Blind Moon Alley

by John Florio

  I don’t want to turn her down, not like this, not while she’s selling her last shred of femininity. But I’ve got Myra waiting at Philly General, her foot blasted into a million pieces, and I’d like to bring her something worth more than the old me.

  “I’ve got Johalis greasing some bulls,” I say. “Sooner or later, we’ll spring you. And you won’t owe me anything in return.”

  “Nothing?” she says.

  My eyes are shimmying and I don’t give a damn. “Not anymore,” I say.

  The Madame leans back and takes another shot of booze. I’ve gotten what I need but I stay anyway, listening as she tells me of her plans to stop drinking, to quit hooking. But visiting hour only lasts sixty minutes and we soon eat them up.

  A guard barks out that it’s time to leave. I say good-bye to the Madame and promise her that she’ll see daylight soon. Right after I find Reeger.

  I’m cruising along the Schuylkill with the windows open, cooling off, letting the misty rain soothe my broiled ear. I’ve got Reeger’s matchbook in my pocket. It’s from Bobby Lewis’s joint, a billiard parlor over by the Delaware. Lewis is a shark, one of the best, but his place is tucked away in a section of town that most working stiffs are too scared to visit, and most bulls won’t go without backup. I’ve spent the morning trying to connect Reeger to the place. A rogue bull and a pool shark? It doesn’t fit, not in any way that helps me.

  I pull into the hospital parking lot and walk in through the main entrance. I’m wearing dark glasses and have my handkerchief wrapping my jaws; the sun has already branded my exposed cheeks. A busty brunette is working the reception desk. When she sees me, a look of confusion crosses her face. I guess she thinks I’m here to be cured.

  “I’m here for a woman named Betty Blake,” I say, holding up my box of flowers to show I’m a visitor and not a patient.

  “One hour limit, no exceptions,” she says, still eyeing my raw cheeks with that bewildered look. She’d fit in nicely with the guards at Eastern State.

  “I know the rules,” I say.

  I take off my glasses and shove the handkerchief into my pocket. Then I skip up three flights of stairs with a bounce in my step that only comes from knowing you’re making somebody’s day. Halfway down the hall, I pass a young Joe with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a towheaded girl in the other. I wonder if the guy knows how good he’s got it, how much other people would give to be walking in his shoes.

  When I reach Room 311, I find Myra in bed, lying on her back with three pillows under her head. She’s half asleep; her hair is fanned out behind her on the white linen. A plaster cast covers her right leg from the knee down.

  She gives me a drugged smile.

  “The doctor says I’ll be out in a week,” she says. Her speech is as thick as buttermilk and her lids as heavy as wet velvet. My money says the laudanum has got her floating somewhere north of Mars and southwest of Pluto.

  Her head rolls in my direction. “We’re still running away, right?” she says.

  I’d put her in the Auburn and drive to the train station right now, but she deserves to come back down to earth before re-­committing to riding shotgun with me.

  “As soon as you’re back on your feet,” I say. “For now, you’ve got to rest up.”

  She was asleep before I made it to the period.

  I put the roses in a water pitcher on the windowsill and slide them to a corner where she’ll be sure to see them. I write a note—To my prom queen of Elementary School Four—and put it on the Inquirer beside her. The headlines are shouting about a protest at City Hall and I’m relieved Garvey has finally dropped off the front page.

  I shut the lights and leave the room. In the hallway, I look for Johalis’s friend, Dr. Dailey. He’s walking the hallway with a clipboard in his hand.

  “So how’s she’s doing, Doc?” I ask him. “Betty Blake? Room three-eleven?”

  Dailey nods and says he remembers me. I guess he doesn’t have a lot of patients with busted feet and albino visitors.

  “Your friend doesn’t know this,” he says in his slow, halting rhythm. “But we ran into a few, umm, complications during the surgery.”

  My stomach rolls; I feel as if the doc is dangling me from the rooftop. I’m hanging onto his words, and the slow pace of his speech, the way he pauses between words, is unbearable.

  “I’m afraid several of the small bones were shattered,” he says. “We did our best, but we were unable to repair all of them.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Dailey says. “I’m hoping she’ll be able to walk on the foot, but it’s too early to tell. If she does, she’ll probably have a limp, or she’ll need a cane. Maybe both.”

