Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde (5 page)

“Did Paddy explain why he sent me?”

“I do anything for Paddy.”

“He’s a fine fellow.”

“I write him bonds, tens’n tousands bailbonds.” He rapped on the table, calling out in an old tired voice: “Sammy, Sammy, schnapps.” The waiter hopped out of the kitchen in the rear. He set down two glasses and a bottle, retreated to the bar, where he began to polish the wood, never glancing at them. If that guy doesn’t carry a gat, nobody does, thought Bill.

Pop poured out the drinks.

“Paddy a gud friend,” said Pop, speaking carelessly in a low tone. “Nottink I not do, and you his friend. You wait. We see.”

Bill lit another cigarette. What the hell was he supposed to do? Sit over the old mummy until he became alive again? Pop shut his eyes, almost dozing. Sammy swished his cloth up and down. Sammy’s brow was wrinkled, but he was still thin as a school kid, as puppishly fashionable, his feet twinkling in brand-new shoes. He was a nice guy, that Sammy, like hell he was. Pop slept. This was one swell way to make five grand.

The laughter from the coffee-drinkers knocked against the wall. Time slumbered with the old man. It took a long time for him to thaw, yawning, pulling out a card from his pocket. “Call him up. Pattini do anything for me. Say Pop wants to see him.”

What was he, an errand boy? This was getting hot. He propped the card up on the top of the box in the phone booth, dropped in the nickel. Somebody said Pattini was out and who was calling? “I’m speaking for Pop. Pop says for Pattini to get in touch with him soon as he can. It’s important.”

“Oh, Pop,” said the voice in a vanishing crescendo.

“Pattini’s not in,” he said, moving back to the old man through the atmosphere that held them all as in glue, the bar, the electric bulbs, Sammy working like a mechanism.

“You got twenty dollar like Paddy say?” said Pop.

It was a sock between the eyes. “He didn’t say anything of that to me.” The old man turned his living eyes downwards, so that his face was dead, an enigma without emotion or thought. “You got it or ain’t you?”

Bill took the chance. “If he said so, O.K.” He was the lousiest sucker the world’d ever seen. Pop folded the banknotes and stuck them in his pocket. He leaned on his fist. They waited.

Time ticked unendurably, his mind doped by the quiet, by Pop’s immobility, by that other stillness of Sammy, ghostly for all his pushing the cloth. The laughter from the coffee house seemed not to belong to men.

He wound his watch. Time had some use elsewhere. He’d been down here almost two hours and nothing’d happened. He was out twenty bucks and five cents. What a rooking! It was nearly five, and here he sat like a pig’s behind, his brain dusty, shelling out two tenbucks as if they were butts. He was so damn easy. You bet crime was a business for smart guys. Where’d he expect to shine in? And he’d figured crime as nothing because some apes rode around in yellow Packards. How the hell did they do it? His head ached with a desire for sleep.

He almost dropped off, awaking suddenly to danger. He heard footsteps. Pop, leaning his forehead on his fist, was listening. The door opened and Pop actually smiled, his lips pulling back on his teeth. It was Paddy, his voice marching ahead, loud, insolent. He sat down next to Pop, his fists on his belly, the thumbs hooked in his vest pockets. His face was shiny with wind and high-class barber service.

“Hello, Pop. Hello, Bill. You guys havin’ a good time? Me? I’m on the blink. A man can’t earn an honest living any more. They don’t let you set fire to a house or pick a pocket or run a joint. Hey, Pop, what can an honest feller do these days? Madge sends her regards to you, Bill.”

“You keep that line up long enough and I’ll be falling for her.”

“Hey, Pop, how’s he look? Should we give him a break? How’s he look?”

Paddy placed a tiny package on the table. It was wrapped up carefully, tied with peppermint-striped string, and sealed with thick red wax. “It’s a match-box,” said Paddy.

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“It’s yours.”

“Mine? What’s in it?”

“I’m not sayin’. It’s your first job. You’re to fetch it over to a little cigar store tonight. You’re not to open it.”

Bill was wide awake. “Dope? I’m not carrying dope.”

“You damn fourflusher. Want your dough’n you can have it. I mighta known you’d belly-ache.”

Pop leaned his forehead on his hand again. He seemed tired, as if he didn’t understand their language.

“I’m not reneging.”

“What then?”

Pop gave Paddy the two tens. Paddy held them up.

