My Brother's Keeper (15 page)

The original Arramingo Club sat at the end of 27th Street somewhere between Grays Ferry and the muddy waters of the Schuylkill. A Laotian restaurant occupies the building now and Haggerty still owns it, still owns a few apartment houses in the neighborhood too and a couple of bars, his hands still reaching into the pockets of people he'd forgotten about almost as soon as he'd moved out.

His father, William Haggerty, had first opened the doors to the Arramingo Club in 1972. Draft beer was a quarter a glass and a shot of good Irish whiskey was never more than a buck. It had caught fire and burned twice in the next twenty years and he'd rebuilt it both times. It hadn't been turned into a strip joint yet but even back then cheap women were as abundant as cheap booze. And if you worked for William Haggerty you could run a tab at the club, no questions asked. Haggerty understood that hard-working men needed a good stiff drink at the end of the day and he wasn't about to begrudge his men a few beers whether they could afford it or not. And if the tab ran too high, Haggerty would see the balance was taken out of their paychecks in increments that kept the pain tolerable. And as long as you made it to work the next day, the agreement held. That was the rule.

And for all his labors he'd never had any trouble with the cops or with the church. Haggerty took care of business all week and the church got them on Sunday. Haggerty put a crisp fifty-dollar bill in the basket and the priests nodded and shook his hand and looked the other way, same as the cops.

Lou didn't need anyone to tell him about the Arramingo Club. He didn't need Joey to tell him and he didn't need Mitch to tell him and he didn't need to read it in the papers or hear it from Franny Patterson. He'd heard it and seen it all before. Though, what he remembered most wasn't just about the Arramingo Club. It was just as Joey had said. It was about William Haggerty. It had always been about William Haggerty.

The Philadelphia Police Department had never been in much of a hurry when it came to responding to bar fights. It wasn't official policy. It's just the way it was. They'd take their time and hope the brawl would punch itself out before they arrived. They'd pull up in their cruisers and the crowd would scatter and whoever was still standing would spend the night in the drunk tank and whoever wasn't would go away in an ambulance. They weren't called to many fights at the old Arramingo Club. Not that it didn't have its share. It's just that they were over soon after they began and no one dared call the cops.

Lou had responded to one such fight. He'd taken his time but was still the first officer on the scene. He'd expected a crowd but when he'd pulled up there were just two guys, grown men standing toe to toe punching the shit out of each other. They'd seemed to be enjoying it, the fight choreographed as if they'd been taking turns, a certain politeness to the style though the blood was running freely from their noses and mouths. At the same moment Lou had stepped from his police car, William Haggerty had stepped from the club.

He'd been wearing a white button-down shirt with a stiff, white collar and an apron around his waist and a touch of sweat on his chest as if he'd been working behind the bar and had just come out for a breath of air. His hair had been a steely gray, flat and colorless with a hint of white at the edges like rain-soaked clouds. It had been the same color as the slate sidewalk and the roof, the same color as the freighters floating down the Delaware, the same color Lou had painted his mother's back porch. He'd looked sternly at the fighters, set his chin and spoken with the brogue still heavy in his voice.

‘I'll take care of this, Officer.'

It was all he'd said and everyone, including Lou, knew he meant it. William Haggerty's reputation preceded him and Lou had seen it first-hand: a man who recognized men's needs and gave them what they wanted but not without conditions. They needed money and they needed drink and they needed a woman now and then that wouldn't be there in the morning to knee them in the balls. And men needed to fight. Haggerty would give them that too, let them get it out of their system and leave it on the street. But then he'd sober them up and dry them out and carry them home and tuck them in if need be and even have them picked up the next day for work. No one doubted his methods. Not the politicians that got paid to look the other way, not the bosses at the Philadelphia waterfront that needed to keep the barges loaded, and not the Philadelphia Police Department who needed to keep the peace.

He'd grabbed each of the men by the scruff of the neck and loaded them one at a time into the back seat of a black Chrysler Imperial with suicide doors and clean whitewalls – managed it without getting a drop of blood on the hood, on the seat or on himself. He'd driven away leaving Lou alone on the street with only his report left to write.

