"You don't think I take your acting seriously?"

"Of course you don't."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this. That piece of shit you were in on Second Avenue, fucking Strindberg, how many people did I bring to see that? There was twenty-five people in the house and I brought twenty of them."

"To see your pet actor. 'That piece of shit you were in.' That's taking my acting seriously, Skippy baby. That's real support."

"I don't fucking believe this," Skip said. "You hate me." He looked around the room. "He hates me."

Bobby just looked at him.

"You did this to screw me. That's all."

"I did it for the money."

"I woulda given you the fucking money! "

"I didn't want to take it from you."

"You didn't want to take it from me. Where do you think you did take it from, you cocksucker? You think it came from God? You think it rained outta the sky?"

"I figure I earned it."

"You what?"

Bobby shrugged. "Like I said. I figure I earned it. I worked for it. I was with you, I don't know how many times, from the day I took the books. I was along for the ride Monday night, on the scene, everything. And you never had the least suspicion. That's not the worst job of acting anybody ever did."

"Just an acting job."

"You could look at it that way."

"Judas was pretty good, too. He got an Oscar nomination but he couldn't be present at the awards ceremony."

"You make a funny-looking Jesus, Arthur. You're just not right for the part."

Skip stared hard at him. "I don't get it," he said. "You're not even ashamed of yourself."

"Would that make you happy? A little show of shame?"

"You think it's okay, right? Putting your best friend through hell, costing him a lot of money? Stealing from him?"

"You never stole, right, Arthur?"

"What are you talking about?"

"How'd you come up with twenty grand, Arthur? What did you do, save your lunch money?"

"We skimmed it. That's not much of a secret. You mean I stole from the government? Show me anybody with a cash business who doesn't."

"And how did you get the money to open the joint? How did you and John get started? Did you skim that, too? Tips you didn't declare?"

"So?"

"Bullshit! You worked behind the stick at Jack Balkin's joint and you stole with both hands. You did everything but take the empties to the grocery store for the deposit. You stole so much offa Jack it's a wonder he didn't have to close the place."

"He made money."

"Yeah, and so did you. You stole, and Johnny stole where he was working, and lo and behold, the two of you got enough to open a place of your own. Talk about the American Dream, that's the American Dream. Steal from the boss until you can afford to open up in competition with him."

Skip said something inaudible.

"What's that? I can't hear you, Arthur."

"I said bartenders steal. It's expected."

"Makes it honest, right?"

"I didn't screw Balkin. I made money for him. You can twist it all you want, Bobby, you can't make me into what you are."

"No, you're a fucking saint, Arthur."

"Jesus," Skip said. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what I'm going to do."

"I do. You're not gonna do anything."

"I'm not?"

Bobby shook his head. "What are you gonna do? You gonna get the gun from behind the bar, come back and shoot me with it? You're not gonna do that."

"I ought to."

"Yeah, but it's not gonna happen. You want to hit me? You're not even mad anymore, Arthur. You think you oughta be mad but you don't feel it. You don't feel anything."

"I-"

"Listen, I'm beat," Bobby said. "I'm gonna make it an early night if nobody objects. Listen, guys, I'll pay it back one of these days. The whole fifty thousand. When I'm a star, you know? I'm good for it."

"Bobby-"

"I'll see you," he said.

* * *

AFTER the three of us had walked Skip around the corner and said goodnight to him, after John Kasabian had flagged a cab and headed uptown, I stood on the corner with Billie Keegan and told him I'd made a mistake, that I shouldn't have told Skip what I'd learned.

"No," he said. "You had to."

"Now he knows his best friend hates his guts." I turned, looked up at the Parc Vendome. "He lives on a high floor," I said. "I hope he doesn't decide to go out a window."

"He's not the type."

"I guess not."

"You had to tell him," Billie Keegan said. "What are you gonna do, let him go on thinking Bobby's his friend? That kind of ignorance isn't bliss. What you did, you lanced a boil for him. Right now it hurts like a bastard but it'll heal. You leave it, it just gets worse."

"I suppose."

"Count on it. If Bobby got by with this he'd do something else. He'd keep on until Skip knew about it, because it's not enough to screw Skip, Bobby's gotta rub his nose in it while he's at it. You see what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"Am I right?"

"Probably. Billie? I want to hear that song."

"Huh?"

"The sacred ginmill, cuts the brain in sections. The one you played for me."

" 'Last Call.' "

"You don't mind?"

"Hey, come on up. We'll have a couple."

We didn't really drink much. I went with him to his apartment and he played the song five, six times for me. We talked a little, but mostly we just listened to the record. When I left he told me again that I'd done the right thing in exposing Bobby Ruslander. I still wasn't sure he was right.

