to explode when the little hand hits the stroke of twelve—which, by the looks of things, could be any second now. It’s nothing I haven’t seen at Madame Curio’s, but even the Madame shuts the door during business hours.

  The steel corridor door opens and the Madame steps into the room, handcuffed and escorted by a strapping guard with a nightstick in his hand. If we were back in New York, I could grease a palm and get her the hell out of here. But these aren’t my streets and I haven’t been pouring booze here long enough to saddle up to any rogue bulls. The Madame must know a few politicians who could free her—after all, she makes a living by yanking power from those who wield it—but she’s too smart to merge those two worlds. And so are they.

  The guard undoes the Madame’s cuffs and she walks over to my table. The bruise on her cheek is fading. She’s not wearing her turban, and her copper-colored hair springs from her head in tight curls. Her eyes are round, wide-eyed, like a young girl’s. Without her bracelets and kerchief, she looks more like Little Orphan Annie than the busiest hooker in Center City. It’s almost as if her moxie was in her makeup, that there was no way to remove one without taking the other. Seeing her like this makes me realize she’s got parents somewhere, probably crying over the loss of their daughter.

  “Jersey Leo,” she says, taking the seat opposite me. “You in the newspaper lately?”

  I hand her the flask I’ve got in my pocket.

  “Check tomorrow’s obituary,” I say.

  She screws the cap off the flask and takes a hearty slug. If she’s hoping the booze is going to give her the spunk she needs to get through a stay at Eastern State, she’d better hit it again. And she’d better do it now because last call comes when visiting hours end.

  “Thanks,” she says, the glow of the booze slowly replacing the missing rouge on her cheeks.

  She’s waiting for me to say something but the words aren’t coming to me. I’m hoping she’s got some skinny on Reeger—she survives in the darkest corners of the city, maybe she knows how I can get at him—but first I owe her an apology.

  “So why’d you come?” she says. Her words are nearly gobbled up in the din around us. “Miss me?”

  “No,” I say. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about all this.”

  “You should be,” she says. “I was fine until you pulled me into your shit. You owe me, and you owe me big time.”

  I feel my face drop. So much for the champ’s absolution.

  “And don’t start the poor-me garbage,” she says. “Just get me the fuck out of here.”

  I curse myself for opening my mouth during those long, lonely nights on Filbert Street. “I’m trying,” I tell her. “But they told me you had to go through the system, that you were a repeat offender. Prostitution.”

  She shakes her head. “Fucking Reeger. That bull hit me with everything he had. It’s all bogus.”

  I’m about to tell her that I’ve got receipts that prove otherwise, but a wave of shame rolls over her eyes. This is the real Madame—not the one that claims she grew up a gypsy in the circus, but the young pigtailed girl who dreamed of doing something grand with her life. It hits me that the Madame and I aren’t all that different. For all of her gyrating, cursing, kicking, and spitting, she’s a mouse hiding inside a lion’s suit.

  “Your friend Garvey’s got an angel looking out for him,” she says to me. “Reeger and his boys busted into my place right after he left.”

  “I know,” I say. “I was there.”

  “Not then,” she says with a smirk. “Garvey came back again. I gave him some food and sent him out on the road.” She takes another slug of hooch and wipes the shine from her lips with the back of her hand.

  “Figures,” I say. “I think he’s looking for Reeger.”

&nb
sp; “Well, he shouldn’t have a tough time. Reeger’s out for him, too.”

  “Yeah, but he probably wants to get Reeger alone.”

  She shakes her head. “He’s crazy. Why doesn’t he just get the hell out of here?”

  “He needs money.”

  “Then fucking give it to him,” she says. She takes another hit from the flask, but it’s a smaller sip this time. “This whole thing has brought me nothing but trouble.”

  “Same here,” I say. “I’ve got a lady in the hospital and a body in the morgue.”

  Her eyebrows scrunch into her version of a question mark. I’m sure she’s trying to get her arms around the idea that I’ve got a woman who isn’t charging me by the hour.

  I lower my voice and tell her about Myra. And Calvin. And the Ink Well. What I don’t mention is the party I’ve got planned for Reeger. But she knows the rules of the street, the rules we play by. The Sarge is picking off my friends one at a time. The only move I’ve got is to bring him down.

  “You’re talking about a fucking bull,” she says.

  I give the Madame a subtle nod, as if the guards will hear me if I nod too loudly.

  “I know,” I say. “Any idea where I can find him? Before Garvey does? I want him all to myself.”

  “You’re as crazy as your friend,” she says.

  When I don’t answer, she sizes me up: my shimmying green eyes, my yellow hair, my white skin. I can see she’s afraid to help me any more than she already has. I can also see that I’m the only one here for her.

  “Some pool hall,” she says. “Garvey was planning on nailing Reeger there. But that’s all I know.”

  My mind races back to the matchbook I palmed at Reeger’s. It came from a pool hall, but I can’t remember the name.

  “I’ll find it,” I say.

  “Good,” she says before taking a sip from the flask. “Now how ’bout getting me out of here?”

  She puts her elbows on the table and leans toward me. If I did the same, our lips would lock. “I’ll make it worth your while,” she says in a husky voice.