There's all kinds of things can bust the legs of political hopefuls so they can never run again. Collusion, which is "a secret agreement between two or more persons for deceitful or fraudulent purposes." Malfeasance, which is "wrongdoing, especially illegal or contrary to official obligations." Conspiracy to defraud the electorate. . . .Well, you get the idea. There's all kinds of ways, and anytime you try to make a crooked deal with an outsider, you're sticking your head under the knife. If the person or persons you're trying to corrupt say no, they've got you by the shorts. Sometimes there's only one way to shut them up.

  So who could that somebody be who had Spencer and Frye done? I've got my money on Barker Jefferson. I count up the reasons for me thinking so on my fingers.

  One. He was there to see that Baby was comfortable over to the Paradise Baths. He provides the padlock for the door to the dry room and hands out the keys. There's two keys come with a new lock. He only hands out two. So why did he have his man, Huron, have another one made?

  Two. Peachy Keane, the cabbie, tells me he sees Jefferson's stretch Cadillac over to the Canals of Venice on the night in question.

  Three. Jefferson asks me to run for alderman because he's ready to withdraw from the race right after that Friday night. Was that maybe because he wanted to give me something more important to occupy my mind than two dead gays?

  "What the hell you telling me?" Pescaro says. "You think you got something, walk into the station house and make your complaint. Don't come telling me fairy stories while I'm having my lunch. You want a pickle?"

  Pescaro likes warm, dill pickles, the thought of which makes me sick to my stomach.

  "I'll stick with my coffee. I don't come in because I don't want it to be official."

  "You don't want to stick your neck out."

  "Whatever you want to call it, there's no reason for me to call attention to myself by blowing the whistle on somebody when—"

  "When all you got is a key somebody has made, a black car sitting out in front of a night spot, and a man what decides he don't want to run for public office this election year."

  "Also a gorilla keeper what somebody makes so drunk he can't hear two guys getting beat to death."

  "Two guys which this cabbie claims he takes to the Paradise Baths around twelve-thirty. So where are they when this citizen shows up with a bottle so he can have a look at a gorilla?"

  "I don't say I got it all."

  "Give me a break, you got nothing."

  "So you want to buy the idea that the gorilla done it?"

  "You know anything about gorillas?"

  "I read a little about them."

  "Then read again. They ain't all that timid, the way some people make them out to be. They'll charge a person if they get it in their heads to do it."

  "All I'm asking is you go ask around Velletri's Canals of Venice and find out what a transvestite by the name of Harriet or a fairy by the name of Kitchy really knows. Find out what was going on in the back room the Friday night Spencer and Frye was killed."

  Pescaro puts down his sandwich and looks me straight in the eye for the first time, "You know I ain't too fond of you, don't you, Flannery?"

  "I get a hint every now and then."

  "You know why I don't like you?"

  "Because I bug you to do what you should be doing."

  "You'll be putting the arm on me for that girl what got blown up over to the clinic on Sperry Street for the rest of my life. You want to think I was paid off or pressured to let that one die, that's up to you. But I'm telling you, on this one there's no question of trying to sit on how two citizens got to be corpses."

  I get up.

  "So, Flannery," he says, "let it alone. Go inspect your sewers or whatever, but leave the police work to me. What do you say?"

  "I say this is an election year and there's juice by the barrel flooding the streets."

  I find out where Manny Rosenquist, who is an accountant, husband, and father of two, lives.

  It's in a nice block of flats on a nice street. It's just a little before supper, a good time to talk to somebody who maybe don't want to talk to you. There's supper waiting, the kids hollering, and the wife worrying about the meal getting cold. Who needs to stretch out something not so pleasant at the best part of the day?

  I knock on the door and it's opened by a little boy about seven just as I hear a woman yell, "Don't open that door before you ask who it is!"

  "Who is it?" the kid asks me, startled out of his pants.

  "Will you tell your father. . ."

