Out on the Cutting Edge

He started to say something but I wasn't done yet. "And I did other things. I got guys sent away for things they didn't do. I don't mean I framed any choirboys. Anybody I ever hung anything on was bad to start with. I'd know a guy did a certain job, and I'd know I couldn't touch him for it, but then I might find some eyewitnesses suggestible enough to ID him for something he hadn't done, and that was enough to put him away. Case closed."

"There's a lot of guys in the joint who didn't do what they went away for," he allowed. "Not all of them. I mean, three out of four cons'll swear they were innocent of what they're doing time for, but you can't believe 'em. Cons'll con you. I mean, they lie." He shrugged. "But sometimes it's the truth."

"I know," I said. "I'm not sure I regret putting the right people away for the wrong reason. It got them off the street, and they were people who didn't do the street a whole lot of good. But that didn't necessarily make it the right thing for me to do, so I figured it belonged in my fifth step."

"So you told somebody about it."

"And more. Things that weren't against the law, but that bothered me more than other things that were. Like running around on my wife while I was married. Like not having time for my kids, like walking out on them around the time I left the department. Like not being there for people in general. One time an aunt of mine was dying of thyroid cancer. She was my mother's younger sister, she was all the family I had left, and I kept promising myself I would go and see her in the hospital, and I kept putting it off and putting it off, and the woman died. I felt so bad about not getting to the hospital that I didn't get to the funeral, either. I sent flowers, though, and I went to some fucking church and lit a fucking candle, all of which must have been a hell of a comfort to the dead woman."

We walked in silence for a few minutes, heading west on one of the streets in the low Fifties, then taking a left on Tenth Avenue. We passed a lowdown saloon with the door open and that stale beer smell rolled out at us, sickening and inviting all at once. He asked if I'd ever been in the place.

"Not lately," I said.

"It's a real bucket of blood," he said. "Matt? You ever kill anybody?"

"Twice in the line of duty. And once accidentally, and that was line of duty, too. A bullet of mine ricocheted and killed a child."

"You mentioned that last night."

"Did I? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Once after I left the department a guy jumped me on the street in connection with a case I was working on. I threw him and he landed wrong and died of a broken neck. And another time, Christ, I was all of a week sober, and this crazy Colombian charged me with a machete and I emptied a gun into him. So the answer is yes, I've killed four people, five if you count the kid.

"And, except for the kid, I don't think I ever lost a night's sleep over any of them. And I never agonized over the assholes I sent up for something they didn't do. I think it was wrong to do it, I wouldn't do it that way now, but none of that stuff bothers me anywhere near as much as not visiting Aunt Peg when she was dying. But that's an alcoholic for you. The big stuff is easy. It's the little shit that drives us crazy."

"Sometimes it's the big stuff, too."

"Something eating you, Eddie?"

"Oh, shit, I don't know. I'm a neighborhood guy, Matt. I grew up in these streets. You grew up in Hell's Kitchen, the one thing you learned was not to tell nothing to nobody. 'Don't tell your business to strangers.' My mother was an honest woman, Matt. She found a dime in a pay phone, she'd look around for somebody to give it back to, but I must of heard her say it a thousand times. 'Don't tell nobody your business.' And she walked the walk, God bless her. Two, three times a week till the day he died, the old man'd come home half in the bag and slap her around. And she kept it to herself. Anybody asked her, oh, she was clumsy, she walked into a door, she lost her balance, she fell down a flight of stairs. But most people knew not to ask. If you lived in the Kitchen, you knew what not to ask."

I started to say something but he took my arm and urged me to the curb. "Let's cross the street," he said. "I don't like to walk past that place if I don't have to."

The place in question was Grogan's Open House. Green neon in the window offered Harp lager and Guinness stout. "I used to hang out there a lot," he explained. "I like to steer clear of it now."

I knew the feeling. There was a time when I drank away the days and nights at Armstrong's, and when I first got sober I'd go out of my way to avoid passing the place. When I had to walk past it I would avert my eyes and speed up my pace, as if I might otherwise be drawn in against my will, like iron filings to a magnet. Then Jimmy lost his lease and relocated a block west at Tenth and Fifty-seventh, and a Chinese restaurant moved into his old spot, and I had one less problem in my life.

"You know who owns that joint, Matt?"

"Somebody named Grogan?"

"Not in years. That's Mickey Ballou's place."

"The Butcher Boy?"

"You know Mickey?"

"Only by sight. By sight and by reputation."

"Well, he's a sight and he's got a reputation. You won't find his name on the license, but it's his store. When I was a kid I was tight with his brother Dennis. Then he got killed in Vietnam. Were you in the service, Matt?"

I shook my head. "They weren't drafting cops."

"I had TB when I was a kid. I never knew it at the time, but there was something showed up on the X ray, kept me out of the service." He threw his cigarette in the gutter. "Another reason to quit these things. But not today, huh?"

