I wasn’t sure how I’d play it after that. By ear, probably. Maybe I’d catch up with him on his doorstep and see if he was rattled enough to spill anything. Maybe I’d wait and try to get into his apartment when he was out of it. First, though, I’d follow him and see where he went.
Except he didn’t go anywhere. He just stood there, lurking in his doorway even as I lurked in mine, drawing in his shoulders against the cold, bringing his hands to his mouth and blowing on them. It wasn’t all that cold, but then he didn’t have anything on over the shirt and the vest.
He lit a cigarette, smoked half of it, threw it away. It landed at the curb and sent up a little shower of sparks. As they were dying out, a car heading uptown on Tenth made a right and pulled up in front of Grogan’s, blocking my view of Neil. It was a Cadillac, a long one, silver. The glass was tinted all around and I couldn’t see who was driving, or how many people it held.
For a minute I expected gunshots. I thought I’d hear them, and then the car would pull away fast, and I’d see Neil clutching his middle and sinking to the pavement. But nothing like that happened. He trotted over to the car. The passenger door opened. He got in, closed the door.
The Cadillac pulled away, leaving me there.
15
I thought I heard the phone while I was in the shower. It was ringing when I got out. I wrapped a towel around my middle and went to answer it.
“Scudder? Mick Ballou. Did I wake you, man?”
“I was already up.”
“Good man. It’s early, but I have to see you. Say ten minutes? In front of your hotel?”
“Better make it twenty.”
“Sooner if you can,” he said. “We don’t want to be late.”
Late for what? I shaved quickly, put on a suit. I’d spent a restless night, dream-ridden, my dreams full of doorway stakeouts and drive-by shootings. Now it was seven-thirty in the morning and I had a date with the Butcher. Why? For what?
I tied my tie, grabbed up my keys and wallet. There was nobody waiting for me in the lobby. I went outside and saw the car at the curb, parked next to a hydrant directly in front of the hotel. The big silver Cadillac. Tinted glass all around, but I could see him behind the wheel now because he had lowered the window on the passenger side and was leaning halfway across the front seat, motioning me over.
I crossed the pavement, opened the door. He was wearing a white butcher’s apron that covered him from the neck down. There were rust-colored stains on the white cotton, some of them vivid, some of them bleached and faded. I found myself wondering at the wisdom of getting into a car with a man so dressed, but there was nothing in his manner to lead me to fear that I was going to be taken for that sort of ride. His hand was out and I shook it, then got in and drew the door shut.
He pulled away from the curb, drove to the corner of Ninth and waited for the light. He asked again if he’d awakened me and I said he hadn’t. “Your man at the desk said you weren’t answering,” he said, “but I made him ring again.”
“I was in the shower.”
“But you had a night’s sleep?”
“A few hours.”
“I never got to bed,” he said. The light turned and he made a fast left in front of oncoming traffic, then had to stop for the light at Fifty-sixth. He had touched a button to raise my windshield, and I looked through tinted glass at the morning. It was an overcast day, with the threat of rain in the air, and through the dark window the sky looked ominous.
I asked where we were going.
“The butchers’ mass,” he said.
I though of some weird heretical rite, men in bloody aprons brandishing cleavers, a lamb sacrificed.
“At St. Bernard’s. You know it?”
“Fourteenth Street?”
He nodded. “They have daily mass at seven in the main sanctuary. And then there’s another mass at eight in a small room off to the left, and there’s only a handful ever to come to it. My father went every morning before work. Sometimes he’d take me with him. He was a butcher, he worked in the markets down there. This was his apron.”
The light turned and we cruised down the avenue. The lights were timed, and when one was out of sync he slowed, looked left and right, and sailed on through it. We caught a light we couldn’t run at one of the approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel, then made them all clear to Fourteenth Street, where he hung a left turn. St. Bernard’s was a third of the way down the block on the downtown side of the street. He pulled up just short of it and parked in front of a storefront funeral parlor. Signs at the curb prohibited parking during business hours.
We got out of the car and Ballou waved at someone inside the funeral parlor. Twomey & Sons, the sign said, and I suppose it was Twomey or one of his sons who waved back. I kept pace with Ballou, up the steps and through the main doors of the church.
He led me down a side aisle and into a small room on the left, where perhaps a dozen worshipers occupied three rows of folding chairs. He took a seat in the last row and motioned for me to sit next to him.
Another half-dozen people found their way into the room during the next few minutes. There were several elderly nuns in the group, a couple of older women, two men in business suits and one in olive work clothes, and four men beside Ballou in butchers’ aprons.
At eight the priest entered. He looked Filipino, and his English was lightly accented. Ballou opened a book for me and showed me how to follow the service. I stood when the others stood, sat when they sat, knelt when they knelt. There was a reading from Isaiah, another from Luke.
When they gave out communion, I stayed where I was. So did Ballou. Everyone else took the wafer, except for a nun and one of the butchers.
The whole thing didn’t take all that long. When it was over Ballou strode from the room and on out of the church, and I tagged along in his wake.
On the street he lit a cigarette and said, “My father went every morning before work.”
“So you said.”
“It was in Latin then. They took the mystery out when they put it in English. He went every morning. I wonder what he got out of it.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t go that often. Maybe ten or twenty times in a year. I’ll go three days in a row and then I’ll stay away for a month or two.” He took another drag on his cigarette and threw the butt into the street. “I don’t go to confession, I don’t take communion, I don’t pray. Do you believe in God?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes. Good enough.” He took my arm. “Come on,” he said. “The car’s all right where it is. Twomey won’t let them tow it or ticket it. He knows me, and he knows the car.”
“I know it, too.”
“How’s that?”
“I saw it last night. I copied the plate number, I was going to run it through Motor Vehicles today. Now I won’t have to.”
“You wouldn’t have learned much,” he said. “I’m not the owner. There’s another name on the registration.”
“There’s another name on the license at Grogan’s.”
“There is. Where did you see the car?”
“On Fiftieth Street a little after one. Neil Tillman got into it and you drove away.”
“Where were you?”
“Across the street.”
“Keeping an eye out?”
“That’s right.”
We were walking west on Fourteenth. We crossed Hudson and Greenwich and I asked where we were going. “I was up all night,” he said. “I need a drink. After a butchers’ mass where would you go but a butchers’ bar?” He looked over at me, and something glinted in his green eyes. “You’ll likely be the only man there in a suit. Salesmen come in there, but not this early. But you’ll be all right. Meatcutters are a broadminded lot. Nobody’ll hold it against you.”