Pigeon Pie, page 11
part #11 of Jimmy Flannery Series
"Well, now, how about my dear wife?" he goes on. "How about Maggie? You forget all about her?"
"Well, no, I didn't forget about her."
"Just slipped your mind, all these times you've been up to her condominium enjoying the view, maybe having a little breakfast?"
"Maggie's not on my staff. She's a friend."
"And a heavy contributor to your campaign?"
"I sent her generous contribution back," I say.
"No use for it yet? Of course not. But she'll be there with wallet or purse when you're really ready to roll, right?"
"My policy about the size and source of contributions is down on paper. It's the same for one and all."
"So, it's just socializing, you being in my wife's apartment day after day?"
"I'm learning what she can teach me."
He smiles a smile that calls me a liar and a womanizer and a wife stealer and God knows what else. He's got me on the run all because I didn't come right out with it and tell him I'd been seeing his soon-to-be ex-wife before he could bring it up.
"I'll just bet," he says. He's playing the outraged husband, helpless and impotent through circumstance, who has to sit by and watch his happy marriage destroyed by an opportunist and a thief. It's partly an act but it's partly what he believes because he wants to believe it.
It was my mistake, not being up-front about her. Was it because in my heart of hearts I knew going over there, seeing her so much, was not out of the best of motives? Was I like a kid playing with fire and afraid to admit it?
"I got to assure you there's nothing going on here," I say, hating the way it sounds, like I'm covering up a guilty secret.
"Look at the situation from where I'm sitting," Lundatos says.
I feel like saying that where he's sitting is in a tub of butter.
"It's not a week after I walk into this joint that my wife of many years informs me that she's filing for divorce," he goes on.
"Wouldn't you say that she finally got fed up with you fooling around with professional ladies and..."
"Are you crazy? We had an understanding. She's in Washington with me and I'm a good husband. But I got to spend my time here in the city, making myself available to the voters and I'm alone and lonely. There's a lot of separation. She understands I'm a man of strong appetites."
I feel like telling him did he ever think that she's a woman of strong appetites, too, and just how far did the understanding go?
"She don't necessarily condone but she accepts the fact that I need occasional relief," he says.
Which you take wherever and whenever with whoever, I think to myself.
"But then you come along, Flannery."
I don't mention that he dragged me into his circle; I didn't elbow my way in. He thought he could use me, so he threw his wife in my face, figuring I was also a man of strong appetites and easy conscience like hisself. She was a temptation.
I hear myself thinking the way I'm thinking and all of a sudden I don't like it. So I stand up.
"Where do you think you're going?" Lundatos says.
"I don't like where this conversation's going," I say. "The next thing, you'll be accusing me of stealing your wife away from you. I met the lady two or three times before you put your foot into it up to your neck."
"There you are," he shouts, jumping up from the bed. "You just proved my point. I never said you were a dumbbell. You see her maybe twice all them weeks and since I walked through the gates here you've seen her a dozen times that many."
"Okay, I'll give you that. It looks a little funny from the outside looking in."
"From the inside looking out," he sticks in there.
"So would you like it better if Maggie and me met in public places?"
"I'd like it better you didn't meet with her at all," he says in this very flat, very quiet way which is a lot more threatening than shouting.
"I don't know if you got a say in it anymore. Maggie don't consider she owes you anything anymore."
"Oh, I still got something to say about it. You just go on fooling around my wife and you'll find out I still got a say. And you'll find out that actions speak louder than words."
"I don't know was that a threat, Mr. Lundatos, or if your feelings just got the better of you, but I got to tell you that I don't take easy to threats. I told you that there was nothing between me and your wife, and I don't intend there ever will be, but I'm going to see her anytime she wants to see me, because she's a friend, and I got no guilty feelings."
TWENTY
Joe Medill, the columnist for the Tribune, wants to do a profile on me for the Sunday Magazine section.
I ask him will that put Jackie Boyle's nose out of joint, him being a longtime friend of mine just like Joe.
"So, let him do one on you, too, if he wants to," Medill says. "It ain't like we're doing a scoop here, Flannery. Whatever you got to say ain't going to shake the body politic."
Which in its own way is not a very complimentary remark.
We set a date and time to meet over to Schaller's Pump.
I call Boyle to see if that's all right with him.
"Sure, that's all right with me," Boyle says. "I'll meet you over to Schaller's, but what's the meeting all about?"
"Joe Medill wants to do a profile on me and I didn't want you to think I was giving him an exclusive over you."
"A profile, is it?" Boyle says. "Well, that is grand, but I don't think I want to do any more than a column—maybe a mention. I mean, after all, Flannery, anything you have to say ain't going to make headlines."
So here I am getting interviewed by two columnists who don't think much of who they're going to write about.
I get to Schaller's about eight o'clock. There's quite a crowd sitting at the tables and bellied up to the bar. I tuck myself between Medill and Boyle, what already got their paws wrapped around a couple of pints which I, no doubt, will be expected to pay for. I order a ginger ale from Harry Fannon, the bartender.
