'So?'
'So I'm afraid he'll drink,' I said, 'and I'm afraid it'll be my fault. But it won't be my fault if he drinks, and it won't be my doing if he stays sober, and anyway he's got his own Higher Power. Right?'
'Everything you say is right, master.'
'Oh, boy.'
'So what are you going to do? Grab a cab uptown?'
'Nah, fuck him,' I said. 'Let's go to a movie.'
The movie we saw starred Don Johnson as a homicidal gigolo and Rebecca De Mornay as his attorney. As we left the theater, Elaine said, 'I cannot believe how much she looked like Hillary.' Who was Hillary, I wanted to know, and who looked like her?
'Hillary Clinton,' she said. 'Who else? And De Mornay looked enough like her to fool the president himself. You didn't notice? I can't believe it. Where were you, anyway?'
'Lost in space, I guess. Regretting the past, dreading the future.'
'Business as usual. Just to keep you abreast of things, Don Johnson was the bad guy.'
'I got that much,' I said.
'Well, how much more do you really need to know? I think it's finally going to rain. I just felt a drop, unless it dripped from somebody's air conditioner.'
'No, I felt it, too.'
'Dueling air conditioners? Unlikely, I'd say. What do you want to do now?'
'I don't know. Go home, I guess.'
'Sit around and stare out the window? Make a few phone calls to people who aren't home? Pace the floor?'
'Something like that.'
'I've got a better idea,' she said. 'Walk me home and then go see if Mick wants to make a night of it. Get blitzed on coffee and Perrier. Watch the sun come up. Go to mass, take Holy Reunion.'
'Communion.'
'Whatever.'
'Goyim is goyim, huh?'
'You said it.'
In front of the Parc Vendome she said, 'It's definitely raining. You want to come upstairs and get an umbrella?'
'It's not raining that hard.'
'Want to see if anybody called? Want to catch the weather report and see what color bow tie your friend Gerry Billings is wearing? Naw, you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the rain is falling.'
'No.'
'Of course not. You just want to get to Grogan's. Give Mick my love, will you? And enjoy yourself.'
22
'You just missed him,' Burke said. 'He stepped out not fifteen minutes ago. But he'll be along. He said you might be in.'
'He did?'
'And that you should wait for him as he'll not be long. There's fresh coffee made, if you'll have a cup.'
He poured coffee for me and I carried it to the table where Mick and I usually wound up sitting, over on the side beneath the mirror advertising Tullamore Dew. Someone had left a copy of the Post on a nearby table, and I opened it to the sports section to see what the columnists had to say. I wasn't much better at tracking their sentences than I'd been at following the movie. After a while I set the paper aside and thought about trying Jim Shorter again. Was it too late to call him? I was considering the point when the door opened and Mick Ballou entered.
He stood just inside the door, his hair pressed flat against his skull by the rain, his clothes sodden. When he caught sight of me his face lit up. 'By God,' he said, 'didn't I say you'd be in tonight? But what a fucking night you picked for it.'
'It wasn't much more than a fine mist when I came here.'
'I know, for was I not out in it myself? A soft day, the Irish call it. A fucking downpour is what it's turned into.' He rubbed his hands together, stamped his feet on the old tile floor. 'Let me get out of these wet clothes. Catch a cold this time of the year and the fucker's with you till Christmas.'
He went into his office in the back. He sleeps there sometimes on the green leather couch, and keeps several changes of clothing in the oak wardrobe. He has a desk there, too, and a massive old Mosler safe. There's always a lot of cash in the safe, and I can't believe the box would be all that hard to crack. So far no one has ever been fool enough to try.
He emerged from the office after a few minutes with his hair neatly combed and wearing a fresh sport shirt and slacks. He said a few words to one of the darts players, laid a gentle hand on the shoulder of an old man in a cloth cap, and slipped behind the bar to pour himself a drink. He threw down a quick shot to take the chill off, and I could almost feel the warm glow radiating outward from the solar plexus, providing comfort, warming the body and the soul. Then he refilled his glass and brought it to the table along with a fresh cup of coffee for me.
'That's better,' he said, dropping into the seat opposite mine. 'Terrible thing, being called out on business on a night like this.'
'I hope it went well.'
'Ah, 'twas nothing serious,' he said. 'There was this lad who lost a few dollars gambling, and gave a marker for what he owed. Then he decided he'd been cheated, and so he made up his mind that he wasn't going to pay the debt.'
'And?'
'And your man who'd taken his marker offered it for sale.'
'And you bought it.'
'I did,' he said. 'I thought it a decent investment. Like buying a mortgage, and deeply discounted in the bargain.'
'You paid cash for it?'
'I did, and sent Andy Buckley to talk to the lad. And do you know, he still insisted he'd been cheated, and thus owed nothing, no matter who might be holding his marker. He said there was no point in discussing it, that his mind was made up.'
'So what did you do?'
'I went to see him.'
'And?'
'He changed his mind,' Mick said.
'He's going to pay?'
'He's paid. So you might say it was an excellent investment, offering an attractive return. And it's matured early.'
He is a large man, my friend Mick, tall and heavy, with a head that would not look out of place among the ancient sculptures on Easter Island. There is a primitive and monolithic quality to him. Years ago, a wit at Morrissey's after-hours described Stonehenge as looking like Mick and his brothers standing in a circle.
It may be fitting, then, that he is just about the last of a vanishing breed, the tough Irish criminals who have been drinking and fighting and raising hell in the West Forties and Fifties since before the Civil War. Various gangs and mobs held sway- the Gophers, the Rhodes Gang, the Parlor Mob, the Gorillas. A lot of their leaders were saloon keepers, too, from Mallet Murphy and Paddy the Priest to Owney Madden. They were as cheerfully vicious