Lou glanced at the naked statue now, giving it one last, hard look before walking through the wide front doors of the Arramingo Club, wondering if William Haggerty's son could handle men the same way his father had. There didn't seem to be much of a question how he handled women.

The low vibration from the music inside reached him even before he tugged on the heavy glass doors. A deep electronic beat throbbed with the steady, resounding tempo of war drums, distant but coming closer and with a purpose behind them. Lou heard it as a kind of warning, primitive and malevolent. Its meaning was clear. Something was coming and if you stood in its way, you'd be trampled. It shook the walls and the sidewalk. It rumbled like thunder, like an earthquake rippling beneath the foundation of the building, threatening to bring it down like a house of cards.

A sea of people moved in broken waves. They were men mostly, the smell of alcohol thick in the air, mixing with the scent of cologne and perspiration. It clung to them like the soupy aroma of sex, of fluids mixing together and bubbling up like chemicals heated in a test tube. He could feel the pounding base in his chest. Narrow beams of blue and green light cut through the darkened space and strobe lights flickered from all four corners and Lou's first impression was that it was utter chaos. It took him a second to get his bearings, the mirrored walls distorting his depth perception.

There were two circular bars in the center of the room with a long, elevated ramp that ran like a trolley track between them. Around the ramp was a narrow ledge where customers could set their drinks and lean their elbows and flash some green and get a better view of the girls who strutted down the lighted runway as if they were modeling the latest summer fashion. There was an open second floor, a balcony of sorts with a yellow iron rail and those oversized binoculars on yellow posts, the kind that cost a quarter at the zoo in case you were interested in a closer look at a grazing zebra or a sleeping tiger.

Spotlights shone up from the stage, rotating wildly, capturing the girls in their nakedness, following them as they danced and mimicked the ecstatic convulsions of sex.

They all seemed to be cut from the same mold: lean and muscular, smooth and tan with long legs on high heels that accentuated their height. Their features seemed exaggerated, just a little too perfect, like the statues outside. Lou hardly considered himself an expert on the female form. He hadn't seen more than a handful of women in his life and the girls on stage at the Arramingo Club constituted a whole hell of a lot more than a handful. But still, they seemed unreal, more than most men could handle.

And the patrons of this Arramingo Club looked more like boys than men, standing around the stage raising dark green bottles to their lips and clanking them together and surveying the women as if they were bidders at a slave auction. One of them yelled out, the others laughed and they all took a drink as Lou weaved his way past them.

On stage a skinny, very white-skinned girl moved slowly and seductively to the music. She had bright red streaks in her dyed blonde hair. She wore it short and her face was painted in shades of powdery blue around her eyes. Her lips were slick and red and her teeth sharp and white through her open mouth. She cupped her breasts in both hands, running her palms lightly over her nipples until they stood sharp and erect.

The bartender came over and bent his ear toward Lou, trying to hear over the music and the laughter and the catcalls and the electric hum that would ring in his ears well into the next day. Lou ordered a beer and asked to see Brian Haggerty.

The bottle was cold and wet in Lou's hand. His eyes remained on the girl as she centered herself over her spiked heels and lowered her swiveling hips until she was an inch off the floor. Her head swayed hypnotically and her hair splashed across her face. She was remarkably thin, her ribs showing beneath the bulging artificial breasts. She would allow her tongue to dart from her open mouth and Lou noticed a thin scar on her upper lip, a horizontal slash that seemed to give it a permanent curl. She'd tried to hide it under a coating of heavy red lipstick but it only made her appear more inanimate, like a doll in a Race Street sex shop. Her eyes looked provocatively around the room, lurid and unashamed, two rolling black irises. She was high as a kite.

Lou turned his back to the stage and, leaning against the bar, took a long swallow from the bottle.

