“What’s the big hurry?”
“Damn it, Mike, do I have to send you an engraved invitation when I want to talk to you? Get in here.”
“Okay,” Carmody said, glancing at the alarm clock. He intended to see Eddie as soon as possible, and then, if necessary, Karen. “I’ll be in at four o’clock,” he said. “That’s when my shift goes on.”
“I want to see you now, right away,” Wilson said.
“Okay, okay,” Carmody said. He wasn’t going in so there was no point in arguing about it. “How did that Wagner Hotel job turn out?”
“You struck gold, you lucky ape,” Wilson said in an easier voice. “It was the bellhop, Ernie. Seems he brought a bottle up and found both Degget and the girl out cold. He was going through Degget’s wallet when the girl woke and began to yell copper. He tried to talk her into a split, but she was too drunk to be sensible. Anyway, he got scared and shot her. He’s put it all down on paper, so that winds that one up.”
“The poor damn fool,” Carmody said. “Why did he shoot her? You’d think a bellhop, of all people, would be smart enough to keep away from the big rap.”
“He’s not smart,” Wilson said. “He’s been in and out of trouble since he was a kid.”
“This will be his last then,” Carmody said. “How about the girl?”
“We got in touch with her mother. She’s flying in to claim the body.”
“It’s a senseless mess all around,” Carmody said. He glanced at his watch. “Well, get my name right for the papers.”
“You’re all right when you work at it,” Wilson said. “I’ll see you pretty soon, eh?”
“Sure.” Carmody ordered his breakfast sent up, then showered, shaved and dressed. Eddie had worked twelve to eight and would still be asleep. Carmody decided to give him a few hours; he might be in a better mood if he had some rest. After coffee and orange juice he left his suite and drove across the city to the Midtown Club where he played three furious games of handball with a trainer. It was a punishing workout; the trainer had once been a semifinalist in the Nationals and he gave nothing away. Carmody was satisfied to win one of the three games and make a close fight of the other two. He baked out in the steam room afterwards and took an alcohol rub. Sitting in the dressing room later, a towel across his wide shoulders, he looked critically at himself in the mirror, noting the flat tight muscles of his stomach and the deep powerful arch of his chest. In good shape, he thought. The handball hadn’t even winded him. Carmody’s own strength and stamina had always surprised him slightly; his body simply ran on and on, meeting any demand he put on it, always more than equal to the occasion.
That’s one thing I owe the old man, he thought; the indestructible constitution.
It was twelve-thirty when he left the club. He stopped at the Bervoort for cold roast beef with salad, then drank a bottle of cold beer and lit his first cigarette of the day. Relaxed and at ease, he sat for a few minutes at the table, savoring the fragrant smoke and the clean, toned-up feeling of his body.
Now he was ready for Eddie. This time he was sure of himself, charged with hard confidence.
The day was superb, clear and bright with sun. Carmody put the top of the convertible down before starting for the Northeast. He took the Parkway Drive, following the shining bend of the river, and enjoying the clean feel of the wind and sun against his face. Turning off at Summitt Road, he wound into the Northeast, driving through quiet residential streets where children played on the lawns, with their mothers coming to the porches occasionally to see that they weren’t in trouble. This was Carmody’s background; he had lived in this neighborhood until he was twenty-seven, increasingly bored by the middle-class monotony of the people, increasingly annoyed by the sharp but worried eye the old man kept on him. Our break was inevitable, he thought, turning into Eddie’s block. We just split on the big things. But why couldn’t people be reasonable about these disagreements? The old man was a fool, not because of what he believed but because he was so blindly insistent that he was right. You could argue with him up to a point; but beyond that there was no sympathy or compromise. Well, it’s all over and done with now, Carmody thought, as he went up the wooden stairs of the old frame house and banged the old-fashioned brass knocker.
He waited, rapped again, then tried the door. It was open as usual. Carmody walked into the hallway, hung his hat automatically on the halltree and turned into the familiar shabby living room. Nothing much had changed in the seven years that he had been gone; the old man’s outsized leather chair stood with its back to the windows, his piano was still stacked with Irish songs and church music and the dark, shadowy copy of Rafael’s Madonna hung over the mantel, slightly crooked as always. The room was clean and he wondered if Eddie did the work himself. Very probably, he thought.
“Eddie?” he called. “You up yet?”
Eddie’s voice sounded from the basement. “Hey, who’s that?”
“Mike. Come on up.”
“I’ve got to wash my hands. Sit down and make yourself at home.”
Make yourself at home! Carmody glanced around with a wry little smile. There was no place in the world where that would be less possible. He couldn’t be comfortable here; he felt smaller and less certain of himself in the old man’s home. The memories of his father crowded around him, evoking all the past pain and friction. That was why he hadn’t come back even after the old man died; he hated the uncertainty and guilt this shabby, middle-class room could produce in him. But it wasn’t just the room, it was his father, Carmody knew. His feeling about the old man had started long before he had gone to work for Beaumonte, before he had learned that his job could be made to pay off like a rigged slot machine. It had begun with those arguments about right and wrong. To his father those words defined immutable categories of conduct, but to Carmody they were just words applied by men to suit their convenience. It was an emotional clash between a man of faith and a man of reason, in Carmody’s mind. His father was a big, gentle, good-natured person, who believed like a trusting baby in the fables of his childhood. Like Eddie, for that matter. But you couldn’t tell them different. It only hurt and angered them. Maybe that’s why I feel guilty, he thought. It’s the reaction to destroying anyone’s dream, even if you’re only showing up Santa Claus as the neighbor across the street with a pillow under his shirt and a dime-store beard on his chin.
Turning to the mantel, he picked up a dried-out baseball from a wooden saucer. He was remembering the game in which it had been used, as he tossed it up and down in his hand. The police department against the Phillies’ bench. A big charity blowout. Carmody had tripled home the winning run in the bottom of the tenth inning. This was the ball he hit off a pitcher who was good enough to win thirteen games in the majors that season. Eight years ago! He was working for Beaumonte then, taking the easy money casually and without much reflection; it seemed like just another tribute to his superior brains and strength. But he couldn’t fool his father about the source of the money. The old man saw the new convertible, the good clothes, the expensive vacations, and that was when the sharp, worried look had come into his eyes. The blowup came the night after the game in which Carmody had tripled home the winning run.
He had picked up a set of silverware by way of celebration, the kind they’d never been able to own, and when he walked in with it trouble had started. Carmody tossed the baseball up and down in his hand, frowning at his father’s piano. The old man had been singing something from the Mass the choir was doing the coming Sunday. It had got on Carmody’s nerves. He had said something about it as he unwrapped the silver, and that touched off their last row.