When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

breakfast. I thought about what I'd read and tried to figure out how I felt about it. It didn't seem real to me. I didn't know him well and I hadn't known her at all, had never known her name, had known only that she existed somewhere inBrooklyn.
    I looked at my left hand, the ring finger. No ring, no mark. I had worn a wedding ring for years, and I had taken it off when I moved from Syosset toManhattan. For months there had been a mark where the ring had been, and then one day I noticed that the mark was gone.
    Tommy wore a ring.A yellow gold band, maybe three-eighths of an inch wide. And he wore a pinkie ring on his right hand, a high-school classring, I think it must have been. I remembered it, sitting there over coffee in the Red Flame.A class ring with a blue stone on his right pinkie, a yellow gold band on his left ring finger.
    I couldn't tell how I felt.
    THAT afternoon I went toSt. Paul 's and lit a candle for MargaretTillary. I had discovered churches in my retirement, and while I did not pray or attend services, I dropped in now and then and sat in the darkened silence. Sometimes I lit candles for people who had recently died, or for those longer dead who were on my mind. I don't know why I thought this was something I ought to do, nor do I know why I felt compelled to tuck a tenth of any income I received into the poor box of whatever church I next visited.
    I sat in a rear pew and thought a bit about sudden death. When I left the church a light rain was falling. I crossedNinth Avenue and ducked into Armstrong's. Dennis was behind the bar. I ordered bourbon neat, drank it straightdown, and motioned for another and said I'd have a cup of coffee with it.
    While I poured the bourbon into the coffee, he asked if I'd heard aboutTillary. I said I'd read the story in the News.
    "There's a piece in this afternoon's Post, too.Pretty much the same story. It happened the night before last is how they figure it. He evidently didn't make it home and he went straight to the office in the morning, and then after he called a few times to apologize and couldn't get through, he got worried."
    "It said that in the paper?"
    "Just about.That would have been the night before last. He didn't come in while I was here. Did you see him?"
    I tried to remember. "I think so. The night before last, yeah, I think he was here with Carolyn."
    "TheDixie Belle."
    "That's the one."
    "Wonder how she feels about now." He used thumb and forefinger to smooth the points of his wispy moustache. "Probably guilty for having herwish come true."
    "You think she wanted the wife dead?"
    "I don't know. Isn't that a girl's fantasy when she's running around with a married guy? Look, I'm not married, what do I know about these things?"
    THE story faded out of the papers during the next couple of days. There was a death notice in Thursday's News. Margaret WaylandTillary, beloved wife of Thomas, mother of the late James AlanTillary, aunt of Mrs. Richard Paulsen. There would be a wake that evening, a funeral service the following afternoon at Walter B. Cooke's, Fourth and Bay Ridge Avenues, inBrooklyn.
    That night Billie Keegan said, "I haven't seenTillary since it happened. I'm not sure we'regonna see him again." He poured himself a glass of JJ amp;S, the twelve-year-old Jameson that nobody else ever ordered. "I bet we don't see him with her again."
    "The girlfriend?"
    He nodded. "What's got to be on both their minds is he was with her when his wife was getting knifed to death inBrooklyn.And if he'd only been home where he was supposed to be,didahdidahdidah. You're fooling around and you want a quick bounce and a couple of laughs, the last thing you need is something to remind you how you got your wife killed by fooling around."
    I thought about it, nodded. "The wake was tonight," I said.
    "Yeah?You go?"
    I shook my head. "I don't know anybody that went."
    I left before closing, I had a drink at Polly's and another at Miss Kitty's, Skip was tense and remote, I sat at