by Con Lehane
My expression must have been something to see, because despite everything she laughed. “You should see yourself,” she said, and patted the couch beside her again. This time I did sit, pushing the cat aside, though he hissed and took a swat at me, a quick right cross with his claws out. “I do know what it is about you, Brian,” she said. “You’re easy. You don’t ask anything. You don’t judge … You’re kind.”
“I’m confused,” I owned up. By then, I’d given up any caginess I thought I might use to trap her into the truth. If what was unfolding in front of me wasn’t the truth, she had me so completely befuddled I wouldn’t know true from false, up from down, or in from out anyway. “I have no idea what to make of you at all,” I told her with all sincerity. “Tell me whatever you want.”
“I’m afraid to tell you and afraid not to.”
“That’s a start.”
She tried a smile. “It’s not terrible that I lied to you, is it?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you try some bits and pieces of the truth to start with and see how it turns out?”
She stiffened and then relaxed. “I lied about seeing Barney,” she said, clutching my arm and pulling on it slightly so that I faced her. “That afternoon, before he came to the picket line, Dennis grabbed me when I was leaving for work. He said he’d told MacAlister that Barney was in the country illegally and that he was a fugitive from Northern Ireland.” She faltered for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on. “He said Barney was done for. He would be deported and put in prison if he wasn’t killed by the Protestants.” She waited for me to say something, and when I didn’t, she went on. “I went back to the picket line and told Mary Donohue to tell Barney what Dennis had said. When I found Dennis was dead, I was afraid to tell anyone what had happened.”
“Because you were afraid Barney had killed your husband?”
“No. Not that. Because I was afraid people would think he had.”
“You were afraid to leave your husband, afraid of what he might do?”
“Yes,” she said tentatively.
“Were you romantically involved with Barney?”
She slumped back into the couch away from me. “I honestly don’t know. I talked to him a lot. I felt close to him. I was attracted to him. He was chivalrous—and so shy; he is very Catholic, you know, so he was respectful and never let on what he felt. I don’t know if he was interested in me or not. I think he was. I went out with him for drinks after work a few times. We talked. He told me about Ireland—he really misses it. He was very careful because I was married to not step over the line. He called me at home, and we met a couple of times when we were off. Dennis found out about that somehow. He thought I was having an affair.”
“Did you ask Barney to help you get away from Dennis?”
Now the flashing eyes and flaring nostrils; I thought she was going to slap me. Instead, she choked a couple of times, snorted once, and began bawling. “How”—she hiccupped—“how could”—hiccup—“how could you … could you … think that?”
I stumbled around for a couple of minutes trying to apologize. Finally, I said, “If the cops didn’t ask you that already, they will. They suspect Barney killed your husband, and you helped him or told him to. Part of the reason is that you’re not being straight with them.”
The tears stopped. She pulled herself up straight, her chin jutting out, “Well, I won’t tell them, and you better not, either.” The fire was back.
“Not even to save you from jail?”
“Jail?” She was horrified. “They wouldn’t send me to jail.” Her eyes opened wide. “Would they?”
chapter nineteen
I called and arranged for Ntango to come by and take Betsy to her mother’s in Gerritsen Beach—the end of the earth in New York City cab-ride terms. I also had to ask him to put it on my tab, spending more money that I didn’t have.
Betsy’s latest admission didn’t just alter the landscape, it took a bulldozer to it. I already suspected she’d told Barney about her husband’s investigation, but this didn’t mean Barney killed him. What it meant was he had a reason to kill him. So did other people. Now Barney had a good reason to kill MacAlister, too—and while Eliot might have had a reason to kill MacAlister, I didn’t know of any reason for him to kill Tierney, Barney’s theory notwithstanding.
The phone woke me up the next morning not long after I’d gone back to bed after getting up to see Kevin off to school. It was Pete Kelly’s secretary. “Mr. Kelly would like to see you this morning at ten in his office,” she said in a tone that sounded like she was used to giving commands.
“What time is it now?”
“Nine A.M., hon.” Then, in a more confidential tone, “He wanted to meet you earlier, but I reminded him you were a bartender. He thinks everyone can start work at seven thirty like he does.”
“Thanks.” I meant it. Someone should sympathize with bartenders.
Before I left to meet Kelly, I called Peter Finch and laid Barney’s theory of a connection between MacAlister and Tierney on him, asking if he could do a cursory background check on MacAlister to see if Tierney somehow turned up. He grumbled but said he would.
I showered and took the train to Times Square. It was early enough for the car to be full of rush-hour straphangers. The only good thing about the rush-hour train is getting squashed up against one of the pretty office-worker girls. This morning, I was fortunate to get squashed between two of them so tightly that if I’d picked my feet up off the floor I would have been held up by the back end of one and the front of the other. It was a cold morning with everyone bundled up in thick coats, so there wasn’t anything indecent going on, just being squashed, and everyone smiled. Fortunately, one young woman got off at 59th Street and the other at Times Square, or I would have stayed on past my stop.
