'Twice in the line of duty. And once accidentally, and that was line of duty, too. A bullet of mine ricocheted and killed a child.'
'You mentioned that last night.'
'Did I? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Once after I left the department a guy jumped me on the street in connection with a case I was working on. I threw him and he landed wrong and died of a broken neck. And another time, Christ, I was all of a week sober, and this crazy Colombian charged me with a machete and I emptied a gun into him. So the answer is yes, I've killed four people, five if you count the kid.
'And, except for the kid, I don't think I ever lost a night's sleep over any of them. And I never agonized over the assholes I sent up for something they didn't do. I think it was wrong to do it, I wouldn't do it that way now, but none of that stuff bothers me anywhere near as much as not visiting Aunt Peg when she was dying. But that's an alcoholic for you. The big stuff is easy. It's the little shit that drives us crazy.'
'Sometimes it's the big stuff, too.'
'Something eating you, Eddie?'
'Oh, shit, I don't know. I'm a neighborhood guy, Matt. I grew up in these streets. You grew up in Hell's Kitchen, the one thing you learned was not to tell nothing to nobody. 'Don't tell your business to strangers.'
My mother was an honest woman, Matt. She found a dime in a pay phone, she'd look around for somebody to give it back to, but I must of heard her say it a thousand times. 'Don't tell nobody your business.' And she walked the walk, God bless her. Two, three times a week till the day he died, the old man'd come home half in the bag and slap her around.
And she kept it to herself. Anybody asked her, oh, she was clumsy, she walked into a door, she lost her balance, she fell down a flight of stairs.
But most people knew not to ask. If you lived in the Kitchen, you knew what not to ask.'
I started to say something but he took my arm and urged me to the curb. 'Let's cross the street,' he said.
'I don't like to walk past that place if I don't have to.'
The place in question was Grogan's Open House. Green neon in the window offered Harp lager and Guinness stout. 'I used to hang out there a lot,' he explained. 'I like to steer clear of it now.'
I knew the feeling. There was a time when I drank away the days and nights at Armstrong's, and when I first got sober I'd go out of my way to avoid passing the place. When I had to walk past it I would avert my eyes and speed up my pace, as if I might otherwise be drawn in against my will, like iron filings to a magnet. Then Jimmy lost his lease and relocated a block west at Tenth and Fifty-seventh, and a Chinese restaurant moved into his old spot, and I had one less problem in my life.
'You know who owns that joint, Matt?'
'Somebody named Grogan?'
'Not in years. That's Mickey Ballou's place.'
'The Butcher Boy?'
'You know Mickey?'
'Only by sight. By sight and by reputation.'
'Well, he's a sight and he's got a reputation. You won't find his name on the license, but it's his store.
When I was a kid I was tight with his brother Dennis. Then he got killed inVietnam . Were you in the service, Matt?'
I shook my head. 'They weren't drafting cops.'
'I had TB when I was a kid. I never knew it at the time, but there was something showed up on the X
ray, kept me out of the service.' He threw his cigarette in the gutter. 'Another reason to quit these things.
But not today, huh?'
'You've got time.'
'Yeah. He was okay, Dennis. Then after he died I did some things with Mick. You heard the stories about him?'
'I've heard some stories.'
'You heard about him and the bowling bag? And what he had in it?'
'I never knew whether to believe it or not.'
'Well, I wasn't there. One time, though, and this was some years ago, I was in a basement two, three blocks from where we're standing now. They had a guy, I forget what he done. Ratted somebody out, it must of been. They're in the furnace room and they got him tied to a post with a clothesline, and a gag in his mouth, and Mickey puts on this long white butcher's apron, covers you from your shoulders down to your feet. The apron's pure white except for the stains on it. And Mickey picks up a ball bat and starts wailing on the guy, and the blood sprays all over the place. Next time I see Mickey he's in the Open House with the apron on. He likes to wear it, like he's a butcher just off work, ducked in for a quick one.
'See that?' he says, pointing to a fresh stain. 'Know what that is?
That's rat blood.' '
We had reached the corner a block south of Grogan's Open House, and now we crossedTenth Avenue again. He said, 'I was never no Al Capone, but I done stuff. I mean, shit, voting for Abe Beame's the closest I ever came to an honest day's work. I'm thirty-seven years old and the only time I ever had a Social Security card was in Green Haven.
