Blind Moon Alley

by John Florio

  “What folder?” I ask him.

  “The one that was here and now isn’t,” he says. “The one that has Reeger’s records. The one you took.”

  Charlie’s shadow engulfs me, and the muzzle of his gun kisses my neck. I was so close to getting out of here. Now I’m envisioning my funeral and wonder if Myra will be there. I picture Angela and Wallace sitting in the back row as my father curses me for not taking his advice and walking away from these mobsters.

  “I didn’t take any folder,” I say. “And you should know that, because I don’t know a thing about Reeger’s business. Remember? I thought you guys were in this mess together.”

  Lovely grabs the top of his trousers in his rickety hands and lifts his leg to cross it over the other. Then he tries to brush some lint off the cuff of his shirt and misses by six inches. He doesn’t seem to notice how badly his body is betraying him, and I’m not about to tell him. It’s obvious that Charlie isn’t bringing it up, either.

  “Now you listen to me,” he says through a raspy cough. “I was never partners with that scumbag. And I need that folder. It’s got names, dates, the details of my loans—at least the ones that Reeger muscled in on. I thought you had it, but you say you don’t. Okay. How do you suggest I find it?”

  I shrug. “Are you sure it’s not in here? Or at Reeger’s house?”

  Lovely stares at me, his shoulders are bobbing, but his eyes are locked on mine. I think he’s trying to determine whether or not I’m lying, so I force out a smile and try to look relaxed. Then my eyes start shimmying and he turns away, disgusted. Nystagmus to the rescue.

  “Get out of here,” the old man says. “But if I find out you’re lying about that folder,” he says, “I’ll send you off to the morgue one piece at a time.”

  He extends his hand and I do the same. It’s a handshake in reverse—I actually stop his hand from moving when I grip it. Then I thank him because I can’t think of what else to say.

  When I walk out the door, Charlie the Mustache follows. I put two and two together and come up with this: Lovely is Charlie’s new boss—and Charlie’s new boss is a lot smarter, and a lot more dangerous, than Reeger ever dreamt of becoming.

  I step out of the pool hall and into the evening air a free man. I palm the sweat from my forehead, put on my fedora, and walk west, leaving Charlie to figure out how the hell I fit into this puzzle. I’m sure Lovely is wondering the same thing.

  I wish I had an answer for them.

  CHAPTER 14

  It’s been a week since I left Lovely wallowing in his whiskey and depravity. Since then, I’ve spent every day in Room 311 at Philadelphia General, sitting in an orange armchair the nurses dragged in from the sun room especially for me, watching Myra’s cheeks regain their color as bacon and eggs replaced the laudanum on her breakfast tray.

  She now knows about Garvey and Reeger. I didn’t mention my conversation with Lovely about her supposed partnership in the Canary; she already knows how little she got for her money and doesn’t need to hear me say it. I also didn’t let on that Lovely wanted to give me her twenty large. She wouldn’t understand why I walked away from the offer; I’m sure she’d see it as a pair of one-way tickets to Hollywood. Me, I saw it as an invitation to join the swindlers in Lovely’s coffee can—one body part at a time.

  Myra returned to life on Thursday morning, singing “Bye Bye Blues” along with the radio, her head on her pillow, her eyes as clear as her voice. I should have been happy, but all I felt was the guilt of knowing the doctor was about to snuff her new spark with his prognosis. I should have told her myself—I could’ve lessened the blow—but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words I knew would hurt her so deeply.

  When Dr. Dailey arrived later that afternoon, he had no such qualms. He stood at the foot of the bed, his stomach protruding beyond the reaches of his lab coat, and gave a short lecture on the anatomy of the human foot—specifically, the third metatarsal and what happens when it breaks in four places. Then he took out Myra’s X-rays and began talking about her arch and how it affects her gait.

  I held my breath when Myra’s upper lip started quivering.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” she said. She had her hand in front of her mouth, her fingers splayed in front of her lips as if she feared the bad news might hit her in the face. I wanted to reach out and steady them, but there was no shielding her from this.