“I don’t understand.”

“If you want your dough you can have it. Well? I’ll see you tonight.” Paddy got up and walked out.

He picked up the wrapped, sealed match-box. “A helluva lot of mystery. I don’t get it.” Pop said nothing. Paddy was gone when he walked out on the street. Early winter lay in bluish frosty twilight. Shawled women huddled at the pushcarts. The wind held the teeth of winter, not biting yet, but showing white and hard. The match-box was in his pocket, a third eye given to him. Through it he looked out on another world. He turned around with a wild sudden fear of pursuit. Did he expect to see Pop trailing him? The peddlers’ voices chanted religiously. The sky was dusty deep blue. He shook the hidden match-box. There was no sound of anything. He was shaking something very light but solid. His fingers crawled out from his pocket.

He was in for it. He’d done it. He’d become part and parcel of the rotten slime. He was carrying dope. Cocaine. Heroin. He was a criminal. He stared at the swarthy tribes moving in a dimension outside his own, negative to his worry. Their code was not his code. His code was five thousand bucks. That was enough of a code for anybody.

Getting off at Christopher, he hurried down to where the last wagons were lumbering. The huge brown bulk of the post office squatted on Greenwich and Christopher like a mammoth cave. He walked south to Leroy. Had any guy interested in him got off the train? He stared backwards for the pursuer born in mind from the movies and crime stories, from kid memories of Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin. He saw the winter night that would be until the spring, and the next winter and the winters after. High on its stilts, Christopher station, green-wooded, slant-roofed, was perched like a tiny mountain villa.

He slipped into his own house. He went up to his flat. The dark corridor, with the wallpaper torn like a poor woman’s skirt, ended on his own door. He turned the knob.

Cathy lifted her body that had been stooped with cleaning, gazing at him.

“Hello,” he said.

Slender, her light hair plaited, her neck, pale white, rising strongly from her dress, her hands also white, she stood in an infinite distance of pallor, in her own pale beauty.

“No need to rush, Cathy. Take your time.”

His heart beat to the lust pounding in his blood. He’d like to squeeze her all over, to touch the pale curves of her body. Must be the match-box. Fault of the match-box. It held his evil spirit. Cathy was only a kid. But the thing he’d like to do best now was to seduce Cathy, to put his hands on her young girl thighs.

The future was in the flat. The hidden match-box held the sewerage of life. Cathy was the purity. He thought: I ought to smash the match-box. Crush it in my fist, be clean of Paddy. He held the box between iron fingers. The box was concealed, his purpose was concealed. What he was becoming was also hidden. The proof of it all was that Cathy didn’t notice a thing wrong, finishing up her work, her childish eyes blue, serene, innocent.

“I’d like to kiss you, Cathy. You’re getting to be a real pretty kid.” She blushed as he gripped her hand. He let go. She shut the door. Another time and he’d yank her back.

He put the match-box on the table. He pulled the window-shades down, sneering at his desire for secrecy. There was no one across the way to spy but the smudged faces of workers. No use shaking it. That didn’t tell him a damn. But again he shook it madly, hoping to find out. The box said nothing. Wrapped up, sealed, it was indifferent whether its contents were dope or salt or matches. Suppose he untied it, broke the wax; what of it? How easy it would be! Cut the strings. Cut loose from Paddy. But why spoil his chances because he was sappy in the bean? The last clean resolve was gone as utterly as Cathy. He placed the box in a drawer, scared at the big scratching cat of his curiosity. No use ruining himself with Paddy for keeps.

He went downstairs, tapping at the banister. The stairs retreated before him. On the ground floor he thought of Cathy. She was some kid. Some build. He’d like to inform her in a deep voice: “Quit cleaning my flat. It’ll be best for you.” At the Gebhardt door he hesitated, wanting to knock. The heavy dark wood faced him like an enemy, and suddenly transparent, he imaged Cathy behind it, saw her limpid, a reflection in water, the slim limbs, the blue eyes, the hard yet soft young girl flesh. He didn’t knock. If it was her luck to clean the flat with him around, well, that was that. Leave it to luck. His good luck. Her bad luck. He flamed hot again thinking of the next time. It’d be better for everybody if he fixed himself up. There was Madge. The street had a forlorn appearance as if he were seeing it at midnight or early dawn. Down on Greenwich, some overtime trucks were close to the sidewalk, the names of towns written on them like timetables. He read Allentown, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre. That was home territory. On another he read Hoboken, Ridgefield, Hohokus, Jersey City.