"You've got time."

"Yeah. He was okay, Dennis. Then after he died I did some things with Mick. You heard the stories about him?"

"I've heard some stories."

"You heard about him and the bowling bag? And what he had in it?"

"I never knew whether to believe it or not."

"Well, I wasn't there. One time, though, and this was some years ago, I was in a basement two, three blocks from where we're standing now. They had a guy, I forget what he done. Ratted somebody out, it must of been. They're in the furnace room and they got him tied to a post with a clothesline, and a gag in his mouth, and Mickey puts on this long white butcher's apron, covers you from your shoulders down to your feet. The apron's pure white except for the stains on it. And Mickey picks up a ball bat and starts wailing on the guy, and the blood sprays all over the place. Next time I see Mickey he's in the Open House with the apron on. He likes to wear it, like he's a butcher just off work, ducked in for a quick one. 'See that?' he says, pointing to a fresh stain. 'Know what that is? That's rat blood.' "

We had reached the corner a block south of Grogan's Open House, and now we crossed Tenth Avenue again. He said, "I was never no Al Capone, but I done stuff. I mean, shit, voting for Abe Beame's the closest I ever came to an honest day's work. I'm thirty-seven years old and the only time I ever had a Social Security card was in Green Haven. They had me working in the laundry there for whatever it was. Thirty cents an hour? Something ridiculous like that, and they had to take out taxes and Social Security, so you had to get a Social Security card. Up to then I never had one, and after that I never used it."

"You're working now, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Little get-well jobs. Sweeping out a couple of joints after closing, Dan Kelly's and Pete's All-American. You know the All-American?"

"Talk about a bucket of blood. I would duck in there for a quick one, but I never stayed any length of time."

"Like making a pit stop. I used to love that, walk into a bar, have a quick pop, then out again to face the world. Anyway, I go into those two joints late at night or early in the morning, sweep the place out, take out the empties, put the chairs back around the tables. And there's a moving company down in the Village gives me a day's work now and then. Everything's off the books, you don't need no Social Security card for those jobs. I get by."

"Sure."

"My rent's cheap, and I don't eat much, I never ate much, and what am I gonna spend my dough on? Night-clubs? Fancy clothes? Fuel for my yacht?"

"Sounds as though you're doing all right."

He stopped walking, turned to face me. "Yeah, but I'm just shooting the shit, Matt." He put his hands in his pockets and stood looking down at the pavement. "The point is I done stuff I don't know if I want to tell anybody about. Admitting it to myself, all right, like I already know it, right? So it's just a matter of getting honest and facing up to it. And admitting it to God, well, man, if there's no God it don't make no difference, and if there is a God He already knows everything you done, so that part's easy. But coming clean with another person, shit, I don't know, Matt. I done certain things that you could go away for, and in some cases there's other people involved, and I just don't know how I feel about all that."

"A lot of people take the step with a priest."

"You mean like confession?"

"I think it's a little different. You're not seeking formal absolution as much as you're attempting to unburden yourself. You don't have to be a Catholic, and you don't have to go through it in a church. You can even find a priest who's sober in AA and understands what the program's all about. But even if he's not he'd be bound by the seal of the confessional, so you wouldn't have to worry about him saying anything to anybody."

"I couldn't tell you the last time I was in a church. Wait a minute, did you hear what I just said? Christ, I was in a church an hour ago. I been going into church basements once or twice a day for months. But the last time I went to mass, well, I went to a couple weddings over the years, Catholic weddings, but I didn't take communion. I'm sure it's more than twenty years since I made confession."

"It doesn't have to be with a priest. But if you're worried about confidentiality-"

"Is that how you did it? With a priest?"

"I took it with another person from the program. You know him. Jim Faber."

"I don't think I know him."

"Sure you do. He comes to St. Paul 's all the time, he was there tonight. He's a few years older than I am. Hair's mostly gray, wears a beat-up army jacket most of the time. You'd know him if you saw him."

"He wasn't at the Flame, was he?"

"Not tonight."

"What is he, a cop or a detective or something?"

"No, he's a printer, he's got his own shop over on Eleventh Avenue."

"Oh, Jim the Printer," he said. "Been sober a long time."

"He's coming up on nine years."

"Yeah, well, that's a long time."

"He would tell you he just did it a day at a time."

"Yeah, that's what they all tell you. It's still nine fucking years, isn't it? No matter how you slice it, divide it into hours and minutes if you want, it still comes to nine years."

"That's the truth."

He took out another cigarette, changed his mind, returned it to the pack. "Is he your sponsor?"

"Not formally. I've never had a sponsor in any formal way. I've never been very good at doing things the way you're supposed to. Jim's the person I call when I want to talk about something. If I call anybody."