Don Winslow: A Cool Breeze on the Underground

Neal knew he shouldn’t have answered the phone. Sometimes they just ring with that certain rotten jangle that can mean only bad news. He listened to it ring for a full thirty seconds before it stopped, and then he looked at his watch. Exactly thirty seconds later it rang again, and he knew he had to answer it. So he set his book down on the bed and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” he said sourly.

“Hello, son!” a cheerfully mocking voice answered.

“Dad, it’s been a long time.”

“Meet me.” It was an order.

Neal hung up the phone.

“What’s up?” Diane asked.

Neal pulled on his sneakers. “I have to go out. A friend of the family.”

“You have an exam in the morning,” she protested.

“I won’t be long.”

“It’s eleven o’clock at night!”

“Gotta go.”

She was puzzled. One of the few things Neal had ever told her about himself was that he’d never known his father.

Neal pulled on a black nylon windbreaker for the cool May night and hit the streets. Broadway was still busy this time of night. It was one reason he loved living on the Upper West Side. He was a New Yorker, born and bred, and for all of his twenty-three years had never lived anywhere but on the Upper West Side. He bought a Times at the newsstand on Seventy-ninth in case Graham was late, as he often was. He hadn’t seen or heard from Graham in eight months and he wondered what was so goddamn urgent that he had to meet him right away.

Whatever it is, he thought, please let it be in town. A quick trip down to the Village to pick up some kid and bring him back to Mama, or maybe a couple of quick sneaky snapshots of somebody’s old lady dining out with a saxophone player.

He and Graham always met at the Burger Joint. This had been Neal’s idea. For a hamburger lover, it was mecca. A narrow little place, jammed in on the first floor of the Hotel Belleclaire, it catered to everyone from junkies who had scraped together a few bucks to movie stars who had scraped together a lot of bucks. Nick made the best burgers in town, if not the civilized world, and it was a terrific place to pick up a fast meal and a tip about a ball game. The Yankees would be in it this summer for sure-the Pennant and Series, too, just for the Bicentennial.

Neal went in and waved at Stavros behind the counter, then took an empty booth in the corner. Sure enough, Graham wasn’t there yet, but Neal was early. He ordered a cheeseburger with Swiss cheese, fries, and an iced coffee. He settled into the Times and waited comfortably for things to happen. In his line of work, waiting well was an acquired talent and a necessity. Neal was a newspaper addict. He read the three major dailies religiously and absorbed the variety of weeklies that New York served up like a heavy dessert. Tonight it was the sports news that interested him, convinced as he was of the Yankees’ destiny.

He started right in when the food came. Although “Meet me” always meant in one half hour at the last designated spot, Neal knew that he could double the time and still be waiting on Graham. He figured that Graham did it on purpose to annoy him. So he did his best to cover his embarrassment when he looked up from his paper to see the smiling face of Joe Graham looking across the table at him. Neal was glad to see him, but he didn’t want to show that, either.

“You look like a bum,” Graham said.

So Graham wasn’t being followed or in any immediate trouble.

“Been working hard,” Neal answered. “How are you?”

“Ah.” He shrugged.

“So… what’s up?”

“You in a hurry? You mind if I eat? I see you waited for me.”

Graham signaled the waiter.

“I’ll have what he’s having on a clean plate.”

“Tell me this isn’t an all-nighter,” Neal said. “I have a test at eight-thirty in the morning.”

Graham chuckled. “You don’t know the half. Why do we always have to meet in this toilet?”

“I want you to feel at home.”

The waiter came with Graham’s food. Graham examined it carefully before pouring half a bottle of catsup all over it. He sipped at his coffee.

“When are you guys going to break down and make a fresh pot of coffee?”

“When you change your shorts,” the waiter answered happily, and walked away. He’d put in his time on Broadway.

Graham sat silently for a minute. Neal recognized the technique. Graham wanted him to ask the questions. Screw him, he thought. He hasn’t called me in eight months.

“You’re going out of town tomorrow,” Graham said finally, wiping a smear of catsup from his mouth.

“The hell I am.”

“To Providence. Rhode Island.”

“I know where it is. I’m not going, though.”

Graham smirked. “What? You got hurt feelings we haven’t called? Your rent gets paid, college kid,”

“How’s your hamburger?”

“Maybe they’d cook it next time. The Man wants to see you.”

“Levine?”

“Levine lives in Providence?”

“For all I see of Levine, he could be living in Afghanistan.”

“Let me tell you something. Levine would rather never see you again. Levine would like to see you pumping gas in Butte, Wyoming. I’m talking about The Man. At the bank. In Providence, Rhode Island.”

“Montana, and I have a test tomorrow”

“Not anymore.”

“I can’t screw around this semester, Graham.”

“Your professor understands. Turns out he’s a friend of the family.”

Graham was grinning at him. Graham was an evil leprechaun, Neal decided. A short, round-faced, middle-aged little harp with thinning hair, beady blue eyes, and the nastiest smile in the whole history of smiles.

“Whatever you say, Dad.”

“You’re a good son, son.”

Neal carey was eleven years old and broke. That wasn’t a big deal for most eleven-year-olds, but Neal was basically self-supporting, as his father had never put in an appearance and his mother had an expensive habit that more than ate up whatever money she brought home when she was capable of leaving the apartment. So when Neal snuck into Meg’s one slow summer afternoon, he was looking for a contribution. He was a skinny, dirty kid like a lot of others on the West Side. There was nothing unusual about Neal and he liked it that way. The ability to blend into a crowd is an important trait for a pickpocket.

There was nothing unusual about Meg’s, either. It was just another bar that served beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin and tonic to the remnants of the neighborhood’s Irish population. McKeegan, the bartender, felt he’d landed in a pretty soft bog when he’d married Meg.

“There is nothing more fortuitous than wedding an Irish broad with her own bar,” he was telling Graham that afternoon. “She’ll keep you in food, whiskey, and you know what, and all you have to do is stand behind the bar and make conversation with other drunks, no offense to yourself, you’ll be understanding.”

Graham also felt lucky. He had an afternoon to kill, he was making a living, and he was parked on a bar stool in front of a cold glass of beer. A child of Delancey Street knew things didn’t get much better.

Young Neal slid up and crouched under the bar next to Graham, listening to the sounds of the baseball game with which the man seemed involved. He waited until he heard the crack of a bat and the cheer of the crowd. Experience had taught him that men sitting in saloons lean forward when home runs are hit. Sure enough, this sucker did, and Neal placed his index and forefingers in a gentle pinch on the now-exposed top of the man’s wallet. When the man sat back again, the wallet popped into the kid’s hand as if it was saying, “Take me home.” Neal, who didn’t have a set at home, nevertheless thought that television was a wonderful thing.