Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (4 page)

She was a tall woman. Her eyes were blue and clean. Her teeth protruded slightly. She was blond, with the scrubbed cleanliness of the poor. “You certainly keep the house spick and span, Mrs. Gebhardt,” he said. “I used to be in real estate. I’m going to live here and Mr. Stanger wants you to phone him for instructions.”

She acted as if she wanted to retreat a step, watching him with a tension that was almost fear.

“It’s no racket, lady. You call Mr. Stanger and you’ll see.” He glanced at the four letter-boxes on each side of the vestibule. There were name cards in about half of them. “Plenty empties.”

“You say I call up?”

“Don’t be so nervous. I’m one of the boys from now on.”

“No phone here.”

“Let’s go to the corner, then.” She got a coat and they went out. On the corner of Leroy and Hudson, there was a coffee-pot and six or seven kids hanging out. They looked at Bill and Mrs. Gebhardt with the sexy appraisal of guys with nothing else to do. Mrs. Gebhardt flushed and muttered: “Loafers.”

He agreed with her. Those kids never worked and always had some money. He wondered how many brats Mrs. Gebhardt had. Her hips were so wide, her hair so yellow, her flesh so clean, she was the type to have six or ten, all with yellow hair and clean as washed pigs. Maybe some daughters in the lot, and no wonder she was sore at the gang. Those kind of kids fixed many a dame. Inside the coffee-pot he listened as Mrs. Gebhardt dialed his office. Good-by to the office.

“Hello,” she said, while he waited. “Can I speak to Mr. Stanger, please?” Finally she hung the receiver up. “Mr. Stanger says for you to pick out any flat you like.” They returned.

He inspected the old railroad flats, three rooms emptying into one another. The corridors were hushed. It was a house seemingly deserted by its tenants. The heavy woman preceded him into rooms dry and hard as bones. He wanted to shout: “I’ve seen enough.” And was it himself, at last, who selected a front flat on the third floor? “This’ll do.”

“You sure? Well, if you need me, we got the flat back of the stairs.”

He was alone in his three rooms. The paint was in fair condition. The floors were scrubbed clean. Hell, it wouldn’t be forever. Once he hooked into real dough, once…. He’d have an electric bill. There was no steam heat, but the middle room had a small gas radiator. Another bill. There was a gas range in the kitchen. Where the hell was the toilet? Christ, only the one on the floor to be shared with three other flats. But Mrs. Gebhardt said only one of the three was occupied, by an old man with some sort of pension. Not so bad. No kids to mess up the seat. And he could always use hotels or the Grand Central. One room was the kitchen, the middle room’d be his parlor, the room on the street’d be bedroom. He looked out at Leroy, feeling secure looking from the inside out. He had a roof at least. Across the way, trucks were loading up in the yard of the printing plant. A great iron gate was raised as if prisoners were preparing to depart on the truck. What an ideal place for a murderer! What a hide-out. What was he thinking of?

He saw his brother’s face as if it were a death mask. Life had come to this, to seeing things as still and dead. He forgot Mrs. Gebhardt, betrayed by a dream of childhood, a long, slow memory of green things and a town and parents. He stared out on Leroy Street, his heart expanding into a vagueness, precious and vanished. Tears shot into his eyes just as they did when he was touched by some movie. He didn’t fight the tears as he did at movies, where the dark was full of eyes, but let them roll down his cheeks. What was the use?

T
HE
next few days wasted away like those when one is coming out of flu. On Ninth Avenue he spent a bartering morning in the shadow of a second-hand furniture store. He sunk his fist into mattresses, cutting the dealer’s price with the virtue of a man who knows he’s going to be gypped anyway. He almost had a good time as if there wasn’t a damn thing to worry about, buying what he needed, playing at settling down all afternoon. He arranged the furniture, put the linen and towels in the dresser, hung his ties on a rack, had the gas and electric companies turn on their service after a flying visit to their immaculate museum-like offices on Irving Place. He got settled.

And one morning when he gazed out on the iron gate and the truckers, his heart was sound again. The new life into which he had dropped like one from the sky was his life, and accepted as such. Only a guy like McMann would’ve been at home in ten minutes, but it had taken him three days.

Mrs. Gebhardt was a great help, cleaning the flat when he was out. “The boss says to make you comfortable.”

He got acquainted with the family. Mr. Gebhardt worked down in the produce market near Washington Street. He was a big raw man, crisp as lettuce, with hair like dry straw, and a red smiling face. The four children Bill divided into two groups. One group consisted of the three little ones, with indefinite sexes, hands usually free from dirt, similar in size and texture as cucumbers. Then there was big sister, big Cathy, sixteen and virginal. The domesticity of these Bavarians in the steel of the city was a peace about him, the names of the children a song of decency and the green earth. Frederick, baby Carl, Gertrude, and big girl Catherine. Freddie, Gertrude (no one abbreviated her name, somehow), Carlie, Cathy.