On the corner he winked at the cashier inside the coffee-pot. He hurried down past tailor shops, coal cellars, paint supplies. A stout woman in a red sweater hovered in front of a news-stand. He looked at her minutely, although she had no interest for him, then boarded the uptown trolley. At Fiftieth and Eighth, he got off. He had an idea he’d like to size up Duffy’s kids. No reason attached, but he’d like to look them over. Up from the ranks. That was him even if he had never been in the ranks.

He entered a combination of shadow and intensity that had no relation to the alarm-clock world or to the grubby little business surrounding the pool parlor. Two of the three tables were in use. The players were young and looked alike. Some were blond, others were thin and dark, but about all of them there was an identical mass appearance. They were Duffy’s kids. When they weren’t shooting pool, they hung out on the corner, smoking, spitting, winking at the dames. But pool was serious. They had dough up.

Bill stood within the door, spotting the kids he knew, Schneck who was supposed to be strong as a horse, Ray the smart aleck. The proprietor observed everybody, a middle-aged man in a gray suit with a face round and shiny as a billiard ball. Bill eased round to where the ranked cue sticks stood in their racks like rifles. “Hello,” he said.

“Howya?” said Schneck, nodding as if this were the first time he’d met Bill.

“How’s tricks?”

“I hear ya got canned.”

“I resigned.”

“In your hat. You got fired.”

The kids roared, Mike, Ray, all proving their ears were sharp and pointed. He contemplated the lot of them, all the dumb bastards with their faith in a fabulous future. The three pools of glare from the low-hung table lights flung down on the crazy ivory balls. The faces of the players were shadowed, terse, tight of lip, leaning over their cues, steadying them up and down before each shot like pistons. He imagined the matchbox on the green baize cloth. What would the kids’ve said if they knew? It’d be nothing to them. Ray’d give him the horse laugh. He concentrated on their faces, reading in their hidden brains other secrets, other match-boxes, knowing them through and through who pretended to be iron men. Hell, Schneck or Ray’d sell their souls for his break. “So long,” he said.

“So long,” they said.

He departed the blue smoke, the clicking of balls, the guarded comments. Was it because he was a stranger, not one of them? After all, he hadn’t gone to public school with them or raided the Greek frankfurter men or lined up some dame in a coal cellar.

He opened the drawer in his room. The match-box was still there, patient and devilish. He walked up and down the flat, the suspended mirror throwing back his double. Another Bill was circling the fellow he knew as himself. His trunk was against the wall, hat and coat chucked on it. He turned into the central room, with its second-hand coach and lamp and book-trough full of novels read long ago, ending up in the bedroom with its double bed, two chairs, and dresser. What a lay-out! He leaned against the window, staring down the length of his flat, the three rooms tied up one to the other like freight cars. What a joint! He was frightened at the poverty he recognized at last. Good God, he had to get out of it somehow, anyhow. He shut the drawer that held the match-box, his curiosity vanishing out of him like a gasp. What the hell did he care? He was broke. He wasn’t becoming a rat for the hell of it. He’d make some dough, a couple grand and quit. A few breaks and he’d leave the Big Stink. A break? No use waiting for it like Duffy’s kids, sitting on your behind like a dope. He had to be of use to Paddy. How? If he wasn’t wise to the money habits of the store keepers, who the hell was? He had the inside info. That was it! At eight-thirty Times Square was going to the theater. Cabs honked into the theater streets. He was fingering the match-box when he went into the cigar store. The window held a rectangular display of empty boxes. Inside, an aisle sneaked past the counter. It was the sort of place where the backroom is the reason for being. Paddy was puffing a cigar as if he had been here forever.

“We alone?” said Bill. He produced the match-box.

Paddy broke the strings, cracked the seal, ripped the paper off. There was nothing in the box. Bill stared from the empty coffin of space to Paddy. “You rat!” he heard Paddy shouting. “You took it!”

“I didn’t open it. I did not.” His protestations were piling up faster than their utterance, yet he stopped short, shaking his head as if dazzled, shaking free from a queer lethargy. He guessed. There’d Never Been Anything In The Box. A trick. A lousy joke. He blurted fast and almost incoherent: “Cut the comedy, Paddy. I knew all along there wasn’t one grain in’t, but I let it pass.”