  “I’m not certain,” he said. “But your gait will probably not be the same as it was. It’s likely you’ll walk with a limp.”

  Myra’s face fell into her hands as she sobbed uncontrollably. Her hair hung down and blocked the sides of her face like curtains in front of a private dressing room. I stroked the smooth skin behind her neck and told her that a damaged metatarsal didn’t change anything, but I knew the truth. In grammar school, that blasted shoe chafed more than her ankle; it scraped her soul. And those kinds of wounds don’t heal. Ever.

  We walked out of the hospital about an hour after our meeting with Dailey. Myra refused my help. She made her way to the Auburn on a pair of wooden crutches, her wrapped foot swinging beneath her like a plaster pendulum. I brought her back to my place, poured two chilled martinis, and cooked some spaghetti. Then I planned our trip to California.

  All we needed to leave, I told her, was a thousand bucks. I tried to look like I believed we’d make it, that we could both find work and save our money, but there are precious few jobs to be had in Philly. Yesterday, a shoemaker’s help-wanted sign sparked a line that stretched a full mile to City Hall. I thought about getting on it myself, but I know as little about shoemaking as I do about sunbathing.

  After dinner, we came to the Red Canary for Myra’s set and we’re still here now. I’m at the same table, the one in the corner near the fire exit, which is now permanently reserved for Myra and me. I wonder if a private table and free drinks are the kind of perks that Lovely gave Myra in exchange for her twenty large. I could ask him—I know he’s here, I saw his white-walled Packard outside—but I’d be crazy to start up with him again. The odds of seeing Lovely and walking out the door are slim. As far as I know, the odds of doing it twice have never been tested.

  It’s nearly midnight and the joint is still filling up. Four suits are leaning on the bar, singing along to a Cole Porter tune the piano player is banging out in the dining room. A couple of flappers are behind them, dancing and sipping shots of moon. Everybody at the bar has shiny faces and glassy eyes; I’m guessing their mood lifted about one second after they heard Reeger left for the pearly gates and took his weekly raids with him.

  Myra finished her set a few minutes ago—she closed by sitting on the piano and singing “Blue Is the Night,” her hobbled foot dangling just below the reach of the spotlight. She made her way to the dressing room when the lights went down, hoping the rummies would be too busy applauding to notice she was wearing a cast the size of a birdcage. I feel for her, even though that cast will come off in a few weeks.

  Red puts a couple of martinis on the table as I watch Myra limp her way over, swinging on her crutches, avoiding the stares coming from the dining room. I’m surprised to see that she’s got a smile on her face. Her cheeks are as round as cue balls.

  “I’ve got good news,” she says.

  At this point, any news that doesn’t involve somebody getting killed is good to me.

  “Feeling better?” I say, nodding toward her foot.

  The smile leaves her face. “Not really.”

  She sits down and extends her leg under the table. Then she leans forward and says with a twinkle, “We can go to California.”

  “Great,” I say, as if we haven’t been through this before. “As soon as we have the money.”

  “We have it,” she says. Then she looks around to make sure nobody can hear us. She doesn’t have to worry; the singing voices at the piano are loud enough to drown us out. “Lovely gave me back my twenty thousand.”

  Fucking Lovely. I should’ve realized that he’d pu
ll something like this. Myra’s looking at me; her eyes are as wide as a kid’s on Christmas morning. I’ve got two choices: owe Lovely a favor, or tell Myra she has to give her new doll back to Santa.

  “Myra,” I begin, but stop in mid-sentence. She’s looking at me and holding her breath, and I don’t have the strength to watch her cry again, not after seeing her view that X-ray.

  “What’s wrong?” she says. I can tell she’s afraid of what she’s about to hear.

  “Myra,” I say again, “Lovely’s not giving that money to you. He’s giving it to me. He wants me in his circle. You can’t take it.”

  She looks confused. And beautiful.

  “What do you mean, giving it to you?”

  “He offered me the dough. He said it was payment for killing Reeger, and I told him I didn’t want it. I know all about that heartless bastard and I don’t want to owe him one red cent. I’ll wind up being his gun for hire. I won’t do it.”

