Somewhere in the middle of the argument the old man had picked up the crate of silverware, walked to the door and had thrown it out into the street.
“And you can follow it, laddy me boy,” he’d yelled in his big formidable voice. “No thief is going to sleep in my house.”
That had done it. Carmody walked out and didn’t see the old man until his funeral, a year later.
He heard Eddie on the basement stairs and quickly put the baseball back in the little wooden saucer. Eddie came in wearing a white T shirt and faded army suntan slacks. A lock of his hair was plastered damply against his forehead and his big forearms were streaked with sweat and dust. “Well, this is a surprise,” he said, smiling slowly.
“You’re up early.”
“I had some work to do in the basement. How about a beer or something?”
“Sounds good.”
“Sure, one won’t hurt us,” Eddie said. He went to the kitchen and returned in a few moments with two uncapped, frosted bottles of beer. Handing one to Carmody he tilted the other to his mouth and took a long swallow.
“That hits the spot,” he said, shaking his head. “You working out this way today?”
“No, I’m here to see you,” Carmody said, and watched the little frown that came on Eddie’s face. “I told Ackerman and Beaumonte that you’d be sensible. They want to see you tonight at ten o’clock.”
“You had no right to do that,” Eddie said.
“Would you rather I sat back and let them blow your brains out?”
“Let me worry about that.” Eddie looked badgered and harassed; a mixture of sadness and anger was nakedly apparent in his eyes. “I hate having you mixed up with those creeps,” he said, almost shouting at Carmody. “I always have. You know that. But I don’t want any part of them. Can you get that?”
“You should be grateful I work for them,” Carmody said, holding onto his temper. “Do you think you’d get this break if you were some ordinary beat-tramping clown?”
“Grateful you work for them?” Eddie said slowly. “That’s almost funny, Mike. Listen to me now. I always thought you were a great guy. Next to the old man, I suppose, you were the biggest thing in my life. I carried your bat home from games, I hung around Fourteenth Street when you were on traffic, watching you blow the whistle and wave your arms as if it was the most important thing anyone in the world could do.”
“All kid brothers are that way,” Carmody said.
“Then you had the blowup with the old man,” Eddie went on, ignoring him. “I didn’t understand it, he never talked about it, but it damn near tore me in two. Then I found out about it a little later when I was a rookie in the old Twenty-seventh. The cop whose locker was next to mine was talking about a guy who’d got into trouble for clipping a drunken driver for ten bucks. And he wound up by saying, ‘Your brother’s got the right idea, kid. Take it big, or don’t take it at all.’ ” Eddie turned away and pounded a fist into his palm. “They had to pull me off him. I damn near killed him. Then I did some checking and you know where that led. I had to apologize to that cop, I had to say, ‘You were dead right, my brother’s a thief.’ ”
“You take things too seriously,” Carmody said. “You sound like a recording of the old man.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, hell no,” Carmody said angrily. “It’s great if you want to live in a dump like this and go through life being grateful to the gas company for a fifty-dollar-a-week job.”
“That’s all you saw, eh?” Eddie said in a soft, puzzled voice. “And you’re supposed to be smart. The old man enjoyed his food, he slept a solid eight hours every night and when he died grown men and women cried for him. None of them had memories of him that weren’t pretty good, one way or the other. They still miss him in the neighborhood. Those things are part of the picture, too, Mike, along with this dump as you call it, and the fifty-dollar-a-week job. But you never saw any of that, I suppose.”
“Let’s get off the old man,” Carmody said shortly.
“You brought him up. You always do. You’re still fighting him, if you want my guess.”
“Well, I don’t want your guesses,” Carmody said. He knew he was making no progress, and this baffled and angered him. Why couldn’t he sell this deal? Eddie stood up to facts as if they were knives Carmody was throwing at his father. That was why they came to the boiling point so quickly in any argument; in anything important the old man came between them. He was the symbol of their opposed values and Eddie was always fighting to defend him, fighting to prove the worth of what his brother had rejected. Carmody understood that now and he wondered bitterly how he could save him against those odds.
“Just listen to me calmly for a second,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “Go along with Ackerman and Beaumonte. Tell them you won’t identify Delaney. At the trial you can cross them and put the finger on him. They won’t dare touch you then, the heat will be too big. Is there anything wrong with that?”
“You don’t think so, obviously,” Eddie said. He looked mad and disgusted. “You don’t care about double-crossing them, eh?”
“I’m thinking about you,” Carmody said, angered by Eddie’s contempt. “Maybe I don’t look very noble, but that’s how the world is run.” He had the disturbing thought that their roles had somehow become reversed; Eddie was calm and sure of himself, while he was getting more worried by the minute.
“Let’s drop it,” Eddie said flatly. “You couldn’t change my mind in a million years. Now I’ve got to wash up. I’m meeting Father Ahearn at St. Pat’s in fifteen minutes.”
“More vespers?” Carmody asked sarcastically. He couldn’t quite believe he had failed.
“No, it’s a personal matter,” Eddie said. He hesitated, then said in an even, impersonal voice: “I want to talk to him about Karen. She’s not a Catholic and I’m going to find out where I stand.”
“You’ll marry her?”
“If she says the word.”
“You’re dumber than I thought,” Carmody said, in a hard, clipped voice. He knew he had taken a step that could never be retraced but he was too angry to care. “Look that merchandise over carefully before you buy it, kid.”
Eddie stared at him, swallowing hard. Then he said, “Get out, Mike. While you’re in one piece.”
“Ask her about Danny Nimo,” Carmody said coldly. “See what happens when you do, kid.”
“She told me about Nimo,” Eddie said quietly.
“I’ll bet she made a sweet bedtime story out of it,” Carmody said. But he was jarred; he’d been certain she wouldn’t tell him about Nimo.
“She simply told me about it,” Eddie said. “That’s all. What you make of it depends on how you look at things. Everything in the world is twisted and dirty to you because you’re always looking in a mirror.”
“She’s playing you for a fool,” Carmody snapped. His anger had stripped away all his judgment; nothing mattered to him but blasting Eddie’s ignorant trusting dream. “Ask her about me, about the scene we played last night. Maybe that will wake you up.”
Eddie walked toward him slowly, his big fists swinging at his sides. There were tears in his eyes and his square face had twisted with anguish. “Get out, get out of here!” he cried in a trembling voice. He stopped two feet from Carmody and threw a sweeping roundhouse blow at his head.
He can’t even fight, Carmody thought despairingly, as he stepped back and let the punch sail past him. Pushing Eddie away from him, he saw that he was crying, terribly and silently. Goddamn, he thought, as a savage anger ran through him, why doesn’t he pick up a chair and bust me wide open? Doesn’t he even know that much?