William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“What happened to your finger?” Billy asked. They were three abreast and he was beside his father.

“What finger?”

“The one that ain’t there.”

“Oh, that. Some wine bum went nuts and chopped it off. Tried to cut my feet off with a cleaver, but all he got was a piece of the finger.”

“Why’d he come after you?”

“He wanted my shoes. I had good-lookin’ shoes on and he didn’t have none.”

“What’d you do to him?”

“I think he went in the river. Somebody told me that.”

“When was all this?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Ten, twelve years ago. Colorado, I think. Or maybe Idaho.”

“You got around some.”

“Yowsah. Trains go everywhere.”

“Lunch is on me,” Billy said.

“Okay by me, Bill.”

Bill. That didn’t sound right to Billy. People who didn’t know him called him Bill. But that’s the way it is. He don’t know me at all. It then occurred to Billy that he’d known for a day and a half that his father was in town and that he’d made no effort to find him. No effort. None.

“I was never here,” Francis said when they walked into the bar of Lombardo’s restaurant. “How long’s it been here?”

“Must be twenty years,” Martin said. “You shouldn’t stay away so long.”

“Got great Italian roast beef, best in town,” Billy said.

“No beef, just soup,” Francis said.

They sat in a booth in the bar area, Martin seating himself first, Francis sliding in beside him. At the bar, three young men with black hair and pure white shirts were talking to the bartender. The bar mirror was spotless, and so were the white floor tiles. Only thing old man Lombardo don’t have in the joint is dirt. Billy, in his gray gabardine, new last month, and a fresh silk shirt, felt clean to the skin. His father looked dirtier now than he had on the street.

Francis told the chubby waitress the way to make the soup. Boil two garlic cloves in water for five minutes. That’s all? No salt, no oregano? No, nothing but the garlic, said Francis.

“You want something to drink?” the waitress asked.

“A double scotch,” Billy said.

“I’ll have a glass of port,” said Martin.

“In that case, muscatel, large,” said Francis.

Martin gave Francis the phone number of Marcus Gorman and explained why the best trial lawyer in town might take his case: because the McCalls, up against the wall from the Dewey attack, would be looking for scapegoats, and who’d care if a drifter and runaway husband took the fall? And Gorman would take any case that needled the McCalls, because they had dumped him as their candidate for Congress after a photo of him vacationing in Europe with Legs Diamond appeared in the local papers.

“The McCall people still owe me money,” Francis said. “I could pay the lawyer something. I only collected fifty of the hundred and five I got coming.”

“Hundred and five,” Billy said. “That ain’t a bad day’s work at the polls.”

“I didn’t work the whole day,” Francis said.

“I doubt they’ll pay you that,” Martin said. “They’ll be afraid of a setup now.”

“If they don’t, I’ll sing to the troopers and take some of them two-bit sonsabitches to jail with me.”

“So we both got our problems with the McCalls,” Billy said.

“What’s your problem?”

“Did you know Bindy’s son, Charlie, was snatched?”

“I heard that out in jail.”

“So Bindy and Patsy want me to shadow a guy they think might be mixed up in it. Spy on him, pump him, then tell them what he says.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“The guy’s a friend of mine.”

“Yeah, Bill, but don’t forget the McCalls got the power. You do a favor for a guy in power, chances are he’ll do you one back. That’s why I think they won’t do nothin’ to me after what I done for them.”

“I look at it different,” Billy said.

“Did anybody hit on you, or anything like that?”

“Not yet, but I’m waiting.”

The waitress brought the drinks and Francis drank half of his wine in one draught. He motioned to her for another and fished in his pocket for the white envelope. He took a crisp five dollar bill from it and put it on the table.

“Not a chance,” Billy said. “I told you this was on me.”

“You said lunch.”

“That’s everything.”

Francis held the fiver up. “The troopers found I had ten of these and they said, How come a bum like you has fifty bucks in new bills? They was old ones, I said. I just sent ’em out to the Chink’s to get ’em washed and ironed.” He laughed and showed his cavity.

“You didn’t ask about my mother,” Billy said.

“No, I didn’t. How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“Good.”

“You didn’t ask about my sister, either.”

“No. How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“I’m glad they’re all right.”

“You really don’t give a shit about them, or me either, do you?”

“Keep it cool now, Billy,” Martin said.

“I’m not anybody you know any more,” Francis said. “It ain’t personal. I always liked the family.”

“That’s why you left us?”

“I been leavin’ home ever since I was a kid. Martin knows some of that. And I woulda been long gone even before that if only they’da let me. I wanted to go west and work on the railroad but Ma always said the railroad killed my father. He was a boss gandy dancer, and an engine knocked him fifty feet. But what the hell, he couldn’ta been payin’ attention. Maybe he was gettin’ deef, I don’t know. You can’t blame the railroad if a man backs his ass into a steam engine. But Ma did and wouldn’t let me go.”

“Did you hate my mother?”

“Hate her? No. I liked her fine. She was a great girl. We had good times, good years. But I was one of them guys never shoulda got married. And after I dropped the kid, I knew nobody’d ever forgive me, that it was gonna be hell from then on. So I ran.”

“You dropped Gerald? I never knew that.”

“No?”

“No. Whataya mean dropped?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I told you I didn’t.”

“Somebody knew.”

“Peg never knew it, either. Nobody knows it.”

“Somebody knows it. Your mother knows it.”

“The hell she does.”

“She saw it happen.”

“She saw it? She never told none of us if she did.”

“Nobody?”

“Not even me and Peg, I’m telling you.”

“She musta told somebody. Her brother, or her screwball sisters.”

“They all talked about you and still do, but nobody ever mentioned that, and they don’t keep secrets.”

“That’s the goddamn truth.”

Francis drank the rest of his wine. When the waitress set a new glass in front of him, he immediately drank half of that and stared at the empty seat beside Billy.”

“She never told,” he said. “Imagine that.” He glugged more wine as tears came to his eyes. “She was a great girl. She was always a great girl.” Tears fell off his chin into the muscatel.

“Why don’t you come home and see her?” Billy said. “Whatever you did, she forgave you for it a long time ago.”

“I can’t,” Francis said and finished the wine. “You tell her I’ll come back some day when I can do something for her. And for your sister. And you, too.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Something. Maybe I’ll come by of a Sunday and bring a turkey.”

“Who the fuck wants a turkey?” Billy said.

“Yeah,” said Francis. “Who does?”

“Come on home and see them, even if you don’t stay. That’s something you can do. Never mind the turkey.”

“No, Bill, I can’t do that. You don’t understand that I can’t do it. Not now. Not yet.”