A Drop of the Hard Stuff

“I stand corrected. And, while we’re correcting each other, it’s not the Pioneer. It’s the Pio- meer. The idiots spelled it wrong.”

“It used to be part of a chain. Then the affiliation ended, and they had to change the name.”

“So they changed one letter.”

“Cheaper that way, I guess. Everybody still calls it the Pioneer.”

“Pioneer with an M, Saloon with no A, and a smoke-filled room where they won’t sell you cigarettes. You okay with the cola?”

“I’m fine. You were starting to tell me about Mr. Williams and his wife.”

“I was, and it won’t take long, either. I already told you her name was Lucille. Fine-looking woman, and what you could call free with her favors. I got lucky myself one night, and it never happened again but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember her fondly. I’ll say this much, I’ve never been worried that her old man’s gonna kill me for it.”

“That would be Robert Williams, but I think you called him Bobby.”

“I did, but there’s as many Bobby Williamses and Bob Williamses as there are Roberts, and what I and pretty much everybody else called him was Scooter.”

“Scooter Williams.”

“On account of he had one of those whatchacallits, like a motorcycle but dinky.”

“A motor scooter.”

“Well, duh, obviously, but I was going for the brand. A Vespa? I think that’s it. So they could have called him Vespa Williams, but nobody did. Scooter. I don’t think he kept the thing that long anyway. Rode around on it long enough to get a nickname, then sold it or it got stolen.”

Scooter was an NYU dropout from somewhere in the Midwest. Got himself a cheap apartment on a bad block on the Lower East Side, met Lucille and married her, and got through the days by smoking a lot of grass and selling enough to pay for what he smoked. He worked now and then for a couple of moving companies, drove a gypsy cab now and then, and did gofer work for the neighborhood Democratic club.

“Sounds like your guy,” Steffens said. “The wife, plus he knew Whatshisname.”

“Jack Ellery.”

“Uh-huh. Ellery worked for some of the movers now and then. Funny thing—he’d move somebody, and a week or two down the line they’d have a break-in, lose their good stuff.”

“And you knew Ellery?”

“I knew who he was, knew him to say hello to. That was about it.”

“And you’re a newspaperman?”

“Where’d you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. I must have figured you were following in the footsteps of your famous nonancestor.”

“Raking muck,” he said. “Hell, I’m on the other side of that one. I don’t rake the muck, I make it. The Shame of the Cities. That’s me, Matt. I’m in local politics across the river. Wipe out municipal corruption, and I’d have to get an honest job.”

He took out a slim black calfskin card case, handed me a card. Vann Steffens, I read. Your Friend in Jersey City. No address, but a phone number with a 201 prefix.

“Everybody needs a friend,” he said. “Especially in Jersey City. You have a card?”

My sponsor’s a job printer, and I’ll never lack for business cards. I dug one out for him.

“And here I thought mine was minimalist,” he said. “Nothing but your name and your number, and I already had ’em both.” He tucked the card away. “But I’ll keep it. A man gives you his card, you keep it. Be bad manners not to. But wait a minute, give me my card back, will you?”

I did, and he uncapped a pen and printed SCOOTER WILLIAMS on the back of the card in tiny block capitals, then consulted a little memo book and added an address and phone number. The book was bound in black calf, and matched the card case.

“There you go,” he said. “You see him, won’t take you ten minutes to rule him out.”

I thanked him, glanced at what he’d written. The address was on Ludlow Street, so Scooter still had his cheap apartment in a bad neighborhood. I looked across at Steffens, and wondered what he expected in return.

He answered the question before I could ask it. “You can pay for my drinks,” he said, “and that’ll do me fine. I’m a machine pol in fucking Jersey City, for Chrissake. Doing favors for people is part of my job description, right up there with pigging out at the public trough. Someday you’ll do me a favor back.”

“I don’t know what it might be, Vann. They won’t let me vote in Jersey City.”

He laughed. “Oh, don’t you be so sure of that, my friend. You come see me on Election Day, and I’ll guarantee you get to vote at least once in every precinct. I’ll tell you what. I’ll have one more drink on your tab, and you can tell me why you give a damn who put the two bullets in Jack Ellery.”

I told him more than I’d planned. He was a good listener, nodding in the right places, stirring the pot with a question or an observation now and then. He’d seemed like a blowhard at first, but I warmed to him over the course of the hour or so we spent together. Maybe his manner softened when he felt less need to impress me. Maybe I became more at ease in Armstrong’s—which might or might not be a good thing.

I took care of the check, and on the way out I remembered something. “You know everything,” I said. “Maybe you’ll know this.”

“If it’s a state capital, forget it. I’m lousy on state capitals.”