Brooklyn Noir 2

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,

The dark threw its patches down upon me also

— Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

Introduction

Shaken, not stirred

When I first proposed what ultimately became the crime-fiction anthology Brooklyn Noir to my publisher, Johnny Temple, he seemed intrigued, and asked a series of questions for which I was not prepared. How do you see it coming together? New stories or reprints? Strictly conventional crime? How would you pick the neighborhoods where the stories would be set?

I’d presented the concept as it popped into my head, in a fairly offhanded manner, and frankly, I didn’t have the answers. As I riffed and winged it, as he embraced some ideas and rejected others, the book began to take shape. We batted these and more questions around over the next few weeks, and compiled a dream list of contributors. After the first few writers agreed to craft original stories for the book, we decided that we would request new stories from all participants, written specifically for the volume. To me the book grew, almost organically, from there. A number of names from the list signed on, other writers heard about the anthology and submitted work, and I was able to include four stories from writers who had not been previously published. It became exactly the book I’d dreamed of when I pitched it, half-formed in my mind’s eye.

But. There was a price to pay. By going with original pieces, I lost all the great stories that had given me the idea for such a book in the first place. I still wanted to collect tales that I felt had fallen between the cracks of time, or had never been grouped geographically, to paint the ominous portrait that I saw lurking behind every laundromat, nail salon, and Starbucks.

The success of Brooklyn Noir, launched in the summer of 2004, surpassed all expectations, I’m pleased to say. One story from the collection received an Edgar Award nomination, another was a Pushcart Prize finalist, and yet another won the Mystery Writers of America’s Robert L. Fish Memorial Award. Two more were selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005. With my head properly swelled, I found myself once again on the phone with Johnny, riffing and winging it. So, here we are.

Working on this volume has been a different task than the first, in that there was little interaction, from an editorial point of view, with the writers, some of whom are deceased. This time I felt more like an archeologist, mining volumes old and new, looking for treasure. The rule for the first Brooklyn Noir had been that each story had to be previously unpublished. Here, just the opposite. Brooklyn Noir 2 stories had to have been printed somewhere else before they hit the doorstep. That was about the only difference. I tried again to capture the special dread, tension, and solid writing that good dark fiction possesses. The scary feeling of watching the average Joe getting in over his head, or accidentally brushing up against something sinister on the way to work.

Figuring how to order the stories was an issue that resolved itself almost immediately. When I scanned the contents page in manuscript form, I was surprised to see that the first three categories from the original Brooklyn Noir applied, and the pieces were easy to assign accordingly. The fourth and final section in the first volume was “Backwater Brooklyn” — overlooked or forgotten neighborhoods. This time around, the stories in the last section all fall under the ominous shadow of World War II — era America. The image of a Brooklyn soldier — always a great dancer; often reading his love letters aloud to the rest of the company — was ubiquitous in classic war movies. My mother, a teenager during the war, told me that every block in her neighborhood, Sunset Park, had at least one “gold-star” family with a banner hanging in their window signifying a child lost in combat. It wasn’t unusual to have three or more gold stars on a single street.

In the introduction to the first Brooklyn Noir, I said that what the writers captured brilliantly was the language of the borough, and that goes for this volume as well. Each story is a slice of neighborhood that rings true, whether the time machine has taken you back one year or eight decades. And, as in the first book, the tales cross all boundaries of past and present, well-known and unknown neighborhoods, literary and genre traditions. It all goes into that great cocktail shaker that is Brooklyn. As editor, I have the pleasure of picking the ingredients, mixing them, and serving them to you. And that makes me the luckiest bartender in the world. Enjoy.

Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn, New York

May 2005

Part I

Old school Brooklyn

The horror at red hook

by H.P. Lovecraft

Red Hook

(Originally published in 1927)

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.

— Arthur Machen

I

Not many weeks ago, on a street corner in the village of Pascoag, Rhode Island, a tall, heavily built, and wholesome-looking pedestrian furnished much speculation by a singular lapse of behaviour. He had, it appears, been descending the hill by the road from Chepachet; and encountering the compact section, had turned to his left into the main thoroughfare where several modest business blocks convey a touch of the urban. At this point, without visible provocation, he committed his astonishing lapse; staring queerly for a second at the tallest of the buildings before him, and then, with a series of terrified, hysterical shrieks, breaking into a frantic run which ended in a stumble and fall at the next crossing. Picked up and dusted off by ready hands, he was found to be conscious, organically unhurt, and evidently cured of his sudden nervous attack. He muttered some shamefaced explanations involving a strain he had undergone, and with downcast glance turned back up the Chepachet road, trudging out of sight without once looking behind him. It was a strange incident to befall so large, robust, normal-featured, and capable-looking a man, and the strangeness was not lessened by the remarks of a bystander who had recognised him as the boarder of a well-known dairyman on the outskirts of Chepachet.

He was, it developed, a New York police detective named Thomas F. Malone, now on a long leave of absence under medical treatment after some disproportionately arduous work on a gruesome local case which accident had made dramatic. There had been a collapse of several old brick buildings during a raid in which he had shared, and something about the wholesale loss of life, both of prisoners and of his companions, had peculiarly appalled him. As a result, he had acquired an acute and anomalous horror of any buildings even remotely suggesting the ones which had fallen in, so that in the end mental specialists forbade him the sight of such things for an indefinite period. A police surgeon with relatives in Chepachet had put forward that quaint hamlet of wooden Colonial houses as an ideal spot for the psychological convalescence; and thither the sufferer had gone, promising never to venture among the brick-lined streets of larger villages till duly advised by the Woonsocket specialist with whom he was put in touch. This walk to Pascoag for magazines had been a mistake, and the patient had paid in fright, bruises, and humiliation for his disobedience.

So much the gossips of Chepachet and Pascoag knew; and so much also, the most learned specialists believed. But Malone had at first told the specialists much more, ceasing only when he saw that utter incredulity was his portion. Thereafter, he held his peace, protesting not at all when it was generally agreed that the collapse of certain squalid brick houses in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, and the consequent death of many brave officers, had unseated his nervous equilibrium. He had worked too hard, all said, in trying to clean up those nests of disorder and violence; certain features were shocking enough, in all conscience, and the unexpected tragedy was the last straw. This was a simple explanation which everyone could understand, and because Malone was not a simple person, he perceived that he had better let if suffice. To hint to unimaginative people of a horror beyond all human conception — a horror of houses and blocks and cities leprous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder worlds — would be merely to invite a padded cell instead of a restful rustication, and Malone was a man of sense despite his mysticism. He had the Celt’s far vision of weird and hidden things, but the logician’s quick eye for the outwardly unconvincing; an amalgam which had led him far afield in the forty-two years of his life, and set him in strange places for a Dublin University man born in a Georgian villa near Phoenix Park.

And now, as he reviewed the things he had seen and felt and apprehended, Malone was content to keep unshared the secret of what could reduce a dauntless fighter to a quivering neurotic; what could make old brick slums and seas of dark, subtle faces a thing of nightmare and eldritch portent. It would not be the first time his sensations had been forced to hide uninterpreted — for was not his very act of plunging into the polyglot abyss of New York’s underworld a freak beyond sensible explanation? What could he tell the prosaic of the antique witcheries and grotesque marvels discernible to sensitive eyes amidst the poison cauldron where all the varied dregs of unwholesome ages mix their venom and perpetuate their obscene terrors? He had seen the hellish green flame of secret wonder in this blatant, evasive welter of outward greed and inward blasphemy, and had smiled gently when all the New Yorkers he knew scoffed at his experiment in police work. They had been very witty and cynical, deriding his fantastic pursuit of unknowable mysteries and assuring him that in these days New York held nothing but cheapness and vulgarity. One of them had wagered him a heavy sum that he could not — despite many poignant things to his credit in the Dublin Review — even write a truly interesting story of New York low life; and now, looking back, he perceived that cosmic irony had justified the prophet’s words while secretly confuting their flippant meaning. The horror, as glimpsed at last, could not make a story — for like the book cited by Poe’s German authority, “es lasst sich nicht lesen — it does not permit itself to be read.”

II

To Malone the sense of latent mystery in existence was always present. In youth he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of things, and had been a poet; but poverty and sorrow and exile had turned his gaze in darker directions, and he had thrilled at the imputations of evil in the world around. Daily life had for him come to be a phantasmagoria of macabre shadow-studies; now glittering and leering with concealed rottenness as in Beardsley’s best manner, now hinting terrors behind the commonest shapes and objects as in the subtler and less obvious work of Gustave Doré. He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe. All this reflection was no doubt morbid, but keen logic and a deep sense of humour ably offset it. Malone was satisfied to let his notions remain as half-spied and forbidden visions to be lightly played with; and hysteria came only when duty flung him into a hell of revelation too sudden and insidious to escape.

He had for some time been detailed to the Butler Street station in Brooklyn when the Red Hook matter came to his notice. Red Hook is a maze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront opposite Governor’s Island, with dirty highways climbing the hill from the wharves to that higher ground where the decayed lengths of Clinton and Court Streets lead off toward the Borough Hall. Its houses are mostly of brick, dating from the first quarter to the middle of the nineteenth century, and some of the obscurer alleys and byways have that alluring antique flavour which conventional reading leads us to call “Dickensian.” The population is a hopeless tangle and enigma; Syrian, Spanish, Italian, and negro elements impinging upon one another, and fragments of Scandinavian and American belts lying not far distant. It is a babel of sound and filth, and sends out strange cries to answer the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the monstrous organ litanies of the harbour whistles. Here long ago a brighter picture dwelt, with clear-eyed mariners on the lower streets and homes of taste and substance where the larger houses line the hill. One can trace the relics of this former happiness in the trim shapes of the buildings, the occasional graceful churches, and the evidences of original art and background in bits of detail here and there — a worn flight of steps, a battered doorway, a wormy pair of decorative columns of pilasters, or a fragment of once green space with bent and rusted iron railing. The houses are generally in solid blocks, and now and then a many-windowed cupola arises to tell of days when the households of captains and ship-owners watched the sea.

From this tangle of material and spiritual putrescence the blasphemies of an hundred dialects assail the sky. Hordes of prowlers reel shouting and singing along the lanes and thoroughfares, occasional furtive hands suddenly extinguish lights and pull down curtains, and swarthy, sin-pitted faces disappear from windows when visitors pick their way through. Policemen despair of order or reform, and seek rather to erect barriers protecting the outside world from the contagion. The clang of the patrol is answered by a kind of spectral silence, and such prisoners as are taken are never communicative. Visible offences are as varied as the local dialects, and run the gamut from the smuggling of rum and prohibited aliens through diverse stages of lawlessness and obscure vice to murder and mutilation in their most abhorrent guises. That these visible affairs are not more frequent is not to the neighbourhood’s credit, unless the power of concealment be an art demanding credit. More people enter Red Hook than leave it — or at least, than leave it by the landwardside — and those who are not loquacious are the likeliest to leave.

Malone found in this state of things a faint stench of secrets more terrible than any of the sins denounced by citizens and bemoaned by priests and philanthropists. He was conscious, as one who united imagination with scientific knowledge, that modern people under lawless conditions tend uncannily to repeat the darkest instinctive patterns of primitive half-ape savagery in their daily life and ritual observances; and he had often viewed with an anthropologist’s shudder the chanting, cursing processions of blear-eyed and pockmarked young men which wound their way along in the dark small hours of morning. One saw groups of these youths incessantly; sometimes in leering vigils on street corners, sometimes in doorways playing eerily on cheap instruments of music, sometimes in stupefied dozes or indecent dialogues around cafeteria tables near Borough Hall, and sometimes in whispering converse around dingy taxicabs drawn up at the high stoops of crumbling and closely shuttered old houses. They chilled and fascinated him more than he dared confess to his associates on the force, for he seemed to see in them some monstrous thread of secret continuity; some fiendish, cryptical, and ancient pattern utterly beyond and below the sordid mass of facts and habits and haunts listed with such conscientious technical care by the police. They must be, he felt inwardly, the heirs of some shocking and primordial tradition; the sharers of debased and broken scraps from cults and ceremonies older than mankind. Their coherence and definiteness suggested it, and it showed in the singular suspicion of order which lurked beneath their squalid disorder. He had not read in vain such treatises as Miss Murray’s Witch Cult in Western Europe; and knew that up to recent years there had certainly survived among peasants and furtive folk a frightful and clandestine system of assemblies and orgies descended from dark religions antedating the Aryan world, and appearing in popular legends as Black Masses and Witches’ Sabbaths. That these hellish vestiges of old Turanian — Asiatic magic and fertility-cults were even now wholly dead he could not for a moment suppose, and he frequently wondered how much older and how much blacker than the very worst of the muttered tales some of them might really be.

