“Where’s Harry?”
He nodded at a threadbare couch where the little dog rested on a pile of blankets, his side wrapped perfectly in gauze and tape as only a good corner man could do. Willy nudged my shoulder gently and said, “Go on.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t trust yourself right now. Eat.”
He knew something I didn’t know because even though food was the last thing on my mind, I devoured it, along with another slice of toast and two more glasses of tea. When I finished, I quit shaking and started talking. I told him all that had happened, from the scene between my dad and Uncle Buddy to the terrible moment when I walked into my house to the confrontation with Detective Smelt. By the time I was done, the cold flame in my gut was burning brightly again. Willy rose from the table, opened a cabinet, took out a battered tin box, and removed a single cigarette.
“I quit twenty-five years ago,” he said. “But I always keep one on hand for emergencies.” He sat down, scratched a match, and lit it.
“What do I do now?” I said.
“You sure can’t go to the police,” he said. “I’ve known a lot of cops in my time, some good, some bad, some ten times more crooked than the crooks they’re supposed to catch. Whoever this Detective Smelt is, she’s not playing by any cop rulebook I ever heard of. She wants something and she’s obviously willing to break the law-hell, several laws-to get it. Seems like that thing is
“So I can’t speak to any of them.”
“Too risky, at least for now,” he said, tapping an ash into a chipped coffee cup. “I’m more concerned about the freak in the ski mask.”
“Like I said, he was burly and he could take a punch. . or at least a kick,” I said, suddenly recalling the first time I met Willy and how he described my uncle’s ability as a boxer to take a beating and keep on going. “Just like Uncle Buddy,” I said.
“What?” he said slowly. “Buddy?”
“He threatened our family, Willy. Today, at the bakery. He warned my dad not to get in his way, or else.”
“You didn’t see his face, Sara Jane. You don’t know for sure it was him.”
“But. .”
“But nothing. Before you go accusing your uncle of. . whatever. . you better be damn sure he’s guilty. If he’s not, there’s no one, and I mean no one, you’re going to need more than ol’ Buddy.”
“Need?” I said, incredulous. “What would I need him for?”
“Listen to me, girl. Of course I know about the bad blood between him and your dad. . but they’re still
“No, never. You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “You didn’t see Uncle Buddy try to hit my dad at my grandpa’s funeral. You didn’t hear the oaths he swore against our family. Besides you, I’m in this all alone. So I’ll ask again. . now what?”
Willy stared at me with his hands folded on the table like he was praying. A line of smoke snaked toward the ceiling as he said, “The worst thing I ever saw was my own child’s dead body. It isn’t natural, your baby dead before you. ’Course she wasn’t no baby. She was just three years older than you are now, nineteen.”
I knew that Willy’s daughter had died a long time ago but he never discussed her, at least not with me. Carefully, I asked, “How did she die?”
“Cars and alcohol,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. “When you see the body of someone you love who died too soon, you. . die a little with them. You didn’t see any bodies in that house, Sara Jane, and you’re alive. So, what you do now is operate on the assumption that there aren’t any. You assume they are alive, too.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged, stubbing out the cigarette. “Find them.”
“How?”
Willy sighed and pulled a hand over his face, and I saw that he was an old man. “Tomorrow, my girl,” he said. “We’ll talk it out tomorrow.”
“Do you really think they’re alive?”
“I don’t know what to think because I’m confused and tired, and so are you.”
“I won’t sleep. There’s no way.”
“You have to, and despite what you think, you will,” he said. “The Crow’s Nest is clean, empty, and quiet. You have it all to yourself.”
The gym had been a factory a hundred years earlier. Back then, as laborers sweated over assembly lines, a boss kept tabs on the operation from a small wooden office suspended from the ceiling high above the activity-the original “eye in the sky.” That old office was still bolted to the roof, complete with large glass windows. There had always been a steady procession of boxers at Windy City over the years, pursuing careers as pro fighters-a few made it, most didn’t-all of them young and broke. Willy took pity on these up-and-comers and outfitted the office with a couple of old army cots, a floor lamp, and an ancient TV. The steel staircase and catwalk that once led up to it had been ripped down for scrap decades ago; a winch and pulley lifted the furnishings into place. Select fighters were allowed to stay rent free while they trained, as long as they kept the Crow’s Nest clean, used no alcohol or drugs, and mopped the gym every night. To reach it required shimmying up a long, knotted rope; once a person was inside, he could see everything, every corner of the gym, just like sailors who occupied a ship’s crow’s nest; thus the nickname. The boxers who currently occupied it were gone, fighting on an undercard in Granite City, and wouldn’t return for a week.
“Try to sleep,” Willy said. “We’ll figure out our next move in the morning.”
“Okay, Willy,” I said, rising from the table, suddenly so aching and bone weary that I was unsure I could make it all the way up the rope.
“I’m gonna move the Lincoln around back, out of sight,” he said, and I handed him the keys. Harry’s ears perked up at the jingle of metal and he whimpered painfully.
“I’d better take him along,” I said, lifting and wrapping him around my neck. “He might need me.” Willy followed me out to the gym and stood beneath the rope while I made the trip like an inchworm, Harry whining all the way. I pulled open the trapdoor, clambered inside, and looked down at Willy, who waved up.
“Good night,” he said, his voice echoing softly around the vast brick room.
“Good night,” I said.
“Sara Jane?”
“Yeah?”
He wiped at his nose, sniffled, and said,
“
“Well. . what I mean is. .”
“I love you too,” I said, and waved back before pulling up the rope and closing the trapdoor.
After Willy’s footsteps crossed the gym, everything was silent except for Harry’s labored breathing. I made him comfortable and scratched between his ears until he fell asleep. It was when I reclined on a cot and noticed the old TV that I remembered the mini camera from Frank Sinatra’s head. I took it from my purse and went to the television, which had a green glass screen set into a wooden cabinet, and looked more like furniture than electronics. Its dial spun to change channels, it had push buttons for volume, and a rabbit-ear antenna sat on top. The only nod to the twenty-first century was a DVD player attached to it. The mini camera had no accessories, but Lou taught me that almost all electronics are compatible despite their age, since a simple cable is still the heart of the technology-just find something that plugs into something else and it might work. I tried all of the DVD’s plug- ins, first the red, then the yellow, but it was the black that fit.
