14 Stories (10 page)

“It's going down already.”

“That a boy. He never would have hit you if you had raised the club over his skull or gotten him first. Anyway, the owner wants you taken off and a new guard put on. I'll have you switch places with the guard who's in a shoestore two blocks north of you, number
575
. I'll call him. He'll know when you get there to come straight to your store, as the owner there always wants a guard on at all times.”

I go to the shoestore. As the guard's about to leave I ask him “Much trouble here?”

“Nothing big. But one guy today, bam, I really slammed it into him when he wouldn't put down the shoetrees he wasn't going to pay for and then pulled on me a knife, though it turned out to be keys. Bam, bam, I did. He crawled out in all the confusion here, but will have as a reminder those two dents in his head the rest of his life. When they pull anything on you, like keys—you know, between their fingers into your face—swing now, talk later, when you get them back awake. That's what they can expect from me, and Gibner tells me to impress on you the same. You don't, all us guards will look to them like potatoes, which'll make our jobs even harder. Half of what we got working for us is their fear of our clubs, you hear?”

“Got you.”

I work the rest of the day. For my breaks, because they always want a guard here, someone brings me coffee and cake for free, and I have to sit in the back watching the front of the store through a big peephole. During my lunch, one of the salesmen puts on my jacket and cap, though doesn't want the club because he says he doesn't want to risk getting killed using it, while I go outside for my half hour.

Nothing worse happens the next two days but a man screaming at the cashier all sorts of curse words. I walk over to him and say, with my club at my side, “Anything wrong, sir?” He looks at me, then at my club, says “Don't bother yourself,” and leaves. The cashier says “He came in just to use the bathroom and when I told him it was for employees only, he laid into me that I was a whore and liar. Thanks, Tom, because I think he could have become much crazier.”

There are no incidents at all the next week for a couple of days till a customer gets up from his seat, starts walking around testing the shoes the salesman just fit him with and then heads for the door. “Where you going?” the salesman says.

The man keeps walking to the door.

“Guard, stop that guy. He didn't pay for the shoes he has on.”

I grab the man's hand just as he gets it on the door handle and pull him back. He throws a punch at me, I duck, grab his other hand and flip him to the floor and sit on him. He's maybe fifty pounds lighter than me and tries to move out from under my buttocks on his back but can't.

“One of you call a cop,” I tell the salesman.

“No, the owner doesn't like to make so much of it. Stick him in jail and he'll be out tonight and tossing a brick through our window by the morning. Let's just get back our shoes.”

“Flunky,” the thief says to me.

“Listen,” I say. “I want shoes, I buy them, I don't swipe them”

“Times are tough. And when I got a job I would have mailed you the money for the shoes.”

“Sure you would, sure.”

Meanwhile the salesmen have taken off the new shoes and slipped on the man's old loafers.

“Okay,” a salesman says. “You can let him up.”

“No trouble,” I say to the thief, getting off him. “I have a club. I'll use it and have.”

“No you won't. You haven't the guts. Your face tells me that, your voice, but there's no need to try you out. What do they pay you for this?”

“Just get out of here.”

“Get out of here already,” a salesman says.

“Two C's a week I bet for beating the brains in of your fellow poor people. A real winner, your job.”

“What do you know?” I say. I poke him in the ribs with the club and edge him to the door.

“That a way,” a salesman says. “But I got a better way for this bigmouth.” Both salesmen grab the man by the arms, tell me to hold the door open, and throw him outside. He lands on his knees, gets up, looks at the hole in his pants he just got, shakes his fist at us and goes.

“Good work,” the salesman says to me. “Good good work. If we didn't have a guard they'd walk out of here twenty times a day with our shoes. I like the club in his side,” he tells the other salesman. “I know what it feels like. When I was in the navy the SP's used to do it to me about once a month when I'd get smashed.”

“Call my boss if you got a moment and tell him what I've done,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I don't think he trusts I can do what I did.”

“If we speak to him, we'll tell him.”

