Everybody Dies

"I've been going half mad," he said. "I can't reach anybody. Have you heard from Andy or Tom?"

"No, but the phone's been off the hook, so- "

"So they couldn't call you if they wanted to, nor could they call me as they haven't the number. Twice I've called Andy and twice his mother's told me he's out and she doesn't know where. And there's no one at all answering at Tom's house."

"Maybe they're out having a beer somewhere."

"Maybe they are," he said. "Have you any plans yourself?"

It was Friday. I always went to the step meeting at St. Paul's on Friday night. Then I always had coffee afterward with Jim. I'd thought I might do the first, even if I couldn't do the second.

But I had a lot to tell him. I'd found out quite a bit since I'd talked to him last.

"No plans," I said.

"I'll come by for you. Fifteen minutes?"

"Make it twenty," I said, "and don't come around the front. In fact why don't you pull up in front of Ralph's Restaurant at Fifty-sixth and Ninth?"

I kissed Elaine and told her I didn't know when I'd be back. "And go ahead and make phone calls if you want," I said.

"I was thinking," she said. "If I make outgoing calls from another extension, it won't change the redial mechanism on that phone. Or am I forgetting something?"

"No," I said, "I think you're right, and I should have thought of that."

"Then you wouldn't need me."

"Yes I would. But I think I'll try it once more before I go."

I punched redial, and *69 appeared in the little window, and after a moment someone's phone rang. I was wondering how long to give it, and then in the middle of the fourth or fifth ring it was picked up. There was silence at first, and then a soft voice, a man's, said, "Hello?'

The voice was curiously familiar. I willed it to say more, but when it spoke again the words were much fainter, as if he was talking to someone else and not into the phone. "There's no one there," he said, and there was another silence, and then the co

"Bingo," I told Elaine.

"It worked, huh?"

"Like a charm. That was brilliant, taking the phone off the hook. You're a genius."

"That's what my father always said," she said. "And my mother always told him he was crazy."

I made a note of the time. In the morning I'd have to find someone at the phone company who could pull the LUDS on my phone, and I could find out who it was I'd just called. Because I didn't think that was a pay phone. And if I could find out where it was located, I could find them when they thought they couldn't be found.

I think a subscriber's entitled to a record of his own calls, if you can find the right person to ask. I know a cop can get that kind of information in a hurry, and if I couldn't find a cop who'd help me out I could always impersonate one myself. That's against the law, but lately it seemed as though everything I did was against the law.

I rode down to the basement and went out the service entrance. Wister could have two teams watching the building, one in back and one in front, but I didn't think he even had one. I took a look around, just to make sure, and then I went over and stood in a darkened doorway alongside of Ralph's He didn't keep me waiting long.

"A son to avenge him," Mick said. "That's more than the likes of Paddy Farrelly ever deserved."

"He's a son who hasn't exactly covered himself with glory in the course of his young life."

"A true son of the father, then. Say the mother's name again."

"Elizabeth Dowling."

"I've known a share of Dowlings over the years, but I don't recall an Elizabeth."

"The woman in the Bronx called her Betty A

"I wonder how Paddy met her. It could have been at a dance. That was how you used to meet Irish girls, at a dance on a Saturday night." He had a faraway look in his eye. "I never knew her, and I doubt she ever knew me. But she must have known of me, and known it was myself put Paddy out of her life and his own. If the cow'd had any sense she'd have thanked God for the favor I did her. Instead she made a hero out of him and a villain out of me, and brought the boy up to kill me."

"I guess he always liked killing," I said. "He had no practical reason to kill those people in the store. All that did was turn up the heat. It pretty much guaranteed he'd get caught and do substantial time. He killed them because he wanted to."

"The same with Ke

"And the same when the Vietnamese he met in prison sprayed bullets all over your bar, and his other prison buddy tossed a bomb. Moon's name is Virgil Gafter, incidentally, suspected of a couple of felony-related homicides, but it was an assault charge that put him in Attica."

"You learned a lot in that prison."

"Everybody does," I said. "Some of them learn to live within the laws, and the rest learn to be better at breaking them."

"I think the cops know Chilton Purvis did the shooting at the Chinese restaurant," I said. "They'd have found out the same way I did. Word got around, and somebody with a badge heard it from one of his snitches. And I think they went looking for Purvis and found him dead in his room on Tapscott Street, unless he'd already been picked up and they found him in the morgue."

"And that's why they came looking for you?"

"That's why," I said. "If they don't know Purvis was the shooter, his death is just another homicide, presumably black-on-black, presumably drug related. Two men shoot each other and one walks away from it. But now they've got someone with a motive to kill Purvis."

"Namely yourself."

"They also found a blood trail," I said, "so the reasoning would be that Purvis and I shot each other and I fled the scene. I'll bet they checked hospitals, and I'll bet when Wister showed up with his warrant he expected to find me in bed and bandaged up. Failing that, he'd have liked to find a.38 that would match the bullets they dug out of Purvis."

"What happens when they catch up with you?"

"I can't worry about that now. The fu

"I gather we're going to the Bronx."

"That's less remarkable than some of your feats of detection," he said, "as we're nearly there."

"Where are we going?"

"Perry Avenue."

"Where Tom lives."

He nodded. "You'll remember we dropped him there, after the trouble at Grogan's."

Trouble in the Irish sense. In America, trouble is something a kid has learning algebra. In Ireland it can be a bit more dramatic.

I said, "Because you couldn't reach him on the phone?"

"He's a lodger in an old woman's house. Has a room and kitchen privileges, and can watch television in the parlor of an evening. Takes his meals there, breakfast and di

"So?"

"The phone is hers," he said, "and she's always home to answer it. And today it rang unanswered every time I called."

"She couldn't have stepped out?"

"She never does. She has the arthritis, and it's a bad case of it. It keeps her at home."

"And when she needs something from the market…"

"She calls the corner store and they deliver. Or Tom goes for her."

"There's probably an explanation."

"I fear there is," he said, "and I fear I know what it is."

I didn't say anything. He stopped for a red light, looked both ways, and drove on through it. I tried not to imagine what might happen if a cop pulled us over.

He said, "I've a feeling."