I handed Tilly the rolled up fifty. “Go ahead,” I told him. “I don’t want no more.” It was just us two, Tilly and myself, on the roof of my mother’s place in Brooklyn.

Tilly held the bottle of Taittanger by the neck. It was a cold, clear night for September. He handed me the pink champagne. “Nice stuff,” he said. He drew his finger across the scar under his eye. It was a habit of his.

He had this two-inch scar under his right eye from a fight with a dude who come up behind him in the alley back of The Starlight. I was there. Tilly, Eddie and myself, out in the alley, doing a number and working on a bottle of Johnny Walker. This junkie with a knife. Tilly turned around and the dude swiped at him and got him under the eye. So Eddie grabs the sucker’s arm, swings him around and buries the knife in the dude’s gut. We got outta there quick. There was no mention of it in the papers. We didn’t even talk about it ourselves. When people asked about the cut, Tilly would laugh and say he cut himself shaving.

“Remember that junkie Eddie took out in the alley?” I just blurted it out.

“Don’t be stupid, Angel,” Tilly said. “Forget about that one.”

“I ain’t stupid,” I said to Tilly. He knows better than to say that to me. I had a bad motorcycle accident. Lost my damn kneecap when a truck back-ended me on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.  Also suffered a concussion with cerebral hemorrhage. Nobody ever said anything about brain damage, but I can tell I’m not the same as before the accident. Not that I’m entirely out to lunch.

“Sorry,” Tilly said. “Sorry, Angel. You miss Eddie. Am I right?”

I took a pull and gave the bottle back to Tilly. It was about half-gone.

“Where’d you get the stash for this?” he asked.

“From the settlement.”

“Right,” Tilly said, “the settlement. So, how’s your mother?”

“Fine. Watches over me like a hawk.” I smiled. I wasn’t supposed to drink anymore, or to take drugs, because it could induce a coma or a spell. A spell was like you didn’t think of anything for a couple days, which really was okay by me, because I didn’t do a damn thing anyways. I mean, I still worked one or two days a week as a hairdresser, but that was about it. I went to hairdressing school after the accident. What else was I supposed to do? I don’t really need the money, but you gotta do something like my mother says. Can’t just sit in the room watching TV, listening to music all day.

“Say,” Tilly said. “You remember when me and Eddie was working at The Plaza? He was Maitre D’ and I was Captain. We had that place scammed.”

“Taittanger,” I said. “Eddie told me it was the best.”

Tilly smiled. “Remember that place we had in SoHo? We had you over, right? Two bedrooms, high ceilings, sliding glass doors, balcony. What a view. You could see uptown on a clear night. Eddie had this room in the basement where he kept wine.” Tilly got up and walked over to the edge of the roof.

I walked over with him, although I don’t like to get too close to the edge. The height gets to me.  Too close and I see angels. That ain’t why Tilly calls me Angel. Everyone calls me Angel ’cause I got white-blond hair and fair skin. My real name is Richard. When I played ball they called me Angel too.

It’s a hot, sticky night in Pawtucket. The stands are half-empty, but Sweet Lou Gorman sits in the first row just to the left of home plate. I get two strikes on the first batter, then he fouls a couple of fast balls off and my catcher, John Marzano, sets up outside. I throw three straight fast balls that just miss. The fourth pitch I throw a breaking ball that catches the inside of the plate at his knees.  The ump calls it a ball.

John jogs out to the mound. I wipe my hands on my pants to try to get the sweat off. John tells me to throw to first – keep the runner close. John goes back behind the plate and gives me the sign for a fastball. I look over at first. He ain’t goin’ nowhere, I says to myself. I wind up and let the ball go.  It catches on my finger and sinks – bounces on the plate and John has to block it with his body. By the time he picks it up the runner is standing at second, brushing off his pants.

“We used to lift champagne from that restaurant every night,” Tilly said. “Open our fridge and there would be a half-dozen bottles from Reims.”

“Reims?”

Tilly held up the bottle of champagne and pointed to the label. “Where the good stuff is from,” he said. He shook his head and laughed. “We had duplicates of all the keys. Eddie handled the inventory himself. We could go in or out any time we wanted. Then we had cooks, even a few executives, under our wing because we got their dope for them. There was one GM we used to get boys for. He liked young boys. Plus, we would do numbers with credit cards people left in the restaurant. Sometimes we’d charge a cash check to a credit card and pocket the cash. Really, we never would’ve gotten caught only we started to get a little too greedy. Things got out of hand.”

“Hey,” I said, backing away from Tilly, “catch.”  I tossed him the hardball I always carry in my jacket pocket.  It was signed by the Red Sox, Yaz included. I always been a Red Sox fan even though I’m from Brooklyn. I guess because my dad, who was from Boston, was a Sox fan. The moon was out so it was light enough to see the ball.

Tilly moved over and backed up on the roof. “Sure this is all right?” he asked.

“It’s all right,” I said, throwing the ball. Letting it roll off my fingers. And I thought, as I did every day of my life, that I could still make it to the big leagues if I wanted to. I have the feel of the ball.  If it wasn’t for the dizziness I sometimes got, I could suit up and try out. I didn’t need no knee to pitch. Maybe I would try out this spring. “Go ahead,” I said to Tilly, “keep talking.”

