If I Should Die Before I Die (9 page)

“Did he hurt you?” I asked.

“… bastards,” she was saying, head down, rocking. “How I hate the fags.”

The bag she was sitting on was at the edge of a pyramid that mounted up around the lamppost. Most of the bags had split open, their contents spilling out among some soggy cardboard cartons. I picked out another closed bag and sat down near her.

“Who the hell are you?” she said, half-glancing across at me.

Her eye makeup had smudged, and the plastic raincoat packed her in, making her look plumper. But she was pretty like I said, in that freckle-faced, Cupid's mouth kind of way.

“What'd he do to you?” I said.

“Whadda you care?”

“I know him some.”

“Then you're no friend of mine,” she answered, looking away.

“I'm not his friend. I just know him, some. What'd he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

She went on talking, though. She'd only just met McCloy, she said. At Rosebud's. All right if it made her a dumbbell, but she'd thought he was cute. Her type. Handsome even. He hadn't wanted to go off partying with the others, he'd wanted them to make their own party. That's what he'd said, and that was okay with her. He'd kept saying it when they were dancing, the whole time. But then, no sooner did the others take off then he told her to get lost.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

“D'you know what he wanted to give me?” she said. “He wanted to give me twenty bucks. Unbelievable. That's what he said: I'll give you twenty bucks just to get lost.”

It wasn't clear whether the twenty bucks was too little or that McCloy had ruined her evening.

“Maybe you should at least have taken the twenty bucks,” I said.

Her bow mouth tightened momentarily, then she burst out laughing.

“Hey, you're right!” she said. “But it felt better to slug him. Hey, who are you anyway,” taking another look, “some kind of cop?”

We stood up then. She twisted and pulled at the raincoat.

“What a mess!” she said. Then, again: “You a cop?”

It was a reasonable guess, I suppose. I was clearly too old for the Rosebud and too well-heeled for the Bowery. On the other hand, I'd taken my tie off inside and my jacket collar was turned up, and, as we started to walk in the drizzle, I must have looked almost bedraggled enough to belong.

I told her I wasn't a cop. It seemed to disappoint her a little. She said she kind of liked cops, most cops. But that's when she started telling me about herself. We walked south on the Bowery a block or two, talking. We exchanged names. She even hooked her arm into mine.

But then, at a corner, she stopped abruptly.

“Hey, Phil, where're we going? I don't exactly want to walk all night in the rain.”

I thought quickly, for some reason, about what Bobby Derr would have done. But I'm not Bobby Derr, and I guess I blew it.

“I'll tell you what, Linda,” I said. “I'll double what he offered you, and then some.”

“What for?” she said.

“You don't have to do anything,” I added. “I just want to know everything you know about him.”

“About who?”

“About McCloy. Carter McCloy. The guy you were just with.”

“I
told
you I never met him before tonight! Jesus, what're you, another one? Isn't there a guy in this whole city who's
not
gay?”

“Wait a minute!” I called after her, because she'd torn away from me and was heading up the street. “Where're you going?”

“Home,” she said angrily, when I caught up.

“How're you going to get there? I'll take you.”

“Thanks but no thanks, buddy. I can take care of myself.”

“Well, let me at least get you a taxi.”

“A taxi to where I live costs eleven bucks.”

“I'll pay for it,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said, pulling free again.

I spotted a cab, though, with the yellow light on in its roof, and waved it down. I called to her, then held the door open for her when she gave in.

“I'm not gay,” I told her. “I just need to know about McCloy.”

She stopped, just inside the door, hand out.

“Sixty bucks,” she said.

“How come sixty?” I said, laughing in spite of myself.

“You said double his twenty and then some. Plus the cab. Round it off at sixty. But not tonight.”

“When can we talk then?” I said, reaching for my wallet and holding on to the door.

The cabdriver swung his head around in the driver's seat and started to bitch.

“Not tonight,” she repeated. “Some other time. You give me a call, my number's in the book.”

