Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (23 page)

“You bastard. What you mean sloughin’ me?” She couldn’t get him. A minute ago he was steaming up a lather and now he was an iceberg, sloughing her, the nervy bastard. He was a funny guy, damn him. A queer. A phony. The different guy, the swell guy. He was funny. Gee, she loved him even if he was a queer, sloughing her for nothing at all. Her eyes were moist. For the first time in months she felt a passion, a love, an emotion known when she’d lived out in Brooklyn and lined up for a guy she liked extra, getting nothing out of it but her pleasure. Now again, after the professional routine, the onslaughts of a thousand men built the same way, this passion swelled her breasts and lay between them like a rare flower. She breathed harshly, haunted by the quest, the search for happiness and a swell guy fulfilled, her lips hanging, her eyes larger and overwhelming her entirely like two huge misty pools from which in some mystic way her body flowered. She leaned towards him, forgiving as a beaten dog.

He was sorry he’d cracked her, puzzled at this yearning giving of her. What the hell was she acting for? She looked like a dope, a school kid. So that was it. Both of them misunderstood passion. She thought he was a funny bird, loving him because maybe he was the swell guy every dame dreamed of, the swell guy who was different, who had class, something. He thought she loved him because he was brutal. It was a cockeyed feeling, the reasons and the underlying emotions tangled up in one dark rose of love. The cab hurled along, its horn screeching. The streets were left behind like many yesterdays. They seemed to come to one another from across the city, each from some lonely place, no longer thinking or wondering why it was so.

She slipped him all her dough, sixteen bucks. He paid the hack, grabbed her arm, walking languidly against the wind, their thighs grazing. They registered at the desk of a small hotel in a sidestreet off Sixth Avenue. The street was full of restaurants, lobster joints, ginzo spaghetti houses. The three hotels in the block catered to fast-time crowds, small stone buildings that had known prime twenty years ago, even then decadent, as if somehow they could never be up to date. Grifters, racketeers and their molls, lived here. Bill had no baggage. He’d been here before, in this musty lobby with the boys scanning the form sheets. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Don’t be long, honey,” she said.

He glanced back at her from the door. She was standing at the end of the faded carpet, a little to the right of the desk and the impassive hotel clerk, a young ambitious man trying to uphold the grand tradition of hotel clerks in this joint, smartly dressed, polite as a diplomat; Bill’s eyes swift across the lobby, the slick boys reading, two men heeling two doll-like dames, his impression was of something smooth as grease rubbed across the dank woods of the old hostelry. Madge smiled, her lips without any wild red. Lipstick was over his mouth. He took out his handkerchief as if signaling he’d be back soon. His stupid heart was beating and he thought of it with an old cynicism, stepping briskly. She was nuts about him because he’d slammed her. The secret of his success was a sock in the puss. Holy hell, just a caveman. But she was nuts about him. That was something among all his troubles. His head rang. The glitter of Broadway, like perfect teeth shining in the mouth of a diseased hag, dazzled him. He was awed by the city, this warren of six million lives, oh, little loves, little lives hoping, sweating towards the alluring promise of wealth and fame. Oh, to win, to come out ahead, to beat the racket. Christ, all he wanted was a few thousand. A fat chance with Hanrahan after him, with McMann and his sneaky brain-guy stratagems. Damn it, he ought to be glad someone, even a little bat like Madge, cared for him. She was his other self found again, his dark sensual self lost from flesh and returned in heart.

He hopped a cab, rubbing the handkerchief across his mouth. It stained red, the smudged color the blood of another time. Madge. Madge. He smoked furiously, aching to be with her, thinking of her legs, the cool thighs, the small young-girl breasts, with a new appreciation. She was more than she used to be. She was the world because she cared for a guy called Bill. Groggy, exultant, he paid the fare. The cab shot away, the tail-lamp a retreating sad eye. Twenty-third hid in the dark mist of February as if no soul lived in any of its houses.

McMann had been drinking with the kids, all of them surrounding the bottle of rye. The kids were celebrating, boisterous with success like a winning football team on Saturday night.

