Don't Die Under the Apple Tree (21 page)

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Authors: Amy Patricia Meade

BOOK: Don't Die Under the Apple Tree
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Logan rushed from his place behind the bar and placed a steadying hand on her forearm. “You okay?”
“Yes, I ...”
He helped her onto a barstool. “Here, sit down a minute.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, no problem. Just stay put and I'll get you some water.” He went behind the bar and filled a clear old-fashioned glass with ice and a steady stream of water from the sink's tap.
“Here,” he said, as he returned to Rosie's side, glass in hand.
She took it in a trembling hand. “I'm so sorry about that. I don't ... I don't know what came over me.”
“No reason to apologize. I've never seen someone go white like that before. Must be the heat.”
“That—that must be it,” she replied, all the while her thoughts on Billy.
“Yeah, thought so. Got too hot too fast. Always does. Then next week it'll probably snow again.” He punctuated the prediction with a disgusted wave of his hand.
“So, um, about Billy. You said he was here two weeks ago?”
“He was. Must have been a last hurrah before shipping out, huh?”
She tried to muster a smile. “Yes, that's exactly what it was.”
“Thought so. I approached him about the bill, but he must have forgotten. No wonder, either. Boy, was he tight!”
“Hmm, you usually bring him home when he's like that. Unless, of course, he wasn't alone.”
“Alone?” Logan's face flushed as he repeated the word evasively. “Oh ... ummm ... why no. No, he wasn't.”
It was apparent from his flustered reaction that the companion was not male.
“I, um, I think I feel better now. How much is the tab, Mr. Logan?”
“Thirty bucks, but I don't need all of it right now, Mrs. Keefe. Just give me what you can afford. What with Billy off to war, I know money must be hard to come by.”
Rosie extracted a tattered leather wallet from her handbag and checked its contents. Payday at the yard occurred every other Monday—her next check was still two days away. “I have five dollars,” she announced as she counted out the last bills in her wallet. “Is that enough?”
“That's more than enough, thanks, Mrs. Keefe. I wouldn't have asked you, but business ain't what it used to be what with most of my customers being drafted.”
“I understand. It's okay.” She hopped down from the stool and gathered up her handbag. “I'd best be going. Thanks, Mr. Logan.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Keefe. I appreciate it. And take care of yourself. If you get another spell like that, go to the doctor.”
Rosie nodded absently and wended her way out of the bar. In a daze, she retraced her steps to the bus stop and boarded.
Two weeks,
she thought as the bus rolled onward.
Billy was in town as recently as two weeks ago and yet he hasn't called. Hasn't stopped by to say “hello.” Hasn't provided an explanation for his whereabouts.
Lies. The whole draft story was a lie. If that was untrue, what else? Had Billy ever loved her or was she simply a trophy? Marrying one of the prettiest girls in school, who lived in one of the biggest houses in the neighborhood, would fetch Billy the glory he sought without much effort on his part.
And Billy had a serious aversion to effort. In Billy's mind, his intellect was higher than everyone else's, his looks more attractive, his charms more alluring. Why should he work? Why should he break a sweat when others should feel honored having him in their employ?
Even though he had managed to talk himself up to others and, to a certain extent, himself, beneath that cocky, devil-may-care exterior existed a desperately insecure human being. A man who put on a good show in order to hide a deep sense of failure and personal dissatisfaction. Most of the time, Billy believed the things he said. Believed that he was the prize catch he claimed to be. Believed he was the pride of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Then there were the dark moments, those lonely hours when the dam behind which he locked his self-doubt opened just wide enough to allow a ripple of uncertainty to wash upon his consciousness. The cause of the dam leak varied—meeting a school friend who had gone on to job success, a friend buying a new car, an argument with an employer—but the solution was always the same.
Seeking any way to quell the oncoming tide of self-loathing, Billy reached out for the best thing he could find to ease the pain and despair: alcohol. Those first few sips of beer or whiskey were like a magic elixir. The muscles in his body loosened, his mood lifted, and for a short while he forgot his demons. But that first drink only lasted so long, and its happy effects mitigated over time. And so it was soon followed by another. And another. And yet another.
In the fifteen years since he had started drinking, the euphoria produced by those first few sips now required a few bottles. And the four-beers-a-night routine had gradually grown to seven, eight, and sometimes as many as ten.
But it was a delicate balance. If he hadn't consumed enough to fall into the deep oblivion of sleep, then his jealousies and insecurities broke through the dam and swept over him like a tidal wave, plunging him into a sea of self-loathing.
It was at those moments that Rosie felt sorry for Billy. Sitting alone in the dark, he'd cry for hours, speaking to no one and feeling nothing except his own pain.
If he drank too much, his bravado reached new and obnoxious heights, spurring him to spew forth insults and obscenities at anyone who dared question his wisdom. Most of the time, Billy passed out shortly after offending those in his company. If the barkeep knew Rosie, he'd call her to collect Billy or, in the case of Frank Logan, drop the intoxicated man at her doorstep. But there were many times when, having faced the sharp end of Billy's tongue, a vengeful pub proprietor would leave him in the side alley or, worse yet, call the police.
And then there were those occasions when he didn't pass out after his eighth beer in two hours and instead, continued drinking. It was during those moments when Billy, his inhibitions lost in the haze of the alcohol and his temper and sense of indignation at full tilt, would manifest his feelings of inferiority in a physical sense.
