He and I sat in a booth at O’Meara’s and I plied him with cheap beers, which Katie’s hollow-eyed daughter dutifully delivered, while Harold told me, in bits and pieces, the sad story that had brought him to the Angles.
Hunkered over the beer, he seemed small, but he’d been of stature once, physically and otherwise. In a fahat was both withered and puffy, bloodshot powder-blue eyes peered from pouches, by turns rheumy and teary.
He had been a stock broker. When the Crash came, he chose to jump a freight rather than out a window, leaving behind a well-bred wife and two young daughters.
“I meant to go back,” Harold said, in a baritone voice whose dignity had been sandpapered away, leaving scratchiness and quaver behind. “For years, I did menial jobs…seasonal work, janitorial work, chopping firewood, shoveling walks, mowing grass…and I’d save. But the money never grew. I’d either get jackrolled or spend it on…”
He finished the sentence by grabbing the latest foamy mug of warm beer from Maggie O’Meara and guzzling it.
I listened to Harold’s sad story all afternoon and into the evening; he repeated himself a lot, and he signed three burial policies, one for $450, another for $750 and finally the jackpot, $1000. Death would probably be a merciful way out for the poor bastard, but even at this stage of his life, Harold Wilson deserved a better legacy than helping provide for Katie O’Meara’s retirement.
Late in the evening, he said, “Did go back, once…to Elmhurst…. Tha’s Chicago.”
“Yeah, I know, Harold.”
“Thomas Wolfe said, ‘Can’t go home again.’ Shouldn’t go home again’s more like it.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“No! No. It was Chrissmuss. Sad story, huh? Looked in the window. Didn’t expect to see ’em, my family; figured they’d lose the house.”
“But they didn’t? How’d they manage that?”
“Mary…that’s my wife…her family had some money. Must not’ve got hurt as bad as me in the Crash. Figure they musta bought the house for her.”
“I see.”
“Sure wasn’t her new husband. I recognized him; fella I went to high school with. A postman.”
“A mail carrier?”
“Yeah. ’Fore the Crash, Mary, she woulda looked down on a lowly civil servant like that…. But in Depression times, that’s a hell of a good job.”
“True enough.”
The eyes were distant and runny. “My girls was grown. College age. Blond and pretty, with boy friends, holdin’ hands…. The place hadn’t changed. Same furniture. Chrissmuss tree where we always put it, in the front window…. We’d move the couch out of the way and…anyway. Nothing different. Except in the middle of it, no me. A mailman took my place.”
For a moment I thought he said “male man.”
O’Meara’s closed at two a.m. I helped Maggie clean up, even though Katie hadn’t asked me to. Katie was upstairs, waiting for me in her bedroom. Frankly, I didn’t feel like doing my duty tonight, pleasant though it admittedly was. On the one hand, I was using Katie, banging this br I was undercover, and undercovers, to get the goods on, which made me a louse; and on the other hand, spending the day with her next victim, Harold Wilson, brought home what an enormous louse she was.
I was helping daughter Maggie put chairs on tables; she hadn’t said a word to me yet. She had her mother’s pretty green eyes and she might have been pretty herself if her scarecrow thin frame and narrow, hatchet face had a little meat on them.
The room was tidied when she said, “Nightcap?”
Surprised, I said, “Sure.”
“I got a pot of coffee on, if you’re sick of warm beer.”
The kitchen in back was small and neat and Maggie’s living quarters were back here, as well. She and her mother did not live together; in fact, they rarely spoke, other than Katie issuing commands.
I sat at a wooden table in the midst of the small cupboard-lined kitchen and sipped the coffee Maggie provided in a chipped cup. In her white waitress uniform, she looked like a wilted nurse.
“That suit you’re wearing,” she said.
Katie had given me clothes to wear; I was in a brown suit and a yellow-and-brown tie, nothing fancy but a step or two up from the threadbare duds “Bill O’Hara” had worn into O’Meara’s.
“What about ’em?”
“Those were my father’s.” Maggie sipped her coffee. “You’re about his size.”
I’d guessed as much. “I didn’t know. I don’t mean to be a scavenger, Miss O’Meara, but life can do that to you. The Angles ain’t high society.”
“You were talking to that man all afternoon.”
“Harold Wilson. Sure. Nice fella.”
“Ma’s signing up policies on him.”
“That’s right. You know about that, do you?”
“I know more than you know. If you knew what I knew, you wouldn’t be so eager to sleep with that cow.”
“Now, let’s not be disrespectful…”
“To you or the cow?…. Mr. O’Hara, you seem like a decent enough sort. Careful what you get yourself into. Remember how my papa died.”
“No one ever told me,” I lied.
“He got run down by a car. I think he got pushed.”
“Really? Who’d do a thing like that?”
The voice behind us said, “This is cozy.”
She was in the doorway, Katie, in a red Kimono with yellow flowers on it; you could’ve rigged out a sailboat with all that cloth.
“Mr. O’Hara helped me tidy up,” Maggie said coldly. No fear in her voice. “I offered him coffee.”
“Just don’t offer him anything else,” Katie snapped. The green eyes were har20;jade.
Maggie blushed, and rose, taking her empty cup and mine and depositing them awkwardly, clatteringly, in the sink.
In bed, Katie said, “Good job today with our investment, Bill.”
“Thanks.”
“Know what Harold Wilson’s worth, now?”
“No.”
“Ten thousand…. Poor sad soul. Terrible to see him suffering like that. Like it’s terrible for us to have to wait and wait, before we can leave all this behind.”
“What are you sayin’, love?”
“I’m sayin’, were somebody to put that poor man out of his misery, they’d be doin’ him a favor, is all I’m sayin’.”
“You’re probably right, at that. Poor bastard.”
“You know how cars’ll come up over the hill…25th Street, headin’ for the bridge? Movin’ quick through this here bad part of a town?”
“Yeah, what about ’em?”
“If someone were to shove some poor soul out in front of a car, just as it was coming up and over, there’d be no time for stoppin’.”
I pretended to digest that, then said, “That’d be murder, Katie.”
“Would it?”
“Still…You might be doin’ the poor bastard a favor, at that.”
“And make ourselves $10,000 richer.”
“…. You ever do this before, Katie?”
She pressed a hand to her generous bare bosom. “No! No. But I never had a man I could trust before.”
Late the next morning, I met with Eliot in a back booth at Mickey’s, a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall saloon a stone’s throw from City Hall. He was having a late breakfast-a bloody Mary-and I had coffee.
“How’d you get away from Kathleen O’Meara?” he wondered. He looked businesslike in his usual three-piece suit; I was wearing a blue number from the Frank O’Meara Collection.
“She sleeps till noon. I told her daughter I was taking a walk.”
“Long walk.”
“The taxi’ll be on my expense account. Eliot, I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. She sent the forms in and paid the premiums on Harold Wilson, and she’s talking murder all right, but if you want to catch her in the act, she’s plannin’ to wait at least a month before we give Harold a friendly push.”
“That’s a long time for you to stay undercover,” Eliot admitted, stirring his bloody Mary with its celery stalk. “But it’s in my budget.”
I sighed. “I never knew being a city employee could be so exhausting.”
“I take it you and Katie are friendly.”
“She’s a ride, all right. I’ve never been so disgusted with myself in my life.”