III

It was the case of Robert Suydam which took Malone to the heart of things in Red Hook. Suydam was a lettered recluse of ancient Dutch family, possessed originally of barely independent means, and inhabiting the spacious but ill-preserved mansion which his grandfather had built in Flatbush when that village was little more than a pleasant group of Colonial cottages surrounding the steepled and ivy-clad Reformed Church with its iron-railed yard of Netherlandish gravestones. In his lonely house, set back from Martense Street amidst a yard of venerable trees, Suydam had read and brooded for some six decades except for a period a generation before, when he had sailed for the old world and remained there out of sight for eight years. He could afford no servants, and would admit but few visitors to his absolute solitude; eschewing close friendships and receiving his rare acquaintances in one of the three ground-floor rooms which he kept in order — a vast, high-ceiled library, whose walls were solidly packed with tattered books of ponderous, archaic, and vaguely repellent aspect. The growth of the town and its final absorption in the Brooklyn district had meant nothing to Suydam, and he had come to mean less and less to the town. Elderly people still pointed him out on the streets, but to most of the recent population he was merely a queer, corpulent old fellow whose unkempt white hair, stubbly beard, shiny black clothes and gold headed cane earned him an amused glance and nothing more. Malone did not know him by sight till duty called him to the case, but had heard of him indirectly as a really profound authority on mediaeval superstition, and had once idly meant to look up an out-of-print pamphlet of his on the Kabbalah and the Faustus legend, which a friend had quoted from memory.

Suydam became a “case” when his distant and only relatives sought court pronouncements on his sanity. Their action seemed sudden to the outside world, but was really undertaken only after prolonged observation and sorrowful debate. It was based on certain odd changes in his speech and habits; wild references to impending wonders, and unaccountable hauntings of disreputable Brooklyn neighbourhoods. He had been growing shabbier and shabbier with the years, and now prowled about like a veritable mendicant; seen occasionally by humiliated friends in subway stations, or loitering on the benches around Borough Hall in conversation with groups of swarthy, evil-looking strangers. When he spoke it was to babble of unlimited powers almost within his grasp, and to repeat with knowing leers such mystical words or names as “Sephiroth,” “Ashmodai,” and “Samaël.” The court action revealed that he was using up his income and wasting his principal in the purchase of curious tomes imported from London and Paris, and in the maintenance of a squalid basement flat in the Red Hook district where he spent nearly every night, receiving odd delegations of mixed rowdies and foreigners, and apparently conducting some kind of ceremonial service behind the green blinds of secretive windows. Detectives assigned to follow him reported strange cries and chants and prancing of feet filtering out from these nocturnal rites, and shuddered at their peculiar ecstasy and abandon despite the commonness of weird orgies in that sodden section. When, however, the matter came to a hearing, Suydam managed to preserve his liberty. Before the judge his manner grew urbane and reasonable, and he freely admitted the queerness of demeanour and extravagant cast of language into which he had fallen through excessive devotion to study and research. He was, he said, engaged in the investigation of certain details of European tradition which required the closest contact with foreign groups and their songs and folk dances. The notion that any low secret society was preying upon him, as hinted by his relatives, was obviously absurd; and showed how sadly limited was their understanding of him and his work. Triumphing with his calm explanations, he was suffered to depart unhindered; and the paid detectives of the Suydams, Corlears, and Van Brunts were withdrawn in resigned disgust.

It was here that an alliance of Federal inspectors and police, Malone with them, entered the case. The law had watched the Suydam action with interest, and had in many instances been called upon to aid the private detectives. In this work it developed that Suydam’s new associates were among the blackest and most vicious criminals of Red Hook’s devious lanes, and that at least a third of them were known and repeated offenders in the matter of thievery, disorder, and the importation of illegal immigrants. Indeed, it would not have been too much to say that the old scholar’s particular circle coincided almost perfectly with the worst of the organised cliques which smuggled ashore certain nameless and unclassified Asian dregs wisely turned back by Ellis Island. In the teeming rookeries of Parker Place — since renamed — where Suydam had his basement flat, there had grown up a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue. They could all have been deported for lack of credentials, but legalism is slow-moving, and one does not disturb Red Hook unless publicity forces one to.

These creatures attended a tumble-down stone church, used Wednesdays as a dance-hall, which reared its Gothic buttresses near the vilest part of the waterfront. It was nominally Catholic; but priests throughout Brooklyn denied the place all standing and authenticity, and policemen agreed with them when they listened to the noises it emitted at night. Malone used to fancy he heard terrible cracked bass notes from a hidden organ far underground when the church stood empty and unlighted, whilst all observers dreaded the shrieking and drumming which accompanied the visible services. Suydam, when questioned, said he thought the ritual was some remnant of Nestorian Christianity tinctured with the Shamanism of Thibet. Most of the people, he conjectured, were of Mongoloid stock, originating somewhere in or near Kurdistan — and Malone could not help recalling that Kurdistan is the land of the Yezidis, last survivors of the Persian devil-worshippers. However this may have been, the stir of the Suydam investigation made it certain that these unauthorised newcomers were flooding Red Hook in increasing numbers; entering through some marine conspiracy unreached by revenue officers and harbor police, overrunning Parker Place and rapidly spreading up the hill, and welcomed with curious fraternalism by the other assorted denizens of the region. Their squat figures and characteristic squinting physiognomies, grotesquely combined with flashy American clothing, appeared more and more numerously among the loafers and nomad gangsters of the Borough Hall section; till at length it was deemed necessary to compute their numbers, ascertain their sources and occupations, and find if possible a way to round them up and deliver them to the proper immigration authorities. To this task Malone was assigned by agreement of Federal and city forces, and as he commenced his canvass of Red Hook, he felt poised upon the brink of nameless terrors, with the shabby, unkempt figure of Robert Suydam as arch-fiend and adversary.

IV

Police methods are varied and ingenious. Malone, through unostentatious rambles, carefully casual conversations, well-timed offers of hip-pocket liquor, and judicious dialogues with frightened prisoners, learned many isolated facts about the movement whose aspect had become so menacing. The newcomers were indeed Kurds, but of a dialect obscure and puzzling to exact philology. Such of them as worked lived mostly as dockhands and unlicensed pedlars, though frequently serving in Greek restaurants and tending corner news stands. Most of them, however, had no visible means of support, and were obviously connected with underworld pursuits, of which smuggling and “bootlegging” were the least indescribable. They had come in steamships, apparently tramp freighters, and had been unloaded by stealth on moonless nights in rowboats which stole under a certain wharf and followed a hidden canal to a secret subterranean pool beneath a house. This wharf, canal, and house Malone could not locate, for the memories of his informants were exceedingly confused, while their speech was to a great extent beyond even the ablest interpreters; nor could he gain any real data on the reasons for their systematic importation. They were reticent about the exact spot from which they had come, and were never sufficiently off guard to reveal the agencies which had sought them out and directed their course. Indeed, they developed something like acute fright when asked the reasons for their presence. Gangsters of other breeds were equally taciturn, and the most that could be gathered was that some god or great priesthood had promised them unheard-of powers and supernatural glories and rulerships in a strange land.

The attendance of both newcomers and old gangsters at Suydam’s closely guarded nocturnal meetings was very regular, and the police soon learned that the erstwhile recluse had leased additional flats to accommodate such guests as knew his password; at last occupying three entire houses and permanently harbouring many of his queer companions. He spent but little time now at his Flatbush home, apparently going and coming only to obtain and return books; and his face and manner had attained an appalling pitch of wildness. Malone twice interviewed him, but was each time brusquely repulsed. He knew nothing, he said, of any mysterious plots or movements; and had no idea how the Kurds could have entered or what they wanted. His business was to study undisturbed the folklore of all the immigrants of the district; a business with which policemen had no legitimate concern. Malone mentioned his admiration for Suydam’s old brochure on the Kabbalah and other myths, but the old man’s softening was only momentary. He sensed an intrusion, and rebuffed his visitor in no uncertain way; till Malone withdrew disgusted, and turned to other channels of information.

What Malone would have unearthed could he have worked continuously on the case, we shall never know. As it was, a stupid conflict between city and Federal authority suspended the investigations for several months, during which the detective was busy with other assignments. But at no time did he lose interest, or fail to stand amazed at what began to happen to Robert Suydam. Just at the time when a wave of kidnappings and disappearances spread its excitement over New York, the unkempt scholar embarked upon a metamorphosis as startling as it was absurd. One day he was seen near Borough Hall with clean-shaven face, well-trimmed hair, and tastefully immaculate attire, and on every day thereafter some obscure improvement was noticed in him. He maintained his new fastidiousness without interruption, added to it an unwonted sparkle of eye and crispness of speech, and began little by little to shed the corpulence which had so long deformed him. Now frequently taken for less than his age, he acquired an elasticity of step and buoyancy of demeanour to match the new tradition, and showed a curious darkening of the hair which somehow did not suggest dye. As the months passed, he commenced to dress less and less conservatively, and finally astonished his new friends by renovating and redecorating his Flatbush mansion, which he threw open in a series of receptions, summoning all the acquaintances he could remember, and extending a special welcome to the fully forgiven relatives who had so lately sought his restraint. Some attended through curiosity, others through duty; but all were suddenly charmed by the dawning grace and urbanity of the former hermit. He had, he asserted, accomplished most of his allotted work; and having just inherited some property from a half-forgotten European friend, was about to spend his remaining years in a brighter second youth which ease, care, and diet had made possible to him. Less and less was he seen at Red Hook, and more and more did he move in the society to which he was born. Policemen noted a tendency of the gangsters to congregate at the old stone church and dance-hall instead of at the basement flat in Parker Place, though the latter and its recent annexes still overflowed with noxious life.

Then two incidents occurred — wide enough apart, but both of intense interest in the case as Malone envisaged it. One was a quiet announcement in the Eagle of Robert Suydam’s engagement to Miss Cornelia Gerritsen of Bayside, a young woman of excellent position, and distantly related to the elderly bridegroomelect; whilst the other was a raid on the dance-hall church by city police, after a report that the face of a kidnapped child had been seen for a second at one of the basement windows. Malone had participated in this raid, and studied the place with much care when inside. Nothing was found — in fact, the building was entirely deserted when visited — but the sensitive Celt was vaguely disturbed by many things about the interior. There were crudely painted panels he did not like — panels which depicted sacred faces with peculiarly worldly and sardonic expressions, and which occasionally took liberties that even a layman’s sense of decorum could scarcely countenance. Then, too, he did not relish the Greek inscription on the wall above the pulpit; an ancient incantation which he had once stumbled upon in Dublin college days, and which read, literally translated,

O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoices in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Marmo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices!

When he read this he shuddered, and thought vaguely of the cracked bass organ notes he fancied he had heard beneath the church on certain nights. He shuddered again at the rust around the rim of a metal basin which stood on the altar, and paused nervously when his nostrils seemed to detect a curious and ghastly stench from somewhere in the neighbourhood. That organ memory haunted him, and he explored the basement with particular assiduity before he left. The place was very hateful to him; yet after all, were the blasphemous panels and inscriptions more than mere crudities perpetrated by the ignorant?

