* * *
? ? ?
The address that Mr. Cohen gave Emmett for Harrison Hewett led him to a dingy hotel on a dingy street in downtown Manhattan. From the well-mannered man who answered the door of room 42, Emmett learned to his disappointment that Mr. Hewett was no longer a resident, but he also learned that Mr. Hewett’s son had been there the previous morning and had apparently checked into the hotel for the night.
—Perhaps he’s still here, said the gentleman.
In the lobby, the clerk with the pencil-thin moustache said sure, sure, he knew who Emmett was talking about. Harry Hewett’s kid. He showed up asking about his old man’s whereabouts, then booked two rooms for the night. But he wasn’t there no more. He and his daydreaming pal had left around noon.
—With my fucking radio, added the clerk.
—Did he happen to say where he was going?
—He might have.
—Might have? asked Emmett.
The clerk leaned back in his chair.
—When I helped your friend find his father, he gave me ten bucks . . .
* * *
? ? ?
According to the clerk, Emmett would be able to find Duchess’s father by speaking to a friend of his who drank at a West Side saloon every night after eight. With time to spare, Emmett walked up Broadway until he found a coffee shop that was busy, clean, and well lit. Sitting at the counter, he ordered the special and a piece of pie. He finished his meal with three cups of coffee, and a cigarette that he bummed from his waitress—an Irish woman named Maureen, who, despite being ten times busier than Mrs. Burk, had ten times her grace.
The information from the hotel clerk sent Emmett back to Times Square, which in the hour before dusk was already incandescent with brightly lit signs announcing cigarettes, cars, appliances, hotels, and theaters. The sheer scale and garishness of it all made Emmett disinclined to buy a single thing that was being advertised.
Emmett returned to the newsstand on the corner of Forty-Second Street, where he found the same newsman from earlier in the day. This time the newsman pointed to the northern end of the square, where a giant sign for Canadian Club whiskey was shining ten stories above the street.
—See that sign? Just beyond it, take a left onto Forty-Fifth and keep walking till you’ve run out of Manhattan.
Over the course of the day, Emmett had grown accustomed to being ignored. He’d been ignored by the commuters on the subway train, by the pedestrians on the sidewalks and the performers in the waiting rooms, chalking it up to the inimicality of city life. So he was a little surprised to discover that once he was beyond Eighth Avenue, he wasn’t ignored anymore.
On the corner of Ninth Avenue, he was eyed by a beat cop in the middle of his rounds. On Tenth Avenue he was approached by one young man offering to sell him drugs and another offering to sell him his company. As he approached Eleventh, he was beckoned by an old black beggar, whom he avoided by quickening his pace, only to run right into an old white beggar a few steps later.
Having found the anonymity of the morning somewhat off-putting, Emmett would have welcomed it now. He felt he understood why the people of New York walked with that purposeful urgency. It was a dissuasive signal to the vagrants and drifters and the rest of the fallen.
Just before the river, he found the Anchor—the bar the clerk had told him about. Given its name and location, Emmett had imagined it would be a spot that catered to sailors or members of the merchant marine. If it ever had, the association had lapsed long ago. For inside there wasn’t a man you might call seaworthy. To Emmett’s eye, they all looked one step above the old beggars he’d dodged in the street.
Having learned from Mr. Morton how reluctant the agents were to share whereabouts, Emmett was worried that the bartender might be equally tight-lipped; or perhaps like the clerk at the Sunshine Hotel, he would expect to be handsomely reimbursed. But when Emmett explained that he was looking for a man named FitzWilliams, the bartender said that he’d come to the right place. So Emmett had taken a seat at the bar and ordered the beer.
* * *
When the door of the Anchor opened shortly after eight and a man in his sixties entered, the bartender gave Emmett the nod. From his stool, Emmett watched as the old man made his way slowly to the bar, picked up a glass and half-empty bottle of whiskey, and retreated to a table in the corner.
As FitzWilliams poured himself a drink, Emmett recalled the stories that Duchess had told of his rise and fall. It wasn’t easy to imagine that this thin, shuffling, forlorn-looking man had once been paid handsomely to play the part of Santa Claus. Leaving some money on the bar, Emmett approached the old performer’s table.