Life and Death of a Tough Guy (28 page)

A frightened hefty redhead sitting on a bed who liked her bottle. And a scared enforcer about to take a run-out powder. Christ, that was the end of it, he thought. Already she seemed far away from him. As if they were both looking at each other from the opposite ends of an endless corridor, rushing away as they looked, turning for a last look, rushing, turning, spinning faster and faster like trick dancers, all backs of heads, without true faces. Only the faces of loss.

“Remember Georgie?” he said. “The guy I lived with down on Twenny-Fourth? The big guy?”

She nodded and before he spoke again he thought why shouldn’t she remember Georgie. She’d come to the room on Twenty-Fourth when her old man’d kicked her out….

“I was ordered to kill him tonight, I let’m go — ”

“Kill?” she said dumbly as if the word were a harmless one.

“I’m a killer, that’s my job,” he said simply. “I’m tellin’ you for your own pertection — Stop that!” he warned her. He jumped from the chair, grabbed her by the shoulders shaking her fiercely as if he’d knock the tears out of her eyes. “Stop! Christ, there’s no time for that!”

He let her go. “You gotta know the truth, for your own pertection — See! I’m blowin’ out and I can’t take you with me and you can’t stay here. They’re liable to come for you. See — ”

But her wet eyes saw nothing — only the jumping jack of a
killer
he’d released in the room out of its long hiding place in his heart.

He went to the dresser, but the sherry bottle there wasn’t what he wanted. In the closet he picked up a half-empty quart of rye, poured five, six inches into a water glass. “Drink this!”

“No,” she wept.

“Drink this, you God damn wino! You gotta lissen t’night like you never listened. Drink it! Drink it, I say!”

She obeyed him. He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. “Sweetie, you gotta lissen,” he pleaded with her. “For your own good. Who the hell wants to be tough? Lissen, for God’s sake,” he pleaded. “All you know about me’s a pack of lies,” he said swiftly. “Remember the night we went to the Mocambo? I thought they were sendin’ me after the Dutchman. Dutch Schultz! Remember how jittery I was? The phones I made? See — they got guys like me, the enforcers. They got their law like the coppers got their law, but I couldn’t kill Georgie. Not Georgie. That’s why I’m in trouble. See! You don’t do what they order, and you’re good as dead. That’s why I gotta blow — you’ll have to go somewhere, too. I haven’t got it all clear in my head what’s the best thing to do — Christ, I could use a drink myself. Aw, I’m half-shot without it! What was I sayin’? Oh, yeah! Anybody come see you, askin’ questions, you don’t know nothin’. Understand? You don’t know nothin’! I never told you a damn thing and that’s the God’s own truth! Not ‘til tonight and you can forget tonight. Tonight don’t count. It’s just between you and me. Forget it! See! What’s one night when there’s a million I never told you a damn thing!” He rubbed his forehead. Something was all screwed up in what he was telling her. What? And what difference did it make? He gazed longingly at the whiskey bottle on the dresser. “Nah!” he said despairingly. “That’s all I need. I’m half-shot without it. Bad, it’s bad. I know too much on all of ‘em. Charley Valinchi, the Spotter, the whole damn Office. They’d make it hot for you.” He had a notion he was repeating himself like a man in a dream going through the same parrot song motions. And was she crying? Always crying, he thought. Crying her whole life….

He went to her, he patted her shoulder gently. “Sweetie, better stop alla that. You hadda know, your own pertection. Yeh. You check out inna mornin’. Before eleven. Get me! Before eleven. Got any money saved?”

“Got any money saved?” he asked again. Had he asked her this question before? “You check out before eleven.” He hurried to the dresser, but he didn’t even glance at the bottles of liquor there. He yanked a drawer open, lifted a pile of shirts and waved a long white fat envelope at her. “How much you got saved?”

She sobbed, but he pounded the question at her like a billyclub until she answered. “Three, four hundred — ”

He shouted. “Drunk it all up, huh?”

“Joey,” she whimpered as if begging him to forgive her for her drinking.

He pressed his hand against his aching forehead muttered. “Who the hell am I to blame you? I can’t think straight. You check out, Sweetie. Yeh! I got about two grand in this envelope — I’ll give you five of it. Check out ‘til all these damn Dewey investigations blow over.”

