Lawrence Block - When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

"We can go now," I said.

"Go where?"

"Home.Back toManhattan."

"We don't have to go back, make a novena or something?"

"The church was some kind of Lutheran."

"And that means we can go toManhattan."

"Right."

He started the engine, pulled out from the curb. He reached out a hand and I gave him the bottle and he drank and handed it back to me.

He said, "I don't mean to pry, Detective Scudder, but-"

"But what was all that about?"

"Yeah."

"I feel silly mentioning it," I said. "It's somethingTillary told me a few days ago. I don't even know if it was true, but it was supposed to be a church inBensonhurst."

"A Catholic one."

"It would have to be," I said, and I told him the story Tommy had told me, of the two kids who'd burglarized a Mafia capo's mother's church, and what had supposedly been done to them in return.

Skip said, "Really? It really happened?"

"I don't know. Neither does Tommy. Stories get around."

"Hung on meat hooks and fucking skinned alive-"

"It might appeal toTutto. They call him Dom the Butcher. I think he's got interests in the wholesale meat industry."

"Jesus. If that was his church-"

"His mother's church."

"Whatever. Yougonna hang on to that bottle until the glass melts?"

"Sorry."

"If that was his church, or his mother's church, or whatever it was-"

"I wouldn't want him to know we were there tonight while it got shot up. Not that it's the same as burglarizing the premises, but he still might take it personally. Who knows how he'd react?"

"Jesus."

"But it was definitely a Protestant church and his mother would go to a Catholic one. Even if it was Catholic,there's probably four or five Catholic churches inBensonhurst. Maybe more, I don't know."

"Someday we'll have to count 'em." He drew on his cigarette, coughed,tossed it out the window. "Why would anybody do something like that?"

"You mean-"

"I mean hang two kids up and fucking skin 'em,that's what I mean. Why would somebody do that, two kids that all they did was stole some shit from a church?"

"I don't know," I said. "I know whyTutto probably thought he was doing it."

"Why?"

"To teach them a lesson."

He thought about this. "Well, I bet it worked," he said. "I bet those little fuckers never rob another church."

By the time we wereback home the pint of Teacher's was empty. I hadn't had much of it. Skip had kept chipping away at it, finally flipping it empty into the backseat. I guess he only threw them out the window on the other side of the river.

We hadn't talked much since our conversation about Dom the Butcher. The booze was working in him now, showing up a little in his driving. He ran a couple of lights and took a corner a little wildly, but we didn't hit anything or anybody. Nor did we get flagged down by a traffic cop. You just about had to run down a nun to get cited for a moving violation that year in the city ofNew York.

When we'd pulled up in front of Miss Kitty's he leaned forward and put his elbows on the steering wheel. "Well, the joint's still open," he said. "I got a guy working the bar tonight, he probably took as much off of us as the boys fromBensonhurst. Come on in, I want to put the books away."

In his office, I suggested he might want to put the ledger in the safe. He gave me a look and worked the combination dial. "Just overnight," he said. "Tomorrow all this shit goes down a couple different incinerators. No more honest books. All you do isleave yourself wide open."

He put the books in the safe and started to close the big door. I put a hand on his arm to stop him. "Maybe this should go in there," I said, and handed him the.45.

"Forgot about that," he said. "It doesn't go in the safe. Yougonna tell a holdup man, 'Please excuse me a minute, Iwanna get the gun from the safe, blow your head off'? We keep it behind the bar." He took it from me,then looked around for an inconspicuous way to carry it. There was a white paper bag on the desk, stained from the takeout coffee and sandwiches it had once held, and Skip put the gun in it.

"There," he said. He closed the safe, spun the dial,tugged the handle to make sure the lock had engaged. "Perfect," he said. "Now let me buy you a drink."

We went out front and he slipped behind the bar, pouring out two drinks of the same scotch we'd had in the car. "Maybe you wanted bourbon," he said. "I didn't think, didn't think when I bought the bottle, either."

"This is fine."

"You sure?"He movedoff, put the gun somewhere behind the bar. The bartender he had on that night came over and wanted a conference with him, and they walked off and spoke for a few minutes. Skip came back and finished his drink and said he wanted to put his car in the parking garage before somebody towed it, but he'd be back in a few minutes. Or I could come along for the ride.

"You go ahead," I told him. "I may go on home myself."

"Make it an early night?"

"Not the worst idea."

"No. Well, if you're gone when I get back I'll see you tomorrow."

I didn't go right home. I hit a few joints first. Not Armstrong's. I didn't want any conversation. I didn't want to get drunk, either. I'm not sure what I wanted.

I was leaving Polly's Cage when I saw a car that looked like Tommy's Buick cruising west on Fifty-seventh. I didn't get a good look at the person behind the wheel. I walked along after it, saw it pull into a parking space in the middle of the next block. By the time the driver got out and locked up, I was close enough to see it was Tommy. He was wearing a jacket and tie and carrying two packages.One, fan-shaped, looked to be flowers.

I watched him enter Carolyn's building.

For some reason I went and stood on the sidewalk across the street from her building. I picked out her window, or what I decided was her window. Her light was on. I stood there for quite a while, until the light went out.

I went to a pay phone, called 411. The Information operator reported to me that she did indeed have a listing for Carolyn Cheatham at the address I gave her, but that the number was unpublished. I called again, got a different operator, and went through the procedure a policeman uses to get an unlisted number. I got it and wrote it down in my notebook, on the same page with my witless little sketch of ears. They were, I thought, rather unremarkable ears. They would pass in a crowd.

I put a dime in the phone and dialed the number. It rang four or five times, and then she picked it up and said hello. I don't know what the hell else I expected. I didn't say anything, and she said hello a second time and broke the connection.

I felt tight across my upper back and in my shoulders. I wanted to go to some bucket of blood and get in a fight. I wanted to hit something.

Where had the anger come from? I wanted to go up there and pull him off of her and hit him in the face, but what the hell had he done? A few days ago I'd been angry with him for neglecting her. Now I was enraged because he wasn't.

Was I jealous?But why? I wasn't interested in her.

Crazy.

I went and looked at her window again. The light was still out. An ambulance fromRoosevelt sped downNinth Avenue, its siren wailing. Rock music blared on the radio of a car waiting for the light to change. Then the car sped away and the ambulance siren faded in the distance, and for a moment the city seemed utterly silent. Then the silence, too, was gone, as I became aware again of all the background noises that never completely disappear.

That song Keegan had played for me came into my mind. Not all of it. I couldn't get the tune right and I only remembered snatches of the lyrics.Something about a night of poetry and poses. Well, you could call it that. And knowing you're all alone when the sacredginmill closes.