John Connolly - The Lovers

In time, the subway came, and with it the middle classes, including Jews and Italians who were abandoning the Lower East Side for the comparatively wide open spaces of Brooklyn. Fred Trump, the Donald’s father, made his name by building the Shore Haven Apartments near the Belt Parkway, at five thousand units the largest private housing development in Brooklyn. Finally, the southern Italian immigrants arrived in force in the 1950s, and Bensonhurst became 80 percent Italian by blood, and 100 percent Italian by reputation.

I had visited Jimmy’s house on only a couple of occasions with my father, one of which was to pay our respects after Jimmy’s father died. All I could recall of that occasion was a wall of cops, some in uniform, some not, with red-eyed women passing around drinks and whispering memories of the departed. Shortly after, his mother had moved out to a place on Gerritsen Beach to be closer to her sister, who was ill and looking after her two grandchildren after their father was killed when his truck overturned somewhere near Nogales, and whose mother struggled with an alcohol addiction. Since then, Jimmy had always lived alone in Bensonhurst.

The exterior of the house was much as I remembered it, the yard tidy, the paintwork recently refreshed. I was reaching for the bell when the door opened, saving me the trouble of ringing, and there was Jimmy Gallagher, older and grayer but still recognizably the same big man who had crushed my hand in his grip so that I might earn the dollar that was on offer. His face was more florid now and, although he had clearly had some sun while he was away, a roseate tinge to his nose suggested that he was hitting the booze more often than was wise. Otherwise, he was in good shape. He wore a freshly pressed white shirt, open at the collar, and gray trousers with a razor pleat. His black shoes were buffed and polished. He looked like a chauffeur who was enjoying his final moments of leisure before ad B are beforeding the finishing touches to his uniform.

“Charlie,” he said. “It’s been a long time.” We shook hands and he grinned warmly, patting me on the shoulder with a meaty left paw. He was still four or five inches taller than me, and I instantly felt as if I was twelve years old again.

“Do I get a dollar now?” I asked as he released his grip.

“You’d only spend it on booze,” he said, inviting me inside. The hallway boasted a huge coatrack, and a grandmother clock that still appeared to be keeping perfect time. Its loud ticking probably echoed through the house. I wondered how Jimmy could sleep with the sound of it, but I supposed that he had been listening to it for so long he hardly noticed it anymore. A flight of carved mahogany stairs led up to the second floor, and to the right was the living room, furnished entirely with antiques. There were photographs on the mantel and on the walls, some of them featuring men in uniform. Among them I saw my father, but I did not ask Jimmy if I might look more closely at them. The wallpaper in the hallway was a red-and-white print that seemed new, but had a turn-of-the-century look that fit in with the rest of the decor.

There were two cups on the kitchen table, along with a plate of pastries, and a fresh pot of coffee was brewing. Jimmy poured the coffee, and we took seats at opposite ends of the small kitchen table.

“Have a pastry,” said Jimmy. “They’re from Villabate. Best in town.”

I broke one apart and tasted it. It was good.

“You know, your old man and I used to laugh about that booze you bought with the money I gave you. He’d never have told you, because your mother thought it was the end of the world when she found that bottle, but he saw that you were growing up, and he got a kick out of it. Mind you, he used to say that I’d put the idea in your head to begin with, but he could never be angry at anyone for long, and especially not you. You were his golden boy. He was a good man, God rest him. God rest them both.”

He nibbled thoughtfully at his pastry, and we were quiet for a time. Then Jimmy glanced at his watch. It wasn’t a casual gesture. He wanted me to see him do it, and a warning noise went off in my brain. I watched him, and I realized that Jimmy was uneasy. It wasn’t simply that the son of his old friend, a man who had killed two others and then himself, was sitting here in his kitchen clearly seeking to rake over the ashes of long-dead fires. There was more to it than that. Jimmy didn’t want me here at all. He wanted me gone, and the sooner the better.

“I got a thing,” he said, as he saw me take in the movement. “Some old friends getting together. You know how it is.”

“Any names I might recognize?”

“No, none. They’re all after your father’s time.” He leaned back in his seat. “So, this isn’t a casual call, is it, Charlie?”

“I have some questions,” I said. “About my father, and about what happened on the night those kids died.”

“Well, I can’t help you much with the killings. I wasn’t there. I didn’t even see your father that day.”

“No?”

“No, it was my birthday. I wasn’t working. I made a good collar for some grass and got my reward. Your old man was supposed to join me after his tour finished, the way he always did, but he never made it.” He twisted his cup in his hands, watching the patterns that resulted on the surface of the liquid. “I never celebrated my birthday the same way after that. Too many associations, all of them bad.”

I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “But your nephew was the one who came to the house that night.”

“Yeah, Francis. Your father called me at Cal ’s, told me that he was worried. He thought somebody might be trying to hurt you and your mother. He didn’t say why he believed that.”

Cal ’s was the cop bar that used to stand next door to the Ninth’s precinct house. It was gone now, like so much else from my father’s time.

“And you didn’t ask?”

Jimmy puffed out his cheeks. “I might have asked. Yeah, I’m sure I did. It was out of character for Will. He didn’t go jumping at shadows, and he didn’t have any enemies. I mean, there were guys he might have crossed, and he put some bad ones away, but we all did. That was business, not personal. They knew the difference back then. Most of them, anyway.”

“Do you remember what he said?”

“I think he told me just to trust him. He knew that Francis lived in Orangetown. He asked if maybe I could get him to look out for you and your mother, just until he had a chance to get back to the house. Everything happened pretty fast after that.”

“Where did my father call you from?”

“Jeez.” He appeared to be trying to remember. “I don’t know. Not the precinct, that’s for sure. There was noise in the background, so I guess he was using the phone at a bar. It was a long time ago. I don’t recall everything about it.”

I drank some coffee and spoke carefully. “But it wasn’t a typical night, Jimmy. People got killed, and then my father took his own life. Things like that, they’re hard to forget.”

I saw Jimmy tense, and I felt his hostility rise to the surface. He had been good with his fists, I knew; good, and quick to use them. He and my father balanced each other well. My father kept Jimmy in check, and he in turn honed an edge in my father that might otherwise have remained blunted.

“What is this, Charlie? You calling me a liar?”

What is it, Jimmy? What are you hiding?

“No,” I said. “I just don’t want you to keep anything from me because, say, you’re trying to spare my feelings.”

He relaxed a little. “Well, it was hard. I don’t like thinking about that time. He was my friend, the best of them.”

“I know that, Jimmy.”