23

And so I told the story of the club of thirty-one. I talked for a long time. When I was done Mick didn't say anything at first. He filled his glass and held it to the light.

"I remember Cunningham's," he said. "They served good beef and the bar would pour you a decent drink. When I think of all the places that are gone, all the people who are gone. I don't understand time. I don't understand it at all."

"No."

"Sand through an hourglass. You hold something- anything- for a moment in your hand. And then it's gone." He sighed. "When did they have their first meeting? Thirty years ago?"

"Thirty-two."

"I was twenty-five, and a loutish piece of work I was. They'd never have had me in their club, or any other decent association of men. But that's a club I'd have joined if asked."

"So would I."

"And never missed a meeting," he said. "Standing together. Bearing witness. Waiting for the man with the broad ax."

"The man with-?"

"Death," he said. "That's how I envision him. A man with his arms and shoulders bare, wearing a black hood and carrying a broad ax."

"Elaine would say you were put to death in a past life, and the man you just described was the executioner."

"And who's to say she's wrong?" He shook his big head. "Sand through an hourglass. Eamonn Dougherty, the fucking Scourge of Skibbereen, sitting on his barstool watching the years slip past him. He outlived the Galway Rose, the murderous little bastard. He'll outlive us all, with his wee cap and his two pints of beer." He drank. "A long line of dead men," he said.

"How's that?"

"Ah, it's a story. Do you know Barney O'Day? He used to come to Morrissey's."

"I never met him there," I said, "but I knew him when I was at the Sixth. He managed a bar on West Thirteenth Street. They had live music, and sometimes he'd get up and sing a song."

"Had he any sort of a voice?"

"I don't think he was any worse than the paid entertainment. I used to run into him at the Lion's Head, too. What about him?"

"Well, it's a story I heard another man tell at a wake," he said. "It seems Barney's old mother was in hospital, and he was at her bedside, and the dear told him that she was ready to die. I had a good life, says she, and wrung all the joy I could out of it, and I'm not after havin' machines keepin' me alive, an' tubes stickin' out of me. So give us a kiss, Barney me lad, says she, as you were always as foine a son as a mother could ask for, an' then tell the doctor to pull the plug an' let me go.

"So your man gives her a kiss and goes off to find the doctor, and tells him straight out what the old woman wants him to do. And the doctor's scarcely more than a boy himself. He hasn't been at it long, and Barney can see he's got no stomach for this sort of thing. He wants to be prolonging life, not cutting it short. He's troubled, and Barney's a gentle soul himself, for all the bluster he puts on, and wants to spare the man some agony.

" 'Doctor,' says he, 'put your mind at ease. It's not such a terrible thing you have to be doin'. Doctor, let me tell you somethin'. We O'Days come from a long line of dead people.' "

Outside, the wind blew up and drove rain against the windows. I looked out and saw cars passing, their lights reflected in the wet pavement. "That's a wonderful story," I said.

"Ever since it was told to me," he said, "I've carried the line around with me. For don't we all come from a long line of dead people?"

"Yes."

"Your tale of the club put me in mind of it. Thirty-one men, and one by one they go to their graves, and the last man left starts it all over again. A long line of dead men, stretching back through the centuries."

"All the way to Babylon, rumor has it."

"All the way to Adam," he said. "All the way to the first fish that grew hands and hauled himself ashore. Is some bastard killing these men of yours?"

"It looks that way."

"Can you tell who it is?"

"No," I said, "I can't. It's one of them or it's not, and either way it makes no sense that I can see. One of them gave me some money at the start, and I worked hard for it, but I don't know that I did anything useful. And now they've gone in together to give me more money, and I took it, but I don't know what the hell I'll do to earn it."

"You'll find him."

"I don't see how. I don't even know what to do next. I haven't got a clue."

"Just wait."

"Wait?"

"How many are left? Fourteen?"

"Fourteen."

"Bide your time," he said. "And when there's but one of them left, arrest him."

And, a little while later, he said, "They've a memorial in Washington, a wall with the names of all who died over there. You've seen it?"

"Only in photos."

"I thought, What the hell do I want to go there for? I know what it looks like. I know his name. I could print it out if I cared to, and hang it on a wall of my own. But something made me go. I can't explain it.

"I rode down on the train. I took a taxi from the station and told the driver I wanted to see the Vietnam Memorial. It wasn't far at all. It's just a wall, you know, with a simple shape to it. But you said you've seen photographs, so you know what it looks like.

"I looked at it and I started reading the names. 'A long line of dead men.' That was a long line of dead men. Thousands of names in no particular order, and only one name among them that meant a thing to me, so why was I reading the others? And how would I ever find his in the midst of them?

"I overheard someone telling someone else where to go to locate a name, and I stopped reading the names and went over to the directory and found out where his name was. I was afraid they might have left it off, but no, it was there, all right. And I found it on the wall. Just his name, Dennis Edward Ballou.

"I looked at that name," he said, "and my throat closed up, and I felt an awful fullness in the center of my chest, as if I'd taken a blow there. The letters of his name blurred in front of me, and I had to blink to clear my vision, and I thought I might weep. I haven't done that since I was a boy. I'd taught myself not to weep when my father hit me, and it was a lesson I learned too well. I'd have been glad of a few tears that day, but I'm long past them. They've dried up within me, they've gone and turned to dust.

"But I could not get away from that great fucking monument. I read his name again and again, and then I read the name before his and the one after, and then I walked along and read more names. I was there for hours. How many names did I read? I could not hope to tell you. And from time to time I would go back and find his name again, and look at it.

"I'd thought I would stay the night, see something of the city. I'd booked a room at a hotel across the street from the White House. But I was at the wall until the sun went down, and then I walked until I came to a bar, and I went in and had a drink. Then I went to another bar, and another, and then I bought a bottle and took a taxi back to Union Station.

"I took the first train out, and I left the bottle unopened until the stop at Wilmington, Delaware. Then I broke the seal and had a drink, and by the time we were back in New York the bottle was empty. And I might have been drinking well water for all the effect it had on me. I caught a cab at Penn Station and came right here, and Andy Buckley was waiting to tell me there'd been a phone call from a friend of ours in the Bronx. A fellow we needed to find had been seen going into a certain house off Gun Hill Road.

"So Andy drove, and we went up to Gun Hill Road and found this fellow. And I beat him to death with my hands."

"Tell me," he said. "What was your father like?"

"I'm not sure I know. He was dead before I was grown."

"Was he a cop himself?"