When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

"Stolen."

"Shit. Well, we figured that."

"Sure."

He drank some of his drink. "Keegan," he said, "has to drink. For myself, I could stop anytime. I don't, because I happen to like what the stuff does for me. But I could stop anytime, and I figure you're the same."

"Oh, I would think so."

"Of course you are. Now Keegan, I don't know. I don't like to call the man an alcoholic-"

"That's a hell of a thing to call a man."

"I agree with you. I'm not saying that's what he is, and God knows I like the man, but I think he's got a problem." He straightened up. "The hell with it. He could be a fucking Bowery bum, I still wish the car hadn't been stolen. C'mon back, we'll spread out and relax a little."

In the office, with the two whiskey bottles on the desk between us, he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up. "You checked the license number," he said. "So I guess you're already working on it."

I nodded. "I went out to Brooklyn, too."

"Where? Not where we were last night?"

"The church."

"What did you think you stood to learn there? You figure one of them left his wallet on the floor?"

"You never know what you'll find, Skip. You have to look around."

"I suppose. I wouldn't know where to start."

"You start anyplace. And do anything you think of."

"You learn anything?"

"A few things."

"Like what? Never mind, I don't want to be sitting on your shoulder while you do all this. You find out anything useful?"

"Maybe. You don't always know until later on what's useful and what isn't. You can look at it that everything you learn is useful. For instance, just knowing that the car was stolen tells me something, even if it doesn't tell me who was driving it."

"At least you can rule out the owner. Now you know one person out of eight million couldn't have done it. Who was the owner? Some old lady, only drives it to bingo?"

"I don't know, but it was lifted from Ocean Parkway, not far from the clam bar they sent us to first."

"Means they live out in Brooklyn?"

"Or they drove their own car out there, parked it and stole the one we saw. Or they went out on the subway or took a cab. Or-"

"So we don't know a whole lot."

"Not yet."

He leaned back with his hands behind his head. "Bobby got another call-back on that commercial," he said. "The basketball referee in the fight against prejudice? He's got to go in again tomorrow. It's now down to him and four other guys so they want to look at everybody again."

"That's good, I guess."

"How can you tell? You believe a profession like that, running your ass off and fighting the competition so you can be on the tube for twenty seconds. You know how many actors it takes to change a lightbulb? Nine. One to climb up and replace it and eight others to stand around the ladder and say, 'That should be me up there!' "

"That's not bad."

"Well, credit where it's due, it was the actor told me the joke." He touched up his drink, sat back in his chair. "Matt, that was strange last night. That was fucking strange last night."

"In the church basement."

A nod. "Those disguises of theirs. What they needed was Groucho noses and moustaches and glasses, you know the kind the kids wear. Because it was like that, the wigs and beards, they didn't even come close to looking real, but they weren't funny. The gun kept it from being funny."

"Why'd they wear disguises?"

"So we wouldn't recognize them. Why does anybody wear a disguise?"

"Would you have recognized them?"

"I don't know, I didn't get to see them without the disguises. What are we here, Abbott and Costello?"

"I don't think they recognized us," I said. "When I went into the basement, one of them called out your name. It was dark, but they'd had time for their eyes to get used to it. You and I don't look alike."

"I'm the pretty one." He drew on his cigarette, blew out a great cloud of smoke. "What are you getting at?"

"I don't know. I'm just wondering why they would bother with disguises if we didn't know them in the first place."

"To make it harder to find them later, I suppose."

"I guess. But why should they think we'd bother to look for them? There's not a hell of a lot we can do to them. We made a deal, traded money for your books. What did you wind up doing with the books, incidentally?"

"Burned them, like I said. And what do you mean, there's nothing we could do to them? We could murder them in their beds."

"Sure."

"Find the right church, take a shit on the altar, and tell Dominic Tutto they did it. That has a certain charm, now that I think of it. Fix 'em up, get 'em a date with the Butcher. Maybe they wore disguises for the same reason they stole the car. Because they're pros."

"They look familiar to you, Skip?"

"You mean looking past the wigs and beards and shit? I don't know that I could see past it. I didn't recognize the voices."

"No."

"There was something familiar about them, but I don't know what it was. The way they moved, maybe. That's it."

"I think I know what you mean."

"An economy of motion. You could almost say they were light on their feet." He laughed. "Call 'em up, see if they want to go dancing."

My glass was empty. I poured a little bourbon into it, sat back, and sipped it slowly. Skip drowned his cigarette in a coffee cup and told me, inevitably, that he never wanted to see me do the same. I assured him he wasn't likely to. He lit another cigarette and we sat there in a comfortable silence.

