At Billy's I waved at Murray and he raised one eyebrow in return. Upstairs Billy hit the electronic lock and when I came in he was at the kitchen counter, starting coffee.
"I also h-have beer if it's not too early. Help yourself. I still have s-some work," he said, going back into his study. In his working room Billy had two computer systems, one almost always connected to local, state and federal government sites. The walls of the room were lined with law and reference books. He is a workaholic, a trait I did not envy.
I got a beer. It wasn't too early. I unscrewed the cap and walked out to the balcony through the already opened glass door. Billy's abuse of A.C., I believe, was a spiteful reaction to his years growing up on the broiling summer streets of North Philly. In the summer only Mustafa's Groceries had air conditioning through one rattling wall unit. You could go over to Blizzards Billiards on Fifth Street and take a chance at getting your ass kicked by whatever gang controlled that corner. But Billy had stayed home instead with a fan set up in his second-story staircase window and read.
I drank half the beer with two long, breathless swallows and the cold spread up into my cheekbones and made my eyes tear. Out on the horizon a soft string of bruised clouds was piling up. The late afternoon sun gave them color. The washed out shades of gray, purple and pink looked like a child's watercolor spread with too much moisture. I sat back on the chaise and thought about the first time I'd seen both my and Billy's mothers together.
My mother had been working at the First Methodist Church on Bainbridge and Fourth Street in the historic section. For her own reasons my mother had left her lifelong Catholic church in South Philly, and every Sunday she took an early bus ride to First Methodist. Since my father had never stepped foot in church since his confirmation, it was not a subject he cared about or controlled her with. At the church she would work the kitchen, setting up coffee and rolls and morning juices for the clergy and their assistants. Because it was a volunteer position and a 6:00 A.M. requirement, she was mostly alone. I had already joined the police department and had come with her to help before, but when we arrived this day there was a stout, black woman in the kitchen. She had on an apron and was setting out heavy white coffee mugs.
She greeted my mother by her first name and with a meaningful hug. When I was introduced she offered her hand and said, "Oh my, Ann-Marie-this can't be the boy you been talkin' bout. Why, this is a man!
"Son, you is twice the size of my boy Billy."
I looked at my mother. Her face was prideful and soft and more comfortable with this woman and their morning embrace than I had ever witnessed at home among blood relations. Their friendship would not have been easy in either of their respective neighborhoods, but it had a simple existence in this church basement. It was also a secret friendship that I admired because I knew my father would never have allowed it. That she had moved behind his back gave me a special appreciation for her.
In the weeks and months to follow I would see them several times in that kitchen, laughing together over a sink of dishes or huddled with their hands cupped over one another's at the long empty table.
One winter morning I had come to pick her up, and when I came down the steps the two of them were whispering to each other and didn't notice me. At first I thought they were praying, their hands again clasped together on the table.
But this time I saw a small bottle being passed, short and made of brown glass like an old apothecary bottle. And this time the tears had not been wiped away from my mother's face. When I looked at Mrs. Manchester's wet eyes she bent to my mother and whispered, "It's all right, baby. The Lord will forgive."
My mother refused to tell me why she had been crying. As far as I knew she had never let loose the demons in her life to anyone save a priest or her own version of God. She was quiet for the entire trip home but when I helped her out of the car and to the stoop, she turned to me and said, "You should go to Florida, Maxey. Mrs. Manchester's boy Billy is a lawyer down there. You should meet him. You could leave this behind." Then she spun with the back of her hand turned up to me, her sign of enough said, and stepped up into the house.
"M-Max?"
Billy was standing next to me. A glass of white wine was in one hand and a sweating bottle of beer in the other.
"You are absorbed."
"Thinking about old times," I said. "And mothers."
"Ahh," was his only response.
Billy and I had spent many nights on this porch, hashing out our mothers' scheme. When the pieces were put together, he'd understood his own mother's burden of complicity, and I had a clearer grasp on gratitude.
We both looked out at the ocean. Three miles out it was raining. I could see the dark curtain slurring down with thick bands falling in curls.
"To old times," Billy said, raising his wine. We touched bottle to glass but neither of us drank.
"Our investors are t-taking us on quite a ch-chase," Billy said, interrupting the thought.
Billy had been tracking the investors. He'd run their incorporation records back through the state's Bureau of Professional Regulations. He'd found three companies filed under fictitious-but not necessarily illegal-names. He'd finally found the names of corporate officers, but none of them had raised any red flags.
"Just incorporated b-businessmen. We can follow the t-trail of money that maybe p-puts McCane's middleman in direct contact with them. But it's still a hard case t-to make."
"Invisible," I said, more to myself than Billy.
"In m-many ways, yes."
"And if all our theories are correct. They still might not know what's going on with their money?"
"Oh, they know w-what's going on with their money," Billy said. "This kind always knows w-what's going on with their money."
18
I stayed in Billy's guest room, on clean sheets and in air conditioning. I had drunk too much, and the good old bad times kept swimming in my head. Once I woke up shivering and pulled a blanket up from the foot of the bed. I curled up like a child and fell back into an old and recurring dream of the night my father died.
I was working patrol on the B shift. It was 5:00 A.M. and my mother had probably sat as long as she could while the daylight crept in and pushed the dark out of their room. When she could see him lying there, she couldn't stand it any longer and called.
The sergeant got me on the radio and asked me to meet him at the roundhouse. I figured I'd screwed up again on some paperwork, until I saw his face in the dispatch room. My uncle Keith, another lifetime cop, was standing next to him.
"Let me drive ya home, kid," Keith said.
Eighth Street was slick with morning rain when we made the corner at Mifflin. Porch lights and street lamps were still reflecting on the sidewalks and the wet hood of the M.E.'s van double-parked in front of my parents' house. I still had my uniform on and the beat cop, who I only knew in passing, took off his hat. On the porch next door Mrs. O'Keefe stood with her fingers curled over her mouth.
I walked in the front door and past the stairs and down the narrow hall where I knew I would find my mother, sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in her flowered day dress, staring up at the east side window like she had done every morning since I could remember. Her hands were folded like a supplicant praying to daybreak.
"Mom?"
"Maxey?" she answered, turning from the light. I pulled a chair across the wooden floor and sat in front of her and took her hands in mine.
"You okay, Mom?"
"I'm fine, Max. Just fine now."