25.

Gene del Vecchio took about an hour to arrive. He looked like he had just come from the Brooklyn College campus, all tweeds, a white shirt checked in blue and red tattersall and the kind of foulard bow tie that screamed college professor. It was a cold day in November, and he wore a coat so long it practically swept the floor. His red scarf was almost as generous. When Ira let him in he hugged me to him and said, “How’s the incipient gangster?”

“More incipient than gangster,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

“From what I understand coming here is the only way to see you.” He tossed a copy of the Daily Mirror on the coffee table. With relief I noted that the editors had been forced to look further afield than the life of Russell Newhouse for a front page.

DOGS SET ON

MARCHERS

HUNDREDS ARRESTED

IN ALABAMA PROTEST

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw it on TV. “

“I’m going down tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Birmingham,” he said. “Fucking redneck cocksuckers.”

I nearly asked if these were the only cocksuckers he did not approve of, but it would have been unfair.

“You think Kennedy is going to do something about it?”

“This is a guy who didn’t vote for the Civil Rights Act when he was in the Senate,” he said. “I’d invite you to join us—three busloads from Brooklyn College, more from Hunter and CCNY and Queens—but I hear you’re tied up.” He opened the paper to page three.

It appeared the Mirror’s editors had not totally abandoned me. There I was, in a photo they’d used before, but this time had flipped so I faced right. Opposite was another profile, facing left.

MOB BRAWL LOOMS

OVER CATS LEGACY

The man facing me was identified as Richard “Big Dickie” Tinti. He appeared to be about forty, his hair thinning a bit in a deep widow’s peak, a cigar stuck in his teeth. As though this was some prizefight in the Eastern Parkway Arena between two relative unknowns, I had a nickname too: Russell “Schoolboy” Newhouse. According to the Mirror, I was a “kid genius” in the “special honors program” at Brooklyn College. It seems I could have gone to Harvard or West Point or MIT except that I preferred to stay close to my “hoodlum associates.” According to the Mirror, “Officials at Brooklyn College confided that Newhouse may be thrown out of the city school on ‘character issues.’” According to the Mirror, Tinti and I had been enemies for years.

“I never met the man,” I said.

“Don’t lose sleep over it,” Del said. “And nobody is going to be throwing you out of school. That’s more bullshit. But we are going to have four incompletes if you don’t get me some term papers.”

By this time Ira had come in from the kitchen with a bottle of Terri’s single malt and two large glasses. He poured a couple of doubles. I watched Del knock his back in one long gulp.

“You got anything to eat?” he said. “Russ, I have been working non-stop on the Birmingham thing. I starve.”

Without a word from me Ira went back to the kitchen. In a moment he came out with a plate of cold cuts, mustard, mayonnaise, stacked slices of rye bread, half-sour dill pickles. I must have become sensitized to smell from being cooped up in the same place for so long—how long was it? Only three days, but it seemed like forever. I inhaled it all, including the poppy seeds in the bread. Del dug in.

“I’m not going to be able to give you those papers,” I said.

“We’ll work something out,” Del said, his mouth stuffed. “I’ve got some mfxshehsd.”

“Some what?”

He made an effort to get the food down. “You guys get the best deli,” he said.

“Us guys.”

“You know.”

“No.”

He motioned quickly back and forth with his right hand, his index finger extended. “Connected.”

“Professor del Vecchio—”

“Russ, please. Del.”

“Del, I’m not connected. I’m not anything but fucking locked up in this fucking hotel suite with fucking hot and cold running corned beef and anything else I want to order in, and you think I’m some kind of bona fide gangster? I mean, you know who and what I am. Is this a joke or what?”

I watched him put down what was left of his sandwich and pour himself another double, maybe a triple. A week before, this man was my hero. Now he was beginning to look like just another putz, a self-indulgent alcoholic who believed what he read in the papers. Worse, I was beginning to look at myself differently as well. My eyes were the same, but the mind that peered out through them seemed to have become more critical, shrewder, cooler if not simply cold. “I didn’t get what you said earlier. ‘We’ll work something out.’ You’ve got some what?”

“I’ve got some old papers. We’ll just put your name on them et voilà!”

“Et voilà quoi?”

“You’re in a tough situation with the college poobahs, Russell. You’re an A student. An A+ student. I’m not worried about you knowing the work. But enough juice from the press, given an opportunity they’ll toss you out.”

“I thought you said the work was in doing the papers the best I could.”

“Consider it a favor,” he said. The scotch in his tumbler was gone. “Maybe one day I’ll need a favor back.”

At that moment any thought I’d had of showing him the secret library on the floor above evaporated like the aroma that was all that was left of his scotch. I hadn’t touched mine. I realized I wouldn’t, at least not until he was gone. Maybe not at all. I needed a clear head. No booze. Probably no grass. And, I realized with both a sinking feeling and a sense of relief, no sex. I could not afford distraction, not even that much.

“Thanks for coming, professor,” I said. “I appreciate the favor and I’ll remember it.” This was the man I was hoping to call on for help, for advice, for a lifeline to a vessel of sanity that was before my eyes drifting away, out of range, useless. “You see Sheriff Bull Connor in Birmingham, give him my best.”

My guest rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet. He must have been drinking before he arrived. He must have been drinking when he used to invite me to lunch, when he lectured me on the responsibility of intellect, the value of the written line. “Don’t worry about those papers,” he said. He hugged me to him again like a beloved nephew. “Ciao,” he said.

The next morning I would have to make a plan. And I didn’t want anyone around to bother me. Whatever I did I would have to do it on my own.