  “But she may not be able to walk at all?”

  Dailey looks at me and gives me the first clear answer I’ve ever shaken out of him. “That’s correct,” he says.

  I picture Myra, pint-sized, in Hoboken, a look of humiliation stamped on her face as she crosses the schoolyard with that blasted boot on her foot. Then I think of how she’ll crumble if she gets the news that she’ll be limping her way through life again, that the few years she had of walking without a boot, a cane, or a crutch have come to an end.

  I want to be there when the doctor tells her all this. I want to console her. I want to touch her skin, stroke her hair, and wrap my arms around her. I want to tell her everything will be swell and know that I can back it up. I want her to believe in me, the albino from Hoboken who was a hero for a day.

  And I want to kiss her tear-stained cheeks until that beautiful, broken foot becomes whole again.

  The neon Billiards sign stopped glowing over an hour ago. The hustlers have come and gone, as has the rain. Bobby Lewis’s is a two-story joint; it’s at the intersection of Fitzwater and the grift. The roads are dark, wet, and empty—Fitzwater might as well be in total blackness. The only streetlamp around here is behind me; there’s also a light burning in the building’s side window, but it isn’t strong enough to reach the walkway. I can’t imagine who would still be inside the place; maybe one last sucker still has a buck to lose.

  I’m behind the wheel of the Auburn, parked halfway up the block. The champ, Johalis, and Homer are with me; they insisted on coming along in case I run into Reeger’s triggermen. The champ is still hoping I can cut a deal with Reeger, that I can give him Myra’s payments in exchange for his calling off the witch-hunt. I don’t blame him for pushing me to walk away from this—he doesn’t want to see me wind up in Garvey’s state-issued slippers—but Reeger will never go for that deal. Besides, the champ isn’t the one who just left his heart soaking in laudanum in Room 311. If he were, he’d have come up with a plan similar to mine: jam a gun into Reeger’s mouth and see what happens next.

  “The place must be emptied out by now,” I say. There’s a quiver in my voice and I hope the champ doesn’t hear it.

  “Maybe it is,” Johalis says. “But maybe not.”

  Johalis is nearly as jumpy as I am. He already tried the front door, which was locked, and then peeked through the side window but couldn’t get a good look inside. He also checked the back door but found it blocked by a garbage truck—left there either by a lazy custodian or a corrupt cop who doesn’t like snoops. My gut says it’s the latter.

  “There’s got to be a way inside,” I say.

  The champ tells me to wait to be sure there are no stragglers left, but I scramble out of the Auburn before he can finish.

  I trot across Fitzwater, my feet keeping time with my pounding heart as the champ curses and gets out of the car behind me. Once I’m on the far side of the street, I turn around and see the champ and Johalis running to cover the front of the joint and Homer taking the wheel of the car. Johalis motions that I should go around back and try the rear entrance again. The champ doesn’t look happy.

  I creep down the side of the building toward the back alley. When I get there, I find an abandoned path even darker than the side street�
�the lamps back here stopped burning hours ago and my albino eyes aren’t helping the situation. I can barely make out the silhouettes of the brick apartment building on my right and the back of Lewis’s place on my left. The garbage truck is overflowing with rubbish and blocking the pool hall door. What I can’t see of the trash I can smell. The heat is cooking the debris; the alley stinks of rotting fruit and stale beer.

  Somebody doesn’t want any late-night visitors.

  Johalis told me about the garbage, but he didn’t tell me about the transom above the door. It’s sitting six feet over the truck, wide open. The only thing missing is a sign that says Enter Here. I climb up on the truck and plant my feet on its hood. A rat crawls over my right oxford and I shake it off. As I reach for the transom, I hear voices coming from inside. They could be paying customers, but it seems awfully late for a nine-ball tournament.

