A Long Line of Dead Men

"And he broke out laughing. He was sprawled on the floor with blood running out of his mouth and I was about to break a chair over his head, and he was laughing. I had never heard the man laugh before, and as far as I know he never laughed again, but he laughed that day. It saved his fucking life, and saved me from as black a sin as a man can commit. I put the chair down and took his hand and drew him to his feet, and he clapped me on the back and walked off without a word. And never hit me again.

"A year later I was living in a place of my own, collecting on the waterfront for a couple of Italians and stealing whatever I could. And a year after that he was dead."

"How did he die?"

"A blood vessel in the brain. It was very sudden, no warning. He was almost twenty years older than my mother, and older when he died than I am now. The man was forty-five years old when I was born, so he'd have been what, sixty-two when he died? He was working when it happened. He'd been to mass that morning, so I suppose he died in a state of grace. I don't know if that truly makes a difference. I know he died with a cleaver in his hand, and wearing a bloody apron. I kept them both, you know, the cleaver and the apron. I wear the apron when I go to mass. And there have been times I've found a use for the cleaver."

"I know."

"Indeed you do. He went to mass every morning, and I don't know why he went or what he thought it did for him. I don't know why I go, either, or what I think it does for me." He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Your mother's not alive still, is she?"

"No, she died years ago."

"So did mine. It was cancer killed her, but I always thought it was Dennis's dying that brought it on. She was never the same after she got the telegram." He looked at me. "We're orphans, the two of us," he said, and waved a hand at the windows, with the storm," he said, and took a drink.

"The other day," I said, "a lawyer I know told me that man is the only animal that knows he'll die someday. And he's also the only animal that drinks."

"It's an unusual thing for a lawyer to say."

"He's an unusual lawyer. But do you think there's a connection?"

"I know there is," he said.

I don't know how we got around to women. He didn't seem to need them as much now, he said, and wasn't sure whether it was the years or the drink that deserved credit for the change.

"Well, I stopped drinking," I reminded him.

"By God, so you did. And now no woman's safe from Inwood to the Battery."

"Oh, they're safe," I said.

"Are you still seeing the other one?"

"Now and then."

"And does herself know about it?"

"I don't think so," I said, "although she gave me a turn the other day. I was trying to get hold of the woman whose husband was stabbed to death in Forest Hills in February. I mentioned to Elaine that I was going to have to go out there and see her. A moment later she told me to enjoy myself with the widow, and I read more into the remark than she'd put in it. I guess I looked startled, but I managed to cover it."

That reminded him of a story, and he told it, and the conversation meandered like an old river. Then a little later he said, "The widow in Forest Hills. Why ever would you go to see her?"

"To find out if she knew anything."

"What could she know?"

"She might have seen something. Her husband might have said something to her." I told him some of the questions I'd ask, a few of the points I'd try to cover.

"Is that how you do your detecting?"

"That's part of it. Why?"

"Because I've no idea how you do what you do."

"Most of the time neither do I."

"Ah, but of course you do. And you try all these different approaches until something works. I'd never have the imagination to devise them all, or the patience to keep at it. When there's something I need to know, there's only one way I have of finding it out."

"What's that?"

"I go to the man who has the answer," he said, "and I do what I have to do to make him tell me. But if I didn't even know who to go to, why, I'd be entirely lost."

If the rain had let up I might have gone home earlier. I began to flag sometime around four-thirty or five in the morning, and there was a time when the conversation died down and I glanced over at the window. But it was still pouring, and instead of pleading exhaustion and heading for the door I pushed my Perrier aside and poured one more cup of coffee from the thermos. A little later I caught a second wind, and it carried me past dawn and down to St. Bernard's for the butchers' mass.

There were fifteen or twenty of us in the little side chapel, including seven or eight men from the meat market, dressed in white aprons just like Mick's, some of them stained as his was stained. There were several nuns as well, and a couple of housewives and some men dressed for the office. And a few elderly people, men and women, including one who was a dead ringer for the murderous Eamonn Dougherty, right down to the cloth cap.