Pete Hamill - Forever

“Is it somethin’ you’re lookin’ for?” the gawky one said, his rhythm Irish, but the words hardened by New York.

Cormac tensed. “Just walking home.”

“Is it far ye have to walk?” the short one said.

“Not far.”

He started to go around them and they moved with him, blocking his way.

Aw, shit.

“You must be carryin’ stuff that’s weighin’ ye down,” the short one said. “I mean, tryin’ to get home alive.”

“Like money,” the tall one said.

Where are you now that I need you, Bill? When you were young and tough?

“Listen to me carefully,” Cormac said, as if addressing children. “You will get out of my way right now. And if you don’t, you’ll be very, very sorry. Fair warning, all right?”

The two men looked at each other. Cormac saw himself doing what he’d done a few times before. Two punches. Fast and vicious. Like cutting with a sword. One left hand, one right. Each to the neck. The men gagging, reeling backward, panting for air, each strangling in pain and shock.

He didn’t have to do it. They stepped aside, and he walked between them, thinking: It must have been the tone of my voice. Or the way I stood with my feet apart, ready to punch. Or maybe it was their own woozy weakness. No matter. He walked on, thinking: The city fathers change the names of the streets. They bring water pumps to the thirsty. The preachers open mission schools to teach trades. Tough, hard, determined people move on, Uptown, to the West Side, to Brooklyn. There are always idiots left behind. And sometimes the idiots get rich for a while, and then disappear. Like Hughie Mulligan disappeared.

One night, after leaving the Five Points for the larger rooms on Leonard Street (driven there by Bill Tweed’s scorn), Cormac found a note under his door from Hughie Mulligan.

MEET ME AT THE PIER FOOT OF CANAL AND NORTH RIVER. THURSDAY NITE EIGHT O’CLOCK. NEED TO TALK TO YOU. HUGH M.

This was on a night in ’68, when Bill Tweed was in the fullness of his power, and Hugh Mulligan was the boss of the opposition Democrats who had failed to get that power themselves. Cormac studied the note. Then he went to Duane Street and showed it to Tweed.

“Go,” he said. “See what the treacherous fucker wants.”

“It might have nothing to do with you,” Cormac said, and told Tweed what he’d done to Mulligan years before in the front parlor of the house of the Countess de Chardon. Tweed laughed.

“Jesus, you’ve got some terrible history in you, Cormac,” he said.

“I was young.”

“But he must’ve seen you around the Sixth Ward,” Tweed said, alert to a possible ambush.

“He saw me all right, over the years,” Cormac said. “At events I covered. At rallies. A few times in the street. But I don’t think he made the connection.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Tweed said. “Hughie looks dumb and slow, but he’s got something dangerous inside that brain too. He’s like a cunning old warthog.”

Cormac laughed.

“The only way to find out is to go to see him,” he said.

He turned to go.

“Wait,” Tweed said, turning to a wall closet. “I’ll give you a gun.”

“I don’t want a gun.”

“Why, for Chrissakes?”

“I might use it,” Cormac said. “That’s why.”

Two nights later, he went to the pier at the end of Canal Street. Mulligan was alone, holding a lantern. Cormac looked into the darkness behind him but couldn’t see anyone else. Water sloshed at the timbers. Boats moved on the river. The air was thick with the threat of rain.

“Hello, Cormac,” Mulligan said.

“What do you want with me?”

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“I’ve got a job, Hughie,” Cormac said.

“I mean a job .”

There was a pause, the water sloshing louder, sails flapping in the darkness. Mulligan led the way farther out onto the pier, until the river was beneath them.

“Why me?”

“ ’Cause you’re a nobody. You got no wife. You got no kids. You make crappy paintings. You work on a newspaper and nobody ever fucking heard of you.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“But you’re a nobody that’s close to Bill Tweed.”

“Bill knows ten thousand people like me,” Cormac said. “He even remembers their names.”

“But nobody like you. Nobody that goes up to his apartment in the Broadway Central when everybody else is leavin’. Nobody that sits around laughin’ wit’ him. Nobody that plays the piano and gets him singin’.”

“You’ve been watching, all right.”

“For a long time, pallie.”

He laid the lantern on the planks at his feet and lit a cigar, turning to gaze at the river with its black glossy sheen. A few drops of rain started falling. Cormac thought: Jesus, he’s big. And his cheekbones look like walnuts now.

“What’s the job?”

“Kill Tweed.”

Cormac laughed.

“Why the laugh, pallie?”

“I was thinking about a philosopher I once met. He said there were three categories of belief. Plain old belief, disbelief, and beyond fucking belief. This is beyond fucking belief, Hughie.”

“We don’t think so.”

Cormac looked toward the dark stacks of packing cases at the land end of the pier. He still saw nobody.

“What’s the deal?”

Mulligan took a drag on the cigar and let the smoke drift from his mouth.

“A hundred thousand,” he said. “Half up front, half when the job is done. You’ll get a whole new identity. You’ll get a first-class passage from Boston to France. You’ll get a place to stay in Paris, where you can make your fucking paintings to your heart’s content. You could just vanish.”

“Why Paris? Why not Mexico or Russia or County Mayo?”

“Go wherever the fuck you want to go, pallie. I don’t care. Why are you breaking my stones?”

“Details, Hughie. It’s all in the details. For example, how do you propose I do this… job?”

“Up to you. You can shoot him. You can stab him. You can strangle him. You can poison him. We don’t give a fiddler’s fuck. As long as he’s dead.”

A lone bell ding-ding ed as a dark skiff moved downriver toward the harbor.

“A simple question, Hughie. Why do you want to kill Bill Tweed?”

Mulligan laughed.

“What kind of stupid question is that? He’s got the Ring.”

“And you want it.”

“Of course. He’s got the mayor, he’s got the controller, he’s got the aldermen, he’s got—”

“Wouldn’t you have to kill them all?”

“They’ll work with us if Tweed’s gone.” Mulligan paused. “There’s nobody else.”

“So the deal is simple. I kill Bill Tweed so you and your friends can get the swag.”

Mulligan shrugged. Why even discuss it?

“But Hughie, I’ll never get to spend the down payment. I’ll never get the rest of the money either, isn’t that right? I’ll never even make it to France. Because you couldn’t afford to have me around. If I’m alive, you’d have to pay me off forever. And you’d never do that. You’d kill the killer, isn’t that the way it’s usually done, Hughie?”

In the light of the lamp, Mulligan looked angry, his eyes sinking under his brows, his nostrils flaring. He wiped in an annoyed way at the falling rain.

“You put it that way, I might have to kill you now,” he said, “and get someone else for the job.”

“You’re welcome to try, Hughie.”

Mulligan stared at him, and then Cormac turned to go. Hughie grabbed his arm.

“I know you, pallie,” he said. “I know you from the whore-house. The one the countess ran. Where you made a fool of me.”

“It was a long time ago, Hughie.”

“And you never got what you deserved, pallie.”