Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (21 page)

She would call. She would come back to Holtz’s. She would get a message to Quinn, her husband. She was so wildly in love that she had married him before she got to know him. She was a resourceful woman. Savvy. A good driver. Didn’t drink much. Knew how to protect herself. Wouldn’t willfully put herself in jeopardy. Smart as they come. Brilliant. A survivor. Narciso said danger lay ahead for her and gave her that necklace, told her to show it to her enemy and tell him if he harms her Changó will kill him. She took that seriously. Narciso said Quinn was in danger from murderers. The police? The SIM? Batista’s freelance gangsters? Alfie said he’d put his friends on the case. Alfie was worried. He really liked Renata. He’d look for her with Quinn, wherever, however long it took.

Quinn entered the hall, his hair thick in a casual torsion to the right, and very black. He smiled at the group, mostly men, though he could not be sure whether women were among them. Their number seemed to diminish, which was of no matter. He was ready to speak, and did, text in hand which he did not look at or need, and what he said evoked laughter from all, and he knew the audience was ready for him and he grew confident. He spoke about faces and masks, how we need them to survive, which was a gaffe. He suddenly realized he knew several of the men and they were dead. To his left sat an old colleague, dead, but full of smiles that seemed earnest, which was unlikely, for there was bad history here. Perhaps it was a welcoming, glad to see you here among the dead.

The reason Quinn was speaking of surviving to dead men would become clear, he was sure. He talked on but the audience was now lost to him, vanishing rather quickly. The old colleague stood up and smiled, not speaking, but giving enthusiastic gestures for all Quinn was saying. Then he left and Quinn turned and spoke his next words to half a dozen listeners, his hair moving and then flung back in a manner that suggested a brilliant British film actor whose name he could not remember. He wondered if any in the audience would recognize the dramatic effect of the thrown hair, which was a bodily gesture of completion, confidence, singularity. It was a most dramatic effect for any actor. It did not matter that the audience was gone. Quinn knew how witty, how meaningful his remarks were.

“The arc of justice,” he said to the empty room, “the arc of justice . . .”

ALBANY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1968

Daniel Quinn’s day began with the tragedy of Bobby Kennedy comatose but wide-eyed on a hotel kitchen floor, vigils for him now unfolding across the nation, including one in Albany. Quinn’s story in yesterday’s paper on the silencing of Albany’s radical Catholic priest had also infuriated blacks and college students, and a protest meeting set for tonight could inflame a city already quivering with racial tension.

Quinn’s father, George Quinn, lived with Quinn and could not be left alone. Renata had gone to the clinic to bring home her niece, Gloria, and Ursula, the family housekeeper who doubled as keeper of the quixotic father, had totaled her car, broken her arm, and would do no keeping of any sort today. Quinn went upstairs and found his father dressed for dinner, wearing his gray Palm Beach suit, maroon paisley tie, and tying knots in one of his two hundred neckties. The ties hung on five wooden hangers in the room’s closet, a dozen or more of them knotted and reknotted, one tie outstanding with four knots in it. Quinn moved his father away from the ties and began the daily unknotting.

“How you feeling?” Quinn asked.

“I’m several flavors of excellent. How’s yourself?”

“I’m tip-top but Ursula isn’t coming today. She totaled her car and broke her arm.”

“Was she hurt?”

“She broke her arm.”

“Ursula?”

“Yes.”

“How did she do that?”

“She totaled her car.”

“Was there much damage?”

“It was totaled.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“No, and it means we should get you out of the house. Get a little recreation. What do you say?”

“Recreation is fine if you don’t get too much of it.”

“How about a few hours? That’s not too much. Get you out on the town. Whataya say we go down to the Elks Club? How does that sound? I’ll drop you when I go to the paper.”

“There’s people who come in and out and you don’t know who the hell they are.”

“You’ll know some of them.”

“It’s neglect all the way along.”

“What do you mean, neglect?”

“Right up to snuff.”

“What do you mean, snuff?”

“The best. The griff. The spiff. The whole thing here is static.”

“What do you mean, static?”

“Static has got to be good.”

“All right. Get your hat and we’ll go down to the Club.”

“The Club?”

“The Elks Club.”

“I joined the Elks when the bishop wouldn’t let us have beer in the K. of C. alleys.”

“I remember. You were a ringleader in the protest.”

“Beer and bowling go together.”

“You can get both of them at the Club.”

“The Club.”

“Get your hat.”

Quinn called Pat Mahar, custodian of the Elks, and told him George was coming in and could he keep an eye on him for a couple of hours? Leave me a message at the paper if he needs anything, Pat. Just keep him busy, give him a beer or two, not too many, put him in the card room, he can still play blackjack, or in the TV room or at the pool table, just get him talking to his friends and he’ll be all right. He does what he’s told, most of the time. I know you’re not a nursemaid, Pat, but try to keep him in the club. I’ll owe you. Twenty bucks for your trouble, how’s that? Even with the twenty Quinn didn’t trust Pat to do any of this, but it was a start. He’d stop at the Club himself when he got a few minutes.

He called the city desk for any change in his assignment and Markson, the city editor, said Quinn should interview the Mayor on Bobby Kennedy and on the racial tension in town.

“Did you forget the Mayor leaves the room when I arrive?”