Tilly talked a little louder. “The trouble started when Eddie decided he wanted a Porsche. Eddie said that a Porsche was the best car you could buy. A perfect piece of machinery, he said.  He wanted a red Porsche convertible. It would have been easy if we hadn’t been living in Manhattan, partying four, five nights a week. And the girls. He was seeing two girls at that time. One was an actress. One was an artist.”

I moved my first two fingers together and threw a curve.

I’m pitching in the Cape Cod League the summer after high school. I’ve had a curveball for a long time but my old man wouldn’t let me throw it in high school – said it would ruin my arm. Made me promise to save it until I graduated. It’s the ninth inning and we’re up by one run. I’m gassed. The catcher gives me the sign for the fastball; I shake it off; the changeup; shake it off. He shrugs and sets up in the middle of the plate and I throw the curve. It arcs high – appears to be going high and outside then just about three feet away from the batter it curves in and down – right over the plate.  I strike out the side on curveballs. 

“Woah. Slow down there, buddy,” Tilly said, fumbling with the ball, “this ain’t the majors.”

I felt the sweat come out the back of my neck. I could see myself right there in the Pawtucket uniform, my father on the sidelines – he was still around then. That was six years ago. I had the accident that fall, in the offseason

“One of the girls – the actress – was nineteen,” Tilly said. “The artist was over thirty. What’re you now, Angel, 28?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Tilly said. “Eddie would go from one to the other, sometimes in the same night. He’d come back to the apartment, take a shower, and go out again. He’d go out to dinner with one, then meet the other one at a club. And the clothes he had. Man, he had beautiful clothes. Suits by Georgio Armani, Perry Ellis, Versace – I got to know all the names. The best of everything, he used to say.  He got me thinking the same. He was into the wine too. We used to drink twenty-year-old French burgundies with dinner. They were worth a couple hundred bucks each and we’d have them with pasta. What did we care? We’d lifted them from the restaurant. We even had the use of a suite at the hotel every once and a while. The GM would loan us the key. What can I say?” Tilly laughed. “We lived like kings.”

I didn’t want to throw the ball anymore. I walked over to the edge of the building and sat down. Tilly came over and sat beside me. In the moonlight I could see white hairs and the beginning of a bald spot on the back of his head. He was getting a little thick around the middle too. Then I noticed a white haze floating in the corner of my eye. I took what was left of the gram of coke, wet my finger and snorted a pinch. Felt myself swoon and grabbed onto the gutter.

“It wasn’t just the car that blew it,” Tilly said. “Eddie always had to have more money. He started betting at the track and on pro games through a bookie. He was good at it for a while, but then he started to lose and he borrowed money from the sharks, so we stepped up our action at the restaurant and it got crazy. Credit cards, writing off checks, lifting entrees off checks and pocketing the cash, destroying checks, signing checks to big companies and city ledgers and hotel accounts. Eddie didn’t seem to think it would end, or maybe he knew it would and didn’t care.”

“But he got the car,” I said. “Drove over here and gave me a ride. Even let me drive on the part of the Hutch that’s closed off. That was the first time I drove in years. What a car. It was a beauty.”

“Yea, it was a beauty all right.” Tilly finished off the champagne, stood up, and threw the bottle across the street into the park. We listened, but I couldn’t tell whether it broke or not.

“So, they blew the Porsche up,” I said, “with Eddie in it.”

“He owed a lot.” Tilly scratched his head, “’bout a hundred grand. And the hotel was onto him.”

I had a Honda Shadow – not a big bike, a 500 – white gas tank, lots of chrome. It was bumper-to-bumper on the Cross-Bronx. I was weaving in and out and I pulled in front of a ten-wheeler – one of those big dump trucks. I caught a glimpse of him in my handle mirror; he was right on top of me.  Then I wasn’t holding on to anything – I hit the roof of the car in front of me and landed on the highway. The doctors told me I’d hit my head on the road. They figured I’d shattered my knee when I hit the car. They told me I was lucky. 

“Let’s go,” Tilly said, standing up. We climbed back down to the fire escape and in through the window to my room.

My mother called and asked what we were doing and I yelled that we were fine. I walked Tilly down to the street door. “How’s things goin’ at the cleaners?”

“Okay” Tilly said. “Workin’ for the old man gets to me sometimes, but what can you do.”

“So,” I said, “was it wise guys took him out?”

Tilly leaned his head back and looked at me out of the corners of his eyes.

“How’s the head, Angel?”

“Fine.”

“Okay,” Tilly said. “I’ll tell you something. It wasn’t Eddie in the car. Remember Huckleberry Finn? Arranged his own death? That’s what Eddie did. He got the corpse from the Bowery. I helped him. We drove the car over to the Bronx, put a dead drunk in the driver’s seat, dowsed the Porsche with gas and lit it up. Eddie’s in California. Has a different name now.”

Tilly shook my hand, put one finger to his lips and raised his eyebrows.

I closed the door. I didn’t know exactly what to make of that. I’d have to think about it. Maybe if I was to ask the angels. Sometimes they would tell me things. Not always. Sometimes. No rush. I got the entire fall and winter to think, and to practice. Eddie was alive. I looked down at my knee. I figure next spring, next spring I’ll be ready to suit up. I felt a chill so I zipped up my Pawtucket jacket. I went back to my room, got in bed and turned on the TV with the sound off. I put the headphones on and listened to The Dead Kennedys. That’s the way I like to watch TV.

***

Ed Meek is the author of Luck (short stories) and In the Cooling Twilight (memoir).