Tommy wore a ring. A yellow gold band, maybe three-eighths of an inch wide. And he wore a pinkie ring on his right hand, a high-school class ring, I think it must have been. I remembered it, sitting there over coffee in the Red Flame. A class ring with a blue stone on his right pinkie, a yellow gold band on his left ring finger.
I couldn't tell how I felt.
THAT afternoon I went to St. Paul 's and lit a candle for Margaret Tillary. I had discovered churches in my retirement, and while I did not pray or attend services, I dropped in now and then and sat in the darkened silence. Sometimes I lit candles for people who had recently died, or for those longer dead who were on my mind. I don't know why I thought this was something I ought to do, nor do I know why I felt compelled to tuck a tenth of any income I received into the poor box of whatever church I next visited.
I sat in a rear pew and thought a bit about sudden death. When I left the church a light rain was falling. I crossed Ninth Avenue and ducked into Armstrong's. Dennis was behind the bar. I ordered bourbon neat, drank it straight down, and motioned for another and said I'd have a cup of coffee with it.
While I poured the bourbon into the coffee, he asked if I'd heard about Tillary. I said I'd read the story in the News.
"There's a piece in this afternoon's Post, too. Pretty much the same story. It happened the night before last is how they figure it. He evidently didn't make it home and he went straight to the office in the morning, and then after he called a few times to apologize and couldn't get through, he got worried."
"It said that in the paper?"
"Just about. That would have been the night before last. He didn't come in while I was here. Did you see him?"
I tried to remember. "I think so. The night before last, yeah, I think he was here with Carolyn."
"The Dixie Belle."
"That's the one."
"Wonder how she feels about now." He used thumb and forefinger to smooth the points of his wispy moustache. "Probably guilty for having her wish come true."
"You think she wanted the wife dead?"
"I don't know. Isn't that a girl's fantasy when she's running around with a married guy? Look, I'm not married, what do I know about these things?"
THE story faded out of the papers during the next couple of days. There was a death notice in Thursday's News. Margaret Wayland Tillary, beloved wife of Thomas, mother of the late James Alan Tillary, aunt of Mrs. Richard Paulsen. There would be a wake that evening, a funeral service the following afternoon at Walter B. Cooke's, Fourth and Bay Ridge Avenues, in Brooklyn.
That night Billie Keegan said, "I haven't seen Tillary since it happened. I'm not sure we're gonna see him again." He poured himself a glass of JJ&S, the twelve-year-old Jameson that nobody else ever ordered. "I bet we don't see him with her again."
"The girlfriend?"
He nodded. "What's got to be on both their minds is he was with her when his wife was getting knifed to death in Brooklyn. And if he'd only been home where he was supposed to be, di dah di dah di dah. You're fooling around and you want a quick bounce and a couple of laughs, the last thing you need is something to remind you how you got your wife killed by fooling around."
I thought about it, nodded. "The wake was tonight," I said.
"Yeah? You go?"
I shook my head. "I don't know anybody that went."
I left before closing, I had a drink at Polly's and another at Miss Kitty's, Skip was tense and remote, I sat at the bar and tried to ignore the man standing next to me without being actively hostile. He wanted to tell me how all the city's problems were the fault of the former mayor. I didn't necessarily disagree but I didn't want to hear about it.
I finished my drink and headed for the door. Halfway there Skip called my name. I turned and he motioned to me.
I walked back to the bar. He said, "This is the wrong time for it, but I'd like to talk to you soon."
"Oh?"
"Ask your advice, maybe throw a little work your way. You be around Jimmy's tomorrow afternoon?"
"Probably," I said. "If I don't go to the funeral."
"Who died?"
"Tillary's wife."
"Oh, the funeral's tomorrow? Are you thinking about going? I didn't know you were that close to the guy."
"I'm not."
"Then why would you want to go? Forget it, not my business. I'll look for you at Armstrong's around two, two-thirty. If you're not there I'll catch you some other time."
I was there when he came in the next day around two-thirty. I had just finished lunch and was sitting over a cup of coffee when Skip came in and scanned the room from the doorway. He saw me and came on over and sat down.
"You didn't go," he said. "Well, it's no day for a funeral. I was just over at the gym, I felt silly sitting in the sauna after. The whole city's a sauna. What have you got there, some of that famous Kentucky coffee of yours?"
"Just plain coffee."
"That'll never do." He turned, beckoned the waitress. "Let me have a Prior Dark," he told her, "and bring my father here something to put in his coffee."
She brought a shot for me and a beer for him. He poured it slowly against the side of the glass, examined the half-inch head, took a sip, put the glass down.
He said, "I might have a problem."
I didn't say anything.
"This is confidential, okay?"
"Sure."
"You know much about the bar business?"
"Just from the consumer's point of view."
"I like that. You know it's all cash."