Mullaney suddenly remembered something that caused the sweet aroma of money to flood once more into his nostrils. He suddenly remembered that O’Brien had sent someone else to get the suit of clothes from the other room, and he suddenly remembered who that someone had been. The man who kept offering the schnapps. The stonecutter or whatever the hell he was. He had very definitely gone into the other room to get the jacket and pants, leaving the shirt behind because he was certain it would not fit Mullaney. Was it not possible, then, that the stonecutter was the man with the shifty fingers, the man adept at cutting up The New York Times? The only trouble was that Mullaney didn’t know where he had been this morning, other than that it was on the edge of a cemetery. Wait a minute, he thought, wasn’t there a sign, didn’t I notice a sign, something that caused me to think of Feinstein’s funeral (it was so funny the way he died) no, the hearse in the backyard made me think of his funeral, an excellent hearse, that and the marble stones, in memory of, wait a minute, one of them had a name on it, now hold it what was the name on that stone, just a minute, the large black marble stone, and across the face of it, IN LOVING MEMORY OF...
Who?
In loving memory of all the pleasures I will no longer enjoy on this sweet green earth.
In...
loving...
memory...
Got it! he thought as it came to him in a terrifying rush, IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARTIN CALLAHAN, LOVING HUSBAND, FATHER, GRANDFATHER, 1896–1967, crazy! and hoped it wasn’t just a dummy stone left around the yard for prospective customers to examine for chiseling styles.
He found an open drugstore on Thirty-eighth Street and looked up the name Martin Callahan in the Manhattan telephone book, discovering that there were two such Callahans listed and thinking So far, so good, I’ve got twenty cents, and a phone call costs a dime, and there are only two Martin Callahans, so I can’t lose. He went into the phone booth and dialed the first Martin Callahan and waited while the phone rang on the other end. There was no answer. This was Friday night. If this was the quick Callahan, he might very well be out stepping. Mullaney hung up, retrieved his dime (which was one-half of his fortune) and dialed the second Martin Callahan.
“Hello?” a woman said.
“Hello,” he said, “my name is Andrew Mullaney. I was out at a cemetery this morning...”
“What?” the woman said.
“Yes, and happened to see your husband’s beautiful stone...” He paused.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Your husband was Martin Callahan, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he died last month, poor soul,” she said.
“Well, I’d like to get a stone just like his,” Mullaney said, “but I can’t remember where I saw it. Would you remember the name of the stonecutter?”
“Is this Phil?” the woman said.
“No, this is Andrew Mullaney.”
“Because I don’t think it’s a very funny joke, if this is you, Phil.”
“No, this isn’t Phil.”
“I thought you were coming here at ten o’clock,” the widow Callahan said.
“Well, you see, this isn’t Phil.”
“I got all ready for you,” she said, petulantly he thought.
“Would you remember the name of the stonecutter, ma’am?” he asked. “It’s really very important.”
“Are you sure this isn’t Phil?”
“Oh, I’m positive. Positive, ma’am. Andrew Mullaney, M-U-L–L...”
“Oh,” the woman said. She paused. “The stonecutter’s name is Roger McReady, and he’s of McReady’s Monument Works in Queens,” she said, and hung up.
“Thank you,” Mullaney said in retrospect, and hung up. Since he was very hungry, he spent his last dime on a Hershey bar, which he consumed in three bites. Then he went out into the street and began walking crosstown toward the Queensboro Bridge. He had no plan in mind. Vaguely, he assumed it would be best to keep on the move, but he figured he had at least a little time before Merilee found her way back to Kruger’s apartment on East Sixty-first. So he walked at a normal pace, ambling along and looking at the Lexington Avenue chippies and the Third Avenue fags and the Second Avenue winos, then cutting uptown and thinking all the while what a nice city New York was if only a person had some money to spend in it. Irene had never been a one to worry about money, couldn’t matter less to her whether he’d earned ten thousand a year (which he hadn’t) or twenty thousand (which he most certainly hadn’t). “The best things in life are free,” she was fond of chirping around the house while he wrote out checks for the mountain of bills that seemed to accumulate each month, “all the world loves a lover, and boy do I love you!” or words to that effect, all of it sounding to him like the jabberwocky of a happy schizophrenic. He would gnaw his pencils down to a nub and mutter to himself about freedom and realization, thinking of the several times he had been out to the racetrack and won, or thinking of the few five-and-ten-cent poker games he had busted, or thinking of the impromptu crap game in which he had won thirty-two dollars from his startled friends — break out, he had muttered to himself, break out, cut loose, be a gambler!
So here he was, big gambler, just having lost half a million dollars, but hot on the trail of it again. Or at least hot on the trail of the stonecutter who might or might not have a clue as to how all that newspaper had happened to get inside the jacket. The problem now was one of transportation. He paused at the approach to the bridge, saw a sign reading FOOTWALK TO WELFARE ISLAND, and remembered that it was possible to walk to the island, and then across it, and then onto another bridge that led to Queens. The idea of such a long walk did not appeal to him, but the only other choice he could think of was walking all the way up to 125th Street and then across the Triboro Bridge, which seemed even longer to him. So he went down the cobbled path below the arching roadway overhead, and paused at the steps leading to the walkway. There were several signs affixed to the stone wall there. One of them, in white letters on a red enameled field, read:
A sign alongside it, in black letters on a white field, read:
He was standing there reading the second sign when a police car pulled up behind him. There were two patrolmen in the car. The one sitting alongside the driver rolled down his window and said, “Can’t you read that sign?”
“What sign, officer?” Mullaney said.
“That sign right behind you there,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, pointing. “I guess he can’t read the sign, Freddie.”
Mullaney turned and read the sign again. He was neither a baby carriage, a bicycle, a dog, or a skater, so he couldn’t understand why the policemen had stopped, or why they were now questioning him.
“Well, I can read the sign,” he said, “but I don’t see...”
“The other sign,” Freddie said.
“Oh, I see,” Mullaney said, and turned to look at it again. “It says No Standing Any Time.”
“Oh, he sees,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, “it says No Standing Any Time.”
“Yeah, Lou, he sees,” Freddie said, both of them beginning to sound very much the way Henry and George had sounded, though these two didn’t look at all alike. “What are you doing here?”
“It was just...”
“Are you standing here?”
“Yes, but..”
“Does the sign say No Standing Any Time?”
“Yes, but that applies to auto—”