By the time of Suydam’s wedding the kidnapping epidemic had become a popular newspaper scandal. Most of the victims were young children of the lowest classes, but the increasing number of disappearances had worked up a sentiment of the strongest fury. Journals clamoured for action from the police, and once more the Butler Street station sent its men over Red Hook for clues, discoveries, and criminals. Malone was glad to be on the trail again, and took pride in a raid on one of Suydam’s Parker Place houses. There, indeed, no stolen child was found, despite the tales of screams and the red sash picked up in the areaway; but the paintings and rough inscriptions on the peeling walls of most of the rooms, and the primitive chemical laboratory in the attic, all helped to convince the detective that he was on the track of something tremendous. The paintings were appalling — hideous monsters of every shape and size, and parodies on human outlines which cannot be described. The writing was in red, and varied from Arabic to Greek, Roman, and Hebrew letters. Malone could not read much of it, but what he did decipher was portentous and cabbalistic enough. One frequently repeated motto was in a sort of Hebraised Hellenistic Greek, and suggested the most terrible daemon evocations of the Alexandrian decadence:

HEL HELOYM • SOTHER • EMMANVEL • SABAOTH • AGLA • TETRAGRAMMATON • AGYROS • OTHEOS • ISCHYROS • ATHANATOS • IEHOVA • VA • ADONAI • SADAY • HOMOVSION • MESSIAS • ESCHEREHEYE

Circles and pentagrams loomed on every hand, and told indubitably of the strange beliefs and aspirations of those who dwelt so squalidly here. In the cellar, however, the strangest thing was found — a pile of genuine gold ingots covered carelessly with a piece of burlap, and bearing upon their shining surfaces the same weird hieroglyphics which also adorned the walls. During the raid the police encountered only a passive resistance from the squinting Orientals that swarmed from every door. Finding nothing relevant, they had to leave all as it was; but the precinct captain wrote Suydam a note advising him to look closely to the character of his tenants and protégés in view of the growing public clamour.

V

Then came the June wedding and the great sensation. Flatbush was gay for the hour about high noon, and pennanted motors thronged the streets near the old Dutch church where an awning stretched from door to highway. No local event ever surpassed the Suydam-Gerritsen nuptials in tone and scale, and the party which escorted the bride and groom to the Cunard Pier was, if not exactly the smartest, at least a solid page from the Social Register. At five o’clock adieux were waved, and the ponderous liner edged away from the long pier, slowly turned its nose seaward, discarded its tug, and headed for the widening water spaces that led to old world wonders. By night the outer harbour was cleared, and late passengers watched the stars twinkling above an unpolluted ocean.

Whether the tramp steamer or the scream was first to gain attention, no one can say. Probably they were simultaneous, but it is of no use to calculate. The scream came from the Suydam stateroom, and the sailor who broke down the door could perhaps have told frightful things if he had not forthwith gone completely mad — as it is, he shrieked more loudly than the first victims, and thereafter ran simpering about the vessel till caught and put in irons. The ship’s doctor who entered the stateroom and turned on the lights a moment later did not go mad, but told nobody what he saw till afterward, when he corresponded with Malone in Chepachet. It was murder — strangulation — but one need not say that the claw-mark on Mrs. Suydam’s throat could not have come from her husband’s or any other human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an instant in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory, seems to have been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of the word LILITH. One need not mention these things because they vanished so quickly — as for Suydam, one could at least bar others from the room until one knew what to think oneself. The doctor has distinctly assured Malone that he did not see IT. The open porthole, just before he turned on the lights, was clouded for a second with a certain phosphorescence, and for a moment there seemed to echo in the night outside the suggestion of a faint and hellish tittering; but no real outline met the eye. As proof, the doctor points to his continued sanity.

Then the tramp steamer claimed all attention. A boat put off, and a horde of swart, insolent ruffians in officers’ dress swarmed aboard the temporarily halted Cunarder. They wanted Suydam or his body — they had known of his trip, and for certain reasons were sure he would die. The captain’s deck was almost a pandemonium; for at the instant, between the doctor’s report from the stateroom and the demands of the men from the tramp, not even the wisest and gravest seaman could think what to do. Suddenly the leader of the visiting mariners, an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth, pulled forth a dirty, crumpled paper and handed it to the captain. It was signed by Robert Suydam, and bore the following odd message:

In case of sudden or unexplained accident or death on my part, please deliver me or my body unquestioningly into the hands of the bearer and his associates. Everything, for me, and perhaps for you, depends on absolute compliance. Explanations can come later — do not fail me now.

ROBERT SUYDAM

Captain and doctor looked at each other, and the latter whispered something to the former. Finally they nodded rather helplessly and led the way to the Suydam stateroom. The doctor directed the captain’s glance away as he unlocked the door and admitted the strange seaman, nor did he breathe easily till they filed out with their burden after an unaccountably long period of preparation. It was wrapped in bedding from the berths, and the doctor was glad that the outlines were not very revealing. Somehow the men got the thing over the side and away to their tramp steamer without uncovering it. The Cunarder started again, and the doctor and a ship’s undertaker sought out the Suydam stateroom to perform what last services they could. Once more the physician was forced to reticence and even to mendacity, for a hellish thing had happened. When the undertaker asked him why he had drained off all of Mrs. Suydam’s blood, he neglected to affirm that he had not done so; nor did he point to the vacant bottle-spaces on the rack, or to the odour in the sink which showed the hasty disposition of the bottles’ original contents. The pockets of those men — if men they were — had bulged damnably when they left the ship. Two hours later, and the world knew by radio all that it ought to know of the horrible affair.

VI

That same June evening, without having heard a word from the sea, Malone was desperately busy among the alleys of Red Hook. A sudden stir seemed to permeate the place, and as if apprised by “grape-vine telegraph” of something singular, the denizens clustered expectantly around the dance-hall church and the houses in Parker Place. Three children had just disappeared — blue-eyed Norwegians from the streets toward Gowanus — and there were rumours of a mob forming among the sturdy Vikings of that section. Malone had for weeks been urging his colleagues to attempt a general cleanup; and at last, moved by conditions more obvious to their common sense than the conjectures of a Dublin dreamer, they had agreed upon a final stroke. The unrest and menace of this evening had been the deciding factor, and just about midnight a raiding party recruited from three stations descended upon Parker Place and its environs. Doors were battered in, stragglers arrested, and candle-lighted rooms forced to disgorge unbelievable throngs of mixed foreigners in figured robes, mitres, and other inexplicable devices. Much was lost in the melee, for objects were thrown hastily down unexpected shafts, and betraying odours deadened by the sudden kindling of pungent incense. But spattered blood was everywhere, and Malone shuddered whenever he saw a brazier or altar from which the smoke was still rising.

He wanted to be in several places at once, and decided on Suydam’s basement flat only after a messenger had reported the complete emptiness of the dilapidated dance-hall church. The flat, he thought, must hold some clue to a cult of which the occult scholar had so obviously become the centre and leader; and it was with real expectancy that he ransacked the musty rooms, noted their vaguely charnel odour, and examined the curious books, instruments, gold ingots, and glass-stoppered bottles scattered carelessly here and there. Once a lean, black-and-white cat edged between his feet and tripped him, overturning at the same time a beaker half full of red liquid. The shock was severe, and to this day Malone is not certain of what he saw; but in dreams he still pictures that cat as it scuttled away with certain monstrous alterations and peculiarities. Then came the locked cellar door, and the search for something to break it down. A heavy stool stood near, and its tough seat was more than enough for the antique panels. A crack formed and enlarged, and the whole door gave way — but from the other side; whence poured a howling tumult of icecold wind with all the stenches of the bottomless pit, and whence reached a sucking force not of earth or heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralysed detective, dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled with whispers and wails, and gusts of mocking laughter.

Of course it was a dream. All the specialists have told him so, and he has nothing to prove the contrary. Indeed, he would rather have it thus; for then the sight of old brick slums and dark foreign faces would not eat so deeply into his soul. But at the time it was all horribly real, and nothing can ever efface the memory of those nighted crypts, those titan arcades, and those half-formed shapes of hell that strode gigantically in silence holding half-eaten things whose still surviving portions screamed for mercy or laughed with madness. Odours of incense and corruption joined in sickening concert, and the black air was alive with the cloudy, semi-visible bulk of shapeless elemental things with eyes. Somewhere dark sticky water was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of raucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the background.

Avenues of limitless night seemed to radiate in every direction, till one might fancy that here lay the root of a contagion destined to sicken and swallow cities, and engulf nations in the foetor of hybrid pestilence. Here cosmic sin had entered, and festered by unhallowed rites had commenced the grinning march of death that was to rot us all to fungous abnormalities too hideous for the grave’s holding. Satan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved. Incubi and succubae howled praise to Hecate, and headless moon-calves bleated to the Magna Mater. Goats leaped to the sound of thin accursed flutes, and ægypans chased endlessly after misshapen fauns over rocks twisted like swollen toads. Moloch and Ashtaroth were not absent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the bounds of consciousness were let down, and man’s fancy lay open to vistas of every realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had power to mould. The world and Nature were helpless against such assaults from unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer check the Walpurgis-riot of horror which had come when a sage with the hateful key had stumbled on a horde with the locked and brimming coffer of transmitted daemon-lore.

Suddenly a ray of physical light shot through these phantasms, and Malone heard the sound of oars amidst the blasphemies of things that should be dead. A boat with a lantern in its prow darted into sight, made fast to an iron ring in the slimy stone pier, and vomited forth several dark men bearing a long burden swathed in bedding. They took it to the naked phosphorescent thing on the carved golden pedestal, and the thing tittered and pawed at the bedding. Then they unswathed it, and propped upright before the pedestal the gangrenous corpse of a corpulent old man with stubbly beard and unkempt white hair. The phosphorescent thing tittered again, and the men produced bottles from their pockets and anointed its feet with red, whilst they afterward gave the bottles to the thing to drink from.

All at once, from an arcaded avenue leading endlessly away, there came the daemoniac rattle and wheeze of a blasphemous organ, choking and rumbling out the mockeries of hell in a cracked, sardonic bass. In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest of the sound — goat, satyr, and ægypan, incubus, succubus and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter in darkness — all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently, bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man. The strange dark men danced in the rear, and the whole column skipped and leaped with Dionysiac fury. Malone staggered after them a few steps, delirious and hazy, and doubtful of his place in this or in any world. Then he turned, faltered, and sank down on the cold damp stone, gasping and shivering as the daemon organ croaked on, and the howling and drumming and tinkling of the mad procession grew fainter and fainter.

Vaguely he was conscious of chanted horrors and shocking croakings afar off. Now and then a wail or whine of ceremonial devotion would float to him through the black arcade, whilst eventually there rose the dreadful Greek incantation whose text he had read above the pulpit of that dance-hall church.

“O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs (here a hideous howl burst forth) and spilt blood (here nameless sounds vied with morbid shriekings) who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs (here a whistling sigh occurred), who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals (short, sharp cries from myriad throats), Cargo (repeated as response), Mormo (repeated with ecstasy), thousand-faced moon (sighs and flute notes), look favourably on our sacrifices!”

As the chant closed, a general shout went up, and hissing sounds nearly drowned the croaking of the cracked bass organ. Then a gasp as from many throats, and a babel of barked and bleated words — “Lilith, Great Lilith, behold the Bridegroom!” More cries, a clamour of rioting, and the sharp, clicking footfalls of a running figure. The footfalls approached, and Malone raised himself to his elbow to look.

The luminosity of the crypt, lately diminished, had now slightly increased; and in that devil-light there appeared the fleeting form of that which should not flee or feel or breathe — the glassy-eyed, gangrenous corpse of the corpulent old man, now needing no support, but animated by some infernal sorcery of the rite just closed. After it raced the naked, tittering, phosphorescent thing that belonged on the carven pedestal, and still farther behind panted the dark men, and all the dread crew of sentient loathsomeness. The corpse was gaining on its pursuers, and seemed bent on a definite object, straining with every rotting muscle toward the carved golden pedestal, whose necromantic importance was evidently so great. Another moment and it had reached its goal, whilst the trailing throng laboured on with more frantic speed. But they were too late, for in one final spurt of strength which ripped tendon from tendon and sent its noisome bulk floundering to the floor in a state of jellyfish dissolution, the staring corpse which had been Robert Suydam achieved its object and its triumph. The push had been tremendous, but the force had held out; and as the pusher collapsed to a muddy blotch of corruption, the pedestal he had pushed tottered, tipped, and finally careened from its onyx base into the thick waters below, sending up a parting gleam of carven gold as it sank heavily to undreamable gulfs of lower Tartarus. In that instant, too, the whole scene of horror faded to nothingness before Malone’s eyes; and he fainted amidst a thunderous crash which seemed to blot out all the evil universe.