He wrote to his brother, itemizing the flat, the gas radiator, the outside toilet, the poor chances, advising Joe to stay where he was. How was he to make money? He’d called on a number of real-estate firms and agencies, wanting a job in the jobless city where the employed all looked like soldiers not knowing when they’d get theirs. It was 1931. In another year the nation would vote on Hoover’s policies. Next November there would be the dubious sort of hope all Democrats experience at the polls. What good did that do him? He spoke to the pale swarm of interviewers and bosses, who listened, smoked, and uniformly moaned about business. He produced letters of reference. There were no jobs. Men much longer in the real-estate field than himself couldn’t land a thing. Real estate was plain lousy. The banks and mortgage companies were foreclosing right and left. In 1930 some eighty millions of properties had been foreclosed. Thirty-one was twice as bad, and he wasn’t the type to find work. He wasn’t the stubborn-chinned, light-blue-eyed type who have the guts to make the round of agencies and offices day in and day out for weeks and months with a courage superior to that of dying. He was too soreheaded, too spineless, for the endless ordeal. And always the dream of easy money. How could a fellow take a job (he had just one offer) for ten bucks a week, to collect forty houses, when that job was worth thirty bucks at least? When, given a break, a fellow could pick it off the streets? Why sweat for pennies when the greenbacks were waiting to be plucked?

He ate in cheap cafeterias where everybody wore their hats and coats; speculating about Paddy, McMann, all the dead-eyed crowd of hangers-on, the bookies, pimps, good-time boys, who earned such a fine living with less brains and guts than lice. He had picked up too much easy sugar, had grifted ten bucks in ten minutes. How in hell could he work an eight-hour, six-day week for a lousy stinking tenbuck, where he’d be checked up with no chance to shake down anybody? That was no job. That was slavery. The thing to do was see Paddy. Paddy only gave him a few minutes to explain, and then laughed like a hyena. “You sonufabitch!”

“I need some dough. Why the hell don’t you give me a break?”

That day Paddy was wearing a blue shirt. He was nodding like a father, tickled to be handing out advice. “You might get a break with Duffy and Spat’s mob of kids. Try them. Speak to Duffy.”

“I’m not going to hang out with Duffy’s kids. They’re heels. I want to do business with you.”

“With me?”

“Sure. Like we done in the past.”

They thought of the murder. “Yeh?” said Paddy, hiding behind that “Yeh” like a kid round a corner.

“We got something between us. You could trust me.”

“You’ve got too many ideas. Come around tomorrow.” He winked. “The young un’s nuts about you. I’m nuts about you myself. You got nerve. If they don’t murder you, you lil sonufabitch, you’ll be a big shot. I’m getting old and gray. I need a smart feller like you.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Paddy. Don’t kid me.”

“You got my number, kid.”

“I wish I had.”

Paddy said: “Tomorrow, smart guy.”

T
HE
women were out, but some of their things were lying on the bed. “It smells like a department store where all the customers are dames.”

“Hello, Bill.” Paddy’s hair was pomaded. “Afternoons ain’t worth a thing. I let them off. But if I knew you were coming I’d akept Madge home.”

“You knew I was coming.”

“How did I know?”

“You didn’t get me here to kid around?”

“Maybe. I like a good joke.” Big-jowled, impressive, Paddy was the plump, ruddy sort who are usually expansive, but now his discretion was that of a lean killer. He looked steadily at Bill. About him and the flat there was a stale odor of women and the busy night-times. The linoleum reflected a glassy light.

“I was sacked account of you.” He frowned. “There’s no work.”

“You ain’t the only one.”

“Pete sake, you can give me a break.”

“Maybe I could.” He was grinning, as if he had determined on this facial expression and was resolved to keep it. He picked his creased trousers an inch higher, whistling with the monotony of a calliope.

“I’m ready to do anything.”

“Listen. Get yourself a job with a real-estate bunch.”

“There aren’t any jobs.” He spoke with the hysterical urgency of a man with one hope, and beyond that the breadline. “A fellow in your racket can use somebody you can trust. You’re liable to get in dutch any day, and then who’d stick by you?”

“How do I know I can trust a smart guy?”