I handed her three tens—on account, I said. She called me a cheap bastard but she took them. Then I let her go, shutting the door, and stood back to watch another set of red taillights disappear into the wet night.

Needless to say, her number wasn't in the book, not at least under Linda Smith. I never saw her again, only her picture in the paper. Right then, I was stranded on the Bowery, wet and insomniac, and that's how come I ended up in the wee hours, at Melchiorre's, drinking with Carter McCloy.

By reputation, Melchiorre's has been
the
preppie watering hole in New York for about as long as I can remember. It's been closed down once or twice, and one time, when the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of the city's prominent families got herself raped in Central Park early one morning and it turned out she'd been drinking in Melchiorre's, there was a move to put it out of business for good. It never happened, though. Presumably business was good enough for the protectors of Melchiorre's to up the ante. It was a darkish place, with half-curtains on brass bars in the windows and a long, heavy oak bar, oak tables, some with chairs, some long benches, dining areas in the back, and a giant old-fashioned juke box with the big half-moon glowing with neon.

I drove up there on a hunch, and for once one paid off. The action was fierce by the time I arrived, but McCloy was in the middle of it. I squeezed onto the last empty stool at the short end of the bar next to the waiter's station. I realized at some point that I was the oldest guy in the joint by plenty, and that included the bartenders and the waiters, all male, all in white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, black bow ties and white half-aprons tied around their waists. Old enough, in fact, that a couple of the damsels who got me to buy them drinks could have been my daughters, if I had any daughters.

I bought them drinks, which—sign of the times—was all they seemed to want out of me, and nursed some draft Bass Ale and kept an eye on McCloy who was holding court, the white scarf around his neck like a badge, about halfway down the long leg of the bar.

I remember thinking I should have bought stock in the Dewars Company. He was putting them away, doubles on the rocks, like tomorrow was the start of Prohibition. A couple of times he swayed off toward the back, maybe to clear his stomach like he had at the Rosebud, but he navigated pretty well and then he returned to the booze and, to use his term, the bunnies. He drew them like magnets. Well, he was a good-looking stud like I've said, of the young, tall and long-jawed kind, the straight hair slanting across his forehead like a scowl, and I guess he looked like Money, Glamor, Romance to girls who were a little short on all three. They seemed to come at him in waves, edging into the bar next to him, and I watched their different techniques. None worked. For that night anyway, he was wedded to the bottle, and he dismissed them with a sneer and a shake of the head and words I couldn't hear, and I watched them slink away to be replaced by other hopefuls.

The Bass Ale sent me off to answer the call a couple of times myself. The second time back, just as I came abreast of him, a pretty blonde in a black stretch outfit and high heels was backing off from the bar.

“You can go to hell yourself, Cloy,” I heard her say.

A space had opened up next to him, an empty stool, and I took it.

“Bunnies,” he was saying to nobody in particular. “Thick as flies, you know?”

I recognized the voice all right, flat and scornful, from the Counselor's Wife's tapes.

With a vague wave he summoned the bartender. He ordered another double, I a fresh Bass.

“What'd she do to you?” I said. “Or you to her?”

“Who?”

“The blonde. The one who was just here.”

“Her?” he said. I saw him eye me in the mirror above the bar bottles. “Why? You want me to fix you up with her?”

He gave off some weird kind of smell. I couldn't identify it. It wasn't pleasant, musty sort of, stale. Maybe the Scotch was sweating back out through his pores. Maybe that's just the way rich kids smell. He was sweating all right, and from time to time the back of his hand did double duty, brushing away the sweat and the hair off his forehead.

“That's what I do, you know?” he said. “I fix people up with people. That's my life's work. What's your life's work?”

“A little of this,” I said, “a little of that.”

“Fix people up with people. You don't believe me, do you?”

“Oh, I believe you,” I said. “Is it lucrative?”

“Lucrative,” he said. “Lu. Cra. Tive.”

“But who do you fix yourself up with?” I asked.

He didn't answer, though. Instead he waved for another Scotch.

“Double Dew,” he said.

