Dreadful Summit (5 page)

Mrs Ehrlich was standing at the top of the stairs. She was short and kind of dumpy with two big bloopers, but she had a nice face and she was always smiling.

‘Oh good, good,' she said right away, ‘Georgie, I got to go shopping maybe ten, fifteen minutes. I promise I'll be back quick. Meanwhile keep an eye on the baby, huh?'

Sometimes she would say that and it would be an hour before she came back. So I said, ‘Look, Mrs Ehrlich, my father is hurt and I have to get back right away. So please hurry up if you don't mind.'

She put her hands to her head. ‘Oh, I heard about it. Such a nice man, and such a terrible thing to happen. Is he hurt bad, Georgie? Did you have a doctor?'

I said, ‘He's hurt pretty bad, Mrs Ehrlich, and I have to be back right away. So please hurry up.'

I went into the parlour and she went to get her coat, and all the time she was putting it on she kept saying, ‘Terrible. Terrible. Such a neighbourhood,' until I wanted to tell her to shut up. Then she ran down the stairs and I sat down in my overcoat to wait.

I know one thing always happens to me when I get all hot and bothered like before I take a big test in school. I have to take a leak bad. Even if I went only a little while before, I still feel I have to go again, and sometimes I'll go three or four times in a row without anything happening, only I have the feeling.

That's how I felt while I was sitting there and waiting, so I got up and went down the hall to the bathroom and it wasn't any false alarm either. Only when I got done I still had the feeling and my knees were trembling like there was a wind blowing through them. And the funniest thing was when I put my hand in my pants pocket to straighten out the gun because it was poking me, all the feeling went away.

I pulled out the gun and went over to the mirror and pointed it right at my face in the mirror. I couldn't see too good but the black hat looked good and I made a face like a tough guy pointing the gun at it. Only the mirror was so high that if I wanted to see the gun I had to hold it way up in the air and that made it look phony.

I turned out the bathroom light and held the gun under my coat. Then I tiptoed out into the hall and into the bedroom where the door was open. There was a big dresser in the bedroom with a mirror that you could see everything in from your belt up. The baby's crib was in there too, so I was very quiet and instead of turning on the overhead light I switched on the lamp by the bed. The bedroom smelled funny like baby's pee and some sweet powder but that didn't matter. I pointed the gun at myself in the mirror and it was so good I could see Al Judge standing in front of me there, with the sweat running down his face. The only trouble was, the way it looked in the mirror he had a gun too and that spoiled it.

Then all of a sudden there was a loud noise and I tried to turn around and shove the gun under my coat at the same time. But it was only little baby Gertrude crying because maybe the light bothered her or something. I couldn't even move for a minute until I got everything straightened out in my head, and then I took the gun out from under my coat and went to the crib.

The baby was pushing her arms out over her head and yelling loud, and every time she did it I had that feeling of somebody pulling his fingernail down a blackboard. I put my hand tight over her mouth so all you could hear was the noise pushing inside of her. All I could think of was somehow she would tell about me and the gun, and then I remembered she didn't even know how to talk yet and I pulled my hand away.

She started to yell all over again, and I took the gun and pointed it right at her head. I said, ‘Shut up, or I'll give it to you.'

That was some feeling. I think I had her all mixed up with Al Judge in my mind and I was giving it to him.

I wanted to do it now so bad that it was like hot waves in my stomach. I kept the gun pointing at her, and I pulled back the hammer with my thumb till it clicked. Then I started pulling on the trigger, but careful, so the gun wouldn't go off. And then all of a sudden, baby Gertrude stopped crying and I felt everything loosen up in me so I didn't want to kid around any more.

But now I had the hammer back and I didn't know how to get it closed again. I couldn't think of what to do, and I was afraid to put the gun in my pocket that way because it might go off. All I could think of was putting the safety on, and that was better than nothing even though I would rather have the hammer back where it belonged. And just then I heard Mrs Ehrlich coming up the stairs. I shoved the gun away in my pocket and tried to pull my coat straight, and I stood by the crib looking at baby Gertrude so that when Mrs Ehrlich came in she would find me like that. She came in with two big bundles in her arms, and right away she looked scared.