Kelly, as usual, was ready for me. His desk was clear, as it had been the last time. I wondered what he did all day. Nothing mundane, probably; he had hirelings for that. He was by himself, none of the goons around. Not that I was such a fearsome person that he needed them. I also wondered what they did. I could ask, it occurred to me; after all, my dues money paid their salaries—except for the extra bucks they might pick up shaking down bar owners.
“A guy I know wants to have a sit-down with you,” Kelly said, before I’d gotten all the way into his office.
“A what?”
Kelly grimaced. “Don’t be a smart-ass. This is an important guy; he’s talking to you on my say-so.” With his thick head and neck and sour expression, he looked like a bulldog about to bite. “Don’t think you don’t owe me.”
We went by cab the few blocks to a small Italian restaurant off Seventh Avenue in the garment district. Tucked in among the textile shops, it was a surprise—a well-worn gentility, white tablecloths, red rug, dim lights, candles on the tables, two waiters in tuxedos acting like foreign dignitaries. An elderly, gracious man with a thick Italian accent greeted Kelly as “Mr. Kelly,” paid little attention to me, and led us to a booth against the far wall, where another elderly, almost frail man in an expensive pinstriped suit sat drinking out of a small espresso cup. He didn’t stand up but greeted Kelly, who, to my surprise, kissed him on both cheeks. This wasn’t the usual greeting in the circles I traveled in. Kelly indicated I should sit down on the inside part of the booth across from the old man, not bothering to introduce me this time, either.
“So, Peter?”
Kelly nudged me. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, so I didn’t do anything.
The old man looked at me. He had those rheumy eyes old people get that are unpleasant to look at, and you wonder whether they can see out of them. He seemed content to wait until I thought of something.
“McNulty’s the bartender with that strike I told you about,” Kelly said. “He says he wasn’t involved in any of the other unfortunate events.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
I wondered if I was supposed to plead for my life. I was willing,
but this guy didn’t seem the type you impressed by pleading. I understood from Kelly’s careful choice of words that I should speak in euphemisms, too.
“I’m a bartender,” I began. “No big deal. I’m sorry about the unfortunate events, but I wasn’t involved.”
“You know who?” the old man asked.
“Sorry. I’d like to help you out. I don’t know.”
“The girl? The Irishman?”
The guy had done his homework. This was now a ticklish situation. Was I going to save my own ass by throwing Barney to the sharks? I had to answer quickly or the guy would know I was hiding something.
“Not them,” I said. “If you ask me, it was Tom Eliot, the business agent.” I told him Barney’s theory as if it were my own—and as if there were some reason to believe it was true. MacAlister was tapping the till and sharing with Eliot, I told him. MacAlister used Tierney as a private cop, a muscle to lean on Eliot until Eliot had enough of it.
“You know this?” The old man didn’t open his eyes any wider or show any other sign of interest. Kelly, on the other hand, showed a lot of interest, more like astonishment.
“I don’t know it for sure, but—”
The old man interrupted me. “You say but you don’t know?” He indicated by shifting his glance that he expected Kelly to take over.
“He don’t know shit,” Kelly said. “He’s got a bug up his ass about Eliot. I thought he knew something.”
Sipping his coffee, the old man took stock of me again. In repose like this, he seemed kindly. “You give me a problem,” he said. “Or someone give me a problem. You are a nice man, a gentleman. I don’t dislike you. You have a boy. I don’t want to give you trouble. But how can I believe you?”
So far so good, I told myself, without shaking the feeling this wasn’t going to end well.
He spread out his hands in front of him. “Peter, my good friend, says I should hear you out. But you don’t have anything to tell me.”
Fear began creeping up my back. “I’m telling you I didn’t kill anyone. I promise you that’s true.”
This time when he shrugged his shoulders he held his hands, palms up, out in front of him. “If not you, who?”
On the cab ride back to his office, Kelly was deep in thought. He didn’t say anything until we were out of the cab, standing on the sidewalk. It was cold, more for him in his suit jacket than for me in my pea coat, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“You gotta have some reason to think this Eliot thing.” This wasn’t a question, and it didn’t allow for the fact that I didn’t.
“It makes sense,” was what I said. “The dead cop was a muscle for MacAlister. Something went wrong, so Eliot got rid of them both.”
“What went wrong?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the strike stirred something up. They were gonna be found out, so they were willing to give each other up.”
Kelly was thinking again, putting more credence in the crap I was peddling than I did. “You gotta come up with somethin’ more than that. I’ll see what I can find out.” He looked at me steadily, and I didn’t know what to do: Shake his hand? Pat him on the back? Why had he become my guardian? No use asking him. He was heading back into the union building without even a “see you later.”
Since it was nearing lunchtime and I was in the neighborhood, more or less, I walked over to the hotel to check in with Downtown Sam. It was still too early for the lunch crowd; he was setting up the bar when I got there.
“What’s up, McNulty.”
Little did he know. I told him about my morning coffee klatsch and Barney’s theory about the murders.