There's no further trouble that day, but the next day a man comes in and says to the cashier, who's hanging some shoehorns on a rack next to the cash register, “Excuse me, you have the time?”

She looks at her watch. He quickly punches a few register keys and the drawer opens. He grabs a stack of bills and runs to the door. She yells “Stop, thief, he got all our twenties.” I'm already in front of the door with my club raised.

“Put the money down and you can go,” I say.

“You'll have to take me, sucker,” and picks up a floor ashtray and swings it around his head, cigarette and cigar butts flying around the room. I jump him, one hand pressing the club against his neck and other on the hand holding the ashtray, and wrestle him to the floor. One of the salesmen holds him down with me while the other takes the money out of his hand and says “You walking out of here nicely or do we have to get the police?”

“Oh I'll go, all right, after I bean the three of you and set fire to your cashier.”

“This one I think's too sick to just give to the street,” the salesman says. “Because I'm sure not letting him up till the police come.”

He calls the police, we hold him till they come, and they fill out a report on the incident and take the man away. One of the salesmen calls the owner in his other shoestore across town and then comes back and says “Mr. T. wants to know why you didn't hit that nut with your club?”

“To tell you the truth, I tried to but couldn't. I also thought I could disarm him manually, which I did, without cracking his skull and maybe getting blood—”

“You thought, you thought. Did you also think that if he knocked you cold with that cigarette thing he then might have grabbed your club and come after us? You thought. Well Mr. T. and us think you're not right for this work, I'm sorry. I even think I convinced him we got to have a guard with a gun the way things are going here. He wants you to call your Mr. Gibner.”

I phone Gibner and he says “Tom, what am I going to do with you? Because you do such good work, even great. You stop thieves like nobody I've seen and you look strong and presentable and you've proven yourself no thief. But you don't use your club. That made us look very unprofessional again, very. Look, finish out the day. It's okay with your boss, and then Monday a little before midnight be at this building address I'll give you to work as a guard there. You won't have to use a club but will have to carry one. You'll be mostly show, because just a guard in the lobby is enough to keep potential troublemakers away.”

“I thought you said I'd only work days.”

“For a few weeks work evenings. Then, in that time, you think you can swing a club again but at someone's arm or head when it's warranted, I'll put you back in a store. You think you can't, then it's apartment buildings and nursing homes from now on. Pay's a bit less there, despite the occasional midnight-to-eight shift, but that's because there's none of what we call ‘possible battle pay.'”

I say “All right, but only because I need the money,” and Monday night I'm at the apartment building a half-hour before my shift's to begin to learn what I'm supposed to do.

The head of the tenants' association shows me around and says the tenants are paying my entire salary. “The landlord's a cheap S.O.B. He doesn't live here, that's why he can act like that. We were getting a burglary a month and mugging every other before we started patrolling the place days and hiring a guard for after midnight. What they did to break in was ring a number of names on the intercom till someone without asking who's there let them in. When the tenants stopped letting in people this way, the intruders broke the door panes or locks to get in or just waited in the vestibule for someone to rob or followed them in from the street. What happens now is anyone in the vestibule who doesn't have a lobby door key has to get past the guard. You ring the tenant the visitor wants and the tenant has to personally give you the okay. The tenant doesn't or isn't in, the visitor has to leave. If a tenant doesn't have a key, ask for his ID. We issued everybody one with his picture on it. If a tenant says he forgot his ID and nobody in his apartment is home, or you have trouble with someone that you can't handle alone, call me in 7 B no matter what time at night and I'll be down in a minute. If I'm not in, here's another tenant's name to ring. One or the other of us will always be home, and if we're not, you'll be given the name of a third.”

Except for the bad hours and little periods of boredom, it's a very easy job. I sit in a comfortable lobby chair facing the vestibule door and read or listen to a radio that man in 7 B loaned me. When I have to go to the bathroom I put a sign he gave me on the lobby door that says “Be back in 30 seconds. Premises also patrolled by attack dogs,” which isn't true. For lunch the tenants' association left me a thermos each of coffee and milk and two very thick meat sandwiches on good bread and an apple.

