I wanted to save Roger Brown, which meant locating, and maybe dislocating something on, Ambrose Thurman. But before I could do any of that I had to get through Oddfellows. I considered walking around the room, asking if anyone had seen the face on the fake business card. But I rejected that approach. A room full of half-drunk men who wouldn’t like you in the best of circumstances could easily ramp themselves up into a frenzy.
I decided that this was a dead end and that I should move on.
I had been in the pub for no more than three minutes.
Just as I was about to turn a tall and hale redhead stood up from a table in the corner. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and had the look of a kid who had just taken a dare. He smiled broadly and walked in my direction, so I put off my exit for one minute more.
“Hey,” the young man said, grinning and friendly. He was handsome like a fifties TV child star who had grown up losing nothing of the boyish charm that got him through.
“S’hap {izet gpenin’?” I replied, deciding to be who he thought I was.
“What you doin’ here?” he said, still showing teeth. It was almost as if there was no threat in the room at all. Almost.
“S’posed to meet a guy.”
“What guy?”
I took Ambrose Thurman’s card from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. His fingers were pale and thick. The nails had some dirt under them, which made me like the person he might have been.
He studied the photo and name.
“Know him?” I asked.
He handed the card back to me.
“What’s yer name?” was his reply.
“Bill. What’s yours?”
“Jonah.”
“Like with the whale?”
The kid smiled. We might have gotten along in other circumstances . . . on some far-flung planet. He glanced around, as if the eyes on us were about him.
“Maybe we should talk outside,” he suggested.
I nodded and turned toward the door.
“Out back,” he said. “Come on, this way.”
Jonah moved toward a short hallway at the far end of the bar. After a moment’s hesitation I followed.
Being a boxer, even just an amateur like me, can make a man reckless. I’ve stood in the ring, sparring with heavyweights, and held my own. But that was many years before, and there was more rust than iron in my joints of late. Still, I had the confidence of a man Jonah’s age.
When I caught up to him he was opening the back door. He went through first and I paused to make sure there was no one coming up behind us. As I passed the threshold Jonah sucker-punched me with a right hook that had some smarts to it. The blow sent me crashing into a herd of aluminum trash cans. I was down, but the only thing that hurt was my sense of smell. Garbage had been festering on that dark alley floor for decades.
Jonah was wearing serious motorcycle boots. I could see the steel-shod heel of one as he tried to stomp my face with it.
A good thing about being a boxer is that you have reason to be confident. My reflexes were twice what they should have been. I grabbed Jonah’s foot and rolled with it until he was down on the ground with me. Then I scrambled to my feet, slammed the back door shut, and wedged the edge of a metal trash can under the doorknob so that we wouldn’t be dis {oulmy turbed.
Jonah rose to his feet effortlessly and grinned. I could see then that he was one of those adorable sociopaths that can love you or kill you with the same friendly smile on his lips.
My mind was a calculating machine right then. There were ten men behind a flimsy wooden door who would most likely be on the kid’s side, and there was Jonah, who felt that he could make short shrift of me with three well-placed blows.
I wasn’t worried about Jonah. What had me sweating was the clock back in the bar. In three minutes guys would be banging on the door, in five they’d either break through or come around the outside.
The first rule in the streetfighter’s handbook is—when in doubt, attack.
I crouched down and moved forward, delivering a one-two combination to the kid’s middle. He threw a punch that landed on the side of my head but I was ready this time and paid him back in duplicate. I hit him in the gut again and he felt it. His hands came down and I was able to get in two uppercuts before he moved backwards. My short legs have always been strong, and even at my advanced age I had a spring in my left. I leaped and connected with a straight right, got my balance, and delivered two left jabs and then another right.
Jonah was bleeding pretty good from a rupture on his left cheekbone. He was breathing hard, and I was, too. I stood back to catch my breath, counting off the seconds in the back of my mind. Jonah took a staggery step forward and then fell face down into a puddle of glistening gray glop.
My legs were ready to run but I stopped long enough to turn the kid over. It would have probably been saving some innocent’s life to let Jonah die in that alley, but I had my new leaf to consider, and I was feeling some largesse after having won the test of arms.
Ê€„
15
I got way too much pleasure out of beating on Jonah. Running down the alleyway behind the bar, I felt giddy over my performance. I still had it. I was still in the game.
Still a fool, was more like it.
I was in my red SUV speeding away in less than the five minutes it would have taken for the Oddfellows to be after me. My knuckles hurt and I was breathing hard to work off the adrenaline that the fight set loose. When the blood pressure began to fall I became aware of the fact that I’d messed up the one clear chance I had of getting to Thurman. My contacts in the city and state police departments of Albany were pretty much useless at that juncture. One man had been murdered and another was missing. I couldn’t make my connection to them public record. The police had to be kept out until I knew more.
The summer sun was still in the sky at six. I made my way to the South End. That part of town looked a bit seedier but was more to my sensibilities. There were black and brown peoples in among the whites, and so nobody would single me out for special treatment.
On Standard I passed a glass-and-plaster hotel named Gray Wolf Inn. It was a modern structure hemmed in by older, nondescript buildings that were neither offices nor warehouses, commercial spaces nor living lofts. These buildings had once been factories where Americans worked to feed their families and pay their bills. My father had spent his life organizing unions in places like this. They broke his bones and sent him to jail more than once, but he kept on organizing. Now the factories were all shut down and the unions reduced to rusty old buttons and yellowing membership cards in forgotten trunks. My father was long gone, as were the vestiges of his blood and hard work.
Gray Wolf had a glass door that opened onto a short hallway ending at a gunmetal elevator. On the right was a clear plastic cage where there sat an emaciated and sallow-skinned white lad whose eyes had seen more years than he had actually lived.
The young man didn’t have a proper desk. He was seated on a swivel stool at a turquoise ledge that jutted from the ochre wall. When I cleared my throat he stood up and approached the plastic barricade that sealed him away from danger. I was thankful for the barrier, certain that if he got a whiff of the sour odor of garbage on my clothes he wouldn’t have given me a room.