Free My Brother's Keeper by Keith Gilman Page B

screen telling Butchy he owes him thirty bucks. Butchy tells him it don’t work like that. Jimmy’s getting pissed and Butchy tells him to go fuck himself. That’s when he throws the glass.’
    â€˜Just like that?’
    â€˜Yeah, Lou. Just like that.’
    Heshy poured Lou a cup of coffee without being asked. He caught Lou’s eye and nodded toward Maggie, who was gritting her teeth and growling into her cell phone. Lou recognized the tone. He could picture Maggie’s mother on the other end of the line, the same grimace on her face, trying to control the daughter who’d run away from her a dozen times because she was sick of dealing with the different husbands and the moves and the different houses and the schools, sick of feeling like a piece of furniture. Maggie felt Lou’s eyes on her and slumped down inside the cramped booth. She was quiet for about ten seconds and then abruptly snapped the phone closed.
    â€˜Did you talk to him at all, Joey, or did you two guys just get drunk?’
    â€˜Jimmy don’t just get angry when he drinks, he’s also got a lot to say.’
    â€˜His sister said the same thing.’
    â€˜It turns out that Jimmy knew Brian Haggerty’s first wife, the one that got herself dead with the old man. She went by the name Valerie Price, but he didn’t think that was her real name. The impression I got was that she was more than just a casual acquaintance.’
    â€˜Complicates things, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜He didn’t have one good thing to say about her. He did say she started as a dancer at the Arramingo Club, had quite a reputation.’
    â€˜The Arramingo Club again.’
    â€˜Yeah. Jimmy said she was gorgeous and she knew it. Wasn’t afraid to use it either. But she was reckless. These are Jimmy’s words, Lou, not mine. I couldn’t help get the feeling he thinks she got what she had coming to her.’
    â€˜A thousand years ago they would have burned her at the stake or had a good old-fashioned stoning in the town square. A bullet in the brain is much more expedient.’
    â€˜You said it.’
    â€˜What else did he say?’
    â€˜You ever been to the Arramingo Club? It’s a home away from home for some of Philly’s finest: cops, politicians, gangsters. They call a truce just long enough to sip their Scotch and stuff a dollar bill into a stripper’s thong. Put it on the taxpayer’s tab.’
    â€˜Never had the pleasure. But that’s going to change real soon.’
    â€˜According to Jimmy he wasn’t the only person getting his fingers wet with Valerie Price and neither was Brian Haggerty. She was a climber, kept her eyes on the prize. She’d latch onto the fattest wallet she could get her hands on. Jimmy seemed to imply that he’d gotten her out of his system pretty quick. Couldn’t say the same thing about Haggerty.’
    â€˜I’ve seen it happen to the best of them.’
    â€˜He said Haggerty made a fool of himself, chasing her all over town, pulling her out of bars, hotel rooms, parked cars. The jealousy drove him insane. Even Jimmy was surprised when Haggerty married her. Jimmy thought maybe she got knocked up and talked Haggerty into making an honest woman out of her.’
    â€˜You sure Jimmy was over her?’
    â€˜Famous last words, right?’
    Heshy grabbed a fly swatter from over the stove and swung it like a tennis racquet at a big black fly circling over his head. The buzzing sounded like an airplane propeller. He fanned the air a few times until the thing landed on the wall. He snuck up on it and got it with his next swing. It slid down the tile and landed on the floor but it wasn’t dead. Its wings fluttered and it spun around in a circle like a dog chasing its tale until Heshy stepped on it and kicked it into the corner.
    â€˜Did Jimmy say anything about her murder?’
    â€˜What’s he going to say? “By the