Sam wasn’t impressed by Barney’s theory, but my conversation with the godfather made him sit up and take notice. I moped over the bar with a cup of coffee, watching him work. He was good, moving effortlessly, pouring juices without spilling, cutting fruit without a mess, nothing hurried, no wasted effort.
“So you think you can give him Eliot? Don’t look like that to me.”
“I don’t know what to do. You used to be a cop. Maybe you could catch the bad guy. Isn’t that what you used to do?”
“Damn right.” He flashed me the evil eye. “But what if it’s you?”
“Me?”
“How do I know it ain’t you? I ain’t begun to investigate yet.”
I must have looked worried, because he laughed, real enjoyment in the sound.
A man in a suit, who looked too young to be wearing one, walked into the lounge then, circled the bar, looked everything over, nodded to Sam, and walked away.
“New food and beverage manager?”
“Yeah,” said Sam dismissively.
“What’s he like?”
“An asshole,” said Sam. He paused. “Aren’t they all?”
I moped some more, ordered another coffee.
“Don’t be takin’ up space when lunch starts,” Sam said when he delivered it, joking and not joking. Not joking because the bar stool was money to him, joking because he knew I wouldn’t take up space and cost him money.
After another few minutes, Sam took pity and came over again. “Look, McNulty, you been a bartender long enough to know some things. You get me? You know when someone’s puttin’ you on. You know when someone’s for real. Like you know that cat you saw this mornin’ wasn’t puttin’ you on. You hear what I’m sayin’? He could put some hurtin’ on you. You gotta get that guy off your back, man.” He made a couple of drinks at the service bar for one of the dining room waitresses and came back. “Bartenders know how to listen. You know a lot of people; you know your way around; you gotta use that stuff. Be the invisible man.”
“The what?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “C’mon, man—”
“You could help.”
Sam gave a start. So did I. Asking for help wasn’t something I did very well. Still the words were out.
“Come in early for your shift,” he said. “Maybe we can do somethin’.”
A brief sense of well-being lifted me up for a moment. The idea that I had friends, that folks helped me out when I needed it, led me to think, at least for the moment, that something might be right with the world, after all.
Before I left the hotel, I stopped in the kitchen to see Francois. We hadn’t talked after the strike ended, and since he more or less started the whole commotion, I wanted to make sure he was okay with the outcome. What I found out instead was that Francois was a suspect.
“Idiots,” he said. “Where was I? What was I doing? Who can vouch for me?” He waved his arms, puffing like an old locomotive. “No one must vouch for Francois DeLouge. Fou! Cretins!”
“Did they ask about anyone else?”
Francois shook his head. “He asked about you, Sam, Barney. He asked about Betsy, about Betsy and MacAlister. Porc! A pig!”
“Did he ask about Eliot?”
Francois shook his head.
Since he didn’t seem busy in the kitchen—Francois never seemed busy; it was as if he blew a whistle and a dozen or so kitchen slaves started up and the place ran like a clock. Every once in a while, he’d storm into the kitchen from his office, berate the sous chef, rip a sauté pan out of his hand, dump the contents into the garbage can, harangue the entire kitchen crew in a loud and profane mixture of French, Spanish, and English that I doubt anyone understood, and then stomp back into his office. Occasionally, during one of these tirades, an offended cook would quit and walk out, so Francois would have to take over his station for the shift. Otherwise, everything returned to normal and everyone began churning along at the same breakneck speed as before the blow-up.
Since he didn’t seem busy, I asked him to come talk to the woman at the front desk who had told him about Mary Donohue’s visit to MacAlister. I wanted to find out who else she might have seen coming and going from MacAlister’s office, but I hesitated to go by myself. She was an assistant manager, for one thing. For another, she was a French woman, and I’m nervous around French women—especially pretty on
es. They seem so sophisticated and aloof that I’m intimidated.
Jeanne was working the desk—and she was busy, but she took enough time to answer my questions, with a good deal of thought and carefully chosen words. She tried to understand as I described, as best I could, various folks from Barney to Eliot to Kelly. Given the language barrier and my inability to come up with anything better than generic descriptions, we didn’t get far. She knew Barney but hadn’t seen him in the hotel during the strike. Eliot and Kelly were another story.
“If you were to have pictures,” she offered helpfully. She was pretty but, as I suspected, very serious, almost severe, dressed in a conservative pantsuit, her hair tied back in a bun. Maybe when she lets her hair down, I thought, while I smiled like an idiot at her.
Pictures, I thought. Plenty of pictures of Kelly in the union newspaper, on every page of every issue; there’d probably be pictures of Eliot, too, if I went through some back issues. I told Jeanne I’d get back to her by the end of her shift or tomorrow morning. A slight smile. Was that a come-hither look in her eyes? It was. She was signaling the next guest in line to step up to the desk.
“Sam the Hammer wants to see you,” Kevin told me when I got home.
“Where is he?”
“He said he’d be around, you’d find him.”
“What does he want to see me about?”
“He didn’t tell me.” Then, after a pause, offhandedly, “I made the team.”