‘What's wrong, Georgie? What happened?' She dumped the two bags down on the bed and started to pat her hand all over the baby's face.

I said, ‘She was crying so I came in to see what it was. Then she stopped right away.'

Mrs Ehrlich said, ‘Oh, I got scared.' Then she smiled all over and said, ‘You're a real little father, Georgie. The girl who gets you, she'll be the lucky one all right.'

Then she patted the kid some more and pulled her straight. After that she turned out the light and got her packages to take in the kitchen. In the hall she said, ‘And tell your father, Georgie, he should feel better, and he's got a wonderful, wonderful boy.'

All the way down the stairs I was worried about the guys standing around, but when I came in there was only one left, and he was reading the paper and didn't even look up. Mr Ehrlich gave me a dime and I put it in my overcoat pocket. He said, ‘Give your father my best, Georgie, and tell him to take care of himself,' and I said, ‘Okay, Mr Ehrlich,' and I went out into the street.

I pushed up my coat collar and I shoved my hands into my overcoat pocket and started walking as fast as I could away from the candy store and the bar. I figured it would be better to take a bus a block away in case Flanagan or my father was by the window upstairs.

Down the block was Mr Triola's barbershop where I got haircuts, and there was a clock in back of the store. I tried to see what time it was, but it was too dark inside. I figured it must be getting pretty near time for the big fight, because it started at ten o'clock after the preliminaries.

The big fight always went on at ten o'clock so they could broadcast it over the radio. I always used to listen to them over the radio and wonder what it was really like to see them, and now I was going to find out. That was all right, but it was even better when I thought how Al Judge would be sitting by the ringside maybe writing something about the fight, and I would be sitting up in the first row of the mezzanine watching him, and any time I wanted to kill him I could. I was his boss only he didn't know it.

But I didn't want to kill him there. I wanted to get him in the right spot and then it would be easy. That was one thing I found out when I was kidding around with baby Gertrude. It was going to be easier to kill somebody with a gun than I ever figured.

Chapter Seven

As soon as I got off the bus at Fiftieth Street at the back end of Madison Square Garden, I tightened up. Al Judge was somewhere around here. Maybe he was inside watching the preliminaries wind up, but you couldn't be sure. He might be walking right behind me looking down my neck. He could be standing in a dark spot by the building watching me go by and I wouldn't know. He could be anywhere around me now, and that's what tightened me up.

I tried to figure out if he would know who I was from seeing me in the bar. He might have seen me good but he might have been too excited to get it stuck in his head. I didn't remember him looking my way, but I was out for a while too, and he might have noticed then. But when a guy is out with his face down on the table, it's not easy to see what he looks like. I started to figure suppose Sam Schwartz was with him when I caught up to him, Sam Schwartz would know me good. But what would Sam Schwartz be doing with him? It didn't make sense but it bothered me. All that kind of stuff.

I walked down Fiftieth to Eighth Avenue where the front entrance of the Garden was, and all the way I kept seeing Al Judge pop up in front of me. Once it was a big guy and he was wearing a white scarf, and then it was a guy who limped but he didn't have a cane, and the way I was starting and stopping and looking around, anybody who was watching me would have figured I was crazy sure.

When I got into the lobby of the Garden it was worse than ever. There was a lot of people liked Rocks Abruzzo because he was a killer, but I never figured on so many jamming into that street like, that goes right into the building and up to the ticket doors. Mostly men but with a couple of women and they were all pushing in and out so that you could hardly get through them. In that mob, Al Judge could have shoved right into me and I wouldn't know it. So all I could do was keep looking around as much as I could and hope it wouldn't happen like that.

I knew what Madison Square Garden looked like all right because I was there once before. That was the time Mr Hildebrand from the C.Y.O. took a bunch of kids to the circus and my father gave me money to go along. First we went down in the basement where they had all the freaks sitting around and it was all right. I mean the way there were so many different freaks and you could walk around and look at them and they didn't even mind. It was a break I was so tall, too, because the other kids had to hop up and down to get a look until somebody let them get up front where they could see.