VII

Malone’s dream in full before he knew of Suydam’s death and transfer at sea, was curiously supplemented by some odd realities of the case; though that is no reason why anyone should believe it. The three old houses in Parker Place, doubtless long rotten with decay in its most insidious form, collapsed without visible cause while half the raiders and most of the prisoners were inside; and of both the greater number were instantly killed. Only in the basements and cellars was there much saving of life, and Malone was lucky to have been deep below the house of Robert Suydam. For he really was there, as no one is disposed to deny. They found him unconscious by the edge of a night-black pool, with a grotesquely horrible jumble of decay and bone, identifiable through dental work as the body of Suydam, a few feet away. The case was plain, for it was hither that the smugglers’ underground canal led; and the men who took Suydam from the ship had brought him home. They themselves were never found, or at least never identified; and the ship’s doctor is not yet satisfied with the simple certitudes of the police.

Suydam was evidently a leader in extensive man-smuggling operations, for the canal to his house was but one of several subterranean channels and tunnels in the neighbourhood. There was a tunnel from this house to a crypt beneath the dance-hall church; a crypt accessible from the church only through a narrow secret passage in the north wall, and in whose chambers some singular and terrible things were discovered. The croaking organ was there, as well as a vast arched chapel with wooden benches and a strangely figured altar. The walls were lined with small cells, in seventeen of which — hideous to relate — solitary prisoners in a state of complete idiocy were found chained, including four mothers with infants of disturbingly strange appearance. These infants died soon after exposure to the light; a circumstance which the doctors thought rather merciful. Nobody but Malone, among those who inspected them, remembered the sombre question of old Delrio: “An sint unquam daemones incubi et succubae, et an ex tali congressu proles enascia quea?”

Before the canals were filled up they were thoroughly dredged, and yielded forth a sensational array of sawed and split bones of all sizes. The kidnapping epidemic, very clearly, had been traced home; though only two of the surviving prisoners could by any legal thread be connected with it. These men are now in prison, since they failed of conviction as accessories in the actual murders. The carved golden pedestal or throne so often mentioned by Malone as of primary occult importance was never brought to light, though at one place under the Suydam house the canal was observed to sink into a well too deep for dredging. It was choked up at the mouth and cemented over when the cellars of the new houses were made, but Malone often speculates on what lies beneath. The police, satisfied that they had shattered a dangerous gang of maniacs and man-smugglers, turned over to the Federal authorities the unconvicted Kurds, who before their deportation were conclusively found to belong to the Yezidi clan of devil-worshippers. The tramp ship and its crew remain an elusive mystery, though cynical detectives are once more ready to combat its smuggling and rum-running ventures. Malone thinks these detectives show a sadly limited perspective in their lack of wonder at the myriad unexplainable details, and the suggestive obscurity of the whole case; though he is just as critical of the newspapers, which saw only a morbid sensation and gloated over a minor sadist cult which they might have proclaimed a horror from the universe’s very heart. But he is content to rest silent in Chepachet, calming his nervous system and praying that time may gradually transfer his terrible experience from the realm of present reality to that of picturesque and semi-mythical remoteness.

Robert Suydam sleeps beside his bride in Greenwood Cemetery. No funeral was held over the strangely released bones, and relatives are grateful for the swift oblivion which overtook the case as a whole. The scholar’s connection with the Red Hook horrors, indeed, was never emblazoned by legal proof; since his death forestalled the inquiry he would otherwise have faced. His own end is not much mentioned, and the Suydams hope that posterity may recall him only as a gentle recluse who dabbled in harmless magic and folklore.

As for Red Hook — it is always the same. Suydam came and went; a terror gathered and faded; but the evil spirit of darkness and squalor broods on amongst the mongrels in the old brick houses, and prowling bands still parade on unknown errands past windows where lights and twisted faces unaccountably appear and disappear. Age-old horror is a hydra with a thousand heads, and the cults of darkness are rooted in blasphemies deeper than the well of Democritus. The soul of the beast is omnipresent and triumphant, and Red Hook’s legions of blear-eyed, pockmarked youths still chant and curse and howl as they file from abyss to abyss, none knows whence or whither, pushed on by blind laws of biology which they may never understand. As of old, more people enter Red Hook than leave it on the landward side, and there are already rumours of new canals running underground to certain centres of traffic in liquor and less mentionable things.

The dance-hall church is now mostly a dance hall, and queer faces have appeared at night at the windows. Lately a policeman expressed the belief that the filled-up crypt has been dug out again, and for no simple explainable purpose. Who are we to combat poisons older than history and mankind? Apes danced in Asia to those horrors, and the cancer lurks secure and spreading where furtiveness hides in rows of decaying brick.

Malone does not shudder without cause — for only the other day an officer overheard a swarthy squinting hag teaching a small child some whispered patois in the shadow of an areaway. He listened, and thought it very strange when he heard her repeat over and over again,

“O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices!”

Borough of cemeteries

by Irwin Shaw

Brownsville

(Originally published in 1938)

During the cocktail hour, in Brownsville, the cab drivers gather in Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill and drink beer and talk about the world and watch the sun set slowly over the elevated tracks in the direction of Prospect Park.

“Mungo?” they say. “Mungo? He got a fish for a arm. A mackerel. He will pitch Brooklyn right into the first division of the International League.”

“I saw the Mayor today. His Honor, himself. The Little Flower. What this country needs …”

“Pinky, I want that you should trust me for a glass of beer.”

Pinky wiped the wet dull expanse of the bar. “Look, Elias. It is against the law of the State of New York,” he said, nervously, “to sell intoxicating liquors on credit.”

“One glass of beer. Intoxicatin’!” Elias’s lips curled. “Who yuh think I am, Snow White?”

“Do you want me to lose my license?” Pinky asked plaintively.

“I stay up nights worryin’ Pinky might lose his license. My wife hears me cryin’ in my sleep,” Elias said. “One beer, J. P. Morgan.”

Regretfully, Pinky drew the beer, with a big head, and sighed as he marked it down in the book. “The last one,” he said, “positively the last one. As God is my witness.”

“Yeah,” Elias said. “Keep yer mouth closed.” He drank the beer in one gulp, with his eyes shut. “My God,” he said quietly, his eyes still shut, as he put the glass down. “Fer a lousy dime,” he said to the room in general, “yuh get somethin’ like that! Fer a lousy dime! Brooklyn is a wonderful place.”

“Brooklyn stinks,” said another driver, down the bar. “The borough of cemeteries. This is a first class place for graveyards.”

“My friend Palangio,” Elias said. “Il Doochay Palangio. Yuh don’t like Brooklyn, go back to Italy. They give yuh a gun, yuh get shot in the behind in Africa.” The rest of the drivers laughed and Elias grinned at his own wit. “I seen in the movies. Go back t’ Italy, wit’ the fat girls. Who’ll buy me a beer?”

Complete silence fell over the bar, like taps over an army camp.

“My friends,” Elias said bitterly.

“Brooklyn is a wonderful place,” Palangio said.

“All day long,” Elias said, reflectively rubbing his broken nose, “I push a hack. Eleven hours on the street. I now have the sum of three dollars and fifty cents in my pocket.”

Pinky came right over. “Now, Elias,” he said, “there is the small matter of one beer. If I’d knew you had the money …”

Elias impatiently brushed Pinky’s hand off the bar. “There is somebody callin’ for a beer down there, Pinky,” he said. “Attend yer business.”

“I think,” Pinky grumbled, retreating, “that a man oughta pay his rightful debts.”

“He thinks. Pinky thinks,” Elias announced. But his heart was not with Pinky. He turned his back to the bar and leaned on his frayed elbows and looked sadly up at the tin ceiling. “Three dollars and fifty cents,” he said softly. “An’ I can’t buy a beer.”

“Whatsamatta?” Palangio asked. “Yuh got a lock on yuh pocket?”

“Two dollars an’ seventy-fi’ cents to the Company,” Elias said. “An’ seventy-fi’ cents to my lousy wife so she don’t make me sleep in the park. The lousy Company. Every day for a year I give ’em two dollars an’ seventy-fi’ cents an’ then I own the hack. After a year yuh might as well sell that crate to Japan to put in bombs. Th’ only way yuh can get it to move is t’ drop it. I signed a contract. I need a nurse. Who wants t’ buy me a beer?”

“I signed th’ same contract,” Palangio said. A look of pain came over his dark face. “It got seven months more to go. Nobody shoulda learned me how to write my name.”

“If you slobs would only join th’ union,” said a little Irishman across from the beer spigots.

“Geary,” Elias said. “The Irish hero. Tell us how you fought th’ English in th’ battle of Belfast.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Geary said, pushing his cap back excitably from his red hair. “You guys wanna push a hack sixteen hours a day for beans, don’ let me stop yuh.”

“Join a union, get yer hair parted down the middle by the cops,” Elias said. “That is my experience.”

“O.K., boys.” Geary pushed his beer a little to make it foam. “Property-owners. Can’t pay for a glass a beer at five o’clock in th’ afternoon. What’s the use a’ talkin’ t’ yuh? Lemme have a beer, Pinky.”

“Geary, you’re a red,” Elias said. “A red bastidd.”

“A Communist,” Palangio said.

“I want a beer,” Geary said loudly.

“Times’re bad,” Elias said. “That’s what’s th’ trouble.”

“Sure.” Geary drained half his new glass. “Sure.”

“Back in 1928,” Elias said, “I averaged sixty bucks a week.”

“On New Year’s Eve, 1927,” Palangio murmured, “I made thirty-six dollars and forty cents.”

“Money was flowin’,” Elias remembered.

Palangio sighed, rubbing his beard bristles with the back of his hand. “I wore silk shirts. With stripes. They cost five bucks a piece. I had four girls in 1928. My God!”

“This ain’t 1928,” Geary said.

“Th’ smart guy,” Elias said. “He’s tellin’ us somethin’. This ain’t 1928, he says. Join th’ union, we get 1928 back.”

“Why the hell should I waste my time?” Geary asked himself in disgust. He drank in silence.

“Pinky!” Palangio called. “Pinky! Two beers for me and my friend Elias.”

Elias moved, with a wide smile, up the bar, next to Palangio. “We are brothers in misery, Angelo,” he said. “Me and th’ Wop. We both signed th’ contract.”

They drank together and sighed together.

“I had th’ biggest pigeon flight in Brownsville,” Elias said softly. “One hundred and twelve pairs of pedigreed pigeons. I’d send ’em up like fireworks, every afternoon. You oughta’ve seen ’em wheelin’ aroun’ an’ aroun’ over th’ roofs. I’m a pigeon fancier.” He finished his glass. “I got fifteen pigeons left. Every time I bring home less than seventy-five cents, my wife cooks one for supper. A pedigreed pigeon. My lousy wife.”

“Two beers,” Palangio said. He and Elias drank with grave satisfaction.

“Now,” Elias said, “if only I didn’t have to go home to my lousy wife. I married her in 1929. A lot of things’ve changed since 1929.” He sighed. “What’s a woman?” he asked. “A woman is a trap.”

“You shoulda seen what I seen today,” Palangio said. “My third fare. On Eastern Parkway. I watched her walk all th’ way acrost Nostrand Avenue, while I was waitin’ on the light. A hundred-and-thirty-pound girl. Blonde. Swingin’ her hips like orchester music. With one of those little straw hats on top of her head, with the vegetables on it. You never saw nothin’ like it. I held onto the wheel like I was drownin’. Talkin’ about traps! She went to the St. George Hotel.”

Elias shook his head. “The tragedy of my life,” he said, “is I was married young.”

“Two beers,” Palangio said.

“Angelo Palangio,” Elias said, “yer name reminds me of music.”

