“She thought I was having her on about staying there. Said she was calling my bluff.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be lying to Rosemary when I tell her I don’t know what happened.”
With the noise of the crowd roiling around them, Francis confessed that there was another girl who had caught his eye. He spelled out for his brother the meeting aboard the Britannic, the dinner at Bingham Castle. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about this girl,” Francis said.
“Yeah, she’s worth a million bucks.”
“She’s worth a lot more than that—but that’s not it.” Francis looked into his glass, swirled the ice in the last drops of Scotch. “Or not all of it. She played the violin after dinner and there was something, well, something magic about it. You’d know the tune. Beethoven, I think it was.” He swirled the glass again, then crunched the ice in his mouth. “Do you remember much about Mam?”
Martin rubbed his chin. This wasn’t where he’d seen the conversation going. “I wish I could remember more.”
“You’re lucky, being the oldest. And she doted on you, with the music and all.”
“Mam didn’t dote on anyone but Da.”
“Da,” Francis said. “Well. He certainly needed looking after.” He caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another round: Scotch and soda for himself, a gin rickey for Martin. “I wish he could have gone out some other way. Him alone, and us scattered to the four winds.”
“There are worse ways, I’m sure.” Martin bolted down the rest of his drink. “Sorry. That came out colder than I intended.”
“Just how cold did you intend it?”
“Look, I knew I’d never see him again. Still, not having him in the world—I don’t know what to make of that.”
“He didn’t pull us out of Cork just to make you miserable.”
“I know that—”
“He was heartbroken and he never got over it. Losing Mam like that—well, she’s another that deserved a better death.”
“A better life.”
Francis lifted the fresh cocktail from the bar. “Cheers to that,” he said, nodding the glass toward his brother.
“How is Michael taking all of this? He and Da had a lot of years where it was just the two of them.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what he thinks. About anything. He’s been in good spirits since we arrived but I don’t know if it’s New York or just the passage of time.” Francis rotated his glass a half turn but did not lift it to his mouth. He had already told Martin about the visit to the doctor and the promise of specialists to come, all as a way of validating his big-spending, Plaza-living approach to the immigrant experience. “We had a fine dinner tonight and then it was straight to bed for him. For now, I’m just trying to put some meat on his bones,” Francis said. “I don’t think the priests fed him more than brown bread and weak tea.”
“But how long can you keep this up?” Martin dropped his voice to a raspy whisper, though it wasn’t necessary. The bar was humming with talk, with music, with the chime of bottles and glasses. “Are you just going to wait until the IRA comes looking for their money? Or for the FBI to figure out they’ve got an escaped convict on their hands?”
“Fellas run off all the time,” Francis said. “And I’m hardly notorious. The police aren’t going to wear themselves out because one well-dressed pornographer got away.”
“You haven’t given it a moment’s thought, have you?”
“On the contrary—”
“Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in?” Elston Hooper materialized out of the growing crowd and gave Martin a slap on the back. “I thought this place had standards, but I guess writing the hottest song at the Savoy will open a few doors.”
At a nod from Martin to the bartender, Hooper’s regular—bourbon and milk—appeared on the bar. Martin looked from Hooper to his brother and hesitated. Was it to be aliases, or—
Francis extended his hand. “Francis Dempsey,” he said. “Martin’s wayward brother.”
Martin would save the reprimand for later. Escaped convicts ought to be a little more careful about advertising their identity, even in an after-hours bar in Harlem. Or especially in an after-hours bar in Harlem.
“I’ve been telling Martin about the latest love of my life,” Francis said, omitting any mention of Michael, their parents, and the possibility that he was being pursued.
It took Martin a moment to realize that Francis meant the heiress and not his sister-in-law. “It’s quite a love story,” he said to Hooper. “She thinks he’s someone else.”
Hooper shook his head. “Women always think their men are someone else. They could never love us if they knew the truth.”
“Your friend’s a wise man,” Francis said.
“He’s also a man who lives in fear of his own wife,” Martin said.
“All smart men fear their wives,” Hooper said. “You could take a lesson, Martin. I still can’t believe you walked out on—what’s his name again? Chestnut Kingfisher?”
“You think that job’s so great? Then you take it.” Martin extended a palm toward Hooper, offering him a handful of nothing. “Here. It’s yours.”
“Now, you know Chesterfield would never hire me. He’s got all the trumpets he can handle.”
The band that night might have been a makeshift operation, but oh, could they play. They jumped right into “Take the A Train,” leaving plenty of room for solos and stepping out, before rolling into a smoky, slow-burn take on “Honeysuckle Rose.” Between songs, Martin and Hooper settled into musicians’ shop talk: who was hot, who was a pretender, who hadn’t paid his band in weeks, who was in the market for a new alto, a new drummer, a new bass. Hooper himself had just come from Smalls, where word was spreading about a scorching horn player from Cincinnati. He had just blown into town, and apparently John Hammond was already working his corner. At the mention of Hammond’s name, Martin perked up. He still hadn’t said a word about Hammond to anyone.
“Cincinnati!” Hooper sounded astonished. “Cinci-goddamn-nati! Bad enough we got guys from New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City—even Ireland, if you can believe it—trying to take our jobs. Now we’ve got to worry about Cincinnati. It’s enough to make a man give up music and go into the dry-cleaning business.”
There was a parting in the crowd as the people packed close to the band made room for a late arrival. The lighting over the stage was a simple affair but someone switched on a spotlight covered with a blue gel, and the mood of the room shifted.