LITMIR.BIZ

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He told himself that after tonight there would be no need for him, that if everything worked out the way he envisioned, McCloskey and his kin would soon be a distant memory and he could have his life and his city back.

      “We’ll see you later then,” said McCloskey.

      “Right,” said Locke.

      Clara kissed her brother’s cheek. “Take it easy, Henry.”

      McCloskey walked Clara to a speakeasy over on Wyandotte. It was in the basement of a tailor’s shop and the entrance was off the alley. The owner knew McCloskey from way back and sat them at a good table.

      “I think Henry’s warming up to you.”

      McCloskey took a sip from his teacup. “Don’t be fooled. Politics makes strange bedfellows. I know he’s just using me to get what he wants.”

      “Does it matter if you both want the same thing?”

      “Maybe we don’t.”

      “You mean you’re not going after Davies?”

      McCloskey set down his cup. “Last night you were telling me that I’d already lost the battle and should just leave town with my tail between my legs. What gives?”

      Bodies were crammed in the speakeasy. The humid air was thickened with cigar smoke. Clara downed her whisky.

      “Nothing.”

      “No, you’ve seen the man that gave the order. Now an eye for any eye doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea.”

      Clara tapped her spoon on the side of her teacup and a man wandering among the tables with a porcelain teapot came over and filled it. McCloskey dropped some more change on a saucer.

      “What would you be avenging?” asked McCloskey. “It wouldn’t be Billy. And what would Davies’ death mean to you?”

      Clara took a sip from her cup. “You wouldn’t understand.”

      “Try me.”

      She sighed. “I’ve never had Billy or you all to myself. You arrived at my door with all your baggage, which included Billy, the war, bootlegging, and the law. You both disappear, leaving me at the side of the curb, and then you reappear with, well, whatever all this is.”

      She took another drag on her cigarette. “A girl can’t hardly have a life of her own; she has to find a man to have it with, and you men got these crazy lives and everything always has to be so goddamn complicated.”

      “You’re drunk.”

      “No, I’m not.”

      “Well, you’re not making any sense. You want me to hunt down Davies because you can’t find a man that can hold a regular job, sit by the radio with you at night, and take you and your mother out for brunch on Sundays.”

      “That’s not what I said.”

      “That’s what I heard.”

      They cooled for a moment.

      “Well?” Clara said. “Are you going after Davies or aren’t you?”

      McCloskey glanced over Clara’s shoulder at the happy faces swilling rye. As far as blind pigs go, it was one of the better ones in town.

      “No.”

      That was only sort of a lie.

      “Why not?”

      “Because I’m supposed to be going after the Lieutenant.”

      “Huh?”

      “There’s this guy in the outfit, and he’s got ambitions. He wants me to meet up with the Lieutenant tonight at the pool hall and ice him.”

      “What do you get out of it?”

      “I don’t have to go to jail; I don’t have to spend my life on the run; I don’t have to die.”

      McCloskey left out the part about how Clara and Henry would be spared. He also left out the part about how he thought it was a set-up and Jigsaw was probably counting on him and the Lieutenant taking each other out. He was starting to feel like everybody’s all-purpose, unwitting, and disposable assassin. They had him coming and going.

      This was too much for Clara to take in, especially as lit as she was. Sadly, her years with the McCloskeys had left her no wiser or better prepared.

      “We’re burying your pa and Billy tomorrow, you know.”

      “Thanks for taking care of all that for me.”

      “I’m not going alone, Jack. If you get killed and can’t make it to your father’s funeral, I’ll never forgive you.”

      “Now I know you’re drunk. C’mon, let’s go.”

      McCloskey got up and led her out the door and into the street. It was still just as hot as it had been in the afternoon. In the distant sky they saw lightning flashes but heard no thunder.

      “Oh, Jack, maybe you should forget about Davies.”

      “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

      “Do you?”

      McCloskey stopped to watch the lightning flash. Clara moved in front of him.

      “Davies isn’t some bootlegging yokel or gangster like the Lieutenant. He’s bigger than that. He’s all that and —”

      “You’re wrong, Clara. He’s a gangster like all the rest.”

      They turned back down Glengarry.

      “Please don’t do this, Jack. Nothing good’ll come of it. You’re just going to get yourself killed.”

      The porch light at Fields’ house came on. They stood together on the sidewalk for a moment. She knew this might be the last time she would get to see McCloskey. He could break a girl’s heart a hundred different ways. She was trying hard not to cry. What she really wanted to do was hit him, make him feel a fraction of the pain she was feeling.

      “I’ll come for you when it’s over.”

      “I won’t wait up.”

      — Chapter 27 —

      PRINTED MATTER

      IMPROPER NOVEL

       COSTS WOMEN $100

      Greenwich Village Publisher and Her

       Editor Fined for Producing “Ulysses.”

      WOMEN’S DRESS DESCRIBED

      Prosecution, on Anti-Vice Society Complaint,

       Said Description Was Too Frank.

      February 22, 1921 — Margaret C. Anderson and Jane Heap, publisher and editor respectively of the Little Review, at 27 West Eighth Street, each paid a fine of $50 imposed by Justices McInerney, Kernochan and Moss in Special Sessions yesterday, for publishing an improper novel in the July and August, 1920, issues of the magazine. John S. Sumner, Secretary of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, was the complainant. The defendants were accompanied to court by several Greenwich Village artists and writers.

      John Quinn, counsel for the women, told the court that the alleged objectionable story, entitled “Ulysses,” was the product of one Joyce, author, playwright and graduate of Dublin University, whose work had been praised by noted critics. “I think that this novel is unintelligible,” said Justice McInerney.

      Mr. Quinn admitted that it was cast in a curious style, but contended that it was in similar vein to the work of an American author with which no fault was found, and he thought it was principally a matter of punctuation marks. Joyce, he said, didn’t use punctuation marks in this story, probably on account of his eyesight. “There may be found more impropriety in the displays in some Fifth Avenue show windows or in a theatrical

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