The Strangler Read Free

from the Narragansett ads.
    The bartender did not acknowledge the little joke, but went right back to filling the beer cooler.
    Joe gave up on him. He tossed a dime on the bar as a tip, then moved over to the booth. “What’s going on, Fish?”
    No one knew why this man was called Fish. His real name was not Fish or anything like it, nor had he ever been involved with fishes or fishing, at least not that anyone knew of. But Fish he was, a small-time bookie who, after paying out the rent he owed to the North End mobsters and to the Chantilly and to the cops, barely had anything to show for his bookmaking efforts. It had been easier before Capobianco took over, before the dagos decided to consolidate all the bookmaking in the city. Then, you paid the cops and that was that. Now you paid everybody. You couldn’t live off the crumbs they left you. Not like the old days.
    Joe slid onto the bench opposite Fish. “Let me see the Army,” he said. This was
Armstrong’s,
a daily racing form that covered the East Coast tracks. “What looks good today, Fish, anything?”
    “I don’t get involved, Officer.”
    “Hey, what’s with the ‘officer’? I ain’t working, not till five.”
    “Before five, after five, I don’t get involved. Just make your own picks. I don’t give a shit.”
    Joe opened the paper and studied the handicapping information closely. He muttered as he read, “Feeling good today, Fish, fee-lin’ good.”
    Fish shared a glance with the bartender.
    “How about this one,” Joe said. “Sixth race at Suffolk, Lord Jim. I like that name. Can I get one down for three oh five? Time is it?”
    Fish took the Army with a little frown and found the listing. “Lord Jim,” he mumbled, “ten to one. Ten to one.”
    “No guts, no glory.”
    “What do you know about him?”
    “I know I like him. What, you gonna talk me out of it now?”
    “How much?”
    “A fin. Make it interesting.”
    “To win, you mean?”
    “Yeah, to win. Of course to win. What do I look like?”
    “Let me see the cash.”
    Joe dug in his pocket but came up with just two crumpled singles. He felt the envelope, hesitated. The bartender was watching. Ah, what the fuck, right? It was Joe’s money, some of it anyway. He peeked inside the envelope. Nothing smaller than a ten.
    “That ain’t all for you,” the bartender said.
    “I’ll put it back.”
    “It’s not yours in the first place.”
    “I said I’ll put it back.”
    Fish shook his head. He produced a battered black notebook from his coat and he noted the bet, encoding Joe’s name in a cipher of his own invention. He folded the
Armstrong’s
and put it aside, went back to reading the
Observer
.
    The bartender returned to his work, avoiding Joe’s eyes. His movements were sulky, miffed.
    “I told you, I’m good for it.”
    “Yeah, alright, Joe, you’re good for it. Whatever you say.”
    “Good.”
    “I just don’t want to hear the envelope was light. Some sergeant comes down here—”
    “I’m good for it, I said.”
    In the sixth race at Suffolk Downs, Lord Jim finished sixth in a field of six.

4
    Joanne Feeney’s apartment on Grove Street had a kitchen window overlooking the West End, or what was left of it. The old neighborhood had been leveled. Rubble, acres and acres of nothing. Only a few buildings had been spared, a couple of churches, Mass. General Hospital. Outside the window now, in the distance, a crane idly swung a wrecking ball into the remains of a tenement. With each tap of the ball, the building shed a few crumbs.
    Mrs. Feeney hadn’t had much to do—she was sixty-three—so she had formed a habit of watching the demolition day by day. From her window she studied the wasteland, overlaying it with her memories of the West End, the narrow streets where she’d grown up. When she was a girl, there had been a bicycle shop on Chambers Street where you could rent a bike for a nickel an hour, and Mrs. Feeney had ridden around and around those vanished