  A woman about thirty and a man a couple of years older rush into the living room from separate doorways at the same time. They look at me as though I'm a burglar, and at each other as though the other one is to blame for not getting to the kid fast enough. Then Rosenquist sticks his head out like a bird and says, "I know you, don't I?"

  "We met more than once. My name's—"

  "Flannery."

  "That's right."

  "It's okay, Sheila. I know Mr. Flannery. You can go back to the kitchen—if you want to—and finish with dinner."

  "It's almost ready to go on the table," Sheila says suspiciously.

  "Take David with you. I don't think this will take long."

  She leaves with the little boy, who's curious about the stranger but, having made one mistake, don't intend to make another.

  "It won't take long, will it, Mr. Flannery?" Rosenquist says smoothly, waving me to a chair.

  "That depends," I say, still standing there.

  He sits down. "On what?"

  "On whether you answer the questions what I got to ask."

  He waves his hand at me again, telling me to get on with it. He's trying to act cool, but I can tell he's nervous as hell.

  "Why did you decide not to join up with Calcazone and Trebova to back Janet Canarias for the alderman's seat?"

  "I don't know about Tony and Steve, but for myself I can say that I didn't see that she had a chance."

  "Well, begging your pardon, but I think you can speak for them other two, since you was all there together over to the Canals of Venice with Barker Jefferson, and I don't know who else, when the deal was cut."

  He glances toward the kitchen and I know right away that it's Sheila who's the crusader and he considers himself a more practical person. He lowers his voice. "Just what are you getting so upset about, since you're going to be the beneficiary of any deal that was cut?"

  "Was that settled?"

  "It was discussed as a very strong possibility."

  "Well, since I wasn't asked at that time, I couldn't be the one to give you favor for favor. Who made you an offer?"

  "Jefferson, as the representative of the mayor, proved a case for the benefits our cooperation will bring this election year."

  "Looking to the future for the three of you?"

  "Whoever still has the ambition next time around. Compromise and knowing when to make your fight is the very soul of politics, isn't it?"

  "Oh, sure," I say in a way so offhanded he knows what I think of simple numbers like that. "Anything else happen in the back room of the Canals of Venice while you was there?"

  He looks toward the kitchen door again. Sheila's standing there white-faced and still.

  "Not a thing. We had our meeting and I left with Tony and Steve."

  "Jefferson leave with you?"

  "No."

  "Who else was there?"

  "A lot of members of the Limburg Club. I wouldn't know their names."

  "Not any of them?"

  "Not any."

  "What time did you leave?"

  "Oh, it must have been no later than one o'clock."

  "You see any other customers leave when you leave?"

  "We left by the side entrance to the banquet room."

  "So you wouldn't know."

  I go over to Anthony Calcazone's house, where he lives with his mother. He's not at home, but is expected any minute. His mother is a lovely old Italian lady what offers me a glass of homemade wine first and then asks me what I want with her son second. I drink half of the wine to please her.

  When Calcazone comes through the door I know he's already talked to Rosenquist and expects me, but pretends he doesn't. Mrs. Calcazone leaves us to make her son's supper. I ask the same questions I ask Rosenquist, not trying to be tricky, because you can't be tricky about something you don't know very much about and which nobody is helping you to find out more. His answers are the same Rosenquist's. They could sing a duet.

  I don't bother looking up Trebova. I don't need to hear the same thing three times.

  When I go home, there's a whole bunch of old ladies dressed in black, with black shawls on their heads and prayer books in their hands, quietly huddled around Mrs. Bilina's door, nailed to which is a hand-colored photograph of Mr. Bilina. Somebody's painted a halo around his head with gilt paint.

  There's a message on the pad by the phone left there by my father, who's got a key to the flat which he ain't give me back since Mary come to live with me. Every time I think about him walking in on us when we are busy at things two people—a man and a woman—can get busy at, I remind myself to ask for it back, but then I forget.

