‘Garfield. Randy Garfield.’ Bobby looked up at Len, who so resembled his sister, and thought how odd and sort of wonderful it was to be linked that way to your own blood kin.
Linked so closely people who didn’t even know you could sometimes pick you out of a crowd. ‘Did you like him, Mr Files?’
‘Who, Randy? Sure, he was a helluva gizmo.’ But Len Files seemed a little vague. He hadn’t noticed Bobby’s father in the same way his sister had, Bobby decided; Len probably wouldn’t remember about the Jo Stafford song or how Randy Garfield would give you the shirt right off his back. He wouldn’t give a drunk a drink, though; he wouldn’t do that. ‘Your pal’s all right, too,’ Len went on, more enthusiastic now. ‘I like the high class and the high class likes me, but I don’t get real shooters like him in here often.’ He turned to Ted, who was hunting nearsightedly through the phonebook. ‘Try Circle Taxi. KEnmore 6-7400.’
‘Thanks,’ Ted said.
‘Don’t mention it.’ Len brushed past Ted and went through the door behind the desk. Bobby caught another brief glimpse of the living room and the big cross. When the door shut, Ted looked over at Bobby and said: ‘You bet five hundred bucks on a prizefight and you don’t have to use the pay phone like the rest of the shmucks. Such a deal, huh?’
Bobby felt as if all the wind had been sucked out of him. ‘You bet Jive hundred dollars on Hurricane Haywood?’
Ted shook a Chesterfield out of his pack, put it in his mouth, lit it around a grin. ‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘On Albini.’ After he called the cab, Ted took Bobby over to the bar and ordered them both rootbeers. He doesn’t know I don’t really like rootbeer, Bobby thought. It seemed another piece in the puzzle, somehow — the puzzle of Ted. Len served them himself, saying nothing about how Bobby shouldn’t be sitting at the bar, he was a nice kid but just stinking the place up with his under-twenty-oneness; apparently a free phone call wasn’t all you got when you bet five hundred dollars on a prizefight. And not even the excitement of the bet could long distract Bobby from a certain dull certainty which stole much of his pleasure in hearing that his father hadn’t been such a bad guy, after all. The bet had been made to earn some runout money. Ted was leaving.
The taxi was a Checker with a huge back seat. The driver was deeply involved in the Yankees game on the radio, to the point where he sometimes talked back to the announcers.
‘Files and his sister knew your father, didn’t they?’ It wasn’t really a question.
‘Yeah. Alanna especially. She thought he was a real nice guy.’ Bobby paused. ‘But that’s not what my mother thinks.’
‘I imagine your mother saw a side of him Alanna Files never did,’ Ted replied. ‘More than one. People are like diamonds in that way, Bobby. They have many sides.’
‘But Mom said . . . ‘ It was too complicated. She’d never exactly said anyth ing, really, only sort of suggested stuff. He didn’t know how to tell Ted that his mother had sides, too, and some of them made it hard to believe those things she never quite came out and said. And when you got right down to it, how much did he really want to know? His father was dead, after all. His mother wasn’t, and he had to live with her . . . and he had to love her. He had no one else to love, not even Ted. Because —
‘When you going?’ Bobby asked in a low voice.
‘After your mother gets back.’ Ted sighed, glanced out the window, then looked down at his hands, which were folded on one crossed knee. He didn’t look at Bobby, not yet.
‘Probably Friday morning. I can’t collect my money until tomorrow night. I got four to one on Albini; that’s two grand. My good pal Lennie will have to phone New York to make the cover.’
They crossed a canal bridge, and down there was back there. Now they were in the part of the city Bobby had travelled with his mother. The men on the street wore coats and ties. The women wore hose instead of bobbysocks. None of them looked like Alanna Files, and Bobby didn’t think many of them would smell of liquor if they went ‘Shhh,’ either. Not at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125