“A guy met her in front of the St. George. A big fat guy. Smilin’ like he just seen Santa Claus. A big fat guy. Some guys …”

“Some guys …” Elias mourned. “I gotta go home to Annie. She yells at me from six to twelve, regular. Who’s goin’ to pay the grocer? Who’s goin’ to pay the gas company?” He looked steadily at his beer for a moment and downed it. “I’m a man who married at the age a’ eighteen.”

“We need somethin’ to drink,” Palangio said.

“Buy us two whiskies,” Elias said. “What the hell good is beer?”

“Two Calverts,” Palangio called. “The best for me and my friend Elias Pinsker. “

“Two gentlemen,” Elias said, “who both signed th’ contract.”

“Two dumb slobs,” said Geary.

“Th’ union man,” Elias lifted his glass. “To th’ union!” He downed the whisky straight. “Th’ hero of th’ Irish Army.”

“Pinky,” Palangio shouted. “Fill ’em up to the top.”

“Angelo Palangio,” Elias murmured gratefully.

Palangio soberly counted the money out for the drinks. “Now,” he said, “the Company can jump in Flushing Bay. I am down to two bucks even.”

“Nice,” Geary said sarcastically. “Smart. You don’t pay ’em one day, they take yer cab. After payin’ them regular for five months. Buy another drink.”

Palangio slowly picked up his glass and let the whisky slide down his throat in a smooth amber stream. “Don’t talk like that, Geary,” he said. “I don’t want to hear nothin’ about taxicabs. I am busy drinkin’ with friends.”

“You dumb Wop,” Geary said.

“That is no way to talk,” Elias said, going over to Geary purposefully. He cocked his right hand and squinted at Geary. Geary backed off, his hands up. “I don’t like to hear people call my friend a dumb Wop,” Elias said.

“Get back,” Geary shouted, “before I brain yuh.”

Pinky ran up excitably. “Lissen, boys,” he screamed, “do you want I should lose my license?”

“We are all friends,” Palangio said. “Shake hands. Everybody shake hands. Everybody have a drink. I hereby treat everybody to a drink.”

Elias lumbered back to Palangio’s side. “I am sorry if I made a commotion. Some people can’t talk like gentlemen.”

“Everybody have a drink,” Palangio insisted.

Elias took out three dollar bills and laid them deliberately on the bar. “Pass the bottle around. This is on Elias Pinsker.”

“Put yer money away, Elias.” Geary pushed his cap around on his head with anger. “Who yuh think yuh are? Walter Chrysler?”

“The entertainment this afternoon is on me,” Elias said inexorably. “There was a time I would stand drinks for twenty-five men. With a laugh, an’ pass cigars out after it. Pass the bottle around, Pinky!”

The whisky flowed.

“Elias and me,” Palangio said. “We are high class spenders.”

“You guys oughta be fed by hand,” Geary said. “Wards of the guvment.”

“A man is entitled to some relaxation,” Elias said. “Where’s that bottle?”

“This is nice,” Palangio said. “This is very nice.”

“This is like the good old days,” Elias said.

“I hate to go home.” Palangio sighed. “I ain’t even got a radio home.”

“Pinky!” Elias called. “Turn on the radio for Angelo Palangio.”

“One room,” Palangio said. “As big as a toilet. That is where I live.”

The radio played. It was soft and sweet and a rich male voice sang “I Married an Angel.”

“When I get home,” Elias remembered, “Annie will kill a pedigreed pigeon for supper. My lousy wife. An’ after supper I push the hack five more hours and I go home and Annie yells some more and I get up tomorrow and push the hack some more.” He poured himself another drink. “That is a life for a dog,” he said. “For a Airedale.”

“In Italy,” Palangio said, “they got donkeys don’t work as hard as us.”

“If the donkeys were as bad off as you,” Geary yelled, “they’d have sense enough to organize.”

“I want to be a executive at a desk.” Elias leaned both elbows on the bar and held his chin in his huge gnarled hands. “A long distance away from Brownsville. Wit’ two thousand pigeons. In California. An’ I should be a bachelor. Geary, can yuh organize that? Hey, Geary?”

“You’re a workin’ man,” Geary said, “an’ you’re goin’ to be a workin’ man all yer life.”

“Geary,” Elias said. “You red bastidd, Geary.”

“All my life,” Palangio wept, “I am goin’ to push a hack up an’ down Brooklyn, fifteen, sixteen hours a day an’ pay th’ Company forever an’ go home and sleep in a room no bigger’n a toilet. Without a radio. Jesus!”

“We are victims of circumstance,” Elias said.

“All my life,” Palangio cried, “tied to that crate!”

Elias pounded the bar once with his fist. “Th’ hell with it! Palangio!” he said. “Get into that goddamn wagon of yours.”

“What do yuh want me to do?” Palangio asked in wonder.

“We’ll fix ’em,” Elias shouted. “We’ll fix those hacks. We’ll fix that Company! Get into yer cab, Angelo. I’ll drive mine, we’ll have a chicken fight.”

“You drunken slobs!” Geary yelled. “Yuh can’t do that!”

“Yeah,” Palangio said eagerly, thinking it over. “Yeah. We’ll show ’em. Two dollars and seventy-fi’ cents a day for life. Yeah. We’ll fix ’em. Come on, Elias!”

Elias and Palangio walked gravely out to their cars. Everybody else followed them.

“Look what they’re doin’!” Geary screamed. “Not a brain between the both of them! What good’ll it do to ruin the cabs?”

“Shut up,” Elias said, getting into his cab. “We oughta done this five months ago. Hey, Angelo,” he called, leaning out of his cab. “Are yuh ready? Hey, Il Doochay!”

“Contact!” Angelo shouted, starting his motor. “Boom! Boom!”

The two cars spurted at each other, in second, head-on. As they hit, glass broke and a fender flew off and the cars skidded wildly and the metal noise echoed and re-echoed like artillery fire off the buildings.

Elias stuck his head out of his cab. “Are yuh hurt?” he called. “Hey, Il Doochay!”

“Contact!” Palangio called from behind his broken windshield. “The Dawn Patrol!”

“I can’t watch this,” Geary moaned. “Two workin’ men.” He went back into Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill.

The two cabs slammed together again and people came running from all directions.

“How’re yuh?” Elias asked, wiping the blood off his face.

“Onward!” Palangio stuck his hand out in salute. “Sons of Italy!”

Again and again the cabs tore into each other.

“Knights of the Round Table,” Palangio announced.

“Knights of Lammanawitz’s Round Table,” Elias agreed, pulling at the choke to get the wheezing motor to turn over once more.

For the last time they came together. Both cars flew off the ground at the impact and Elias’s toppled on its side and slid with a harsh grating noise to the curb. One of the front wheels from Palangio’s cab rolled calmly and decisively toward Pitkin Avenue. Elias crawled out of his cab before anyone could reach him. He stood up, swaying, covered with blood, pulling at loose ends of his torn sweater. He shook hands soberly with Palangio and looked around him with satisfaction at the torn fenders and broken glass and scattered headlights and twisted steel. “Th’ lousy Company,” he said. “That does it. I am now goin’ to inform ’em of th’ accident.”

He and Palangio entered the Bar and Grill, followed by a hundred men, women, and children. Elias dialed the number deliberately.

“Hullo,” he said, “hullo, Charlie? Lissen, Charlie, if yuh send a wreckin’ car down to Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill, yuh will find two of yer automobiles. Yuh lousy Charlie.” He hung up carefully.

“All right, Palangio,” he said.

“Yuh bet,” Palangio answered.

“Now we oughta go to the movies,” Elias said.

“That’s right,” Palangio nodded seriously.

“Yuh oughta be shot,” Geary shouted.

“They’re playin’ Simone Simon,” Elias announced to the crowd. “Let’s go see Simone Simon.”

Walking steadily, arm in arm, like two gentlemen, Elias and Angelo Palangio went down the street, through the lengthening shadows, toward Simone Simon.

Luck be a lady

by Maggie Estep

Kensington

(Originally published in 2004)

Harry Sparrow’d had a run of luck so rotten you could smell it three blocks away. Harry felt like everywhere he set foot folks gave him the twice over and then some. Even doing hump things like his laundry and shopping. Used to be Old Elsa at the Laundorama on Caton Avenue always had a kind word for him, even sometimes let him use the special dryer at the end free of charge. Nowadays Elsa acted like Harry had Ebola. Lousy way to go. Blood pouring out of your eyes and mouth. Harry didn’t like blood much. Or he guessed he didn’t. He’d somehow made it through a lot of years living on the left side of the law without coming close to blood. Probably because Harry never carried a weapon. You took a fall with a weapon, it was Armed Robbery. Harry kept it to Breaking and Entering. He’d only ever done a little time. Jail not prison. Harry wanted to keep it that way.

Harry’s luck took a turn for the better one night when he least expected it. The day had been lousy. The mercury hitting a hundred and staying there even though it was barely May. Harry hadn’t wanted to be cooped up in his room that stank of baroque spices from his landlady Mrs. Desuj’s cooking. So Harry had taken the F train to the A train to Aqueduct Racetrack to meet McCormick, a sometimes associate who swore he had a live tip from an apprentice jockey. McCormick was a small man who wore the same navy three-piece suit every day of the week. He had a history of mental illness and Harry took everything he said with a grain of salt. But Harry knew that sometimes McCormick’s tips were live. So he kept an open mind about it. He tucked a C note in his sock and two twenties in the money clip given him by Susan, the last girl he’d dated. Susan had been arrested for forgery shortly after moving into Harry’s room with him. Harry couldn’t say he’d been sorry to see her go. She was pretty and fond of having sex in public places. Thing was, she had a mean streak. Even that would have been okay, but it was unpredictable. Harry would ask Susan to pass the sugar and she would snap. Start shouting at Harry and kicking him in the shins.

Harry and McCormick were at the rail in time for the first race. Harry glanced at the program. He was familiar with several of the horses running. He played a straight two dollar trifecta with an 18-1 shot over a 10-1 with the favorite to show. Miraculously, with just a sixteenth of a mile to go, the three horses in Harry’s trifecta were running in the order he’d bet them. Harry felt the whole world opening up for him. The sky was wide and beautiful. Two strides shy of the wire, the second place horse stuck her nose in front of the 18-1 shot, ruining Harry’s trifecta. Harry felt sick and headed home, leaving McCormick behind to chat up a floozy brunette with a skin condition.

On the train ride home, two kids got on with a boom box blaring an old Grandmaster Flash song. Harry had seen these kids before. They had a good act. People liked to give them money. The taller of the kids sat the boombox down in the middle of the floor as the shorter one started dancing like Michael Jackson. The kid could dance. Everyone on the train could see it. Then the bigger kid got in on it. He moved well too. He did a few somersaults and a standing back flip. He picked up the smaller kid, twirled him above his head, and miscalculated. There was a horrible sound as the smaller kid’s head smashed against the ceiling of the train. At first the tall kid tried to pretend everything was okay. But the smaller kid was just lying there on the floor. There was a nurse on the train car. She examined the small kid. Told him not to move. Harry knew a bad day was getting worse. Even when the kid eventually sat up and seemed okay. It was a day full of bad things.

So it was with some surprise that at 11:53 that night Harry Sparrow realized his luck had turned. At 10:15 he had walked down 17th Street. He was wearing dark clothing and noiseless rubber-soled shoes. He carried a black briefcase. He passed by the house he’d been eyeing and noted that the front stoop light was on but the rest of the brownstone was in darkness as it had been for many nights. He’d been careful in staking this place out. Had gotten an inside scoop from the maid who had once dated a friend of Harry’s uncle. The Millers were upstate at their summer place for two weeks and they did not have an alarm. Harry approached from the backyard. The windows were locked. He put tape on the window then discretely cracked it. He reached his arm in, undid the window lock, and climbed in.

He didn’t know much about the layout of the place. Only that the master bedroom was on the second floor, the safe behind an oil painting of a landscape. Jewelry and savings bonds in the safe. The Millers did not trust banks. They were the children of Holocaust survivors. Or so the maid had told the friend of Harry’s uncle. Maybe it was wrong to rob the children of Holocaust survivors, but Harry’s uncle had mentioned the Millers were unkind to their pet cat. Harry liked animals.