“Here’s the brain guy.” Schneck staggered over to Bill, his huge body like a wrestler’s, his breath dark brown with whisky smell. He circled his shoulders fondly, his face pale and strong as a butcher boy’s. “Want your cut, huh? We’ll give ya a cut like the rabbi.” Bill took the drink McMann offered. Mike declared he could kiss Bill. He thanked them for the compliments, nodding at Ray’s buzzings. Ray looked more than ever like McMann’s kid brother. Mike blabbed of the swell kicks he was going to buy, three pairs of kicks at one clip, that was him all over, a sport. Their talk swung in low heavy circles. Schneck laughed, and in one triumphant voice all three kids were boasting of what a pipe the stickup was, what a swell guy McMann was, what a swell guy Bill was, of the best, both of them. This exultation of the mosquitoes filled his ears with irritation. This exultation was precisely what McMann wanted. Red devil with the real sting. Bill stared at the enigma of McMann, without comradeship, chilled, hostile, preparing. He told them of what had happened, his close shave. He could’ve been dead as easy as hell if the coin hadn’t come up lucky.

The liquor hadn’t warmed McMann, his small reptilian head poised, the features built close to the bone. “What the hell, Bill. It was figured out O.K. Madge was there, wasn’t she? You were covered. You were safe.”

“I didn’t like it. It was too damn close.”

The kids clamored for him to forget it, to be a sport and forget it, riding him about Madge. Man, what a dandy life with a dame chipping in her love for nothing. Ray said heartily he’d been searching for a nice dame to keep him going, but he had no luck.

“You ain’t got no personality,” roared Schneck.

“I ain’t got luck.”

“No personality.”

“Shut up, you guys.” McMann handed Bill his wallet and watch. “The brain guy’s here and we’re splitting. Them customers were chiselers.” Bill hated McMann and his young cubs, glancing away so McMann couldn’t see his hate. McMann opened the table drawer, heaping the watches and rings near the bottle like an offering. “Somea the jew’lry’ll gross cash. The Irishman and the wop had plenty. We got three hunerd in cash, two watches from the kids. Waltham’n Elgin. A swell watch and stickpin from the wop. A good ring from his pal. Not bad.” He admired the large white diamond glinting in a circle of blue chips. He counted out twenty bucks, added the Waltham’s octagon to the pile. “Mike’s cut.” The kids were watching quietly. They weren’t so drunk now, with all that dough to sober them up. “You might get ten in hock, Mike.” Mike took his share, dangling the octagon on its chain like a pleased child. “Thirty bucks’n the Elgin for Ray. Ray drove the car, that’s why he gets more’n you guys. And thirty’n no watch for Schneck.” The kids all had their share. There was two hundred left over, a watch, two rings, the stickpin. Who’d get them?

“I’m in a hurry,” said Bill. “I’ve a date — ”

“Hold your pants’n. Now, Duffy’n Spat don’t havta get a cut. Did’n Duffy say his share was to go for the boys? Hell with’m.” He gave the kids ten bucks more a man. “Two hunerd’s left. The watch ought be good for forty in hock.” He fingered the rings, squinting at the stones as if estimating how many carats, how many flaws, while they stared at him, the big shot turning jeweler easy as hell. “Them rings is a hunerd in hock. The stickpin’s a carat. Say another hunerd. That’s two-forty in jew’lry. Two hunerd in cash. Our pal’s in a hurry to be with Madge, an’ we don’ blame’m so here’s a hunerd for’m and a hunerd for me.” On the round table the platinum watch, the diamond rings, and the stickpin, resting on the crystal, were all that remained.

Everybody had had a square deal. The kids exclaimed damn right they were. Holy Moses, it was square. They hadn’t seen so much dough in a million years. If it’d been Duffy’s job, Duffy’d akept more’n two hundred between him and Spat. Here Mac and Bill, planning it and all, working on the job and all, only taking two hundred. Everybody concentrated on the jewelry. What’d be done with that? McMann gulped another drink, grinning at Bill. “Me’n Bill’ve been thinkin’. This jew’lry’s worth two-forty about. That’s plenty for a clubhouse. A reg’lar place. We can get a house somewhere for about a hunerd a month.” The kids were speechless at this grandeur, shouting, laughing, important as hell. McMann promised them a future.

“What about Duff?” asked Ray.

“I’ll give’m the car. It’s a good car. I hocked it from a rich guy.”

Schneck beamed. “A clubhouse, gee!”

“Two-forty’s two months’ rent. We’re gonna be somebody. Don’ you worry. Me’n Bill don’ sleep. We’re gonna make dough’n be big shots. All stickin’ll wear diamonds.” He flashed the stickpin at the kids, intoning his fairy-tale. It was even money on it.

Bill put on his overcoat. McMann had the kids hypnotized with that clubhouse, the clubhouse palace. They were drinking goofily. Somebody in the world. McMann wasn’t so dumb. They could rent a place for a hundred a month, a fifteen-footer on a sidestreet with three floors. That’d be one helluva palace. God alone knew what McMann was thinking in his bean. You couldn’t guess from the words he spoke. “Give Madge the works for me,” said McMann. “How’s the ball of your feet? Say, when a brain guy gives a dame the works it’s the works.”

