A Long Line of Dead Men

We talked about that some, and then he said, "I guess I could take a ride uptown, see what the brothers and sisters know about my uncle Eldoniah. Thing is, folks just be talkin' different types of trash. Dude's on the street, all he'll tell you is how bad he is, like he dusted six cops and robbed the Bank of England. Same dude's in prison, it's always for something he didn't do."

"I know," I said. "The prisons are all overcrowded, and none of those guys ever did what they went away for."

"I'll go up to the Bronx, see if anybody knows anything. All this is four years ago, that what you said?"

"It's been almost that long since Cloonan was killed. The murder Mims was tried for came later on, and the trial was postponed a couple of times. He's only been working on his twenty for the past year and a half."

"Makes it a little easier," he said. "Least there's a chance somebody'll remember who he was."

I got the check. While I was leaving the tip he said, "I was just thinking. These dudes in the club? How it's suspicious that half of 'em's dead after thirty years. Is that right, thirty years?"

"More like thirty-two."

"Thirty-two years," he said. "You couldn't start a club like that on the Deuce. Never mind no thirty-two years. 'Fore you knew it, you wouldn't have nobody left to have a meeting with. The ones that wasn't dead themselves, they most likely be locked up for killin' the other ones." He took a black Raiders cap from the back pocket of his shorts, tucked his hair into it, checked his reflection in the mirror. He said, "Group of dudes I knew four, five years ago, half of 'em's dead. Didn't take thirty-two years, neither. Dyin' must be easy, when I think of all the dudes caught on real quick how to do it."

"Try to be a slow learner," I said.

"Oh, I tryin'," he said. "I doin' the best I can."

11

I treated myself to the afternoon, catching a movie on Twenty-third Street, then walking downtown to the Village. I passed the apartment building that had risen where Cunningham's had once stood, and the brownstone a block away where Carl Uhl had been murdered. I got down to Perry Street in time for the four o'clock meeting and stood in the rear with a cup of coffee from the pastry shop around the corner.

The speaker told what a friend alcohol had been, and how it had turned on him. "Toward the end," he said, "it just didn't work anymore. Nothing worked. Nothing relaxed me, not even seizures."

While I waited for a bus on Hudson Street, a florist's display caught my eye. I had them wrap a dozen Dutch iris, rode the bus to Fifty-fourth, and walked over to Elaine's shop.

"These are beautiful," she said. "What brought this on?"

"They were going to be diamonds," I said, "but the client got cheap about the bonus."

"What bonus?"

"For the picture we took at Wallbanger's."

"Oh, God," she said. "What a crazy evening that was. I wonder how many bars like that there are in the city, with grown men and women sticking themselves to the wall."

"I know one on Washington Street," I told her, "where they stick each other to the wall, but they don't use Velcro."

"What do they use, Krazy Glue?"

"Manacles, leg irons."

"Oh, I think I know the place you mean. But didn't they have to close?"

"They reopened again under another name."

"Is it boys only these days? Or is it still boys and girls?"

"Boys and girls. Why?"

"I don't know," she said. "One isn't obliged to participate, is one?"

"One doesn't even have to walk in the door."

"I mean you can just observe, right?"

"Why you ask, kemo sabe?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm interested."

"Oh?"

"Well, look how much fun we had at the Velcro Derby out in Queens. It might be even more of a hoot to watch people get kinky."

"Maybe."

"It would finally give me a chance to wear that leather outfit that I had no business buying."

"Ah, that's why you want to go," I said. "It's not sex at all, it's to make a fashion statement. You're right, though, it's the perfect costume for the well-dressed dominatrix. But what would I wear?"

"Knowing you, probably your gray glen-plaid suit. As a matter of fact you'd look really hot in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt."

"I don't own a black T-shirt."

"I'll get you one. I'd get you a black tanktop if I thought you'd wear it, but would you?"

"No."

"That's what I thought. Let me put these in water, and then I'll close up and you can walk me home. Unless the flowers were for the apartment?"

"No, I thought they'd look nice here."

"You're right, and I've even got an empty vase the right size. There, don't they look pretty? We'll stop at the Korean and pick up something for a salad, and I'll fix us some pasta and a salad and we'll eat at the kitchen table. How does that sound?"

I said it sounded fine.