Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics by Tim McLoughlin Page B

ideas.”
    “Oh, don’t tell me he didn’t already think of it,” Tommy said. “Matt, my boy, I love you. I was in a tight spot, I didn’t want to walk out of my house, and you came through for me.”
    What the hell had I done? I hadn’t hanged Miguelito Cruz or coaxed a confession out of Angel Herrera. I hadn’t even set eyes on either man. But he was buying the drinks, and I had a thirst, so who was I to argue?
    I don’t know how long we stayed there. Curiously, my drinking slowed down even as Tommy’s picked up speed. Carolyn, I noticed, was not present, nor did her name find its way into the conversation. I wondered if she would walk in—it was, after all, her neighborhood bar, and she was apt to drop in on her own. I wondered what would happen if she did.
    I guess there were a lot of things I wondered about, and perhaps that’s what put the brakes on my own drinking. I didn’t want any gaps in my memory, any gray patches in my awareness.
    After a while, Tommy was hustling me out of Armstrong’s. “This is celebration time,” he told me. “We don’t want to sit in one place till we grow roots. We want to bop a little.”
    He had a car, and I just went along with him without paying too much attention to exactly where we were. We went to a noisy Greek club on the East Side, I think, where the waiters looked like Mob hit men. We went to a couple of trendy singles joints. We wound up somewhere in the Village, in a dark, beery cave.
    It was quiet there, and conversation was possible, and I found myself asking him what I’d done that was so praiseworthy. One man had killed himself and another had confessed, and where was my role in either incident?
    “The stuff you came up with,” he said.
    “What stuff? I should have brought back fingernail parings, you could have had someone work voodoo on them.”
    “About Cruz and the fairies.”
    “He was up for murder. He didn’t kill himself because he was afraid they’d get him for fag-bashing when he was a juvenile offender.”
    Tommy took a sip of scotch. He said, “Couple days ago, huge black guy comes up to Cruz in the chow line. ‘Wait’ll you get up to Green Haven,’ he tells him. ‘Every blood there’s gonna have you for a girlfriend. Doctor gonna have to cut you a brand-new asshole, time you get outa there.’”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Kaplan,” he said. “Drew talked to somebody who talked to somebody, and that did it. Cruz took a good look at playin’ drop the soap for half the jigs in captivity, next thing you know, the murderous little bastard was on air. And good riddance to him.”
    I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I worked on it while Tommy went to the bar for another round. I hadn’t touched the drink in front of me, but I let him buy for both of us.
    When he got back, I said, “Herrera.”
    “Changed his story. Made a full confession.”
    “And pinned the killing on Cruz.”
    “Why not? Cruz wasn’t around to complain. Who knows which one of ’em did it, and for that matter, who cares? The thing is, you gave us the lever.”
    “For Cruz,” I said. “To get him to kill himself.”
    “And for Herrera. Those kids of his in Santurce. Drew spoke to Herrera’s lawyer and Herrera’s lawyer spoke to Herrera, and the message was, ‘Look, you’re going up for burglary whatever you do, and probably for murder; but if you tell the right story, you’ll draw shorter time, and on top of that, that nice Mr. Tillary’s gonna let bygones be bygones and every month there’s a nice check for your wife and kiddies back home in Puerto Rico.’”
    At the bar, a couple of old men were reliving the Louis-Schmeling fight, the second one, where Louis punished the German champion. One of the old fellows was throwing roundhouse punches in the air, demonstrating.
    I said, “Who killed your wife?”
    “One or the other of them. If I had to bet, I’d say Cruz. He had those little beady eyes; you looked at him up close and you got that