Joe was having none of it. “I know Brendan. I know him way better than you two clowns. Way better. There’s no way. I just can’t, I just can’t…Okay, okay, okay. Michael’s got a hair across his ass about Brendan. That’s fine, that’s your business, Mike. But this is nuts. You don’t go around accusing people like that.”
“I’m not accusing. I’m just saying there’s enough there we ought to look into it.”
“Who are we? What are we gonna look into it? That’s the police’s job.”
“You think the cops are gonna investigate Conroy? He’s in Homicide.”
Ricky smirked bitterly. “Wouldn’t be the first case he didn’t solve.”
“It’s not our job, Mike.”
“I didn’t choose it, Joe. I was just living my life, having an ordinary day, and then the phone rang and Dad was dead and suddenly we were all about dying. We’ve never been the same since. At eleven fifty-nine we were a regular family, at twelve-oh-one suddenly we were the family that had a murder. I didn’t choose this job, ‘son of a dead guy.’ I’d give it back if I could.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“Can I ask you something, Joe? If you found the guy that killed Dad, and there was no doubt about it, you knew he was guilty, and it looked like he was going to get away with it-”
“If, if, if.”
“That’s right, if, if, if-what would you do?”
“That’s not what this is.”
“I know. I’m just saying, what if? If you knew who did it?”
“I don’t know. Kill him.”
“Kill him,” Michael repeated evenly. “Kill him.”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“I agree.”
Joe shook his head. “What are you talking about, ‘you agree’? You don’t even know anything yet, and already you’re ready to kill him? You ahn’t exactly the type, Michael. Tough guy.”
“I meant, I agree it would be the right thing to do.”
“I think he just called you a fag, Mike. What does that mean, he’s not the type?”
“Means he’s a fag.”
“Say it to his face.”
“You’re a fag, Mike.”
“Well, he said it to your face, Michael. Give him credit.”
“Okay, I’m a fag.”
“I knew it!” Ricky grinned. “Pickle sniffer.”
But Michael was grim. “I think we have to think about it.”
Joe: “Again with this. Would you shut the fuck up? No one’s killing anyone.”
“We have to think about what we’re going to do if it’s true.”
“It’s not true. Would you just get that? It’s not true.”
“Joe, he didn’t say it was true. He said if.”
“I know what he said, Rick. He keeps sayin’ it without sayin’ it.”
“All I’m saying is we have to consider it. Because that’s where we’re headed.”
“Mike, do you know this is already a felony? It’s called conspiracy to murder.”
“We’re just having a philosophical discussion, Joe.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing?”
“Come on, if they arrested everybody who ever talked about murder, or thought about it or read about it…”
“Well, I’m not thinking about it. I’m out.”
“All right. You’re out. How about you, Ricky?”
“Is this a conspiracy or still just a philosophical discussion?”
“Just talking.”
“You hear that, Mr. Cop?”
“Joe knows. We’re just talking. In the abstract. What do we do, Rick?”
“We do nothing. If we have evidence, we pass it to the cops. Give them a chance. If they do nothing, we take it to the feds.”
“And if the feds do nothing?”
“If the federales do nothing, then…we think of something else.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing is thinking, Ricky.”
“I know it. Maybe you should shut it off awhile, Mikey. You’re making yourself crazy.”
“I think maybe everyone else is crazy.”
“All crazy people think that.”
“I think if Conroy is the one and we don’t do anything about it…” Michael shook his head as he searched for the end of his sentence. “…then shame on us.”
“Mikey, are you being serious?”
He pondered before answering. “I don’t know, Rick. To be perfectly honest.”
“Look, you know when the chips are down, we’re with you, right?”
“Except Joe, of course.”
“Joe’s with you too. When the chips are down.” Ricky gave Joe a hard look.
Joe declined to offer any confirmation. Just sat there.
“Well, that’s comforting. Guess it’s me and you, Ricky. The Two Musketeers. Doesn’t have the same ring, does it?”
Joe said, “You got enough trouble already, Ricky.”
“What’s that mean, Rick?”
“Tell him. Go ahead. Tell him what it means.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. It means Joe’s got a big mouth.”
“Tell him what it means, why don’t you?”
“The point is, he’d be there for you. Isn’t that right, Joe?”
“Yeah, whatever. Crazy fag running around like Sherlock fuckin’ Holmes.”
“Mikey, though…you’re not gonna do anything crazy, right?”
“I told you, everyone else is crazy. I’m the only sane one.”
61
Joe found him in one of the “social clubs” in the South End. This one was called the Top Hat, though you were more likely to see a flat-brim fedora here on one of the old Mustache Petes. It occupied the bottom two floors of a tenement. Here the old-timers mixed with the younger generation of kill-crazy grunts like Vinnie The Animal, and all the gangsters, young and old, mingled with the plain civilians, to drink and play poker or barbooth, with no trouble from the cops who were either bought and paid for or simply knew better. You could get a watered-down beer for a dime while you dropped a fifty at the tables, and out of that fifty bucks, one and a quarter-the magical two and a half percent-would be passed from hand to hand to hand to Charlie Capobianco’s counting room. When Joe walked into this place-the Top Hat was members-only but the thing had been arranged, as everything was always arranged, somewhere outside Joe’s hearing-he knew something had changed. Here, finally, was the step too far. He had the sense of the floor moving beneath his feet, as if he had stepped onto a boat as it left the shore, the black water opening up behind him. But Joe’s unease was a wordless, formless thing, and he barred it from the front of his mind where it might coalesce into an idea, a clear reason not to go ahead with it. This was the soldier’s way of completing a mission. Don’t think. Don’t question your orders. Just execute. Accomplish the objective. But the sub- thought persisted, even gained strength and shape: Don’t do this.
Paul Marolla lurked at the periphery of a barbooth game with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, pimped out in a puce polyester shirt that showed off his bodybuilder’s physique. His hair was slicked and
