William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“I need a bankroll for Nick’s game tonight. If I hold on to this and I win I pay you off entirely.”

“And if you lose, I lose this.”

“You don’t lose. Billy pays his debts.”

“I mean this month.”

“All right, Martin, you need the cash, take it. I’m not arguing. I just work a little longer.”

“Keep the roll and maybe we’ll both get our dues paid. But I have a question. What do you hear about Charlie McCall, apart from what we both know about last night?”

“Jesus, this is my big Charlie McCall day. Why the hell does everybody think I know what Charlie’s up to?”

“Who’s everybody?”

“Nobody.”

“Some significant people in town obviously think you might be able to help find him, one way or another.”

“Find him? He ain’t lost.”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“I heard he got snatched, but I just found out upstairs that’s not straight. Daddy Big got it right from Bindy. Charlie’s in New York. All I heard was a rumor.”

“Your rumor was right.”

“They took him, then? That’s it?”

“Correct.”

“Daddy Big and his goatshit.”

“What goatshit?”

“Just goatshit. What about significant people?”

“Your name’s in the paper that comes out tonight, one of twelve names, all in a code in a classified ad, which is obviously a message to the kidnappers about go-betweens. Nobody said anything to you about this?”

“Nobody till now.”

“You weren’t on the original list. The ad came in about two this afternoon and I just found out your name was added about half an hour ago.” Martin told the ad story again, and Billy knew all the names. He signaled for a beer.

“I got a message for you,” Red Tom said when he brought Billy’s beer. “Your friend Angie was in today. She’s at the Kenmore.”

“She say anything?”

“She said she needs her back scratched.”

“That’s not what she wants scratched.”

“Well, you’re the expert on that,” said Red Tom, and he went down the bar.

Billy told Martin, “I don’t belong on that list. That’s either connected people or hoodlums. I pay off the ward leader, nickel and dime, and I vote the ticket, that’s my connection. And I never handled a gun in my life.”

“You classify Berman as a hoodlum?”

“Maybe not, but he sure ain’t no altar boy.”

“You know him pretty well?”

“Years, but we’re not that close.”

“You know everybody on Broadway and everybody knows you. Maybe that’s why you’re on the list.”

“No, I figured it out. Daddy Big got me on it. If it come in half an hour ago, that’s all it could be. Something I said about a plan to snatch Bindy last year. You know that rumor.”

“No. What was it?”

“Fuck, a rumor. I’m the only one heard it? What is this? It was all over the goddamn street. Tom, you heard that rumor about Bindy last year?”

“What rumor?”

“Around August. Saratoga season. Somebody was gonna snatch him. You heard it.”

“I never heard that. Who was gonna do it?”

“How the fuck do I know who was gonna do it?”

“It’s your rumor.”

“I heard a goddamn rumor, that’s all. I paid no attention, nothing ever happened. Now, because I heard a rumor last August, I’m on the McCalls’ shit list?”

“This is no shit list,” Martin said.

When Red Tom went to serve another customer, Billy said, “They think I’m in on it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Martin said, “but it does make you a pretty famous fellow tonight in our little community. A pretty famous fellow.”

“Know where I first heard about Charlie? From my Uncle Chick, who don’t even know how to butter bread right. How the hell did he hear about it? He asks me what I know about Charlie and all I know is last night at the alleys and then you and all your Charlie horses. You knew it then, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, my fucking noodle.”

“Maybe, your fucking noodle then.”

“I’m standing with Charlie horses and you know the guy’s glommed.”

“And that explains why I won?”

“Sure it explains why you won, you prick.”

“I didn’t win anything yet,” and Martin pushed the envelope toward Billy.

“Right. Poker time. Money first, Charlie later.”

“Morrie Berman’ll be in that game, right?”

“That’s what he said last night.”

“Look, pay attention to what he says. Anything. It’s liable to be very important.”

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“That’s an intriguing question we can take up some other time, but now let me tell you very seriously that everything is important. Everything Morrie says. We’ll talk about it later when things aren’t quite so public.”

“What are you, a cop?”

“No, I’m a friend of Charlie McCall’s.”

“Yeah.”

“And so are you.”

“Yeah.”

And Billy drank up and stood up. He and Martin moved toward the door, which opened to the pull of Daddy Big as they reached it, Daddy in his change apron and eyeshade, questing sweet blotto at eventide. Billy grabbed his shirtfront.

“You turned me in, you son of a bitch.”

“What’s got you, you gone nuts?”

“You told Bindy what I said about the snatch rumor.”

“I asked about it. Bindy asked me where I heard it.”

“And you finked on me, you fat weasel. And I don’t know anything worth a goddamn pigeon fart.”

“Then you got nothing to worry about.”

“I worry about weasels. I never took you for a weasel.”

“I don’t like you either. Stay out of upstairs.”

“I play tomorrow and you don’t shut me out and don’t try.”

“I shut out people who need to be shut.”

“Go easy, old man. There’s three things you can’t do in this world and all three of ’em are fight.”

Daddy Big broke Billy’s hold on his shirt and simultaneously, with a looping left out of nowhere, knocked him against the front door, which opened streetward. Billy fell on his back on Becker’s sidewalk, his fedora rolling into the gutter. Martin picked him up and then went for the hat.

“Not your day for judging talent,” Martin said.

Billy put on his hat, blotted his lip. “He hits like he plays pool,” he said.

“So, that’s new. Something you learned,” said Martin, brushing the dust off Billy’s suit coat.

Martin walked with Billy up Broadway toward Clinton Avenue, thinking first he would go to Nick’s cellar and watch the poker game but not play against his own money. Yet the notion of spectating at a poker game on such an evil day seemed almost evil in itself. His mind turned to thoughts of death: closing Scotty Streck’s left eye, Charlie Boy maybe with a bullet in the head, dumped in the woods somewhere.

And passing the United Traction Company building at the corner of Columbia Street he saw Francis Phelan, again cocking his arm, just there, across the street, again ready to throw his smooth stone; and he remembered the bleeding and dying scab, his head laid open, face down on the floor of the trolley, one arm hanging over the top step. The scab had driven the trolley down Broadway from the North Albany barns, and when it reached Columbia Street a mob was waiting. Francis and two other young men heaved a kerosene-soaked sheet, twisted and knotted into a loose rope, over the overhead trolley wire and lit it with matches. The trolley could not pass the flaming obstacle and halted. The militiamen raised their rifles to the ready, fearful that the hostile crowd would assault the car, as it had the day before, and beat the driver unconscious. Militiamen on horseback pushed the mob back from the tracks, and one soldier hit Fiddler Quain with a rifle butt as Fiddler lit the sheet. But even as this was taking the full attention of the military, even before thoughts of reversing the trolley could be translated into action, other men threw a second twisted sheet over the trolley wire to the rear of the car and lit it, trapping the trolley and its strike-breaking passengers between two pillars of flame.