AS THE BAND returned for its second set, Rosemary gave up on Martin making an appearance. All of the hard work had been done without him, anyway. She told her parents that there was a family emergency: “Since when does he have a family?” her father said. She had intervened when the club’s manager refused to let Hooper and Gaines change in the men’s locker room: “This is my father’s favorite band,” she said. “Are you going to tell him they’re not welcome?” And when the music started, she’d seen that Martin was right about the band—they were brilliant—but she was also right about her father. “What kinda crap is he trying to pull?” was the kindest of the assaults unleashed on her husband.
It was a wedding where the guests could truthfully say they had never seen a more beautiful bride, and where the toasts about the bright future that lay ahead of the happy couple—the daughter of Dennis Dwyer wed to a scion of the Hallorans, another family of Bronx-Irish royalty—had, if anything, underestimated just how fortunate these two could be. And yet Dwyer himself spent most of the reception grinding ice between his teeth, as if he needed to crush the bones of every Scotch on the rocks that touched his lips. As he scanned the tables, no longer paper doilies but the real deal, life-size and occupied by the Boston aunts, he counted the ones who weren’t there: La Guardia and Flynn, sure, but also dozens of others who thought the smarter play was bootlicking the big shots invited to see the royals, rather than hoofing along to some half-colored band at Dwyer’s daughter’s wedding. If he had known that Martin was also at the fair, and that he had been not ten feet from the king, and that he had stopped his brother from pulling the trigger? Well, he’d have said, thanks for nothing. If you actually gave a rat’s ass about this family, you’d’ve let him kill the guy who tried to make a monkey out of me.
THAT DAY IN Woodlawn was the start for Hooper, and for Lorena, too. Basie needed a new trumpet and Hammond had heard enough to know that Hooper was his man. On Monday he would be on a train bound for Chicago—good-bye, World’s Fair!—and in the fall he would tour the West Coast as the newest horn player in the Count Basie Orchestra. He tried to convince Lorena to follow him to Chicago but she wasn’t having it. Set up home in the Windy City while Hooper was all the way out west? Had he looked at a map lately? There was a reason why they called it the Middle West.
No, she wasn’t going to follow him to a place where she was unknown and knew no one, but she would happily take a nicer apartment in Harlem, one that wasn’t so cold in the winter, so stifling hot in the summer, and so noisy all the time. Maybe in one of those newer buildings on the edge of Sugar Hill? She would keep on making a place for herself in New York, and once Hooper had professored Basie into realizing that the Big Apple was the one and only place to be, he would find his wife and his home waiting for him. So she said, and so she did, but though her pride would never let her admit it, she missed him terribly during the months they were apart. All through the fall, as the nights grew longer and the knife-edged winds swept in from the Hudson, she sang like she was back in Reverend Hooper’s choir when Hooper was off at Howard and Lorena was sure he was gone for good. Then one night in November, after months of Hooper saying that his wife could sing like one of God’s own angels, Hammond caught her late-night set at the Lenox Lounge. Early the next morning, he sent a telegram to Count Basie—FOUND YOUR NEW GIRL SINGER—and by the end of the day, Lorena was in a sleeper car racing west. Years later, when remastered copies of her early recordings were issued, a critic for the Village Voice would write that no lovers could say they’d been heartbroken until Lorena’s voice told them how it really felt.
MICHAEL AND LILLY HAD walked to the corner store, Lilly in charge of the satchel, and returned with six cans of beer and a church-key opener. Sooner or later, they figured, they would have company, and sure enough, while the cans were still sweating, the older Dempsey brothers arrived and claimed places on the steps. While they drank and smoked, Lilly related the drama that had occurred in the hotel room—the window, the blood, the doctor—and almost as an afterthought, Michael nudged Francis and showed him the bag. Where in the world? Francis thought, but he realized that he knew, and a greater sense of how Cronin must have spent his day settled over him. They had both walked into the trap, but it was Cronin who found a way to spring them. When Lilly asked Martin how the wedding was, he nodded toward the cab slowing to a stop in front of the house and said, “You’ll have to ask Rosemary.”
With the baby in her arms and Kate by her side, Rosemary opened the gate and took in the scene: Lilly, the red scarf around her neck, elegant and relaxed, laughing at something Martin had just said; Michael, his arm heavily bandaged and in a sling, but his eyes lively and alert; Francis bedecked in a tartan kilt, his shirt scuffed and torn, and blood caked in his hair; and Martin, rumpled and exhausted, his tie askew, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his jacket thrown over the steps.
“Daddy, you missed the party!” Kate said, and Martin put his hand on her head, her curls thick in the humid air.
Rosemary sat between Martin and Lilly and opened the last can of beer for herself. She took a long drink and looked at her husband. “Do I even want to ask?” she said.
“Oh,” he said, “you’re not going to believe what the MacFarquhars got up to today.”
Before they went inside, Lilly snapped a picture of the family: Martin and Rosemary and their girls across the top step, Francis and Michael just below. With their bandages and bruises, their torn clothes, the plaid kilt, the matron-of-honor and flower-girl dresses, they looked as if they had survived a fight in a costume shop and come out smiling. Visible just behind Martin’s back was the satchel containing the family fortune, and over his shoulder the shadowy outline of Mrs. Fichetti, peering through her curtains at the ruckus on her steps.
After they had cleaned up Francis and changed out of their battered finery, they walked around the corner to an Italian restaurant, where they tried their best to make sense of the day and all that had led up to it—more than one night’s work, they knew, but a start. Then, over glasses of fiery grappa, they decided how to divide the contents of the satchel. Lilly was granted a full share for saving Michael not once but twice, and when Francis suggested naming her an honorary Dempsey, Rosemary put a consoling hand on her arm: “Careful,” she said. “It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be.”