could recall having seen him within the past year.
'They are forever disappearing,' she said. 'It's normal not to see them for a few days, and then suddenly you'll realize you haven't seen someone for a week or two weeks or a month. And sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't, and you never know if the next place they went to was better or worse for them.' She sighed. 'One boy told me he thought Happy had most likely gone home. And, in a manner of speaking, perhaps he has.'
THE next call was from the desk, announcing TJ's arrival. I told them to send him on up and met him at the elevator. I took him to my room and he moved around it like a dancer, checking it out. 'Hey, this is cool,' he said. 'See the Trade Center from here, can't you? An' you got your own bathroom. Must be nice.'
As far as I could tell he was wearing the same outfit I'd seen him in before. The denim jacket that had looked too warm for the summer now appeared unequal to the winter's cold. His high-top sneakers looked new, and he had added a royal-blue watch cap.
I handed him the sketches. He glanced at the top one and looked up at me, his eyes wary. He said, 'You want to draw my picture? Why you laughin'?'
'I'm sure you'd make a fine model,' I said, 'but I'm no artist.'
'You didn't draw these here?' He looked at each in turn, examined the signature. 'Raymond something. What do you say, Ray? What's happenin'?'
'Do you recognize any of them?'
He said he didn't, and I ran it down for him. 'The older boy's name is Happy,' I said. 'I think he's dead.'
'You think they both be dead. Don't you?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'What you want to know about them?'
'Their names. Where they're from.'
'You already know his name, you said. Happy, you said.'
'I figure his name is Happy like your name is TJ.'
He gave me a look. 'You say TJ,' he said, 'everybody gone know who you be referrin' to.' He looked at the sketch again. 'You sayin' Happy's his street name.'
'That's right.'
'If that's his name on the street, that the only name the street gone know. Who give you that name, Testament House?'
I nodded. 'They said he didn't live there but he stayed there a couple of nights.'
'Yeah, well, they be good people, but not everybody can handle the rules an' shit, you know what I'm sayin'?'
'Did you ever stay there, TJ?'
'Shit, why'd I do that? I don't need no place like that. I got a place where I live, man.'
'Where?'
'Never mind where. Long as I can find it, that's all that matters.' He shuffled through the sketches. Casually he said, 'I seen this man.'
'Where?'
'I dunno. On the Deuce, but don't be askin' me where or when.' He sat down on the edge of the bed, yanked his cap off, turned it over in his hands. He said, 'What you want from me, man?'
I took a twenty from my wallet and held it out to him. He didn't move to take it, and his eyes repeated his question. What did I want from him?
I said, 'You know the Deuce and the bus terminal and the kids on the street. You could go places I don't know about and talk to people who wouldn't talk to me.'
'Tha's a lot for twenty dollars.' He grinned. 'Other time I seen you, you gimme fi' dollars and I didn't do nothin'.'
'You haven't done anything this time either,' I said.
'Could take a lot of time, though. Jivin' with the people, goin' here an' there.' I started to take back the twenty and his hand moved to snatch it from me. 'Don't be doin' that,' he said. 'I didn't say no, did I? Just tuggin' you 'round some is all.' He looked around the room. 'But I don't guess you's rich, huh?'
I had to laugh. 'No,' I said. 'Not quite.'
CHANCE called. He had asked a few people in the fight crowd, and some had recalled an apparent father and son at ringside Thursday. No one remembered having seen the pair before, in Maspeth or elsewhere. I said the man would probably not have had the boy along on other occasions, and he said it was the two of them that people remembered. 'So it's not like the people I talked to recognized him,' he said. 'Are you going back out there tomorrow night?'
'I don't know.'
'Or you could watch it on television. You might see him if he's in the first row again.'
We didn't stay on the phone long because I wanted to keep the line open. I hung up and waited, and Danny Boy Bell was the next to call. 'I'll be having dinner at Poogan's,' he said. 'Why don't you join me? You know how I hate to eat alone.'
'You've got something?'
'Nothing remarkable,' he said, 'but you have to eat dinner sometime, don't you? Eight o'clock.'
I hung up and checked the time. It was five o'clock. I turned on the TV and watched the opening of the news and turned it off when I realized I wasn't paying attention. I picked up the phone and dialed Thurman's number. When the machine picked up I didn't say anything but I didn't hang up, either. I sat there with the line open for thirty seconds or so before I finally broke the connection.
I picked up The Newgate Calendar and the phone rang almost immediately. I grabbed it and said hello and it was Jim Faber.
'Oh, hi,' I said.
'You sound disappointed.'
'I've been waiting on a call all afternoon,' I said.
'Well, I won't keep you,' he said. 'It's not important. Will you be going to St. Paul 's tonight?'
'I don't think so. I have to meet somebody at eight on Seventy-second Street and I don't know how long that'll last. Anyway, I went last night.'
'That's funny, I looked for you and didn't see you there.'
'I was downtown, I went to Perry Street.'
'Oh, did you? That's where I wound up Sunday night. The perfect choice, you can say anything there and nobody gives a rat's ass. I said terrible things about Bev and felt a hundred percent better for it. Was Helen there last night? Did she tell you about the holdup?'
'What holdup?'
' At Perry Street. Look, you're expecting a call, I don't want to keep you.'
'That's all right,' I said. 'Somebody held up Perry Street? What could they get? They don't even have coffee there anymore.'
'Well, it wasn't a brilliantly conceived crime. It was their Friday night step meeting a week or two ago. A fellow named Bruce was speaking. I don't know if you know him and it's not important. Anyway, he gave his qualification for twenty minutes, and then some wacko stood up and announced that he had come to that meeting a year earlier and put forty dollars in the basket by mistake, and he had a gun in his pocket, and if he didn't get his forty dollars back he was going to start blowing people away.'
'Jesus.'
'Wait, here's the good part. Bruce told him, 'I'm sorry, you're out of order, we can't interrupt the meeting for something like that. You'll have to wait until the break at a quarter of nine.' The guy starts to say something and Bruce bangs the gavel on that sort of podium they have there and tells him to sit down and calls on somebody else, and the meeting goes on.'
'And the nut just sits there?'
'I guess he figured he had no choice. Rules are rules, right? Then another fellow, a guy named Harry, went over to him and asked him if he wanted some coffee or some cigarettes, and the nut allowed as to how coffee would be nice. 'I'll just slip out and get you some,' Harry whispered, and he slipped out and around the corner to