Rosie felt the bus come to a halt outside the IRT station. Gathering her handbag, she rose from her seat, stepped from the bus, and walked up a flight of metal stairs and across a wooden platform to the waiting train. Upon showing the conductor her monthly pass, she stepped into the third car and took an empty seat in the last row before once again immersing herself in her thoughts.
Billy
. She shook her head at his name.
Billy and his temper.
He had been told, from the time he was a kid, that his big mouth and temper would be his undoing. Indeed, Rosie wasn't sure how he had managed to live to the age of thirty-three without having some irate bar patron attempt to knock his teeth out of his head.
On some level, she wished some bar patron had, for it might have put the fear of God into him. Heaven only knew that Billy's outbursts had put the fear of God into her several times. Broken glasses, smashed plates, overturned furniture, holes punched into the plaster walls, and once, just once, he had even shoved Rosie into the kitchen table.
The incident had left Rosie with bruises and scratches galore and had spurred her to consider moving to her mother's house. But in true Billy fashion, once he had sobered up he apologized with a bouquet of flowers, copious amounts of hugs and “I love yous,” and a vow to never hurt her again.
She, quite naturally, believed him. She wanted to believe him. That was the thing about Billy: no matter how bad things could be, he had a way of making you believe that they would eventually get better. Although she suspected that not all of his all-night outings had ended with him sleeping in an alley and that perhaps he wasn't always drinking with the boys, when he was home he made her feel as if she were the only woman who mattered.
Mattered, that is, until the next time he came home in a rage or didn't come home at all. And then the cycle of doubt started all over again.
But now, between Del Vecchio's words at the shipyard and Logan's sighting of Billy at the bar, she knew for certain that she wasn't the only woman who mattered to him.
To Billy Keefe, her thoughts and feelings—indeed, Rosie herself—weren't anything that mattered at all.
She was jolted from her reverie by the conductor's announcement that they had reached the Thirty-third Street stop. So lost in thought was she that the twenty-minute trip had seemed to take mere seconds. From the station, she slowly made her way to her apartment building and trudged up the stairs to her second-floor flat.
Finding the evening paper outside the door, she picked it up, went inside, and immediately deposited it on the coffee table before flopping facedown onto the couch. Every bit of strength and energy she possessed after talking to Hansen seemed to have evaporated the moment she received the news about Billy.
Why should she bother to fight to preserve her freedom when her entire existence was a joke?
For the first time in days, she surrendered fully to her emotions. No blinking back the tears or biting her lip to retain composure. Instead of a trickle, her tear ducts produced a steady stream of salty water and her breath came in heavy sobs.
After several minutes, she sniffed and raised her head from the pillow. Her throat was dry, the roof of her mouth soft and swollen, and her eyes burned, but the outburst was, ultimately, cathartic. Deciding she needed both a handkerchief and a drink of water, she rose from the sofa, the hem of her dress knocking the newspaper off the table as she did so.
As she bent down to retrieve it, she read, through puffy, half-closed eyes, the headline:
SENATOR TRUMAN'S CRUSADE CONTINUES.
72 POSSIBLE CASES OF WAR PROFITEERING
FOUND IN NYC; MORE SUSPECTED
Hansen's words about the faulty rivets flashed across Rosie's mind like a streak of lightning. Was Pushey Shipyard doing more than just trying to cut corners? Were they charging the United States government for ships built out of high-quality steel and then using subpar materials instead? And if they were, did Finch know about it? If so, that would help to explain the deposits in his checkbook. It might also help to explain why he was killed.
Her mind full of questions, she scanned the article and made her way to the kitchen for a much-needed glass of water. As she grabbed a glass from the cupboard, a knock came at the door.
Placing both the glass and the newspaper on the kitchen counter, Rosie moved to the door and opened it to see Lieutenant Riordan, a grave expression on his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Hansen,” he replied as he removed his gray fedora and stepped inside the apartment.
Rosie shut the door behind him. “What about him?”
“He was assaulted on his way home from a bar in Greenpoint.”
She felt the color drain from her face. “Assaulted how? Where?”
“We found him on the corner of Franklin and Mese-role. He'd been beaten half to death. If not with a club or bat then by someone with hands like cured hams.”
Rudy Hansen stood approximately six foot three inches tall. Rosie couldn't imagine the brutality required to bring a man that size to the brink of death. “Will he be okay?”
“Should be, but until then he's at Bellevue in critical condition.”
Rosie leaned against the metal kitchen table. “Did he see who attacked him?”
“Don't know. He's still unconscious.”
“Oh!” Rosie drew a hand to her mouth in surprise and horror.
“I know. Whoever attacked him really had it in for the guy,” Riordan commented. “So, um, Greenpoint's your neighborhood, isn't it?”
“Originally, yes. I grew up there and my mother still lives there. Why?”
“Because Hansen's from the Bronx. I find it strange that he'd be all the way in Brooklyn at a bar that's not on his route back home.”
“There's a million reasons why he might have been there: family, friends ...”
“A woman,” Riordan added with a smirk.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose Hansen could have been meeting a lady friend.”
“A good-looking lady friend with red hair?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Who also goes by the name of Rose Doyle Keefe?”
Rosie felt the color drain from her face again.
“We know you were there, Mrs. Keefe. Frank Logan confirmed it. So tell me why? Why would you meet Rudy Hansen, a guy who just a few days ago threw hot rivets in your face?”
“He invited me out for a drink.”
“And you went? You, a married woman, in your old neighborhood? Weren't you afraid that might raise some eyebrows?”
“N-no.” The way Riordan depicted the scene made it seem cheap and tawdry. “I mean, it wasn't like that!”

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