“Do you think we’re all right, George?” Vivian asked.
“It’s all very familiar,” he said. “I worked down here. On this street.”
“Why are we walking this way? It’s away from the concert.”
“We’re taking the long way around, Vivian,” Matt said. “We’ll stay away from cops till I get us a ride. Also Tremont needs a drink.”
“Now you talkin’ Bish. Get us a drink and clean my gun.”
“Where’s that place you say is open?”
“Hapsy’s on Bleecker, the bootlegger,” Tremont said, “near Trixie’s.”
“Trixie’s,” Matt said. “I know that house. Hapsy got a phone?”
“Cost you half a dollar.”
“I took a vow of poverty, but I got half a dollar.”
“Big Jimmy’s is just down there on Dongan,” George said. “He owes me money. Let’s go get him to buy us a drink.”
“Big Jim’s not around tonight, George,” Tremont said.
“Too bad. Gayety Theater was right over there, a burlesque house, but they had stage shows, minstrel shows. Big Jim got his start there in His Honor the Barber. I used to be a barber. I saw that show twice in nineteen-eleven. That’s where ‘Shine’ comes from. Jim went on the road with that show. The Hawkins girl was the star, Nigger Dick’s sister.”
“Don’t call him that, George,” Vivian said.
“That was his name,” George said.
“We shouldn’t use that word anymore,” Vivian said.
“What word?” George asked.
“Nigger,” Tremont said.
“No, we shouldn’t say that,” George said. “There’s other words to use. Like ‘Shine.’” And George sang:
“ ’Cause my hair is curly,
’cause my teeth are pearly. .”
“That old coon tune,” Tremont said.
“Just because
I always wear a smile. .”
“You’re singing that because you’re thinkin’ about Big Jimmy,” Tremont said.
“Big Jim sang that all the time,” George said, and he sang:
“Just because my color’s shady,
That’s the reason maybe,
Why they call me ‘Shine’. .”
“Nobody calls you ‘Shine,’ George,” Tremont said.
“You know that song, Tremont?”
“My daddy taught me. Why you like it so much?”
“It’s got a lot of pep. Everybody oughta love it.”
“You in a good mood, Georgie,” Tremont said. “Big Jim used to say you brought luck and sunshine when you come into the club.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s always wonderful down here,” George said.
“Wonderful?” Tremont said. “You talkin’ about Green Street, Georgie? This old street’s fallin’ apart, one of the lowest of the lowdown streets in this town. They’re boardin’ up houses, kickin’ people out, pretty soon won’t nobody be livin’ here.”
“I was on Green Street when I was young,” Vivian said. “I heard it had houses of prostitution.”
“That’s a positive fact,” said George, “but it didn’t spoil the neighborhood. Madge Burns had the best house, and Davenport’s was the most expensive. Big Bertha used to sit in her window and wave at you, French Emma’s was the cheapest, and the Creole house on Bleecker was very popular. Very popular.”
“You know all about it, George,” Vivian said. “Did you go to those places?”
“Thank God I never had any need of them. But I took their play when I was writing numbers. There were some wonderful girls in those houses, lovely girls, not that I had any need of them.”
“Those girls been down here forever, Miss Vivian,” Tremont said. “My daddy said they had about a thousand when he was young, even more during World War One. Everybody knew Green Street. People came here from all over. Always been a good business.”
“Still is, sort of,” Matt said. “There’s half a dozen houses right on Bleecker Street, busiest street down here. There — across the street, the one with the awning on the first-floor window — any house with an awning is doing business.”
“How do you know all this, Father?”
“Claudia gave me a tour. Better Streets was trying to get the prostitutes to move off her block so the kids wouldn’t have to grow up with all that, and Claudia asked me to help do it. But it’s tough to close those places down, and if you move them their customers can’t find them and you get a lot of rape. That’s the argument, anyway. The madams pay off the police and the politicians, so they’re well protected. I took a list of addresses up to the bishop’s office — twenty-two houses of prostitution — and I showed it to the chancellor. He said Patsy McCall, the political boss of Albany, would never let such places exist and that I made it all up because I was a Republican agitator.”
“He say that to you?” Tremont said, chuckling.
“I was never even a Democrat. Never belonged to anything organized, except the church, if you think that’s organized. I do my thing. That’s why they silenced me. I spoke to a few groups and I did criticize the Mayor in a couple of speeches. And that day you were poll watching, Tremont, my argument with those ward politicians got in the papers and the diocese didn’t like it. I got a big mouth, no doubt about it, and they told me to keep it shut and stay off Green Street.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“I didn’t plan tonight, Tremont. You and your gun got us down here.”
“My gun. Gotta clean it, can’t wait no more, right here quick, sing us a song, Georgie, won’t be a minute.”
They were on Bleecker, a few doors from Trixie’s and Hapsy’s. Tremont went into an alley between two three-story brick houses, both dark. Matt watched him open his sack and gun case, remove the AR-15’s magazine and put it in his coat pocket. He broke down the gun and with the soapy towels he scrubbed the stock, barrel, pistol grip, handguard, sling, and carrying handle, and then he held part of the gun with a towel and let it drip.
George took Vivian’s arm and said, “I remember now that we did go dancing out to Snyder’s Lake.”
“I’m so glad, George. I remember it very well.”
“You were good and honest and you never let anybody cut in,” he said.”You danced every dance.” Then he sang:
“I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down,
So the wind won’t blow them away,
For the best little girl in the wide wide world,
Is lying so ill today.
Her young life must go when the last leaves fall.
I’m fixing them fast so they’ll stay.
I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down,
So Nellie won’t go away.”
Vivian kissed George, which made him extremely happy. He felt like he’d hit the number. He had made the right moves. Was there anything more he should do? In the alley Tremont laid the cleansed AR-15 on the sack and scrubbed the gun case with a soapy towel. On the opposite side of Bleecker a white panel truck pulled up and parked. A white man and a black man got out and went up the stoop of a house with a first-floor awning. Vivian was holding George’s arms and giving him short kisses. Matt was urging Tremont to hurry up with the gun. Tremont opened the sack and nudged the scrubbed gun case halfway into it with his elbow. He was holding part of the gun with a paper towel when a woman screamed and came out of the house that had the awning, running down the steps with something in her right hand. The black man from the truck was behind her, and then the white man, who was holding his ear and yelling, “Get that bitch.” The black man closed on the woman who turned and lashed out at him with her right hand, without contact. She ran toward Green Street past the pilgrims who were watching from the other side of Bleecker.