I cursed the Sunday closing laws, and headed for the back door of a blind pig where a colored man sold me a bottle of something like whiskey. I made good enough use of it that I had a terrible hangover when Monday came. I also had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that had nothing to do with imbibing. Worse yet, although our pitifully one-sided romance was kaput, my business with Margaret was far from finished. She still wanted to know who was behind her husband’s murder. The best I could do was suck it up and come out of this with my reputation intact.
Sorry as I felt for myself Monday evening, I still had some pity to spare for Walter Thornton. He’d stepped out of his flivver anticipating his wife’s lovely face and welcoming arms. Instead, the pockmarked mug of the man across the booth from me ushered him into the next world.
“I could use a drink,” said Wicky Hanson.
“So buy one,” I replied.
“Jeez, I thought you wanted info.”
“I do, and I already paid for it,” I said, but what he told me almost made me sorry I’d been so short.
Hanson cautioned that Tilsen didn’t confide in the non-Jews he occasionally hired, so all he knew was what he overheard. But he had sharp ears and a good memory. He explained that the mood among the five torpedoes on the hit was about what you’d figure—tense and silent on the way, relieved and talkative afterward. Tilsen was the wheel-man.
“There was this one mockie in the front seat next to him,” he said. “Wasn’t no dropper, even though he looked like one—hard guy with a fag in his mouth—but there strictly to finger Thornton. So we’re waiting, car pulls up, guy opens the door, finger-man says, ‘That’s him,’ jumps out, and motions us to follow. We step out and I overhear the mark say to the finger-man, ‘Meyer, what’re you doing?’ And he says, ‘Sorry, Walter, I’m an agent of history.’ Then we start blastin’ and his wife runs out screamin’. That’s about it.”
“You’re sure his name was Meyer, and that’s exactly what he said?”
Hanson nodded.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. When we’re drivin’ away, we’re all laughing and crackin’ wise, even Tilsen. He turns around and says, ‘May not look that way, but we changed the world today, boys.’ Then he nods to this Meyer character. ‘Make sure you tell him we said that,’ he says.”
I put my head in my hands and thought hard. “That it?”
“Well, Jimmy B. says you want facts, not theories.”
“From Jimmy. If you’ve got a theory, go ahead.”
“It’s just that the finger-man probably wasn’t the guy ordered the hit. Tilsen told him to tell someone about this changin’-the-world joke he made. That’s who was behind it.”
I nodded. “I think you’re right.” I motioned to the waitress. “Give this man a drink,” I said, and handed her two bucks.
Next day, two or three times, I was on the verge of calling Margaret and telling her what I’d deduced. It could change your whole life, I told myself. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I wanted to nail it down.
That night I went to the synagogue. They were all there—the radicals, the scholars, Tilsen, the finger-man, the old gent with the skull cap. I took a wine and got right to the point with Rothman.
“You’d have liked to see Lloyd B. Jensen become president, wouldn’t you?”
He knew something was up. He didn’t take off the specs, just gave me a flat stare and nodded yes.
“Was he what the times called for? Was he historically necessary?”
“That’s a complicated question, McDonough. What makes you ask? Thinking of joining the Party?”
“No.” I stepped in closer to make sure he heard. “I’m thinking of telling Margaret Thornton who was behind her husband’s murder.”
He rubbed his beard and took that in. “Let me show you something,” he said.
He took me by the arm and guided me into the thick of things. The air was blue with eye-stinging smoke, and there were so many people talking at once—gesturing, shouting, laughing, cursing—that nothing they said was intelligible. The word that came to mind was babble, but Rothman had another term, which he imparted by shouting in my ear.
“These are the masses,” he said. “Every kind of person with every experience you can imagine is here. Hard workers, lazy bastards, money grubbers, thinkers, doers, devout men, unbelievers, gentlemen, killers. Somebody says something, somebody else hears, passes it on inadvertently or on purpose, pure or changed to suit his own self-interest, and sooner or later, who knows why, somebody does something that matters. Somebody acts.”
“And then it’s history.”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “History is its own imperative. Anything can happen until something does. Then nothing else was ever possible. What are you going to tell Margaret?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, and I turned and walked out. I had goose bumps all the way to the bucket, wondering if someone was going to shoot me in the back.