He sets me up and I'm about to take a swallow when somebody taps me on the shoulder with a stiff finger. It's very funny how you can tell when a finger ain't friendly, so I look over my shoulder expecting to see trouble.
Bailey's standing there with his buddy Connell right behind his shoulder.
"When are you going to start drinking a real drink—a man's drink—Flannery?"
"When are you going to sit down and mind your own business, Bailey?" I ask. "But, since it's on your mind, let me tell you that ginger ale was the drink of Irish kings before Guinness stout was invented."
"And you're an Irish sonofabitch who'd lie to his own priest."
"How'd we bring the Church into this?" I say. "If I were you, Bailey, I'd be the one to switch drinks. You better put that whiskey aside and have a ginger ale with me."
"You can shove your ginger ale up your ass, Flannery."
"Why are you pushing for a fight, Bailey? I can see you got an early start on tonight's drunk and tomorrow's hang over, but why are you acting so foolish?"
"That bitch won't let me share her office the way she lets you share her office."
"If you're talking about Janet Canarias, then I guess all I got to say is that she's got a right to have who she wants sharing the storefront. Go rent your own office."
"I already have."
"Then, if you got time on your hands, why ain't you in it learning your ward and your job?"
"For one thing Canarias ain't making it any easier for me. She ain't giving me a hell of a lot of cooperation dealing with citizen requests and complaints I bring to her."
"I'm sure anything she feels needs doing by her gets done or at least looked into. The idea is that you're supposed to take some of the burden off her. You're the filter between the people and the government."
"I'm no fucking filter. I'm the warlord of the Twenty-seventh," he sputters in my face.
"You're an asshole spitting on me," I say, "and if you don't back off pretty damn quick I'm going to poke a straw up your nose."
"Why you little fuck," he says, getting even closer, "I'll chew you up like you was a cherry and spit you out like you was the pit."
"I don't know how you're going to do that without your teeth," I say, putting the flat of my hand on his chest and backing him off.
Then I start to laugh. Don't ask me why but I start to laugh. It ain't a nervous laugh because I'm afraid I'm about to be in a fight. I'm laughing because here we are making threats to one another like a couple of kids in the playground. Me laughing gets Medill and Boyle to laughing.
It's the wrong thing to do. Bailey turns red and hauls off to give me a fist in the face, which is a stupid thing bullies do, this big windup like they mean to knock your head off.
While his ham-bone of a fist is still back there over his shoulder ready to be fired, I smack him twice in the face, forehand, backhand, one two.
While he's recovering from the surprise of that, I grab his lapels and bring his head down to the height of my head and crack the bone in his nose.
He lets out a hell of a yell as I shove him back, he shouldn't bleed on me, and he goes down on his ass, hollering like a wounded bull.
Connell almost goes down with him, but steps aside just in time and keeps his feet.
Now Connell's coming at me, cocking his fist just like Bailey done.
"Hey, idiot," I say, "you just see what happened to your pal? Well, think about it. It could happen to you."
He thinks about it.
"Pick up your buddy."
He bends down and gets Bailey under the armpits.
"You didn't even catch me, for Christ's sake," Bailey says to Connell. "You let me slip and fall on my ass."
"You didn't exactly slip and fall," Connell says. "More like Flannery knocked you on your ass."
"That little fart knocked me on my ass? What the hell are you talking about?" Bailey says.
"Hey, Mr. Flannery," Harry Fannon says, "you mind taking a walk until I get this straightened out? Half an hour?"
Some people would take offense as the innocent party but I know that Fannon's working it the right way, always get the reasonable combatant out of the way so you can cool the drunk down.
"Come on across the street to my office," I say to Medill and Boyle. "I got a pint of rye for my guests in the desk drawer."
Medill gets a double handful of ginger ale splits from Fannon and we leave Schaller's Pump and go to my office where we pour some drinks and talk about my political career, such as it is, with special emphasis on the number of times I been involved in cases of murder and mayhem through no fault of my own.
TWENTY-ONE
Medill and Boyle leave when the pint's finished.
The fight, such as it was, has still got me all pumped. If I go home, I'm going to toss and turn and wake Mary up.
So I decide to go over to Janet's office in the Twenty-seventh and clean up any ward business I still got on my desk.
I find Mabel sitting in my chair with her long legs stretched out and her feet up on the desk.
"You still running around this time of night?" she says.
"Well, I ain't doing more than you're doing," I say, taking the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. "You shouldn't be here this late."
"I had a few things I wanted to clean up."
"You can't give all your time to this job. You got to have a social life."
"Oh, I've got a social life. I just came from enjoying some of my social life."
The way she puts the emphasis on this word and that I can hear the hurt and bitterness pouring out. Then I can see she's been crying.
"I can see you're very upset, you don't mind my noticing. You want to talk to me about anything?"
She looks right into my eyes for a long minute like she's studying me for signs of sympathy or pity.
She's trying to read me and I'm trying to read her. I don't know if either of us is getting very far.
"Can you use a little help clearing up whatever it is troubling you?" I say, coaxing her a little bit.