Harry had trained himself to see in the dark. He had a tiny beautiful flashlight in his briefcase, but so far he hadn’t run into the kind of darkness he couldn’t see through. Harry now made his way to the central staircase and went upstairs.

Harry had a big surprise waiting for him when he set foot in the master bedroom. It was a lavish bedroom. There was velvet and brocade. The ceilings soared and wore their 19th-century moldings intact. At the center of the room was an immense antique sleigh bed. On the bed sat a small woman with a gun. Just sitting in the dark like that with a gun. She was pointing the gun at Harry. Harry didn’t like guns but he knew a little about them. He thought this one looked like a Raven .25.

“Hello, you must be the burglar,” the girl said.

“Harry Sparrow, nice to meet you,” Harry said. What else was he going to say? She was wildly attractive and she had a gun.

“We’re in a quandary, aren’t we?” the girl asked. She smiled. She had cute teeth. She also had very long brown hair and a face like a fox. She was petite but looked like she had some strength in her. Maybe she’d taken gymnastics as a child. Maybe even gone semi-pro with the gymnastics but wasn’t quite good enough for the big leagues. Had enrolled in college studying some subject her heart wasn’t really in. Her heart had been in the gymnastics. So there was a little bitterness there for one so young. But she could have been thirty. It was hard to tell. After college, she drifted a little. Now she was the house sitter for the Millers. Maybe the nanny? But the kids weren’t here. Maybe she was pet sitting for the abused cat.

“A quandary. Yup,” Harry said. Harry couldn’t quite figure it. What made her wildly attractive. She was dressed in a pair of baggy navy gym shorts and a white tank top. She was close to flatchested and her legs were short, albeit shapely. Mostly it had to do with her face and what was in her eyes. Mischief was in her eyes.

“Are you the house sitter?”

“Something like that,” she said. Smiled a little, showing off the cute teeth.

“You’re not what I expected,” she added.

“You were expecting me?”

“I heard the window cracking downstairs. My pa’s house got broke into once when I was ten. Same thing. The burglar cracked the glass. Pretty quiet about it, but I have overdeveloped auditory and visual senses. Always been that way. Some folks say it’s a gift, but like all gifts it’s a curse. I hear too much and I can’t bear bright light.”

She looked so tired when she said it. She was tired of hearing too much. Tired of the light hurting her eyes.

“Lucky I have my friend,” she said, indicating the gun with her chin.

“I wish you’d stop pointing that at me, I don’t like guns.”

“An outlaw who doesn’t like guns. You’re a man of many faces, Harry Sparrow.”

He liked the way she used his name.

“I don’t believe in violence,” Harry said.

“Ah yes, but the twenty-thousand-dollar question is, do you believe in love, Harry Sparrow?”

“You haven’t told me your name,” Harry said.

“Rebecca Church,” the girl said.

Keeping an eye on the Raven .25, Harry sat down at the edge of the bed. He began asking the girl questions about herself. He asked did she like gymnastics.

“I hate sports,” she said.

Harry said that sports were often detestable.

Rebecca was sitting cross-legged now. Her gym shorts were loose and Harry found himself staring at the place where gym short separated from inner thigh. Rebecca was not wearing underwear. Harry knew it couldn’t be wise to stare at an armed girl’s privates, but the more he struggled not to, the more he stared.

“You’re staring,” Rebecca said. Though she’d been resting the gun on her knee, she now picked it up and pointed it at Harry again. She made no effort to close her legs.

The gun was too close to Harry. It made him see double. It made his heart bump against his ribs. He reached over and touched Rebecca’s cheek. Her eyes became smaller. He then ran one finger from her left knee up to her inner thigh. He let his finger rest there just where the gym shorts ended. The gun was inches from Harry’s head. He put his mouth where his finger was resting. He repeatedly kissed that spot of thigh. He closed his eyes.

Harry Sparrow had always had a keen sense of self-preservation. That was all gone now. He started biting into Rebecca’s upper thigh. He wanted to transplant himself inside of her.

Harry finally stopped biting the thigh, reached his fingers under the elastic waist of the gym shorts, and pulled them down to her knees. Rebecca kept holding the gun even as Harry yanked the tank top over her head. Harry let out a moan as he looked at her small body. The pubic hair a little unruly. It made Harry love her slightly, right then and there.

Rebecca rested the gun on her belly and moaned. Eventually, Harry reached for the gun. He got hold of it before Rebecca realized what was what. He didn’t point it at her. Just held it.

“Get up,” Harry said. All he wanted was to swallow her. Instead, he dressed her. She let him, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Harry retrieved her hairbrush from the bathroom and brushed her hair. She pouted. She put one hand down the front of her gym shorts and sucked the thumb of her other hand. Harry gave her the gun back.

Later on that night, Harry Sparrow learned that Rebecca Church was indeed the house sitter for the Millers. The Millers were friends of her second cousin Jim. Rebecca had been drifting from sublet to sublet since hitting town six months earlier. She’d been glad for a nice place to stay, but then found she didn’t like the Millers. They’d seemed fine when she’d briefly met them the day they left on their trip, but once Rebecca had been in their house twenty-four hours, she disliked the Millers intensely. She disliked their magazines and their clothes that she saw hanging in their closets. The children’s rooms were all wrong, decorated in banal pastels, as if all kids were supposed to like pastel. No kids Rebecca knew liked pastel.

By the time Harry Sparrow came to burglarize the place, Rebecca actively hated the Millers. Harry she liked. She didn’t have second thoughts about helping Harry clean the place out.

“What about your cousin? Isn’t this going to reflect badly on him?”

“I barely know him,” Rebecca said, leaving it at that.

When Harry had a little trouble with the safe, Rebecca came and put her ear to it. She could hear things Harry could never hear. She could hear strangers’ heartbeats on the subway. She could hear the small sounds insects made. She helped Harry get the safe open.

Once Harry had taken the jewelry and bonds and put them into the bag he’d had folded in his briefcase, Rebecca went to find Sally, the cat. She hadn’t heard about the Millers’s alleged cruelty to animals the way Harry had, but the food they had left for Sally contained by-products. Rebecca strongly disapproved of by-products so she decided to take the cat. As they left the house by the front door, Rebecca not even bothering to lock it behind her, Harry glanced at his watch. It was 11:53 p.m. on May 2 and Harry Sparrow’s luck had turned.

Rebecca came with Harry to his furnished room in the attic of the Desuj’s house on Friel Place. It was a stubby street just a few blocks from Prospect Park, but worlds away from some of the more upscale neighborhoods that hugged the park’s perimeter. Humble frame houses were jammed together like teeth. The houses’ inhabitants were working-class people from India, the Dominican Republic, and Guyana. Harry himself was from New Jersey. But no one minded.

“It’s small,” Rebecca said, after entering Harry’s dismal attic room. She immediately turned off the lights and closed the lone window in spite of the thick heat.

“I’ve had a run of bad luck,” Harry shrugged. He watched Rebecca make Sally the cat comfortable by offering her some of the nutritionally correct food they’d purchased in Park Slope. Once the cat started eating, Rebecca looked at Harry. She smiled a little and took off her tank top. Harry stared. She put her finger between her legs and stood there looking at Harry. Harry wondered if Mrs. Desuj was going to mind about the cat. He knew Indian people didn’t think highly of cats. Cows were another story of course.

“How come you have a gun?” Harry asked Rebecca.

“I like to shoot things,” Rebecca said.

This worried Harry a little but they could discuss it later. Rebecca came closer and put her hand down the front of Harry’s trousers. Then she made a purring sound and kissed him. Harry looked at her lovely mischievous face and decided that not only had his luck changed, but he was now the luckiest man alive.

Harry had to do a lot of explaining and even break out the book of penal codes given him by a jailhouse lawyer, but he did finally convince Rebecca to leave the gun at home when they went out on jobs. Rebecca was attached to her gun even though she swore she’d only ever shot cans with it.

Harry and Rebecca worked well together. Rebecca could see in the dark even better than Harry and she was aces at the listening part of safe-cracking. Also, Harry knew that Rebecca was his luck.

It was a very lucrative month for Harry Sparrow and Rebecca Church. By September, they’d rented a nice two-bedroom down the block on the other side of Friel Place. The apartment had a tiny patch of backyard where Rebecca hung wind chimes and Sally the cat sunned herself.

By October, Rebecca got a little crazy. Oftentimes she didn’t want to have sex with Harry because it was noisy. Harry bought her earplugs but she could still hear internal noise. Her sensitivity to light became acute and she wore Ray Charles — style glasses morning, noon, and even night. The world was too bright for her.

Harry Sparrow started feeling low.

December came. Friel Place was festive with holiday lights and plastic Santas. Even the Indian families had gotten fancy with lawn and window ornaments.

Harry and Rebecca started planning holiday-season burglaries. Harry felt it would bring them close again, maybe even temper Rebecca’s hypersensitivities.

Harry and Rebecca staked out a slew of houses in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace. Christmas would be their big day. They had their sights on a lovely brownstone in Windsor Terrace. The occupants were obviously away. Newspapers and mail spilled from the box, and when early snow came, the walk went unshoveled. There was one light showing from the second floor but it was always on. The people were definitely away. Harry knew the place would be alarmed so he went for a brush-up course with Mac the Alarm Guy.

Harry and Rebecca set out in broad daylight on Christmas morning. It was a cold, overcast day and the streets were sleepy. Harry quickly picked the back door open. The alarm whined, threatening to start its full song unless someone disabled it pronto. The sound made Rebecca crouch to the floor and cup her hands over her ears. Harry left her crouching like that as he let his nose lead him to the alarm. He deactivated it in just a few seconds, mentally thanked Mac the Alarm Guy, and went back to find Rebecca. She wasn’t there though. And somewhere upstairs there was music playing. Very soft piano music. Maybe it was French. There hadn’t been music playing a few moments earlier. Had Rebecca gone upstairs and started playing records? She usually didn’t want any music. It was all too brash for her ears. Even some of the soft country ballads and Chopin Nocturnes that Harry liked. But maybe she’d lost it so completely she was playing records on the job.

Suddenly, Harry had to take a leak. This was unusual. Harry had trained himself never to need to evacuate on a job. Some burglars liked that kind of thing. Taking people’s stuff and pissing in their toilets too. Harry found this distasteful but he had to go pretty badly. He found a bathroom. He tried to pee. It wasn’t coming though. He stood there with his johnson dangling. He thought about Rebecca. He thought about her fox face and her gymnast body and how for the first thirty-five days they had had sex at least three times a day and thereafter almost never. Because her ears got so bad. Harry was feeling a mix of frustrations. And he still couldn’t pee. He wanted to call out to Rebecca to explain what the hold up was, but that would mean raising his voice, and Rebecca wouldn’t like that.

Must have been twenty minutes that Harry stood there before giving up on peeing. He was in pain as he went upstairs to look for Rebecca. He had pain from not peeing and pain from Rebecca. But Rebecca Church was his luck and he went to find her.

What Harry saw up there in the high-ceilinged room at the top of the stairs was bewildering. There was trash everywhere. Spent containers of takeout food littered every surface. The furniture beneath the litter was expensive-looking but neglected. There were stains, dust bunnies, and even a pool of vomit. There was one hall light on and it dimly lit the scene. A man was sitting hunched in front of a big black piano, playing very softly. Rebecca was lying under the piano. Harry closed his eyes to put the hallucination away. When he looked again, it was all still there.

Harry wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring. Rebecca eventually noticed him. She yawned and smiled. When the man stopped playing, she introduced him to Harry. His name, it seemed, was Bernard. His dark hair hung over his eyes. Harry couldn’t see what kind of look Bernard was giving him.

“I’m going to stay, Harry,” Rebecca said, after making introductions.

“What do you mean, stay?”

“Stay here, with Bernard.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Harry heard his voice go up a notch. He sounded hysterical.