  Myra’s not saying anything, but her stoic look is betrayed by a quivering lip—as well as a single tear that rolls down her cheek. I’m sure she doesn’t want to believe me, but I’m making too much sense to be ignored.

  “Why else would he give you your money back?” I say.

  “He said it’s a second chance,” she says. “Who cares what he wants from you? You’ll be so far away, he’ll never find you.”

  “I don’t care what he said,” I say. “You can’t take that money. It’s not a chance to do things right. It’s a chance to make the same mistake again. You owed Garvey, then Reeger, and now you’d owe Lovely. And there’s no place in the world far enough away to duck him.”

  Myra takes a long slug of her martini. I know when somebody wants a drink to hurt, and this qualifies.

  “There’s good news here,” I say. “Even without the twenty large, you’re still out of debt. You don’t have to pay Garvey and you don’t have to pay Reeger.”

  I think of Johalis telling me how Myra used suckers like me to wipe away her debts, and it fits. But I didn’t pull that trigger at Bobby Lewis’s for her—not entirely, anyway. I pulled it for Garvey and Calvin. And me.

  “All you’re losing is twenty large,” I tell her. “I know it’s a ton of dough, but it was never yours anyway. You can live without it. We can live without it.”

  “But we can’t live without it in L.A.,” she says.

  Her tears are putting a shine on her rouged cheeks, which are glimmering like wet stones. I nearly cry myself; my throat closes and the backs of my eyes burn. I want to help her. I want to be the hero that she wants me to be. But if we take Lovely’s money, I won’t be the hero I want to be.

  Her hand is on the table; I put mine on top of it.

  “I promise we’ll get to Hollywood,” I say. “I’ll figure something out.”

  I want to believe my own words, but I can’t even imagine how I’ll scratch up the dough to get us on the train. Every possibility—hijacking comes to mind—is nearly as bad as working for Lovely.

  “I will get the money,” I say again, trying to sound more confident the second time around.

  Myra’s sobbing, and all I need to do to lift her pain is tell her that I’m okay with owing Lovely. But I can’t do it. Instead, I sit there, my hand on hers, listening to the piano player bang out “My Future Just Passed,” wondering if he’s playing it for me.

  I’m with Johalis at his place on Ludlow, my shoulders still wet from the afternoon rain. He pours me a finger of whiskey and we raise a glass to Madame Curio, who walked out of Eastern State this morning. She deserves a shot herself; she was locked up in that hellhole for nearly two weeks. Now she’s free, but springing her cost plenty. I had to pay Johalis’s bull two hundred bucks to lose the Madame’s file in a pile of dead inmates’ dental records.

  “To the Madame,” I say before downing the whiskey.

  The brown sends a wave of calm through my chest and I feel I’ve earned it. I promised the Madame I’d get her out of the pen and I delivered. Not that it matters anymore, but I had to dip into Angela’s shoebox to do it. That Zealandia box now holds all the money I’ve got to my name—three hundred and forty bucks. The Hy-Hat safe is empty; the champ can’t even meet the rent. At the rate I’m going, the most exotic place I’ll be taking Myra is a bread line on Market Street.

  “All’s well that ends well,” Johalis says before going into his kitchen to get some ice.

  I sit on Johalis’s sofa and take a look over the folder that Garvey found at the pool hall. As I flip through the papers, a trumpet student blares out a scale upstairs. I ignore the screechy exercises as best I can, focusing instead on the pile of notes and paystubs. Lovely’s name pops up on three cocktail napkins, a roadmap, and two ledger sheets. In each instance, a number is written next to his name. And every one of the numbers is preceded by a dollar sign.

  Johalis comes back in with a bucket of ice in his hand. “Why would Lovely care so much about the folder?” he says. “He’s got half the city’s cops in his pocket.”

  “Maybe he’s worried about the other half,” I say. “Or maybe he really is out to destroy Reeger. I’m telling you, I’m surprised we haven’t caught him at Laurel Hill, pissing on the guy’s grave.”