“Take me with you, Joey.”

“Can’t. I’m too hot.” He counted out five hundred bucks from the white envelope — he had a sensation he’d been counting money all night long like a regular bank teller — and put it in the dresser. “This is for you! With what you got saved you can go to California or something. Don’t tell anybody where you’re goin’.”

She wept. He thought: She don’t know the half of it, she’s punch drunk.

He went to the closet for a suitcase, set it on a chair. He tossed in shirts, shorts, neckties, a pair of shoes.

“Joey,” she groaned and rushed from the bed to him. He held her tight, he kissed her wet cheeks and wet eyes and then like a sick child, he led her back to bed. “I’ll send for you,” he promised. “I’ll write you in a couple months, Sweetie.” She clung to him. “Sit down, Sweetie doll, sit down.” He half-pushed her onto the bed and straightening he glanced at his wristwatch.

2:58….

It was a lie, he felt. Time was a lie, for the only true hour was the eleventh hour that would come ticking in the morning. As the only true room was the backroom behind the Napoli, and the only true face the face of Charley Valinchi or was it the face of the Spotter? Sometimes a guy couldn’t be too sure….

11:00…. Would They give him a trial if he didn’t show up? Try him for dropping out of sight? Put the mark on him? The little old black spot?

He felt dizzy, crazy colors ran behind his eyeballs, ice-pick reds and the roary steely grays of railroad stations. He glimpsed the blue walls of the toilet where he’d given Georgie forty-two bucks and the creamy walls of this bedroom where he’d left five hundred on the dresser. “Yeh,” he said. “I better blow.”

He finished packing, he shut the suitcase. “Sweetie, I’ll write you. Remember, check out! Check out before eleven!”

She flung herself over on her face, weeping. He wanted to kiss her again, to touch her good-bye at least, but he was afraid that if he did he’d be taking her with him and that’d be plain suicide. A guy with a redhead, a dame, was ten times easier to catch up with than a guy alone. No, she was staying. Christ, there was a limit to the times he could let his heart punch a hole in his brain tonight. A limit! He looked at her once more and then he walked to the dresser. He seized the sherry and whiskey bottles, emptied them in the bathroom. He searched in the closet where she kept her supply. There were two unopened bottles and he put them, one into each of his topcoat pockets. “Sweetie,” he called to her. “I took all the licker — I don’t want you drinkin’ and for-gettin’ to check out. Check out early, baby, for your own pertection….”

Did she hear him? Face downwards, she wept, her red hair glinting. Christ, she was punch drunk, he thought.

He hurried to the desk. “I’m writin’ what you should do.” He sat down, grabbed a pencil and a sheet of the hotel stationery.

Sadie…
. He stared at her old name. It had written itself. The name of a long-ago summer when they had both been kids. He got up from the desk and placed the note on top of the five hundred. “I wrote you what you should do, Sadie,” he said. “Get outa town early! Forget you ever saw me! Find yourself another guy, Sadie,” he said, with love.

She lifted her face toward him now, her eyes swollen.

“Joey — ”

“That’s the truth! That’s the truth and I’m tellin’ you it ‘cause I’m afraid — Good-bye. Sadie….”

He presented the two bottles of sherry to the elevator operator. “From Missus Case,” he said.

Downstairs, he whistled a cab. “Penn Station,” he said. Through the window he looked at the dark West Side Streets and felt alone and afraid as when he’d been a kid. Had a lifetime passed? Or had the dark street never run in a straight line, curving back, a circle, to where Jack the Ripper and the Bogeyman were waiting, waiting with judge Charley Valinchi and The Office and the Spotter. Curve, circle, circle, trap. Yes, all of these. But
They
hadn’t bargained for Georgie escaping and
They
wouldn’t like it when he didn’t show up like he was supposed to…. Joey’s heart quickened like when he’d said good-bye to Georgie at the train gate. Quickened in triumph over death, over destiny, over all the forces that had made and unmade him, over curve, circle, trap as he too traveled to his gate.

• • •

Again the Spotter opened that manila envelope of his and sorted out the collected newspaper clippings and photos of No-Gun Joey. Again the Spotter reached for his scissors and quiet as death, went to work.

THE END