Sweet Jesus, I never thought he’d come back and haunt you both with it, and that’s why I’m telling you this. Because when a good man dies, it’s reason to weep, and he died that day and we wept and he went away and buried himself and he’s dead now, dead and can’t be resurrected. So don’t hate him and don’t worry him, and try to understand that not everything that happens on this earth has a reason behind it that we can find in the prayer book. Not even the priests have answers for things like this. It’s a mystery we can’t solve any more than we can solve the meaning of the stars. Let the man be, for the love of the sweet infant Jesus, let the man be.
Billy stared at the woman next to him and smiled.
“What’s your name?”
“Helen.”
“Do you have any money, Helen?”
“There’s a few dollars left of what he had. We’ll get a room with that when he wakes up.”
Billy took out his money, fifty-seven dollars, and pressed it into Helen’s hand.
“Now you can get a room, or get as drunk as he is if you like. Tell him Billy was here to say hello.”
Billy tossed the newspaper on the table.
“And tell him he can read all about me and him both in the paper. This paper.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Billy.”
“Billy You’re the boy.”
“Boy, my ass. I’m a goddamn man-eating tiger.”
He stood up and parted Helen on the beret.
“Good night, Helen,” he said. “Have a good time.”
“God bless your generosity.”
“Generosity can go piss up a rainpipe,” Billy said, and he started to laugh. The laugh storm again. The coughing, the tears of mirth. He moved toward Spanish George’s door, laughing and telling the old bums who watched him: “Generosity can go piss up two rainpipes for all I give a good goddamn.”
He halted in the doorway.
“Anybody here like to disagree with me?”
“You fuck with me,” said the bum with the trimmed mustache, “I’ll cut your head off.”
“Now you’re talkin’,” Billy said. “Now you’re talkin’.”
Eighteen
Billy could go anywhere now, anywhere in town. He was broke. All the way broke.
He began to run, loping across a vacant lot, where a man was warming himself by a bonfire. It had grown chillier. No place for that fellow to go.
Billy could always get a buck. But where now?
He padded down Madison Avenue to Broadway, where the ramp to the Dunn bridge began. Tommy Kane’s garage, where George got his car fixed. He turned up Broadway, still running, putting distance between him and the drunken dead. He wasn’t even winded when he reached the Plaza and the D&H building. But he stopped running at Coulson’s and went inside for a later edition of the Times-Union. The front page was different, but the kidnapping news was the same. He turned to Martin’s column and read about himself. A gamester who accepts the rules and plays by them, but who also plays above them. Billy doesn’t care about money. A healthy man without need for artifice or mysticism.
What the hell was Martin talking about? Whose rules? And what the hell was that about money? How can anybody not care about money? Who gets along without it? Martin is half crazy, a spooky bird. What is that stuff about mysticism? I still believe in God. I still go to the front.
He folded the paper and went out and crossed State Street and walked north on Broadway past Van Heusen Charles, which always reminded him of the goddamn house on Colonie Street, where they bought their junk. And Cottrell and Leonard and the mannequins in the window. Two bums broke that window one night, drunked up on zodiac juice, everybody’s bar dregs, beer, whiskey, wine, that old Lumberg kept in a can and then bottled and sold to the John bums for six bucks a gallon. When the cops caught up with the bums, one of them was dead and the other was screwing the mannequin through a hole cut in its crotch.
Jimmy-Joe’s shoeshine stand. Jimmy-Joe told his customers he shined Al Smith’s shoes once, and Jack Dempsey’s. Everybody’s a sucker for big names. Bindy McCall. I kissed Bindy McCall’s foot. Suckers.
Broadway was slowing down at one o’clock, all the trains in except the Montreal Limited. Traffic down to nothing, shows all let out. Bill’s Magic Shop in darkness. Billy was sweating slightly and breathing heavily. Get the blood pounding and sober up. But he was still drunk as a stewbum, and reeling. Scuse me.
“Where the hell you walkin’?” said Mike the Wop coming out of Brockley’s.
“Hey, Mike.”
“That you, Billy?”
“Me.”
“Whataya know. You got yourself in trouble, I hear.”
“What do you hear?”
“That you got yourself in trouble and nobody’ll take your action.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“Didn’t sound that way.”
“Hey, Mike, you got a double sawbuck? I need coffee money and cab fare.”
“Double sawbuck?”
“Don’tcha think I’m good for it?”
“You’re a bad risk all of a sudden, Billy. You ain’t got a connection. You can’t even get a drink on this street.”
Mike pulled out his roll and crumpled a twenty and tossed it up in the air at Billy. Billy bobbled it and the bill fell to the sidewalk. He picked it up and said nothing. Mike grunted and walked up Broadway and into Becker’s. Billy walked toward Clinton Avenue, considering a western at the Grand Lunch. Martha’s across the street. Martha’s door opened, and Slopie Dodds came out wearing his leg. He saw Billy and crossed the street.
“Hey, man, how you makin’ it?”
“I’m coastin’, Slope.”
“You got a little grief, I hear.”
“Little bit.”
“How you fixed? You need anything?”
“I need a drink.”
“She don’t want you over there.”
“I know all about that. That ain’t the only place in town.”
“You ain’t mixed up in that snatch, Billy. That ain’t true.”
“It’s bullshit, Slope.”
“I knew it was.”
“Hey, man. You got a double sawbuck?”
“Sure, I got it. I got fifty if you need it.”
“All right, twenty-five. That’ll cover me.” And Slopie counted it out for Billy.
“Where’s your bootlegger?” Billy asked.
“Spencer Street. You want a whole bottle?”
“Yeah. Let me make a visit first and we’ll go up.”
“Fine with me. I’m done playin’.”