  The message says: "I come by for a cup of coffee. Nobody home. Somebody named Harriet, with a man's voice, calls to see if you was home. I ask her does she want to leave a number. She says no, she'll get you later. Your dad."

  I call my old man to see if I can get some details, but he ain't at home. So I look up the number for the Canals of Venice, figuring maybe I can get Harry's address or number from somebody over there.

  The phone rings and I jump a foot. It's Mary. "James?"

  "Yes, it's me."

  "I'm at Passavant," she says.

  I wait for it, because I can tell from her voice that something's about to drop on me.

  "You told me a story last night in bed about some poor sucker who was having a gender crisis."

  "What?"

  "The waitress with the beard and the tattoo."

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "A man wearing traces of makeup, with the tattoo of a snake on his arm, was brought in half an hour ago. He was very badly beaten."

  "I'll be right there."

  "You can take your time, James," she says very soft. "He won't be going anywhere. He died five minutes ago."

  TWENTY-TWO

  I don't get mad very often. People see my red hair and that I'm pretty sure of myself, even if I ain't exactly a giant, and they think I'm scrappy. I was never scrappy. Even when I was a kid I tried to keep out of fights. I tried to talk my way out of whatever it is other guys would maybe put up their fists about. I don't believe, like some people say, it's good to get angry. I think it's good to stay calm. If somebody does me dirt, I think it's good to stay very, very cool and, like old man Joe Kennedy taught his kids, "Don't get mad, get even."

  But standing there in the morgue at Passavant, looking at poor Harry or Harriet or whatever, I feel this anger building up inside of me like boiling water.

  Whoever done him done him bad. With pipes and chains. With heavy rings. I can see the marks on his busted mouth and nose.

  You don't have to be a genius to figure out what happened. He call up the guys what he called when I went nosing around the Canals of Venice, the guys what told him to lay me out for a C note. He tells them I make him an offer, and seeing as how I was too quick for him to work over, he calls them again and asks them would they be ready to pay him the same C note for keeping quiet and maybe a little more. And they figure it's cheaper—and maybe more fun—to give him what they give him for trying to hold them up.

  I look at the tag on his toe. His name was Harry Wills.

  I don't even hear the door open. The first thing I know Mary's behind me saying, "Is that the person you fought with?"

  "That's him," I say.

  "If I saw him on the street with lipstick and mascara on, I'd think he was funny. I mean, strange. He'd me me feel very uncomfortable even though I'd want to laugh."

  "Maybe it's only when we're babies and when we're dead that other people see we're only human, with nothing but promises at one end and regrets on the other."

  I go back to the Canals of Venice like I'm just another customer. The place is pretty full of queens and princesses, lipstick-lesbians and lace-panty queers, and all the variations in between. I'm looking for Kitchy to ask him did he know who could have done Harry. Kitchy ain't there but Denny Bachos is, bellied up to the bar eyeing the half-nude dancer—man or woman, I can't tell—up on the runway.

  "This where you hide from the wife, Denny?" I say.

  "Look at you, Mr. Flannery," he says, like he's really glad to see me, though his eyes are looking for a way out, "in a place like this. I could ask the same."

  "I'm not married, Denny."

  "Maybe not, but the word is out that you're as good as."

  "No secrets in this town."

  "Not when you're as famous as you are, Mr. Flannery."

  Denny Bachos is a man crowding seventy what looks thirty-five from ten feet away. It's only when you get up close that you can see his skin looks like an advertisement for the embalmer's art. He don't use it, but his face always looks like he's wearing powder, an impression helped along by the hair lotion he uses to slick back hair as black as patent leather. For some reason it always irritates me that Denny calls me mister. It's more humility than I can stand.

  "You're the man what's famous, Denny. You're the man what sat shoulder to shoulder with old man Daley when he was clerking for the City Council."

  Denny was clerking still, fighting off retirement with hair dye and neck tucks. It was said that he could tell you where every skeleton in the city was buried, even if it was only the bones of a mouse. He got to know so much because, though he talked a mile a minute sometimes, he never said nothing.