After a while he said, "You want to explain something to me, forget about disguises. Tell me why they shot the lights out."

"To cover their exit. Give them a step or two on us."

"You think they thought we were gonna come stampeding after them? Chase armed men through backyards and driveways?"

"Maybe they wanted it dark, thought they stood a better chance that way." I frowned. "All he had to do was take a step and flick the switch. You know the worst thing about the gunshots?"

"Yeah, they scared the shit out of me."

"They drew heat. One thing a pro knows is you don't do anything that brings the cops. Not if you can help it."

"Maybe they figured it was worth it. It was a warning: 'Don't try to get even.' "

"Maybe."

"A little touch of the dramatic."

"Maybe."

"And God knows it was dramatic enough. When the gun was aimed at me I thought I was gonna get shot. I really did. Then when he shot up the ceiling instead I didn't know whether to shit or go blind. What's the matter?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," I said.

"What?"

"He pointed the gun at you and then he fired two shots into the ceiling."

"Is that something we're supposed to have overlooked? What do you think we've been talking about?"

I held up a hand. "Think a minute," I said. "I'd been thinking of him shooting out the lights, that's why I missed it."

"Missed what? Matt, I don't-"

"Where have you been lately that somebody pointed a gun at someone but didn't shoot him? And fired two bullets into the ceiling?"

"Jesus Christ."

"Well?"

"Jesus Christ on stilts. Frank and Jesse."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know what I think. It's such a crazy thought. They didn't sound Irish."

"How do we know they were Irish at Morrissey's?"

"We don't. I guess I assumed it. Those handkerchief masks, and taking the money for Northern Relief, and the whole sense that it was political. They had that same economy of movement, you know? The way they were so precise, they didn't take extra steps, they moved through that whole robbery like somebody choreographed it."

"Maybe they're dancers."

"Right," he said. "Ballet Desperadoes of '75. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around all of this. Two clowns in red hankies take off the Morrissey brothers for fifty grand, and then they jack off me and Kasabian for- hey, it's the same amount. A subtle pattern begins to emerge."

"We don't know what the Morrisseys lost."

"No, and they didn't know what was gonna be in the safe, but a pattern's a pattern. I'll take it. What about their ears? You got pictures of their ears from last night. Are those the ears of Frank and Jesse?" He started to laugh. "I can't believe the lines I'm speaking. 'Are those the ears of Frank and Jesse?' Sentence sounds like it was translated from another language. Are they?"

"Skip, I never noticed their ears."

"I thought you detectives are working all the time."

"I was trying to figure out how to get out of the line of fire. If I was thinking of anything. They were fair-skinned, Frank and Jesse. And they were fair last night."

"Fair and warmer. You see their eyes?"

"I didn't see the color."

"I was close enough to see the eyes of the one who made the trade with me. But if I saw them I wasn't paying attention. Not that it makes any difference. Did either of them speak a word at Morrissey's?"

"I don't think so."

He closed his eyes. "I'm trying to remember. I think the whole thing was pantomime. Two gunshots and then silence until they were out the door and down the stairs."

"That's how I remember it."

He stood up, paced around the room. "It's crazy," he said. "Hey, maybe we can stop looking for the viper in my bosom. We're not looking at an inside job. We're dealing with a daring gang of two who're specializing in taking off bars in Hell's Kitchen. You don't suppose that local Irish gang, what do they call them-"

"The Westies. No, we'd have heard. Or Morrissey would have heard. That reward of his would have smoked it out in a day if any of them had anything to do with it." I picked up my glass and drank what was in it. God, it tasted good right now. We had them, I knew we did. I didn't know a single goddamned thing about them I hadn't known an hour ago but now I knew that I was going to bag them.

"That's why they wore disguises," I said. "Oh, they might have worn them anyway, but that's why they didn't want us to get a look at them. They made a mistake. We're going to get them."

"Jesus, look at you, Matt. Like an old firehouse dog when the alarm goes off. How the hell are you going to get them? You still don't know who they are."

"I know they're Frank and Jesse."

"So? Morrissey's been trying to find Frank and Jesse for a long time. Fact he tried to get you to go looking for them. What gives you the edge now?"

I poured myself just one more little slug of the Wild Turkey. I said, "When you plant a bug on a car and then you want to pick it up, you need two cars. One won't do it, but with two you can triangulate on the signal and home in on it."

"I'm missing something."

"It's not quite the same thing, but it's close. We've got them at Morrissey's, and we've got them in that church basement in Bensonhurst. That's two points of reference. Now we can home in on them, we can triangulate on their signal. Two bullets in the ceiling- it's their fucking trademark. You'd think they wanted to get caught, giving the job a signature like that."