But then the kids started acting crazy and saying all kinds of things right out in front of the freaks and that spoiled it. A lot of people laughed and Mr Hildebrand laughed too, and the freaks looked like they didn't care, but inside of me I remembered how it was when I pulled something dumb in school and the teacher would yell at me and I would sit and look just like the freaks were doing. I mean looking over everybody's head like they weren't there and maybe smiling a little bit like it was funny or something. But inside it hurt all the way down.

So that spoiled it for me, and when we went upstairs to where the real circus was with the acrobats and clowns and stuff I didn't like it so much. I made believe I did but I really didn't.

But I knew what Madison Square Garden looked like and how to get in. What scared me was somebody in the crowd would shove up against the gun and feel it was a gun and maybe start trouble. So I put my hand over it in my pocket as far as I could, and when anybody pushed into me they would only feel my hand.

The only thing I wished was that I could let them know what I had in my hand without getting into trouble and spoiling everything. If they knew I had a gun there they would give me plenty of room. They would fall over one another getting out of the way, and I would walk up the middle with everybody holding their breath. Just thinking about it like that made me feel real tough and I started to push through without caring what they said or the way they looked at me. The only thing was I kept my overcoat unbuttoned and my hand tight over the gun.

Near the end of this street in the building was a row of doors and a couple of guards taking tickets and letting a few people in, and that's where I headed. Everybody was pushing around but hardly anybody was trying to get in, and I caught on right away. They didn't have tickets and they couldn't even buy one any more. Then a skinny guy with a big beak grabbed my arm and said, ‘Buddy, got an extra ticket?' and I pulled away before I remembered I did have an extra ticket and it would go to waste. It didn't matter. I was getting close to Al Judge and that was the big thing. I wanted to get everything over and done with, and besides it made me jumpy to have anybody grab my arm that way.

I was near the guard and I got the tickets out. Before I could shove one away, another man grabbed my arm and pointed at it. He said, ‘If that's an extra, I'll pay plenty for it,' and it hit me all of a sudden that the extra ticket was worth plenty of money and maybe it would come in handy. I mean, suppose Al Judge took it into his head to go around in a taxi somewhere. Then I would have to grab a taxi too, and I would need money for it. All I had was the nickel left from the bus fare.

The man who stopped me was wearing very good clothes, you could see that right off, and under his hat you could see red hair, and he had a little bristly red moustache too. He looked all right to me so I said, ‘How much?'

I don't know if it happens to other people but it happens to me sometime. I mean, now and then you meet a guy, you take a look at him, and you know he's all right. It sort of shows through.

That's the way I felt about this man. Maybe it was because he looked so clean. He looked like he scrubbed an hour and then put on a brand new suit. Everything on him was clean and flat and pressed right, the way my father liked it. Only he didn't wear a hat like my father. He wore a pearl-grey fedora without any dent in it except the one down the middle, and the brim turned up all around. On somebody else it might look corny, but on him it looked all right. I thought he would say right off how much he would give me for the ticket but he didn't. He said, ‘Let's see the ticket and I'll make you an offer.'

I showed him the ticket and he whistled. ‘Hey, that's all right. Is it a deal for ten bucks?'

I said, ‘Okay,' and he opened his wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill like you would expect him to carry around. It was so new it was hardly wrinkled. I stalled a second to look at it before I folded it up, and that's when it happened. Somebody slammed a hand hard on my shoulder, and said in my ear, ‘Okay, big boy. You're it.'

All I knew was Al Judge had grabbed me when I wasn't ready. I almost yelled, it shocked me so much, but at the same time I twisted around as hard as I could and grabbed for the gun. Before I got my hand on it, I saw it wasn't Al Judge at all. It was a big fat red-faced guy, and he was plenty sore because I knocked his hat off when I twisted around. He grabbed at the hat with one hand, and got it on, and with the other hand he started to wrestle me away to the wall. I didn't even argue about it, I was so glad it wasn't Al Judge even if he was almost pulling my arm off. Everybody was getting in his way too and trying to look at us and he didn't like that either. He shoved right along until he got me in a corner where nobody was standing and then he flashed a badge at me so I knew he was a cop.