  The trumpet is now blowing a sour version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  “I ran it by my boys at the precinct,” Johalis says. “From what we put together, Reeger wasn’t a loan shark. He muscled in on loan sharks, took over their payments, told them that if they didn’t like it, they could spend a few years in the slammer. It worked, because he was ripping off sharks and crooks. Nobody was going to complain. And Reeger isn’t the only bull in that folder. Connor’s in there. Others, too. But Reeger was the head of the ring.”

  I look down at the folder. Johalis is right—a lot of these names belong to other cops. They were the muscle that swung Reeger’s hammer.

  “What am I supposed to do with this file?” I say. “I can’t bury it.”

  “Why not?” Johalis says, concern peeking out from the lines on his face.

  “Because every news report is saying Reeger was a hero for killing Garvey. I can’t let the world think that.”

  “Let it be,” Johalis says. “Just be happy Reeger got what he had coming.”

  It’s good advice, assuming all I wanted to do was save my own skin. But I owe it to Garvey to clear his name. Besides, greed never dies with the greedy. The cops in this folder will follow Reeger’s lead, and if I don’t stop them, there will be other Garveys and other Myras. I have to do something with this file; I just don’t know what yet.

  I walk to the door and shake Johalis’s hand. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I owe you one.”

  “No, you don’t,” he says. “I owed your father and I still do. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d be sipping shine with Reeger right now.”

  I think of the champ and the lineup of friends he’s got waiting to help him. The man gains respect simply by respecting himself. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to do the same.

  “Thanks just the same,” I tell Johalis. “You owed my father, but you helped me.”

  Johalis nods. “Any time you need me, just call.”

  I hope I never have to take him up on that offer.

  I step out onto Ludlow. The sun is beating down on the wet, shiny street; the air is as moist and heavy as a used washrag. I put my dark glasses on and tug the straw brim of my fedora down low. I walk to the corner as the trumpet blares “Me and My Shadow” behind me. I get in the Auburn, start the engine, and drive home. I doubt Lovely’s boys are following me, but I stick to side streets and back roads anyway.

  By the time I get home, Myra has already left for the Red Canary. The place feels empty without her. I remind myself that this is how I lived—alone—until a few weeks ago. I guess I’m no different than an inmate coming out of solitary at the pen. Just because I came out of it alive doesn’t mean I want to go back.

  I put on the radio and sit at the Underwood. I type out a one
-sentence letter: The attached folder was pulled from the hands of Sergeant Reeger as he lay dying at Bobby Lewis’s pool hall. I don’t sign my name. I just stuff the letter into an envelope along with the folder, then address the envelope to the Inquirer. If anyone at the paper looks into this file, they’ll surely uncover the crooked bulls hiding inside. If they don’t, at least I’ll know I tried.

  Before I head out the door, I reach into Angela’s shoebox, pull out twenty bucks, and grab another envelope. This one I address to the champ at the Hy-Hat. We’re not only behind on the rent; he needs money for a new icebox motor. I know we can’t afford to keep the Hy-Hat open any longer—not without me pouring drinks somewhere—but it pains me to shut it down. The club is my getaway: the kids there are free of guns, free of moon, and free of the Reegers and Lovelys of the world. And this is when they need us the most—the longer the bread lines, the shorter their cash. If we close down, they’ll have nobody to take them in. They’ll wind up working the city’s speakeasies, just like I did.

  I’m not about to desert them again, not after driving off with the champ and Garvey and leaving Billy Walker holding the bag. Luckily, the kid is as sharp as he is strong; he handed the bulls a pile of malarkey and walked out of the precinct as clean as a pile of starched linens. But that doesn’t mean I had a right to put him in that position.

  I put a stamp on both envelopes and leave my place.

  The sun is setting and the shadows of the trees stretch across Juniper. I check Ronnie’s Luncheonette and see nothing but an empty bench out front. The place is free of hoodlums, just like I am. I have to admit the evenings in Philadelphia are much more enjoyable when nobody is looking to send a bullet through my skull.

  I drop the envelopes in the mailbox and walk up Juniper to Enrico’s flower shop. If I hurry, I can pick up some roses for Myra and still catch her set at the Canary tonight.