Joe put a cigarette in his mouth. A cop named Lew Farber, of Homicide, held a match for him. Farber said, “It was a great night all around.” But Joe didn’t comment. He was thinking. “It was the first double-header we ever had in Kennedy’s precinct, far as I can remember,” Farber said.
Joe looked at him. “I don’t understand you, Lew.”
“You must know the guy, Joe. Freddie Gelb, a cheap thief. Used to run errands for Solly Druze an’ people like that. Well, years ago, when Solly was active, that is. You know ’im?”
Joe didn’t move. He couldn’t move. But the words came out: “I know him.”
“He got shot in bed in a boardin’ house, maybe an hour after Kennedy got it in the street.”
Joe tightened his hands to the point of pain. He succeeded in asking, “You figure maybe it was Solly, Lew?”
“Hell, no,” said Farber. “There’ll be a routine check, but Solly’s been sweet an’ orderly for seven years. Like a reformed dancer, Solly don’t even twitch.”
Joe stood up. “I want to see Needham.”
“We don’t see any connection between the two killings,” Farber continued. “Freddie was vicious, but small-time.”
“Excuse me,” Joe said. He went into the room where Needham had gone. “The Inspector here?”
“Gone, Joe. Hermie Shultz just drove him back downtown. There anything I can do?”
“Not exactly, Lieutenant. Not just now, anyhow.”
“You look weird, kid. You should do what Needham said. Bow out of this an’ do everyone a favor. Hear what I say?”
Joe nodded absently, then realized: they were inviting him out, without knowing it; they were cushioning the way.
At least let the family bury Kennedy, he began to petition himself. Don’t kick the ghost while the air is full of pain. The agony would fill New York. Later, or in a few days, go to Needham. Maybe, after all, it wasn’t Solly. And if it wasn’t Solly, who would have to know of the money that was sticking to Kennedy’s hands. Even if I’m kidding myself (and I know that I am), why must the family take the grimmest punishment?
“Something else, Joe?”
“Nothing else, Lieutenant,” he said.
He did the wrong thing then for what he hoped was a proper reason. He walked out of the station house.
Kennedy’s wake was in his own house, in the old tradition, with the furniture cleared from the big square parlor at the front of the house. There he lay, with his shield on his chest, in the uniform he had not worn for twenty years, except on those dress occasions of department ritual. His gold buttons gleamed and he looked very well, having been shot at a time when his health was high. His widow sat near. She was tearless, accepting the hands of hundreds who passed by. Sometimes she smiled a little foolishly, her gaze far gone. A relative, who had been watching her from the first bad hour, told Joe he was convinced that shock and grief had nudged her two-thirds off her trolley, poor woman. “But I think she will come around all right,” this relative said. It was the evening of the second day.
Joe said nothing. The flowers were sweet as arsenic and in their ceiling-high abundance they had sucked the life from the indoor air. Mary came over and stood next to him, their hands touching at their sides, unseen in the press of the parlor traffic.
“You all right?” Joe said.
“Warm, Joe. That’s all.”
There was sweat on her nose and a few loose hairs had gone astray. Absently, he blew at them, and she smiled. Then he touched the loose hairs with his hand and they were in place again. “Don’t ever leave me, Joe.” She whispered it, but with a fierceness that was not like Mary.
The people kept coming. The priest was there. The various societies arrived — a church sodality, his club. They entered and proceeded in single file. They paused a brief prayer’s length and then moved slowly past the window, past the standing members of the family. If you were a stranger, you could still identify the Kennedys, for they were bigger than the rest. The priest called Mary. “Excuse me,” she said to Joe.
In the kitchen you could get a cup of coffee or a spot of whiskey, depending on your need. Most of the cops and male relatives were there. One of Kennedy’s cousins stopped telling a joke when Joe came in. The deference was unmistakable. He was Kennedy’s boy, the adopted and chosen one. The role made him uncomfortable. The men stood around, smiling, but uneasy. Joe drew himself a cup of coffee from a big jug with a spigot that some fireman had provided. Joe knew how it was at a big man’s wake. After all, he had been to enough of them.
“Finish your joke,” he said to Kennedy’s cousin.
He walked out into the small yard. It was cool and the moon lit up the other small yards and the fire escapes of structures to the south. “Is that you, Joe?” somebody said. He turned around. It was Lew Farber, of Homicide.
“They were prayin’ inside,” Lew said. “I was a hundred per cent in tune with them but I didn’t know the words.”
They talked a while about nothing much. They had a smoke. Then Joe said, hoping it sounded casual, “When they found Kennedy, Lew, was there anything on him? Money, for instance?”
“A dollar forty cents, I think. George was a family man. You ought to know that. He never had any money.”
Joe took a last drag on his cigarette. “Anything else on him? After all, nobody talks to me. You’d think I was his mother and you were trying to spare me.”
“There was nothing on him, Joe. Just junk. You know the way he was. Busted pencils, paper clips, wood shavings.”
“Wood shavings?”
“From all that doodlin’ with wood at home. He had the sloppiest pockets I ever saw on a sane man. Didn’t he?”
“I won’t argue, Lew. Get any breaks at all?”
“Frankly, no. Lots of guys picked up, Joe. Lots of tries, but no cigar.”
“What about Solly Druze?”
Farber looked at him closely. “I remember you mentioned him the other day. Why Solly?”
“Just a notion. Kennedy gave him a bad time once.”
“Kennedy gave many a crook a bad time, then an’ now, till the day he died. Matter of fact, Solly did get called downtown for the usual shave an’ a haircut, like every hoodlum, plain or fancy, in the town. But Solly hasn’t been active. He don’t as much as spit on the subway any more.”
They went inside.
Yes, it can all dissolve and die, he thought, as far as I’m concerned. They will get Solly, if they’re able, but what happens to him is less important than a quiet grave for Kennedy and honor in his house.
It was morning now. The summer dawn had taken the city. The skinny birds in wretched backyards were awake. The family were all upstairs, the widow resting under sedatives. Only a sleepy-eyed mortician and Joe maintained the quiet vigil. Just a few more hours, and then, when it was 9 o’clock, they’d carry Kennedy into the church. Maybe then it would be over?
You lie very well to yourself, his conscience said. His conscience was the most persistent, articulate companion ever to sit beside him, or to walk, and if required, to race beside him when he sought to get away. It was a contest he could not expect to win. Any fair analysis informed him he had been wrong from the beginning when he accepted Needham’s kindness, not as an earned indulgence, but for a shield. He got up and walked into the kitchen. He ran cold water in the sink. He raised it in cupped hands to his face. The one thing he knew that should not prove difficult would be locating the unsuspected Solly Druze.
Solly was not in his bed or his apartment at 6 o’clock. This much the night clerk grudgingly conceded. Solly lived in Kennedy’s precinct, in a Broadway hotel, in the 70s. He was a twilight creature most of the time, and unless he went to the races, slept all day.