“I love her so much,” Frankie Boy tells me.
“Congrats.”
“’Course, I loved the other three so much too. Still do.” A tear comes to his eye. “That’s my problem. I fall hard. Then I come in here to forget. Do you know what I’m saying?”
I don’t, but I tell him that I do. The song “True” by Spandau Ballet comes drifting out of the speakers. Frankie Boy starts singing along: “This is the sound of my soul, this is the sound…” He stops and turns to me. “You ever been married, Win?”
“No.”
“Smart. Wait. You gay?”
“No.”
“Not that I care. Be honest, I like a lot of the gays in here. Less competition for the ladies, you know what I’m saying?”
I ask him how long he’s been coming to Malachy’s.
“First time was January 12, 1966.”
“Specific,” I say.
“Biggest day of my life.”
“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious.
Frankie Boy holds up three stubby fingers. “Three reasons.”
“Go on.”
He drops the ring finger. “One, that’s the first day I found this place.”
“Makes sense.”
“Two”—Frankie Boy drops his middle finger—“I married my first wife, Esmeralda.”
“You went to Malachy’s for the first time on your wedding day?”
“I was getting married,” he says, emphasis on the “married.” “Who’d blame a man for needing a stiff drink or two beforehand?”
“Not I.”
“My Esmeralda was so beautiful. Big as a barn. She wore a bright yellow wedding dress. In our wedding pictures, I look like a tiny planet orbiting a giant sun. But beautiful.”
“And what’s Reason Three?” I ask.
“You may be too young, but did you ever see the TV show Batman?”
“Oh yes.” This, I think to myself, is kismet. Myron and I have watched every episode at least a million times. I nod. “Adam West, Burt Ward—”
“Exactly. The Riddler, the Penguin, oh, and don’t even get me started on Julie Newmar as the Catwoman. I would have ripped off Esmeralda’s right arm and slapped myself silly with it, just to sniff Julie Newmar’s hair. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“And nowadays, we have all these”—finger quotes—“‘method’ actors losing a hundred pounds or whatever to play the Joker, but back then? Cesar Romero didn’t even bother shaving his mustache. Just threw white makeup over it. That, my friend, was acting.”
I see no reason to disagree. “And Reason Three?”
He scoffed. “I thought you were a fan.”
“I am.”
“So what villain appeared in the very first episode?”
“The Riddler,” I say, “played by Frank Gorshin.”
“Correct answer—and when did it first air?” Frankie Boy smiles and nods. “January 12, 1966.”
I want to kiss this man.
“So to summarize,” I say, “on your wedding day, you went for drinks at Malachy’s, and then you watched Batman debut on TV.”
Frankie Boy nods solemnly and stares down at his drink. “Fifty years later, Malachy’s is still in my life. Fifty years later, I can still watch Batman on my old VCR.” Big shrug. “But Esmeralda? She’s long gone.”
We drink in silence for a moment. I need to get to the point of my visit, but I’m really enjoying this conversation. Eventually, I work my way to asking Frankie Boy whether he remembers a waitress or barmaid named Sheila or Shelly or something like that—I hope that perhaps Lake Davies slipped up and gave me the real name—and he scratches his head.
“Kathleen?” he shouts.
“What?”
“You remember a Sheila who worked here a long time ago?”
“Huh?” Kathleen is smiling, but I detect something awry in her body language. Perhaps it is the smile that suddenly seems forced. Perhaps it is the way her grip tightens on the beer tap. “Who wants to know?”
“Our good-looking friend Win here,” Frankie Boy says, slapping my back.
Kathleen heads back toward us. She has the dishrag over her shoulder. “Sheila what?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Don’t remember a Sheila. How about you, Frankie?”
He shakes his head too, and jumps down from the stool. “Gotta take a massive wiz,” he tells us.
“With your prostate?” Kathleen counters.
“Let a man dream, will ya?”
Frankie Boy hobbles off. Kathleen turns back to me. She has the kind of expression that tells you she has seen it all at least twice. Google “world weary” and her photograph pops up.
“When would this Sheila have been here?”
“1975 or thereabouts,” I say.
“Seriously? That’s like, what, more than forty years ago.”
I wait.
“Anyway, I didn’t start working here until three years later. Summer of 1978.”
“I see,” I say. “Anyone still here from those days?”
“Let me think.” Kathleen glances up at the ceiling to make a show of thinking this over. “Old Moses in the kitchen would have been here, but he retired for Florida last year. Other than that, well, I’m the most senior employee, I guess.” With that subject dismissed, she points to my empty glass and says, “Get you another, hon?”
There is a time for the subtle. There is a time for the blunt. I confess that I am far better with the blunt. With that in mind, I ask: “So what about the famous fugitives who hid in the basement?”
Kathleen rears her head back and blinks. “Huh?”
“Have you ever heard of the Jane Street Six?”
“The what?”
“How about Ry Strauss?”
Her eyes narrow. “That name rings a bell, I think. But I don’t see—”
“Ry Strauss and his girlfriend Lake Davies were wanted for murder. They hid in Malachy’s basement in 1975.”
She doesn’t reply for a few moments. Then she says, “I’ve heard a lot of legends about this place, but that’s a new one.”
But her voice is softer now. Kathleen, I’ve observed, usually plays for the entire bar, even in one-on-one conversations, as though the bar is a stage and she wants as big an audience as possible for every encounter.
Now suddenly she wants an audience of only one.
“It’s the truth,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Lake Davies told me.”
“One of the fugitives?”
“She was caught and served her time.”
“And she told you she hid in this bar?”
“In the basement, yes. She told me a kind barmaid named Sheila looked after them.