A sliding door opened at the end of the bar and a well-dressed young man stepped through. He wore a navy blue sport jacket over a black T-shirt and jeans. His brown hair was streaked with blond. Lou assumed it was Brian Haggerty. He carried himself with the same self-confident demeanor as his father. The physical resemblance wasn't immediately evident but Brian Haggerty seemed to have learned a few things from his father, things he didn't necessarily inherit but, like the best lessons, learned by example. Haggerty came up opposite Lou and put his hand over the twenty-dollar bill Lou had dropped on the bar, pushing it back so Lou would have to take it or it would fall to the floor.

‘You're my guest, Mr Klein.'

‘If I had known I was welcome I would have called first and made an appointment.'

Haggerty put his hands up in a gesture of surrender and his eyes moved to the dancer making her way down the runway.

‘Please, Mr Klein. I knew my wife spoke to you. I was just sitting here thinking of what I would say, trying to talk myself out of believing that maybe this whole thing was my fault. I can see by the look on your face that you might not think I sound very convincing.'

‘Guilty conscience or something else?'

Lou raised the bottle to his lips. He emptied it in one long swallow and replaced it on the bar.

‘The doctors called me from the hospital. They told me what happened. Whether you believe me or not, I'm worried about her.'

‘Then how come you're here and not there, with her?'

‘First of all, she doesn't want me there. Second, she's heavily sedated. She'll most likely sleep through the night. I'll be there when she wakes up.'

‘The sincerity sounds genuine. But right now I have no way of knowing for sure that you weren't responsible for what happened to Jimmy Patterson or Franny. I'd be lying to you if I said I was the only person wondering about that.'

‘You mean the police. I don't care what they think.'

‘You should.'

Haggerty invited Lou back into his office, ushering him around the end of the bar toward the hidden door. The bartender was fixing a pitcher of some exotic drink, pouring in four different types of alcohol and mixing it with a variety of tropical fruit juices. It was intended to get someone plastered without them knowing it, the kind of drink that could sneak up on anyone regardless of their size or their age or how fat their wallet was or their sexual orientation. It was sweet and smooth and icy and easy to take and, after the first sip, all your problems were on hold. It was like liquid Valium in a fancy glass.

The bartender gave Haggerty a knowing smile as he shook the mixture in a stainless steel cylinder, shaking it in time to the music like a maraca. Lou turned and took another look at the girl on stage. She was down on her hands and knees now, her hair falling around her face and her painted fingernails extended like claws as she crawled plaintively toward the group of leering men. Haggerty was watching as well.

‘She's good, isn't she?'

‘Sure.'

‘You'll never guess where I found her.'

‘Where?'

‘Waiting tables at a diner in Port Richmond. Had to drag her out of there. Do you believe it?'

‘If you say so.'

‘That girl could raise the fucking dead with a whisper.'

‘Is that what you think?'

FOURTEEN

H
aggerty's dimly lit office was well appointed with a dark green leather sofa and chairs around an oak desk. A brass lamp rested on the edge of the desk, a glimmer of soft yellow light illuminating its polished surface and glinting off a brass pen set, a large walnut humidor and a sailor's barometer. A deck of cards were arranged in a game of solitaire that Brian Haggerty still had hopes of winning.

Autographed football jerseys hung on the wall in glass frames. Some looked old and some new. Haggerty had other memorabilia in the office, all from Philly teams past and present. There were Eagles football helmets and baseballs signed by the Phillies, a hockey puck that allegedly penetrated the net in the '74 Stanley Cup. Lou couldn't read the names scribbled on any of them.

The smell of musty perfume seemed to emanate from the walls and the floor and the furniture as if every woman who'd set foot in that office had left their scent. And there had been a lot of them, no shortage of women willing to take their clothes off for a price. Haggerty pointed to a thickly padded chair but Lou ignored the offer and strode to the darkly stained bookshelf adjacent to Haggerty's desk. He began perusing titles, his head canted to one side as if he'd spent hours a day in a moldy old library and had developed a permanent stiff neck.

‘You have no idea how sorry I am about Franny and Jimmy, Mr Klein.'