At some point we exchanged names. People called him Cloy, he said, short for McCloy, the Real McCloy. And when he heard Revere, he declaimed a little Longfellow, “‘Listen my children and you shall hear,'” his glass raised in the general direction of my mirrored reflection. From then on, he called us the Midnight Riders.

I remember asking him why he called women “bunnies.” He said that's what they were, wasn't it? Bunnies, born to breed? That's what they were for: breeding. I asked him if he'd ever done any breeding himself. That made him laugh. He had a snorting way of laughing, right out through the nose. He said he'd bred a couple of times, but he'd never seen the end results. He'd been too busy making money to pay the bunnies off. Now there was a lu-cra-tive business, he said: paternity suits.

I knew this to be 100 percent garbage, but I let it pass. Instead I asked him what he did to make money.

“Didn't I already tell you that?” he said. “I fix people up with people.”

“Men with women?”

“All kinds,” he said. “Rabbits with bunnies, bunnies with rabbits. Bunnies with bunnies, rabbits with rabbits …”

“You mean you're some kind of pimp?” I asked.

That made him laugh too, a full snorter.

“Pimp!” he said, breaking into some kind of song. “That's me, the King of Pimps, the Pimp of Kings!” and he called for another Double Dew and a Bass Ale for me.

“But what about Linda Smith?” I said.

“Linda who?”

“Linda Smith.”

“Well, I know lots of Lindas,” he said.

“This is the one you picked up at Rosebud's. She called you a cheap fag bastard. She said you offered her twenty bucks to get lost.”

Whatever reaction I expected this to get out of him, though, I was disappointed. At first. His head seemed to float and wobble on his neck, like there was something loose in the swivel.

“That Linda?” he said. “You know that Linda?”

Then his head dropped down over his Scotch glass, nodding and bobbing as though from its own weight, and he was mumbling something, sounded like: “… l'il Linda … l'il Linda, doesn't know what she's …,” and for a second I thought he was about to pass out.

Wrong. He righted abruptly, head jerking up, and, lifting his glass, lurched it hard against my glass mug, sloshing the booze.

“Let's drink to Linda!” he said loudly. “A toast to l'il Linda!”

He downed what was left in his glass, banged it on the bar, waved for another, and then he said:

“All right, Midnight Rider or whoever you are, now answer me this: Why are you following me around?”

His eyes had mine in the bar mirror. Confrontation time.

“I didn't know that's what I was doing,” I said, eyeing him back.

“You didn't
know
,” he said, sneering. “What are you, some kind of private eye? You've been on my back for days asking all kinds of questions, did you think I wouldn't notice? Now here's what I want to know, Midnight Rider: Who's paying you?”

“Nobody's …,” I started to say, but I guess my evasion spiked his courage, and then the bully in him took over.

“D'you think I can't guess?” he said, swiveling toward me and hitting my shoulder with the heel of his hand. “The sucker. If the sucker wants to know what I'm doing, you tell him to come himself. I'm right here. Go ahead, call him now, wake him up.”

He heeled me in the shoulder again. Then he said: “What's in it for you, Rider? A hundred bucks a day?”

The sneer of it got to me, the idea that somebody would do somebody else's dirty work for a measly hundred bucks a day. I turned on him. What kept me from laying him out right then, sneer and all, I can't say. Maybe I'd had too much to drink by then. Or not enough. Instead I knocked his arm away and, fixing him, said:

“I don't know who or what you're talking about, buddy. My name's Revere, you can check my driver's license. I work for a lawyer during the day; I'm on my own time now. As far as I know, this joint is open to anybody who brings money. But I'll tell you this: If you so much as lay a hand on me again, I'll take your knuckles and I'll break them off at the stems.”

I saw his eyes go wide in his pale face, and then he backpedaled about as fast and far as he could, blurting apologies as he went. How he hadn't meant anything. How if I knew what he was going through, I'd understand. Etc., etc. And called for another Scotch. And told the bartender to pour me one too, a real drink, and when I passed it up in favor of another Bass, downed mine as well.