“I know.”
“I wasn’t talking about you,” she said gravely. “I mean, if they succeed, what’s going to happen to all the little people?”
I didn’t say anything. Before she’d give her cooperation, Julie had to work it through according to her own scale of values, in her own terms.
She said thoughtfully, “I don’t think our present society is the best. I think there’s a hell of a lot wrong with it, but it’s something we can work with. If they have their way, they’ll smash it completely. Okay. So it gets smashed. Then what? Do the little people take over? No way! They’ll run it for their benefit and the hell with the little people. All the riots! All the people killed! The millions who’ll starve — just so they can take over! That’s Hitler and Stalin and Franco all over again!”
She turned serious eyes on me. She’d made her commitment. “Nick, how can I help you?”
“I want to know as much as you can tell me about Alexander Bradford. Somehow I get the feeling he’s the key to this whole thing.”
“What about the others?”
“I don’t think they’re in it. There’s just one man at the top. I think it’s him.”
“Bradford could be your man,” she admitted. “Alex always seemed to me to be a little different from the others.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “I can’t really put it into words. There’s something about him. Like he’s always standing back and watching you and kind of filing you away in his mind, like he’s got a computer there and everything you do or say gets punched into it. You know what I mean? Even though he’s my godfather, he gives me the creeps!”
“Can’t you be more specific?”
“He’s a loner. He’s secretive about what he does. God, Nick, even in that group of people who didn’t say much about what they were doing, Alex was the most secretive. I mean, he’s charming and all that, but it’s all on the surface. Underneath, he’s cold as ice. He never lets you know what he’s thinking. Like you can’t pin him down about anything he’s involved in. Know what I mean?”
I knew. Like me, all she had was a gut feeling and no facts, and that really shouldn’t be enough to go on. Certainly not if I had to justify it to Hawk. However, it was enough for me. If Julie’s gut feelings about Bradford matched mine, it added up to something.
I reached for my wristwatch.
“You going somewhere?” she asked, amused.
“I’ve got to meet a man,” I told her.
“At one-thirty in the morning?”
I nodded. “He’s waiting for me now in a bar in Fields Corner.”
“Hey, you’re serious!”
“Right. Only I have a problem. I need a shirt, slacks and shoes.”
Julie popped out of bed. “Stand up,” she said. I obliged her. She looked at my nude body with a measuring eye. “I’ll be right back,” she said and ducked out of the bedroom. Two minutes later she came in carrying a pair of men’s slacks, socks, shirt and shoes. She dumped them on the bed.
“There!” she said proudly. “I think they’ll fit close enough. Raymond’s about your size.”
“Raymond?”
“He’s one of my roommates.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
Julie shook her head disapprovingly at me. “Hey, where’ve you been? We just live together. All the colleges have coed dorms these days. Everybody lives with everybody else, but it doesn’t mean everybody’s screwing everybody! It’s the same with us. We tried — three girls together. Man, I’ll tell you, it’s a drag! So when Barbara left, we asked Raymond if he wanted to take her place. It’s better if there’s a man around. He comes in handy when there’s heavy work to be done. And we don’t get hassled as much by guys who take us out on a date and then try to make it when they bring us home. I don’t know if Raymond has eyes for Sheila or me, but his girl would kill him if he tried making a pass. She’s the jealous type.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get it.” I started dressing. The shirt and slacks fit well enough. The shoes could have been half a size smaller. They were really half-boots with long rawhide laces.
Julie looked me over when I was through dressing. “You’ll do. Now, how were you planning on getting across town to Fields Corner?”
“Subway or taxi.”
“I’ve got a Volks,” she offered. “I’ll drive you.”
I was going to say no, then I changed my mind. “Let’s go,” I said.
Grogan’s is the kind of bar that Jimmy Breslin likes to write about. Its patrons are blue-collar, working Irish. Some of them work for the city, some of them can’t find work, and some of them only work from time to time — at things the law frowns on. The place is paneled in mahogany gone dark from the years and the furniture wax rubbed into it by hand, and from the spillings of whiskey and beer and the countless wipings down with a wet cloth every few minutes. The strong smell of brew is in the air, ingrained in the wood of the booths and the tables and the floor. It’s a man’s place.
At that time of morning there weren’t many customers, so I spotted Reilly as soon as we walked in. He was sitting by himself in the middle booth along the righthand wall.
I turned to Julie, slipping my arm around her shoulders. “How about keeping the motor warm? I won’t be long.”
She glanced at Reilly, then back at me, and shrugged her slender shoulders. “Okay, but don’t forget about me.” She winked as she turned back to the door. “I’ll be keeping my motor warm, too!”
I gave Reilly a hopeful smile as I slid into the booth opposite him. “Do I owe you a bottle?”
His pugnacious face was more irate than usual. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than a bottle!” he growled. He turned his head so I got a full view of the side of his face. His left eye was completely closed. Blood had scabbed along a savage cut that ran from his temple down his cheekbone. The left side of his mouth was badly swollen.
“You want to tell me about that?” I asked.
“Try to stop me from the telling,” he replied. Reilly is third generation but he still has a touch of brogue. The Boston Irish hang onto it longer than their kinfolk anywhere else in the country. “Sweet Jesus, Nick! I knew I should never have gone along with you in the first place! Then I said to myself, what the hell, lookin’ through the morgue for information doesn’t seem like the most dangerous thing in the world, now does it? So I did. I spent the afternoon goin’ through all the old clips. To tell the truth, I was lookin’ forward to a cold glass of brew, it was so dry and dusty in there.”
“You found something,” I said. “Otherwise, that wouldn’t have happened.” I pointed to his cheek.
He shook his head. “I found nothing. Nothing, that is, except trouble on my way here.”
“When?”
“About ten o’clock. Four of them. Big ones, they were, too.”
“Hoods?”
He shook his head again. “You know better than that, Nick. There’s not a punk in town with connections who doesn’t know better than to leave me alone. No, my lad, these were a different breed. Too well dressed, for one thing. Not the right class, for another. There was something about them that tells me they don’t belong in this neighborhood. And they didn’t try to hold me up or anything. Just came right at me like they meant to finish me off. Didn’t say a word. One of them caught me a good lick with a blackjack. That’s how come I got this.” He pointed at his swollen, split cheek. “I was lucky. I got away from them and started shooting. I don’t think I hit any of them, but it was enough to throw a scare into them, so they took off running.”