Rebecca said that Bernard played music so softly she could listen to it. And that’s all she’d ever wanted. Harry had no idea that’s what she’d wanted or he’d have tried to give it to her. But now it looked like it was too late. In the time it had taken Harry to try to pee in Bernard’s toilet, Rebecca had evidently forged some sort of intimate relationship with the man. She clearly meant it. She was going to stay. Harry didn’t know how long she’d stay or what Bernard thought about any of it, but Rebecca, Harry knew, always got her way. Bernard didn’t look the type to protest anything, especially not Rebecca.

Rebecca was smiling as she told Harry how Bernard had a disease that gave him pain in his fingers. He’d been a concert pianist until the disease came when he turned forty. Now he stayed in his house eating from takeout containers and playing softly.

Bernard looked at Harry blankly as Rebecca reported all this. Harry wanted to bash his skull in.

When Harry showed no sign of leaving, Rebecca produced a gun from an ankle holster hidden below her pants. That got Harry mad. She had sworn she wouldn’t bring the gun. She had broken a promise. Harry believed in keeping promises.

Harry said nothing more to Rebecca. He turned, leaving her and her gun with the dirty piano-playing lunatic.

Harry went home. He figured that was it. Back to the bad luck.

Five days later, Harry ran into McCormick. McCormick had a tip on a horse in the fourth, did Harry want to come to the track? It was cold and the sky was angry and Harry knew he would lose. But he went. Harry wanted to sit out the first race. Maiden three-year-olds going five and a half furlongs. Might as well pick numbers out of a hat, it was that unpredictable.

“Come on, Harry, what’s got into you?” McCormick was egging him on.

Harry rolled his eyes, then looked from his program to the muscled and shining horses in the paddock. He picked out a trifecta. He went crazy. Put a 30-1 over a 6–1 over a 17-1. Miraculously, with less than a sixteenth of a mile to go, the three horses in Harry’s trifecta were running in the order he’d bet them. He knew something would go wrong, though, so he looked away. Just walked away from the rail, leaving the crowd to gasp at a dramatic finish.

Harry’s horses had come in. In the right order. The tri paid over ten thousand dollars. Harry had to go to the IRS window and have his picture taken and have his winnings reported to the government. That made him nervous, but the money was nice.

Most important, though, Harry realized his luck was still good. Rebecca Church had given him luck and let him keep it.

Harry Sparrow went home and fed Sally the cat. Rebecca hadn’t even come back for the cat. But that was okay. Harry liked animals.

Part II

Cops & robers

By the dawn’s early light

by Lawrence Block

Sunset Park

(Originally published in 1984)

All this happened a long time ago.

Abe Beame was living in Gracie Mansion, though even he seemed to have trouble believing he was really the mayor of the city of New York. Ali was in his prime, and the Knicks still had a year or so left in Bradley and DeBusschere. I was still drinking in those days, of course, and at the time it seemed to be doing more for me than it was doing to me.

I had already left my wife and kids, my home in Syosset and the NYPD. I was living in the hotel on West Fifty-seventh Street where I still live, and I was doing most of my drinking around the comer in Jimmy Armstrong’s saloon. Billie was the nighttime bartender. A Filipino youth named Dennis was behind the stick most days.

And Tommy Tillary was one of the regulars.

He was big, probably 6’2”, full in the chest, big in the belly, too. He rarely showed up in a suit but always wore a jacket and tie, usually a navy or burgundy blazer with gray-flannel slacks or white duck pants in warmer weather. He had a loud voice that boomed from his barrel chest and a big, clean-shaven face that was innocent around the pouting mouth and knowing around the eyes. He was somewhere in his late forties and he drank a lot of top-shelf scotch. Chivas, as I remember it, but it could have been Johnnie Black. Whatever it was, his face was beginning to show it, with patches of permanent flush at the cheekbones and a tracery of broken capillaries across the bridge of the nose.

We were saloon friends. We didn’t speak every time we ran into each other, but at the least we always acknowledged each other with a nod or a wave. He told a lot of dialect jokes and told them reasonably well, and I laughed at my share of them. Sometimes I was in a mood to reminisce about my days on the force, and when my stories were funny, his laugh was as loud as anyone’s.

Sometimes he showed up alone, sometimes with male friends. About a third of the time, he was in the company of a short and curvy blonde named Carolyn. “Carolyn from the Caro-line” was the way he occasionally introduced her, and she did have a faint Southern accent that became more pronounced as the drink got to her.

Then, one morning, I picked up the Daily News and read that burglars had broken into a house on Colonial Road, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. They had stabbed to death the only occupant present, one Margaret Tillary. Her husband, Thomas J. Tillary, a salesman, was not at home at the time.

I hadn’t known Tommy was a salesman or that he’d had a wife. He did wear a wide yellow-gold band on the appropriate finger, and it was clear that he wasn’t married to Carolyn from the Caroline, and it now looked as though he was a widower. I felt vaguely sorry for him, vaguely sorry for the wife I’d never even known of, but that was the extent of it. I drank enough back then to avoid feeling any emotion very strongly.

And then, two or three nights later, I walked into Armstrong’s and there was Carolyn. She didn’t appear to be waiting for him or anyone else, nor did she look as though she’d just breezed in a few minutes ago. She had a stool by herself at the bar and she was drinking something dark from a lowball glass.

I took a seat a few stools down from her. I ordered two double shots of bourbon, drank one and poured the other into the black coffee Billie brought me. I was sipping the coffee when a voice with a Piedmont softness said, “I forget your name.”

I looked up.

“I believe we were introduced,” she said, “but I don’t recall your name.”

“It’s Matt,” I said, “and you’re right, Tommy introduced us. You’re Carolyn.”

“Carolyn Cheatham. Have you seen him?”

“Tommy? Not since it happened.”

“Neither have I. Were you-all at the funeral?”

“No. When was it?”

“This afternoon. Neither was I. There. Whyn’t you come sit next to me so’s I don’t have to shout. Please?”

She was drinking a sweet almond liqueur that she took on the rocks. It tastes like dessert, but it’s as strong as whiskey.

“He told me not to come,” she said. “To the funeral. He said it was a matter of respect for the dead.” She picked up her glass and stared into it. I’ve never known what people hope to see there, though it’s a gesture I’ve performed often enough myself.

“Respect,” she said. “What’s he care about respect? I would have just been part of the office crowd; we both work at Tannahill; far as anyone there knows, we’re just friends. And all we ever were is friends, you know.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Oh, shit,” she said. “I don’t mean I wasn’t fucking him, for the Lord’s sake. I mean it was just laughs and good times. He was married and he went home to Mama every night and that was jes’ fine, because who in her right mind’d want Tommy Tillary around by the dawn’s early light? Christ in the foothills, did I spill this or drink it?”

We agreed she was drinking them a little too fast. It was this fancy New York sweet-drink shit, she maintained, not like the bourbon she’d grown up on. You knew where you stood with bourbon.

I told her I was a bourbon drinker myself, and it pleased her to learn this. Alliances have been forged on thinner bonds than that, and ours served to propel us out of Armstrong’s, with a stop down the block for a fifth of Maker’s Mark — her choice — and a four-block walk to her apartment. There were exposed brick walls, I remember, and candles stuck in straw-wrapped bottles, and several travel posters from Sabena, the Belgian airline.

We did what grown-ups do when they find themselves alone together. We drank our fair share of the Maker’s Mark and went to bed. She made a lot of enthusiastic noises and more than a few skillful moves, and afterward she cried some.

A little later, she dropped off to sleep. I was tired myself, but I put on my clothes and sent myself home. Because who in her right mind’d want Matt Scudder around by the dawn’s early light?

Over the next couple of days, I wondered every time I entered Armstrong’s if I’d run into her, and each time I was more relieved than disappointed when I didn’t. I didn’t en-counter Tommy, either, and that, too, was a relief and in no sense disappointing.

Then, one morning, I picked up the News and read that they’d arrested a pair of young Hispanics from Sunset Park for the Tillary burglary and homicide. The paper ran the usual photo — two skinny kids, their hair unruly, one of them trying to hide his face from the camera, the other smirking defiantly, and each of them handcuffed to a broad-shouldered, grim-faced Irishman in a suit. You didn’t need the careful caption to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, I went over to Armstrong’s for a hamburger and drank a beer with it. The phone behind the bar rang and Dennis put down the glass he was wiping and answered it. “He was here a minute ago,” he said. “I’ll see if he stepped out.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked quizzically at me. “Are you still here?” he asked. “Or did you slip away while my attention was diverted?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Tommy Tillary.”

You never know what a woman will decide to tell a man or how a man will react to it. I didn’t want to find out, but I was better off learning over the phone than face-to-face. I nodded and took the phone from Dennis.

I said, “Matt Scudder, Tommy. I was sorry to hear about your wife.”

“Thanks, Matt. Jesus, it feels like it happened a year ago. It was what, a week?”

“At least they got the bastards.”

There was a pause. Then he said, “Jesus. You haven’t seen a paper, huh?”

“That’s where I read about it. Two Spanish kids.”

“You didn’t happen to see this afternoon’s Post.”

“No. Why, what happened? They turn out to be clean?”

“The two spics. Clean? Shit, they’re about as clean as the room in the Times Square subway station. The cops hit their place and found stuff from my house everywhere they looked. Jewelry they had descriptions of, a stereo that I gave them the serial number, everything. Monogrammed shit. I mean, that’s how clean they were, for Christ’s sake.”

“So?”

“They admitted the burglary but not the murder.”

“That’s common, Tommy.”

“Lemme finish, huh? They admitted the burglary, but according to them it was a put-up job. According to them, I hired them to hit my place. They could keep whatever they got and I’d have everything out and arranged for them, and in return I got to clean up on the insurance by overreporting the loss.”

“What did the loss amount to?”

“Shit, I don’t know. There were twice as many things turned up in their apartment as I ever listed when I made out a report. There’s things I missed a few days after I filed the report and others I didn’t know were gone until the cops found them. You don’t notice everything right away, at least I didn’t, and on top of it, how could I think straight with Peg dead? You know?”

“It hardly sounds like an insurance setup.”

“No, of course it wasn’t. How the hell could it be? All I had was a standard homeowner’s policy. It covered maybe a third of what I lost. According to them, the place was empty when they hit it. Peg was out.”

“And?”

“And I set them up. They hit the place, they carted everything away, and I came home with Peg and stabbed her six, eight times, whatever it was, and left her there so it’d look like it happened in a burglary.”

“How could the burglars testify that you stabbed your wife?”

“They couldn’t. All they said was they didn’t and she wasn’t home when they were there, and that I hired them to do the burglary. The cops pieced the rest of it together.”

“What did they do, take you downtown?”

“No. They came over to the house, it was early, I don’t know what time. It was the first I knew that the spics were arrested, let alone that they were trying to do a job on me. They just wanted to talk, the cops, and at first I talked to them, and then I started to get the drift of what they were trying to put on to me. So I said I wasn’t saying anything more without my lawyer present, and I called him, and he left half his breakfast on the table and came over in a hurry, and he wouldn’t let me say a word.”

“And the cops didn’t take you in or book you?”

“No.”

“Did they buy your story?”

“No way. I didn’t really tell ’em a story, because Kaplan wouldn’t let me say anything. They didn’t drag me in, because they don’t have a case yet, but Kaplan says they’re gonna be building one if they can. They told me not to leave town. You believe it? My wife’s dead, the Post headline says, ‘Quiz Husband in Burglary Murder,’ and what the hell do they think I’m gonna do? Am I going fishing for fucking trout in Montana? ‘Don’t leave town.’ You see this shit on television, you think nobody in real life talks this way. Maybe television’s where they get it from.”

I waited for him to tell me what he wanted from me. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Why I called,” he said, “is Kaplan wants to hire a detective. He figured maybe these guys talked around the neighborhood, maybe they bragged to their friends, maybe there’s a way to prove they did the killing. He says the cops won’t concentrate on that end if they’re too busy nailing the lid shut on me.”

I explained that I didn’t have any official standing, that I had no license and filed no reports.