  I wriggle my head and shoulders through the window, then push myself a little farther into the space. If Reeger’s here, I hope he doesn’t find me now, halfway into the building, squirming through this narrow opening with my arms pinned to my sides. I look down and see that somebody has taken the precaution of blocking the inside of the doorway with a white cushiony sofa, which would have been a smart move assuming a bartender with more moxie than brains wasn’t crawling through the transom. I push the rest of my body through the window and drop onto the sofa, landing on the soft seat. It couldn’t have gone more smoothly had they blocked the door with a giant marshmallow.

  I draw my gun and inch down the hallway toward the main room. Somebody’s barking out a chain of curses, and once I get close, I’m sure I’ve found my man.

  My anxiety is seeping out of my palms, drenching the gun’s wooden handle. I’m itching to put Reeger in my crosshairs, to hear him beg for his life, to hear him plead for mercy as he swears to never touch Myra or any of my friends again. But I can’t make a move until I know exactly what’s waiting for me.

  I’m an arm’s length from the entrance to the poolroom. The air is as wet and thick as engine oil—and as quiet as Calvin’s funeral. There are no clacking billiard balls, no music, no voices, no anything. All I hear are the soles of Reeger’s shoes squeaking against the tiled floor. My heart is pounding out a drum solo that would make Teddy Brown jealous.

  “You think you can strong-arm me?” Reeger says, breaking the silence. I can practically hear the arrogant smirk cross his face. “Big deal. You found some papers.”

  His words hang in the air until another voice responds.

  “They’re proof.” A soft whistle accompanies the words. That’s Garvey. He and Reeger must be alone because if the Sarge had any muscle with him, Garvey would be dead.

  My mind’s racing too fast to come up with a solid plan—and if I screw up, I’ll wind up on the lam with Garvey.

  “What are you going to do?” Reeger says to Garvey. “Kill me too?”

  There’s a moment of quiet before Garvey answers.

  “Yep.”

  That does it. I break into the room, my gun in front of me. Garvey is behind the pool table across from the manager’s office; Reeger’s in front of the office doorway, right next to a ceiling-high trophy case. They’re each pointing a pistol at the other but look toward me when they hear they’ve got company.

  “Put down the gun, Reeger,” I say, extending my pistol in front of me, my elbows locked. “You too, Garv.”

  “Snowball?” Garvey says. He looks dumbfounded, as if I’d died and he were looking at my ghost.

  “What, you’re surprised?” Reeger asks him. “This fucking freak is always showing up where he doesn’t belong. It started the day he was born.”

  I hear Garvey cock the hammer. For a split second, we’re back at Elementary School Four and Garvey is taking on the blood-crazed teachers again.

  “Gun down, Garv,” I say, keeping my pistol trained on Reeger.

  I can’t see shit, but I make my way across the room, winding around the tables, my pistol leading the way, until only one table separates me from Reeger. The sole lamp that shines is the clock with Lewis’s smiling face on it. It’s three-twenty. Anybody with a life worth living is asleep.

  “I said put the rods down.”

  Garvey doesn’t lower his gun, which I now see is my snubnose. He’s got it trained, along with his eyes, on Reeger. With his free hand, he raises a handful of files.

  “I got it, Snow,” he says.

  I have no idea what he’s talking about and I’m not about to ask questions now. I take another step toward Reeger. My heart charges its way up my throat, and my mouth tastes sour.

  “Drop the revolver, Sarge.”

  Reeger doesn’t budge. I cock the hammer but he still doesn’t move. Neither does Garvey. We’re frozen, locked in a three-man standoff. My eyes are dancing and a bead of sweat rolls down between my shoulder blades. A poster of Bobby Lewis hangs on the wall behind Reeger—it reads Shoot for the Moon. I feel as if he’s talking to me.

  Reeger moves first. He takes a step back toward the manager’s office and hides his body behind the trophy case. I no longer have a clean shot.

  “Go ahead and shoot, Snowfreak,” he says. “But you better kill me, ’cause if you don’t, I’ll fuck you over like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll spend your life in the slammer, curled up in solitary wishing you could shit the warden’s cock out of your bloody albino ass. And your boy here will be right next to you, sitting in a barber’s chair with cables connected to his fucking head, getting fried like a fucking egg sunny side up. So either shoot that gun and kill me, or make like a nice freak and get your bleached girlie balls the fuck out of my sight.”