“He’ll get over it. Tell him what a great job he’s doing. We want your perspective on the machine’s hostility to Bobby when he ran for senator. You know that inside out. And pump him on what he’s doing to hold down any violence. You also got a message. Max Osborne wants to see you but he didn’t leave a number.”

Max. What the hell kind of message is that with no number? “I can’t guarantee I’ll get through to the Mayor,” Quinn said as he hung up, and George Quinn came down the stairs wearing his coconut straw hat.

“Are we ready?” George asked.

“We are.” But as Quinn reached for the knob on the vestibule door he saw Matt Daugherty coming up the porch steps, in shirtsleeves and with a grim smile.

“Matt. We’re just leaving, but come on in.”

“Only a few minutes,” Matt said. “How are you, George?”

“I’m three flavors of excellent, how’s yourself?”

“I’m trying to figure it out,” Matt said.

“I’m taking him down to the Elks Club,” Quinn said. “You want coffee?”

“How about a beer?”

Quinn opened him a bottle of Irish Cream Ale from the fridge and they sat at the kitchen table. George stood by the stove, hat on.

“We’ll go in a few minutes, Pop,” Quinn said.

“Whatever you say. I care not for riches.”

The Reverend Matthew Daugherty, OFM, voluble, forty-four-year-old Franciscan professor of religion and theology at Siena College, built for football, hard-charging, soft-spoken rebel of the faith, self-anointed radical missionary in the slums who, in speeches, offhand remarks to the press, and letters to the editor, had repeatedly attacked the Mayor and the Albany Democratic machine for indifference to the poor and especially the black poor—a brazen stance in the holy shadow of the Albany Catholic diocese, and unheard of in this town in this or the previous century—had been silenced by his superior at the college, told to stay away from the inner city, teach your classes, shut your mouth. But the order had obviously come down from the hierarchy of the diocese; and what else could you expect from those lofty Democratic clerics except an edict to stop bothering our generous politicians who are all regular communicants?

Matt drank half his beer and said, “I just took a ride with Penny. She dropped me off up the block.”

“Didn’t you take a vow of chastity?”

“All we did was talk. You gotta hear this.”

“Tell me.”

“She says the machine is out to get one of their enemies, to set an example. She doesn’t know who but it won’t be pretty. Somebody told her.”

“Who?”

“She wouldn’t say but she swears it’s true. She says it could be me.”

“Didn’t they already get you?”

“Then maybe it’s you. Or one of the Brothers.”

“You don’t really trust Penny, do you?”

“Penny’s all right, Dan. I know what you think, but she does good work with the neighborhood groups, for no pay. I respect that even if I don’t always trust what she says.”

“Why are you riding around with sexy women on the make? Aren’t you restricted to campus?”

“I can walk. I walk the golf course. I wave at the golfers. She picked me up on the road that runs along the seventeenth hole. After we talked I thought I should come down and tell you.”

“You called her?”

“She called me. We’ve talked before.”

“You hear her confession?”

“Not as such.”

“But she confides in you.”

“She’s got troubles like everybody.”

“Does she cry into the shoulder of your robe?”

“She’s got emotions.”

“But you don’t. Salty women with major tits don’t disturb the serenity of your chastity.”

Matt swallowed some beer.

“I’m guessing she put the moves on you,” Quinn said.

“I guess you could call it that.”

“What did she do?”

“You know how it goes.”

“Actually I do. She did it with me.”

“You did it with her?”

“No, she did it with me. The moves. Then she called Renata to say she was sorry for keeping me out late. I wasn’t out late, but that’s her method. She sandbags you, then rats on you for doing nothing. Disturb the equilibrium, that’s her game.”

“I can handle this stuff, Dan. I been handling it for years. I’m not that horny lowlife I used to be. I found other ways of getting in trouble.”

“Shooting off your mouth.”

“My specialty.”

“Look, are you all right? I mean it’s been a rough couple of days for you.” Quinn stood up.

“I’m getting a grip. You gotta leave?”

“I do. Tremont Van Ort is bad off. He’s flat out on his stoop on Dongan Avenue and won’t move, or can’t. Claudia called an ambulance but they don’t pick up on Dongan Avenue. Claudia asked if I could get him to the hospital. I said I’d see what I could do.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“The South End is off-limits for you. What if you’re seen?”

“What else can they do, confiscate my socks? Gotta help Tremont.”

“You want a beer for the road?”

“Why not?”

In the dining room George Quinn was sitting with his hat in his lap, facing the large wall mirror over the sideboard. He was waving to his own image, telling him to come on over, but when he saw Quinn he changed the gesture and blessed himself.

“Bless me father for I have sinned,” he said.

“You haven’t sinned today,” Quinn said. “Let’s go.”

“So that’s it,” George said. “We’re all set. I got my hat.” He stood up and put his hat on and walked to the door.

“My father was asking for you, George,” Matt said.

“Your father?”

“Martin Daugherty.”

“Martin Daugherty. We were in France together.”

“I know. He says you were the best-dressed soldier in the AEF.”

“Martin Daugherty was a good fellow. You could always trust him. He wrote for the papers.”

“He’s out in the Ann Lee Home.”

“I didn’t know that,” Quinn said.

“He’s been there six months but I got a letter from the county that they’re kicking him out.”

“For what?”

“They don’t say. I figure it’s the politicians pressuring me.”

“Those bastards.”

“Martin Daugherty lived on Colonie Street,” George said.

“He did indeed,” Matt said.