William Kennedy - Legs

Milligan came back. "I called Cap Ronan, but no answer. Maybe he's out at the fire, too. Then I called Conlon again and told him the trouble here personally. He got the message." Milligan sat down and waited, though he was free to leave. But he would then miss how it all came out, miss the test of cop-to-cop influence. No police came. Sorry, Milligan.

I've since concluded Jack was right. They would have welcomed his assassination, were perhaps even aware one was impending. The police were called often about Jack during this period: Did Diamond get it yet?… He's going to get it tonight. I sensed then, my innocence on such matters at last thinning out, that Jack was not really an enemy of the police as much as he was an object of their envy. I can imagine a roomful of them talking about ways to annihilate his privilege.

Hubert announced from the door: "They put their headlights on. They're moving."

"Thank God," said the Floss.

"They're probably not going anyplace," Jack said. And he was right again. Within a few minutes they had parked facing the opposite direction, on The Parody side of the street now, still about fifty feet away.

"They just wanted to look in," Jack said.

The car movement prodded all of us except Jack into standing up and moving around. We turned our attention to each other, and finally, one by one, to Jack for the decision was his alone. Go or stay? Barricade or open season? Packy would probably resent, but maybe not resist a barricade fight. Damage would be minimal, apart from any death, but the legend would be immortal, a shrine of gold established in perpetuity.

Only Hubert lacked doubt about what he was to do. His pistol was already part of our little group because of the way he kept fingering it inside his coat pocket. Jack knew what he was doing when he hired Hubert.

"You have an extra pistol?" Jack asked Packy.

"How many? I got a collection."

"Two then, and shells."

Packy unlocked a closet beneath the back bar and brought out a pair of unmatched handguns, one an old Smith and Wesson.32 which I came to know well, its patent dating to 1877, an ugly little bone-handled, hammerless bellygun that was giving in to rust and had its serial number at the base of the butt filed away. No serious gunfighter would have given it room in the cellar. Packy had probably bartered it for beer. Useless, foolhardy, aggravating weapon. It had a broken mechanism behind the firing pin then and still has, but under ideal circumstances it would fire, and it still will. Ugly, deformed little death messenger, like a cobra on a crutch.

"This is insane," I finally said. "We sit here watching a man prepare for a gun battle, and we know damn well there are other ways to solve the problem. The whole world hasn't gone nuts. Why not call the state police?"

"Call the governor," Jack said. "He'll want to keep me healthy."

"Not a bad idea," I said.

"Call my relatives in Philadelphia," Jack said. "Call your own relatives. Call all your friends and tell them we've got an open house here, free booze. Build up a mob in fifteen minutes. "

"Another brilliant idea," I said.

"But what do I do tomorrow night'?" Jack said.

He loaded one of Packy's pistols while we thought about that one. Flossie decided she was not ready for fatalism.

"If you go upstairs, he'll never find you," she said.

"Where upstairs?"

"My upstairs. Where I go in a pinch."

"You got a place upstairs?"

"A place, yeah. But not really a place."

"He comes in here, don't you figure he'll look upstairs?"

"He'd never find my place, that's the whole point. If you're up there and we go, and the place is dark, he'd never find you in a thousand years. It ain't even in this same building."

"The Goose is thick, but thorough," Jack said. "I wouldn't trust him not to find it."

"Then let's go meet the Polack son of a bitch on the street," Hubert said. "Goddamn fucking sitting ducks here, the hell with it."

"None of this makes sense," I said. "Going, staying, not getting any help, not even trying to get any."

"One night at a time," Jack said. "You work it out slow. I know a lot of dead guys tried to solve a whole thing all at once when they weren't ready. And listen. It's also time you all cleared out."

'"I think I'll have another beer," I said, and I sat down at the end barstool farthest from the door. Milligan sat alongside me and said, "I'll have one for the road."

"I'll be closing up after one drink," Packy said, going behind the bar. "I'll put the lights out and leave. I'll get a cop down here if I have to drag him down with a towrope."

Jack shrugged.

"Upstairs then," he said to Flossie. "I guess that's the place."

"Follow me," she said.

"Is there a way back down except through here?"

"Two stairways," Packy said. "It's an old loft. They used to have a peanut butter factory up there."

"Jesus, a peanut butter factory?"

"It faces the other side, on Dongan Avenue, and there's no windows. Flossie is right. Nobody'd ever think we were connected to it. Just a quirk of these antique buildings.

They made connections you wouldn't believe in these old relics."

"Nothing'll happen if The Goose doesn't come in here," I said. "Isn't that right?"

"I don't think he'll come inside anyplace," Jack said, "and he don't want to hurt anybody but me. But he's a maniac, so how do you know anything he'll do? You all should wait for Flossie to come back down and then clear the hell out of here. Hubert and I can wait it out."

That seemed workable. But I said, "I'll keep you company," and Jack laughed and laughed. I didn't think it was that funny, but he said, "All right, let's move," and I took my bottle of beer and followed him and Hubert to the place where there was no longer any peanut butter.

Flossie led us up an unsafe staircase, through musty corridors, through a rough doorway in the brick wall of another building, and through still more corridors, all in darkness, each of us holding the hand of the other. When she finally lit a kerosene lamp, we were in the loft, a large empty space with a warped floor, a skylight with some of its panes broken and now an access route to a pigeon perch. The pigeons had created a pair of three-inch stalagmites with their droppings, rather brilliant aim, as I remember it. The room held only an old Army cot with an olive-drab blanket and a pillow without a pillowcase. A raw wooden box stood alongside the bed for use as a table, and a straight-back wooden chair stood alongside that. There was nothing else in the room except for the cobwebs, the dust, the rat leavings, and a plentiful scatter of peanut shells.

"You know, Jack," Flossie said, "I never use this place except in special emergencies that can't wait. I keep a sheet downstairs. I could go get it."

"Maybe another time, kid," Jack said, and squeezed her rump with his good hand.

"You haven't grabbed me in years, Jack."

"I'd love to think about getting back to that."

"Well, don't you neglect it. Oh, sweet Jesus, look at that."

She pointed to a wall behind Jack where an enormous rat, bigger than a jackrabbit I'd say, looked out at us, his eyes shining red in the light, white markings under his jaw. He was halfway out of a hole in the wall, about four feet from the floor. He looked like a picture on the wall. As the light reached him, we could see he was gray, brown, and white, the weirdest, handsomest rat I ever saw, and in the weirdest position. A bizarre exhibit, if stuffed, I thought.

"I never saw him up here before," Flossie said.

The rat watched us with brazen calm.

"He was here first tonight," Jack said, and he sat on the bed and took off his suit coat. Flossie put the lamp on the box table and told us, "I'll come back and let you know what's going on. I don't know if Delaney's going out, but I'm damn well staying."