  "Hey, don't you go turning an old man's head."

  "What are you drinking, Denny?"

  "Just beer."

  "Have a whiskey."

  "Just what door you trying to open, Mr. Flannery?"

  I catch the bartender's eye. When he comes over, I order two whiskeys and two beers.

  "You was at the war council two weeks ago Friday, wasn't you?"

  "Which one was that?"

  "The one what took place right here in the back room."

  "There wasn't no war council. Just a little gathering of some of the boys from the Limburg Club. You know, just a little cards and a few jokes."

  "Velletri tell any jokes?"

  "Velletri didn't join us. He's old and not feeling very well, don't you know? He set up the feed, spaghetti and pizza. Velletri ain't cheap."

  "Jefferson pick up the tab for the beer and pretzels?"

  "Jefferson? You mean the mayor's man, Barker Jefferson?"

  "That's the one I mean."

  He laughs like he's just seen me go crazy before his very eyes, but there's a hollow sound to it.

  "What would Barker Jefferson be doing at a little gathering of the Limburgs? I mean, don't you know he's with the enemy?"

  "Give it up, Denny. I know he was here. Nobody's trying to hide it."

  "Oh, well, come to think of it, I think he did stop by to say hello."

  "To his enemies?"

  "To a few of the boys what can speak for the Machine."

  "What's left of it."

  "Whatever you say."

  "I get the feeling there's all sorts of deals being made this election year. I get the notion all kinds of people you wouldn't expect to be there is jumping into all kinds of bed."

  "You should know, Mr. Flannery."

  "You get a kick watching these nances prancing around?" I say offhanded.

  "Some people you wouldn't believe get a kick out of this sort of thing."

  "You get a kick out of it, Denny?"

  His face turns red just like that. "I hope you're not suggesting, anything nasty about me, Mr. Flannery. I wouldn't like that. I'm no goddamn closet faggot. I maybe like to watch the goddamn freaks, but I wouldn't have nothing to do with them. I wouldn't have one of them for a friend."

  "The rest of the Limburgs feel that way?"

  "You're goddamn right. Any man what's a man would feel that way, and the Limburgs is all men." He smacks his fist into the palm of his other hand.

  "That's a nice ring you got there, Denny," I say, eyeing the big ring on his little hand. "That the Limburg signet?"

  "You seen plenty of them, ain't you, Mr. Flannery? Don't your old man wear one?"

  "He put it in the drawer after Hizzoner died."

  "This one saw a lot of use years ago. It was my old man's. I have one of my own, but he give it to me before he died, so it's the one I wear. He had it back in nineteen nineteen when the Limburgs make their reputation battling with Ragen's Colts from Canaryville."

  "Them was the days."

  "Oh, yeah. Made the Limburgs a force in politics, you know? They run Bridgeport and the rest of the ward after that last big fight with the Colts back in twenty-four. It was the Thirteenth, then. You know the story of how Doyle, the president of the Limburgs, took the alderman's seat away from the man what sat in it for twenty years?"

  I don't ask him to tell me, because I know he's going to tell me.

  "Three hundred and fifty Limburgs, all young fellas, went out in teams of ten every night the week before election and 'campaigned' for him. You know what I mean?"

  "I know what you mean. You ever join in that sort of persuasion later on when you was grown, Denny?"

  "I'm a lover, not a fighter." Bachos smirks and then he quickly adds, "Which ain't to say I'll run away from a fight. Never would and never will."

  I take one of his hands and bring it closer to my eyes. There's some scraped skin on the knuckles, which look a little swollen.

  "In any fights lately?"

  "Well, you know. Sometimes you got to defend a lady what you're out with."

  "The wife?"

  He smirks and winks his eye. "I ain't dead yet, and a man needs a little something new every now and then."

  "So you had a fight over your girlfriend?"

  "The gazoony was drunk. It didn't last long."

 

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