“You’re funny as a crutch.” This gab of his being a brain guy was n.g.

“Don’t you be sassin’ your buddies.” He clowned.

“I’d like to boot your fanny for a week.” Yes, kick him to death. That’d be fun. The kids might believe the spiel of brain guy, but the whole line stunk to him. Brain guy. So then you stuck this same brain guy in a hole as if brain guys were worth less than a nickel a dozen.

“Boot Madge’s fanny. You’ll like it better.” McMann was a riot.

“Maybe you know from experience,” said Bill, exasperated.

They laughed like crazy men as if he’d hit the truth. The hell with them. He was the goat. If anything went wrong he’d be the goat. Proof was putting the so-called brain in danger of having it shot out. So long, they hollered. The cab jammed brakes on, at his signal. He shivered in its interior, staring numbly at the city, black, repellent, a huge desert fantastically shaped in the image of a city of the dead. There was no life in the world but that in his body and in one other body. Stepping out of the corridor into her room, he guessed something was wrong. A bottle of gin on the dresser was half gone. In violent yellow pyjamas, conservative on her who was so slim, her breasts and hips outlined modestly, Madge greeted him too gayly. She should’ve been drunker if she’d had all that gin. Yet she was almost sober, strolling towards him as he slammed the door, like a soldier in her yellow pants. Somebody’d been helping her put away that gin.

“Hello.” He laughed. He was aware of his mind’s coolness. Oh, he was smart. So smart that Hanrahan was gunning for him, and McMann doublecrossing him like the rat he was, and Joe in trouble. His wisdom was sour. She neared him. He smacked her cheek, his eyes disgusted. Damn her. Damn Hanrahan and McMann. Damn them all. He was like a corpse defeated by the purposes of other men, striking out against life. All life, all life’s puppets were banded against him. God damn the lice. “You bitch. Turn my back and you go for any guy at all.”

“What the hell’s eatin’ you?” she yelled bitterly. “I don’t get a bastard like you.”

“But every bastard does.” She was perplexed at her emotion, by his dark figure lowering in the room. She stared, rocked by a puzzlement that was lust as well as curiosity. She didn’t know what to say or do. She couldn’t get the fact of chastity to one man. What difference was it? The guy was gone, wasn’t he? It was over. She only liked Bill. She pulled out three dollar bills from her pocketbook, offering them to him silently, her homage, her head obsequious as a slave’s. There. That was proof she liked only him. He could have all her dough. She looked like an abandoned child, her thin face so high above the carpet. This face was pleading, alone in space, alone in the space of his thought, her deep childish eyes almost causing him to forget the body in pyjamas, the torso in yellow silk, her legs and thighs. He concentrated on thought of her face, ravishing it with his mind and soul, so that his body also quivered and was gone, and he was but a pair of eyes isolated in immensity, glaring at the last human, the last woman’s face. He put the three dollars in his pocket. This was the action of a body forgotten, a body left on earth, obeying the earth’s laws. “All right, Madge, let’s forget it.”

“How we gonna eat, honey?” she asked. Sure, she had to keep her job and he his. It was tough going, but what could they do?

“I got a hundred bucks. We’re staying here until it’s gone. Then you can go back to Paddy.”

“It’ll go like hot cakes. Once in awhile. A coupla guys a day’d help keep us, Bill. That ain’t much, an’t’s money.”

“You ever been with McMann?”

“Why not? He slipped me ten bucks once to show a good time to a coupla friends.”

“Ray and Schneck? Or was one of them Mike?”

“I don’t know their names, honey.” The life of the elapsed months covered him. He was baffled by a huge mourning, sorry for her and himself. McMann’s head and grim body took shape before him like an apparition. His life was in danger, he thought with a detached grief, as if that life had already been slain. No trusting McMann. The day’d come, must come, when it’d be showdown. He stared into her eyes and saw the time to come.

She pushed her body next to him. Was there anything wrong? She tried to comfort him, unbuttoning his vest. They clasped, but still he was black with the stupidity, the purposelessness of life. All he’d wanted was a few thousand. Was that wanting the world? It seemed that way. God, it was awful. They sat on the couch and he held her quiet the longest time, kissing the whore’s cheeks, gently treating the body that’d just been mauled by a customer. By loving her so he was handling himself gently, raising himself up again to God’s double, rebuilding the God in him. He was no better than she, and if she could become precious, he too must rise. He didn’t care what she thought. Perhaps she didn’t think. He only saw her childish eyes, believing in him.