"What do you think of me, Jimmy?" she asks.
"I think you're one of the nicest, bravest people I ever met."
"Don't get all sweet and silly on me. The next thing you'll be telling me is that you find me an interesting individual."
"Well, I do."
"Okay, that's a given. What's not interesting about a six foot broad with a thirty-six C cup? But you knew me before and you know me after. Milton and Mabel, the Siamese twins, joined at the hip. You must have mixed feelings when you see me with my legs up on the desk showing half an acre of thigh."
She puts her feet on the floor as though taking temptation out of my sight.
"You know, sometimes, I still find myself sitting or standing or moving the way I did when I was a man." She leans forward. "Isn't it confusing to contemplate the essential me and the physical me?"
"From what you told me about the soul-searching you had to go through before you decided to have the operation, it seems to me the physical you and the essential you and the sexual and even the spiritual you come as a package. Maybe because you had to, like, first find yourself and then invent yourself, you seem a lot more whole than a lot of people I know."
"It's sweet of you to say all that, Jimmy, but the fact is I've never felt whole in my entire life. Not before the operation and certainly not afterward. I appreciate what I got by going through with it but I also know what I lost."
"I can understand."
Her mouth twists up in a little smile, like she wants to say, "Well, no, you don't," but is too polite to brush me off that way.
"The only time I can feel really easy," she says, "is when I'm with people like Janet, who's got her own demons to wrestle with, and people like you, who knew me before and after. People I don't have to hide anything from. At least not too much."
She starts to tear up and turns her head away, like a man not wanting a friend to see him cry or a woman afraid she'll be considered weak.
"It's very hard to know how much truth new friends can take," she says. "If I think someone can handle it and I guess wrong, then I can lose the friendship—"
"Maybe that person wouldn't've made much of a friend in the first place."
"—and sometimes a lot more than that," she goes on as though she didn't even hear me.
"If you got doubts about somebody, then I guess all you can do is keep the truth to yourself."
"Then I feel like a liar and a fraud."
She looks away again and I know she's trying to hide the look in her eyes the way people do when they're remembering something that hurts.
"Did you tell someone the truth tonight?" I ask.
She looks at me again and shakes her head in admiration. "Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy," she says with the hint of an Irish brogue, "you've got an eye as sharp as a raven's and a heart as soft as a bun. That's exactly what happened. We were in a place—a situation—a very intimate situation—and I felt safe and secure and—loved—and I..."
She stands up all of a sudden, whatever comes next obviously too painful for her to go on, and says, "Are we ready to get the hell out of here?"
I get up and go get her jacket off the hook. I help her on with it, treating her like she's somebody small and delicate. I turn out all the lights. I pull down the green shade which covers the glass pane in the front door. I set the alarm. We walk out and I lock the door.
There's nothing and nobody on the street. It's so quiet it's hard to believe, for a second there, that we're in the middle of a big city. Then a car starts on a side street and breaks the silence. A pair of headlights flare and the car comes out onto the main street, picking up speed as it straightens out from the turn.
Mabel's grabbing me and turning me around toward the doorway. "Get down," she yells, crouching lower behind me, shielding my body with her own as she crowds me into the doorway, the only shelter available to us. I hear three shots like the clapping of hands. Her whole weight crushes me into the door and through the glass. The alarm goes off.
I'm laying there on the floor inside the storefront with Mabel sprawled on top of me. I get out from under. I make it to my feet and stand there shaking.
"What the hell was that all about?" I say. "You all right?"
She don't say anything back to me. She just lays there.
Some light from a nearby street lamp spills through the broken door. There's blood all over the back of her blouse.
When the cops arrive I'm on my knees beside her (they later tell me), begging her to get up and calling her Milton.
These cops is a team I know, Chalky Butts and Penny Tucker. Tucker's the one helps me to my feet and into my office while Butts calls in the homicide and the location.
It seems to me Tucker's hardly finished asking me do I want a glass of water when O'Shea and Rourke, these old detective friends of mine, are there.
I think I once described O'Shea as a man with a face like a raw side of beef and a kidney for a nose. Right from the minute I first meet him I figure him for the meanest cop I'm ever going to come up against. He works hard to prove me right.
But the years have passed and though his temper ain't got much sweeter he's revealed a liking for me which may be grudging but appears to be genuine. Also his hair's turning white and he's lost some of the color in his face, but the nose still looks like a kidney.
Rourke's the sweetheart of the two, the one who plays good cop and gets criminals to confide in him. But I've seen him when he's turned as cold as ice and you know that a killer sleeps behind his eyes.
"You all right, Flannery?" O'Shea asks.
"I ain't been shot but I ain't all right, either."
"Is that Milton Halstead in there?" he asks.
"Mabel. How did you know she was Milton?"
"ID in her purse. She still carries her cop's card."
"You know her?" I ask.
"I knew her when he was a cop."
"He was a good cop," Rourke says.
"She was a good person," I say.
"You up for telling us what happened?" Rourke says.
"I stopped over here to the office to tie up some loose ends."