“Give me a break.” He imitated Paddy, not ironically, but through some instinct for preservation. His features masked into a hard face. His eyes were cold balls. He sucked in his upper lip, biting on the inner flesh. Neither said anything, listening to words unvoiced, to intentions secret in brain. The kimonos lay soft and whorish on the bed. A smell of disinfectant. In the room on the fire-escape the sun glared. They waited for their paths to cross again. “You’re first rate,” said Paddy without admiration. “You got nerve. You talk tough, but I wonder if you got guts.” His blue eyes swam on the tops of their pouches. “You wanta flop into something soft, but it ain’t easy.”

“I’m no dumb kid. They get nowhere ‘cause they got no guts. They eat. Sure. And a little job now and then keeps them in cat money.”

“You got things sized up.” He seemed like an elderly man, the poise, the hard eternity of the criminal dropping from him. “You’re a nervy bastard ‘cause you don’t know better. Dumb, but what’s the diff? Fact is you’re nervy. I’m in right, but there’s no tellin’. Mad dogs always on the loose.” He sighed, his eyes distant as ever so that it was impossible to say whether he was putting on an act or not.

“That’s what I want. An even break.”

“You’d be nix carrying a rod. See? I know. Hell, you’re a funny guy.” His laughter boomed up, false and hollow. “Here’s an address. It belongs to Pop. You go down’n see’m. See? Wait for me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Either you do it or you don’t.”

“It’s a go.” He offered his hand.

“Shove it up,” said Paddy, “with the rest of the collitch stuff.”

“Thanks for the break.”

“I ain’t promised you nothin’.”

“I’m glad. One business is like another to me.”

“Oh, beat it,” Paddy said wearily, “before you queer yourself altogether.”

T
HIS
was the beginning. He snorted at something theatric in the whole business. Maybe Paddy was tricking him? The flight of the El stairs ascending to the level of the platform was his first stride towards opportunity. He’d have a job at the end of the ride. The El snaked towards South Ferry between the tenements crowding close to the rails. The conductor bawled the stations. He stared at the women who came on and went off. It was as if he had dosed himself with a drug, cocky, impudent, stripping the women naked as they sat. The dead thrall of doing nothing was at an end. He’d be in the dough. He knew plenty storekeepers who had cash-boxes to raid…. The train curved into the brightness of South Ferry. Far across the gray flat of water, the Statue of Liberty stood gripping her torch with the stubbornness of a small child. He got off, jostled by the bodies all going somewhere as if in search of their minds left at home. He boarded the Second Avenue El, finally walking down the flight of iron stairs into a strange city.

The people were smaller, fatter than the Irish German American residents on Leroy. Peddlers sold shoelaces, pretzels, herring. Slabs of pink smoked salmon, fish in tubs, kosher butcher stores.

Peering inside the window of the address, he felt his spine taut and rigid. He, Bill Trent, had business with Isaac Markow’s Roumanian Tea and Coffee House. That was something it wasn’t easy to get over.

It was a long, large room with small marble-topped tables about which men in caps and hats were playing checkers and pinochle, sipping Turkish coffee from demitasses. He hesitated. Where was Pop? A man with a bulldog face and a paunch held tight in a buttoned sweater too small for him swaggered over. “Yeah, mister, what you want?”

“I’m supposed to meet Pop.”

“You know him you find him.” His eyes were stupid, shining immaculate as artificial eyes. He dug his hands into the pockets of his sweater. A thick thunder of Yiddish, cracked by sharp and sudden laughs, hung over the tables. He searched among the mustached and clean-shaven for a stranger. Dark eyes glinted at him over saucers of tea. In the rear at an immense wooden table an old man was watching him, leaning on a cane.

“Pop?” called Bill. The old man nodded.

“What you want?” He was in for it now. The bulldog had changed into a kibbitzer at a card game. “Paddy sent me to you. Did he telephone? I’m Bill.” Pop had the most surprising blue eyes. They gleamed in a whitish stiff face, with a heavy gray mustache. He was dressed in serge, his hat straight on his head. His neck was very thick, as if he’d been a strongarm in his youth. “I hear of you. Paddy say you good worker. Come.” He led the way behind the table into another room, secretive with emptiness. The tables were covered with red checkered cloths. A bar was in one corner. The laughter alone had followed them from the coffee house. Bill listened to it, the raw hawhaws of gambling men. They laughed like Duffy’s Irish toughs. These are Jews, he thought amazed, Jews. He couldn’t believe Jews could have such nasty mugs or that all Jews weren’t tailors and such meek guys. He couldn’t get over this ghetto rathole where everything should’ve been different and wasn’t. Pop had nothing to say, breathing in the afternoon air, heavy and dead here, where all life began late at night. There was nothing to be learned from Pop’s eyes except an uncompromising vigilance.