The people who enter the vestibule are mostly tenants with lobby door keys who stop to introduce themselves and ask my name and say how glad they are to see I'm not asleep like the last two guards usually were. One tenant says if I don't like my sandwiches or prefer tea to coffee the association's food committee will change them. For the few visitors who come I open the lobby door, ask who they want, ring the tenant on the intercom in the vestibule and the tenant gives the okay. The one time the tenant wasn't in, the visitor said “Thank you” to me and went away.

A week later around 2 A.M. a man comes into the vestibule and is about to ring one of the intercom bells when I yell “Hold it” and get up, club sticking out of my side jacket pocket, open the door and ask who he wants.

“It's okay, I can ring it myself.”

“I'm sorry, this is strict building policy. Tell me who you want and I'll ring the apartment for you.”

“Fabor. Tell her Arkin's here.”

I ring Fabor in 14K. A woman answers and I say “There's a Mr. Arkin downstairs, ma'am.”

“I don't want to see him,” she says. “Don't let him up. He's crazy. He's worse. He knows he's not supposed to come here. And please don't call me again that he wants to come up, which he will, because I won't answer again tonight. Thanks, Thomas.”

“The lady says she doesn't want to let you in,” I say.

“She wants to, don't tell me. Now let me past.”

“Excuse me, but she says no. She told me specifically.”

“Call her back and let me speak to her.”

“She also said not to call back and that if I do she won't answer. You want to talk to her, do it from an outside phone.”

“The nearest pay phone's three blocks from here. I'm speaking from yours.”

He reaches for the intercom. I say “Please, don't make trouble. She said no and means no, so I think you better go.”

He rings her bell. “Now I said not to.”

Rings it several times. “Marilyn,” he says into the speaker. “It's me, Arkin, let me up.”

“Please, you're making me look stupid with her. She'll complain to the association that runs things here that I'm not doing my job. I can get fired because of her. Every tenant's my boss.”

“That's your problem.” He rings her bell and I push his hand away from the intercom.

“Don't touch me,” he says. “That's a warning.”

“Then don't ring her bell again. That's my job.”

“The hell with your job.” He rings her bell, keeps ringing it as he says into the speaker “Marilyn? Marilyn, dammit, will you ring me in? You're there. You can hear me. I have to speak to you, okay? Marilyn!”

I take his arm and try to walk him away from the intercom to the street. He throws my hand off and swings at me twice. I sidestep the first but can't the second and he clips me on the chin. I fall against the wall, legs wobbly, think I'm about to drop when I see him coming at me with a real vicious face and his fists raised. I get straight on my feet again, feel for my club, see it on the floor, kick it across the room, run to it and pick it up and hold it above my head and say “Don't make me use it, will you?” He charges over and swings at me just as I swing the club at his arm, but his fist gets in the way and I hit it instead. He shouts in pain, grabs his fist, clenches his teeth, says “Christ…damn!” edges back to the wall he had me flat against before and puts his hit fist over one eye and open hand over the other and starts crying. Then big heavy awful coughy sobs from the throat and tears now also coming out from behind his fist and hand and dropping to the floor.

I ring 7B and tell Mr. Samuels to come right down. “I think I have…just hurry.” Arkin now has his back to me, holding his fist, crying a normal cry again and mumbling things I can't understand.

Mr. Samuels gets out of the elevator. “What happened to your face?” Then he sees Arkin and says “Oh, that guy. Mrs. whatever­her-name on the fourteenth used to come in with him when I was on lobby duty, but I haven't seen him for months. He attack you?”

“I'll tell you later.” I put my hand on Arkin's shoulder. “Hey look, I'm really sorry. I did everything I could not to, but you forced me. I hope it's not broke, though anything I can do now?” He just cries. “Then I think you better go. Right?” I say to Mr. Samuels. He nods. I take Arkin's arm. “Maybe you want me to phone a taxi for you.”