  I’m grinding my teeth, itching to pull the trigger and stop his mouth from moving. But that’s what he wants me to do. He wants me to shoot because he figures I’ll miss him. The second after I fire he’ll jump out and nail one of us, maybe both.

  “You’re a lost cause, a goddamned fucking freak of nature,” he’s saying, taunting me with the names I’ve heard since grade school. “Do people like you have balls or are they powder puffs?”

  His plan is working. My fingers are so sweaty the trigger feels as if it’s been greased. Sweat is running down my lids and into my eyes, stinging my pupils and blurring my vision even more. My temples are pounding, building up a pressure in my forehead that won’t get released until I pull this fucking trigger. But I can’t get a bead on him.

  All of a sudden something crashes behind me. I wheel around and see that the champ has broken through the front door. He and Johalis are coming at us, telling us to stay calm. The champ has his hands extended in front of his chest and keeps repeating that he and Johalis are unarmed.

  Reeger’s hands are sticking out from the side of the trophy case; he’s got his gun leveled at Garvey. My knees are shaking so I lean on a pool table to steady them—but I keep my pistol pointed toward the Sarge, waiting for him to peek his head out.

  “Let’s all put the guns down and talk this out,” my father says.

  “Yeah, Reeger, let’s talk,” Garvey says. “Tell them about your little enterprise. How you fucked me over.”

  Reeger starts saying something about loan sharks, about how they’re the scum of the earth, about how he doesn’t care what happens to them or their albino freak friends. My heart is still hammering at my rib cage like a prisoner banging on prison bars. I’m out of breath—I feel as if I’ve been running for hours even though I’ve barely moved since I got here. I take two steps to my left to get a better angle on Reeger. He’s now got both feet in front of the trophy case and his hands extended a couple more inches. I’ve got him in my sights. I’m sure I can plug him. I can settle the score for Calvin and for Myra in one shot. I can serve justice. All I’ve got to do is squeeze the trigger—but I can’t bring myself to do it, not if he’s not pointing his gun at me. I feel like I’m gunning down an unarmed man.

  “Tell them the story, Reeger,” Garvey is yelling. “Tell him how you fucked me over. How you fucked Myra
over. How you fuck everybody over.”

  Reeger barks back and the two of them are shouting over each other. Johalis and my father are telling us to table our rods, but Reeger and Garvey aren’t listening—they’re still going at it, arguing over who’s right, who’s wrong, who helped Myra, who hurt her, who’s a crook, and who’s a loan shark.

  Their voices echo throughout the billiard parlor, but their words don’t matter. I’ve got my pistol trained on Reeger as I picture Garvey at Elementary School Four, fighting off those twisted teachers. I think of the cast on the champ’s hand, the cotton stuffing that was packed up my nose, and the Madame rotting in jail, bruised and broken. I think of Calvin, his hand squeezing mine, his eyes pleading for justice. And I think of Myra, a prisoner at Philadelphia General, her foot shattered back into 1919.

  Nobody is going to stop Reeger unless I do.

  I tighten my grip. I aim the gun. But Reeger fires.

  The bullet hits Garvey square in the forehead. My friend drops to the ground like a sack of old schoolbooks.

  “No!” Johalis shouts and runs over to my fallen friend.

  I do the same, my ears ringing from the blast and my heart banging on the back of my throat like a battering ram. I’m on my knees and looking down at Garvey. He’s staring up at the ceiling, his eyes open and glazed, a round, red hole above his left eye marking the spot the state had reserved for a live electrode.

  I turn and see Reeger leveling his gun at my father. I’m not about to let him take the champ. I brace my hands atop a pool table and train my rod on the Sarge’s chest. I’m going to pull this fucking trigger before he does. I’m going to pull it for Calvin, for Myra, for anybody who ever expected me to be a hero—especially Garvey, who’s lying on the floor, feet crossed, arms outstretched, a halo of blood spreading out beneath his skull.

  “Put the gun down,” the champ is telling Reeger. He’s got both hands in the air, trying to calm the Sarge.

  Reeger cocks the hammer. The fucking bull is aiming his service revolver at a man whose only weapons are an outdated suit and a three-pound plaster cast.