Chapter 24

I slept late the next day. That night I went out to Sunnyside Gardens in Queens with Danny Boy Bell and two uptown friends of his. There was a middleweight on the card, a Bedford-Stuyvesant kid Danny Boy's friends had an interest in. He won his fight handily, but I didn't think he showed a whole lot.

The following day was Friday, and I was having a late lunch in Armstrong's when Skip came in and had a beer with me. He'd just come from the gym and he was thirsty.

"Jesus, I was strong today," he said. "All the anger goes right into the muscles. I could have lifted the roof off the place. Matt? Did I patronize him?"

"What do you mean?"

"All that shit about I made him my pet actor. Was that true?"

"I think he was just looking for a way to justify what he did."

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I do what he said. Remember you got a hair up your ass when I paid your bar tab?"

"So?"

"Maybe I did that with him. But on a bigger scale." He lit a cigarette, coughed hard. Recovering, he said, "Fuck it, the man's a scumbag. That's all. I'm just gonna forget about it."

"What else can you do?"

"I wish I knew. He'll pay me back when he's rich and famous, I liked that part. Is there any way we can get the money back from those other two fucks? We know who they are."

"What can you threaten them with?"

"I don't know. Nothing, I guess. The other night you gathered everybody together for a war council, but that was just setting the stage, wasn't it? To have everybody on hand when you put it all on Bobby."

"It seemed like a good idea."

"Yeah. But as far as having a war council, or whatever you want to call it, and figuring out a way to sandbag those actors and get the money back-"

"I can't see it."

"No, neither can I. What am I gonna do, stick up the stickup men? Not really my style. And the thing is, it's only money. I mean that's really all it is. I had this money in the bank, where I wasn't really getting anything out of it, and now I haven't got it, and what difference does it make in my life? You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"I just wish I could let go of it," he said, "because I go around and around and around with it in my mind. I just wish I could leave it alone."

I had my sons with me that weekend. It was going to be our last weekend together before they went off to camp. I picked them up at the train station Saturday morning and put them back on the train Sunday night. We saw a movie, I remember, and I think we spent Sunday morning exploring down around Wall Street and the Fulton Fish Market, but that may have been a different weekend. It's hard to distinguish them in memory.

I spent Sunday evening in the Village and didn't get back to my hotel until almost dawn. The telephone woke me out of a frustrating dream, an exercise in acrophobic frustration; I kept trying to descend from a perilous catwalk and kept not reaching the ground.

I picked up the phone. A gruff voice said, "Well, it's not the way I figured it would go, but at least we don't have to worry about losing it in court."

"Who is this?"

"Jack Diebold. What's the matter with you? You sound like you're half asleep."

"I'm up now," I said. "What were you talking about?"

"You haven't seen a paper?"

"I was sleeping. What did-"

"You know what time it is? It's almost noon. You're keeping pimp's hours, you son of a bitch."

"Jesus," I said.

"Go get yourself a newspaper," he said. "I'll call you in an hour."

THE News gave it the front page. KILL SUSPECT HANGS SELF IN CELL, with the story on page three.

Miguelito Cruz had torn his clothing into strips, knotted the strips together, stood his iron bedstead on its side, climbed onto it, looped his homemade rope around an overhead pipe, and jumped off the upended bedstead and into the next world.

Jack Diebold never did call me back, but that evening's six o'clock TV news had the rest of the story. Informed of his friend's death, Angel Herrera had recanted his original story and admitted that he and Cruz had conceived and executed the Tillary burglary on their own. It had been Miguelito who heard noises upstairs and picked up a kitchen knife on his way to investigate. He'd stabbed the woman to death while Herrera watched in horror. Miguelito always had a short temper, Herrera said, but they were friends, even cousins, and they had concocted their story to protect Miguelito. But now that Miguelito was dead, Herrera could admit what had really happened.

THE funny thing was that I felt like going out to Sunset Park. I was done with the case, everyone was done with the case, but I felt as though I ought to be working my way through the Fourth Avenue bars, buying rum drinks for ladies and eating bags of plantain chips.

Of course I didn't go there. I never really considered it. I just had the feeling that it was something I ought to do.

That night I was in Armstrong's. I wasn't drinking particularly hard or fast, but I was working at it, and then somewhere around ten-thirty or eleven the door opened and I knew who it was before I turned around. Tommy Tillary, all dressed up and freshly barbered, was making his first appearance in Armstrong's since his wife got herself killed.

"Hey, look who's back," he sang out, and grinned that big grin. People rushed over to shake his hand. Billie was behind the stick, and he'd no sooner set up one on the house for our hero than Tommy insisted on buying a round for the bar. It was an expensive gesture, there must have been thirty or forty people in there, but I don't think he cared if there were three or four hundred.