“That’s okay,” he insisted. “I told Kaplan what I want is somebody I can trust, somebody who’ll do the job for me. I don’t think they’re gonna have any kind of a case at all, Matt, but the longer this drags on, the worse it is for me. I want it cleared up, I want it in the papers that these Spanish assholes did it all and I had nothing to do with anything. You name a fair fee and I’ll pay it, me to you, and it can be cash in your hand if you don’t like checks. What do you say?”

He wanted somebody he could trust. Had Carolyn from the Caroline told him how trustworthy I was?

What did I say? I said yes.

I met Tommy Tillary and his lawyer in Drew Kaplan’s office on Court Street, a few blocks from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. There was a Syrian restaurant next door and, at the corner, a grocery store specializing in Middle Eastern imports stood next to an antique shop overflowing with stripped-oak furniture and brass lamps and bedsteads. Kaplan’s office ran to wood paneling and leather chairs and oak file cabinets. His name and the names of two partners were painted on the frosted-glass door in old-fashioned gold-and-black lettering. Kaplan himself looked conservatively up to date, with a three-piece striped suit that was better cut than mine. Tommy wore his burgundy blazer and gray-flannel trousers and loafers. Strain showed at the corners of his blue eyes and around his mouth. His complexion was off, too.

“All we want you to do,” Kaplan said, “is find a key in one of their pants pockets, Herrera’s or Cruz’s, and trace it to a locker in Penn Station, and in the locker there’s a footlong knife with their prints and her blood on it.”

“Is that what it’s going to take?”

He smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt. No, actually, we’re not in such bad shape. They got some shaky testimony from a pair of Latins who’ve been in and out of trouble since they got weaned to Tropicana. They got what looks to them like a good motive on Tommy’s part.”

“Which is?”

I was looking at Tommy when I asked. His eyes slipped away from mine. Kaplan said, “A marital triangle, a case of the shorts and a strong money motive. Margaret Tillary inherited a little over a quarter of a million dollars six or eight months ago. An aunt left a million two and it got cut up four ways. What they don’t bother to notice is he loved his wife, and how many husbands cheat? What is it they say — ninety percent cheat and ten percent lie?”

“That’s good odds.”

“One of the killers, Angel Herrera, did some odd jobs at the Tillary house last March or April. Spring cleaning; he hauled stuff out of the basement and attic, a little donkeywork. According to Herrera, that’s how Tommy knew him to contact him about the burglary. According to common sense, that’s how Herrera and his buddy Cruz knew the house and what was in it and how to gain access.”

“The case against Tommy sounds pretty thin.”

“It is,” Kaplan said. “The thing is, you go to court with something like this and you lose even if you win. For the rest of your life, everybody remembers you stood trial for murdering your wife, never mind that you won an acquittal.

“Besides,” he said, “you never know which way a jury’s going to jump. Tommy’s alibi is he was with another lady at the time of the burglary. The woman’s a colleague; they could see it as completely aboveboard, but who says they’re going to? What they sometimes do, they decide they don’t believe the alibi because it’s his girlfriend lying for him, and at the same time they label him a scumbag for screwing around while his wife’s getting killed.”

“You keep it up,” Tommy said, “I’ll find myself guilty, the way you make it sound.”

“Plus he’s hard to get a sympathetic jury for. He’s a big handsome guy, a sharp dresser, and you’d love him in a gin joint, but how much do you love him in a courtroom? He’s a securities salesman, he’s beautiful on the phone, and that means every clown who ever lost a hundred dollars on a stock tip or bought magazines over the phone is going to walk into the courtroom with a hard-on for him. I’m telling you, I want to stay the hell out of court. I’ll win in court, I know that, or the worst that’ll happen is I’ll win on appeal, but who needs it? This is a case that shouldn’t be in the first place, and I’d love to clear it up before they even go so far as presenting a bill to the grand jury.”

“So from me you want—”

“Whatever you can find, Matt. Whatever discredits Cruz and Herrera. I don’t know what’s there to be found, but you were a cop and now you’re private, and you can get down in the streets and nose around.”

I nodded. I could do that. “One thing,” I said. “Wouldn’t you be better off with a Spanish-speaking detective? I know enough to buy a beer in a bodega, but I’m a long way from fluent.”

Kaplan shook his head. “A personal relationship’s worth more than a dime’s worth of ‘Me llamo Matteo y ¿como está usted?’”

“That’s the truth,” Tommy Tillary said. “Matt, I know I can count on you.”

I wanted to tell him all he could count on was his fingers. I didn’t really see what I could expect to uncover that wouldn’t turn up in a regular police investigation. But I’d spent enough time carrying a shield to know not to push away money when somebody wants to give it to you. I felt comfortable taking a fee. The man was inheriting a quarter of a million, plus whatever insurance his wife had carried. If he was willing to spread some of it around, I was willing to take it.

So I went to Sunset Park and spent some time in the streets and some more time in the bars. Sunset Park is in Brooklyn, of course, on the borough’s western edge, above Bay Ridge and south and west of Greenwood Cemetery. These days, there’s a lot of brownstoning going on there, with young urban professionals renovating the old houses and gentrifying the neighborhood. Back then, the upwardly mobile young had not yet discovered Sunset Park, and the area was a mix of Latins and Scandinavians, most of the former Puerto Ricans, most of the latter Norwegians. The balance was gradually shifting from Europe to the islands, from light to dark, but this was a process that had been going on for ages and there was nothing hurried about it.

I talked to Herrera’s landlord and Cruz’s former employer and one of his recent girlfriends. I drank beer in bars and the back rooms of bodegas. I went to the local station house, I read the sheets on both of the burglars and drank coffee with the cops and picked up some of the stuff that doesn’t get on the yellow sheets.

I found out that Miguelito Cruz had once killed a man in a tavern brawl over a woman. There were no charges pressed; a dozen witnesses reported that the dead man had gone after Cruz first with a broken bottle. Cruz had most likely been carrying the knife, but several witnesses insisted it had been tossed to him by an anonymous benefactor, and there hadn’t been enough evidence to make a case of weapons possession, let alone homicide.

I learned that Herrera had three children living with their mother in Puerto Rico. He was divorced but wouldn’t marry his current girlfriend because he regarded himself as married to his ex-wife in the eyes of God. He sent money to his children when he had any to send.

I learned other things. They didn’t seem terribly consequential then and they’ve faded from memory altogether now, but I wrote them down in my pocket notebook as I learned them, and every day or so I duly reported my findings to Drew Kaplan. He always seemed pleased with what I told him.

I invariably managed a stop at Armstrong’s before I called it a night. One night she was there, Carolyn Cheatham, drinking bourbon this time, her face frozen with stubborn old pain. It took her a blink or two to recognize me. Then tears started to form in the corners of her eyes, and she used the back of one hand to wipe them away.

I didn’t approach her until she beckoned. She patted the stool beside hers and I eased myself onto it. I had coffee with bourbon in it and bought a refill for her. She was pretty drunk already, but that’s never been enough reason to turn down a drink.

She talked about Tommy. He was being nice to her, she said. Calling up, sending flowers. But he wouldn’t see her, because it wouldn’t look right, not for a new widower, not for a man who’d been publicly accused of murder.

“He sends flowers with no card enclosed,” she said. “He calls me from pay phones. The son of a bitch.”

Billie called me aside. “I didn’t want to put her out,” he said, “a nice woman like that, shit-faced as she is. But I thought I was gonna have to. You’ll see she gets home?”

I said I would.

I got her out of there and a cab came along and saved us the walk. At her place, I took the keys from her and unlocked the door. She half sat, half sprawled on the couch. I had to use the bathroom, and when I came back, her eyes were closed and she was snoring lightly.

I got her coat and shoes off, put her to bed, loosened her clothing, and covered her with a blanket. I was tired from all that and sat down on the couch for a minute, and I almost dozed off myself. Then I snapped awake and let myself out.

I went back to Sunset Park the next day. I learned that Cruz had been in trouble as a youth. With a gang of neighborhood kids, he used to go into the city and cruise Greenwich Village, looking for homosexuals to beat up. He’d had a dread of homosexuality, probably flowing as it generally does out of fear of a part of himself, and he stifled that dread by fag-bashing.

“He still doan’ like them,” a woman told me. She had glossy black hair and opaque eyes, and she was letting me pay for her rum and orange juice. “He’s pretty, you know, an’ they come on to him, an’ he doan’ like it.”

I called that item in, along with a few others equally earthshaking. I bought myself a steak dinner at the Slate over on Tenth Avenue, then finished up at Armstrong’s, not drinking very hard, just coasting along on bourbon and coffee.

Twice, the phone rang for me. Once, it was Tommy Tillary, telling me how much he appreciated what I was doing for him. It seemed to me that all I was doing was taking his money, but he had me believing that my loyalty and invaluable assistance were all he had to cling to.

The second call was from Carolyn. More praise. I was a gentleman, she assured me, and a hell of a fellow all around. And I should forget that she’d been bad-mouthing Tommy. Everything was going to be fine with them.

I took the next day off. I think I went to a movie, and it may have been The Sting, with Newman and Redford achieving vengeance through swindling.

The day after that, I did another tour of duty over in Brooklyn. And the day after that, I picked up the News first thing in the morning. The headline was nonspecific, something like kill suspect hangs self in cell, but I knew it was my case before I turned to the story on page three.

Miguelito Cruz had torn his clothing into strips, knotted the strips together, stood his iron bedstead on its side, climbed onto it, looped his homemade rope around an overhead pipe, and jumped off the up-ended bedstead and into the next world.

That evening’s six o’clock TV news had the rest of the story. Informed of his friend’s death, Angel Herrera had recanted his original story and admitted that he and Cruz had conceived and executed the Tillary burglary on their own. It had been Miguelito who had stabbed the Tillary woman when she walked in on them. He’d picked up a kitchen knife while Herrera watched in horror. Miguelito always had a short temper, Herrera said, but they were friends, even cousins, and they had hatched their story to protect Miguelito. But now that he was dead, Herrera could admit what had really happened.

I was in Armstrong’s that night, which was not remarkable. I had it in mind to get drunk, though I could not have told you why, and that was remarkable, if not unheard of. I got drunk a lot those days, but I rarely set out with that intention. I just wanted to feel a little better, a little more mellow, and somewhere along the way I’d wind up waxed.

I wasn’t drinking particularly hard or fast, but I was working at it, and then somewhere around ten or eleven the door opened and I knew who it was before I turned around. Tommy Tillary, well dressed and freshly barbered, making his first appearance in Jimmy’s place since his wife was killed.

“Hey, look who’s here!” he called out and grinned that big grin. People rushed over to shake his hand. Billie was behind the stick, and he’d no sooner set one up on the house for our hero than Tommy insisted on buying a round for the bar. It was an expensive gesture — there must have been thirty or forty people in there — but I don’t think he cared if there were three hundred or four hundred.

I stayed where I was, letting the others mob him, but he worked his way over to me and got an arm around my shoulders. “This is the man,” he announced. “Best fucking detective ever wore out a pair of shoes. This man’s money,” he told Billie, “is no good at all tonight. He can’t buy a drink; he can’t buy a cup of coffee; if you went and put in pay toilets since I was last here, he can’t use his own dime.”

“The john’s still free,” Billie said, “but don’t give the boss any ideas.”

“Oh, don’t tell me he didn’t already think of it,” Tommy said. “Matt, my boy, I love you. I was in a tight spot, I didn’t want to walk out of my house, and you came through for me.”

What the hell had I done? I hadn’t hanged Miguelito Cruz or coaxed a confession out of Angel Herrera. I hadn’t even set eyes on either man. But he was buying the drinks, and I had a thirst, so who was I to argue?

I don’t know how long we stayed there. Curiously, my drinking slowed down even as Tommy’s picked up speed. Carolyn, I noticed, was not present, nor did her name find its way into the conversation. I wondered if she would walk in — it was, after all, her neighborhood bar, and she was apt to drop in on her own. I wondered what would happen if she did.

I guess there were a lot of things I wondered about, and perhaps that’s what put the brakes on my own drinking. I didn’t want any gaps in my memory, any gray patches in my awareness.

After a while, Tommy was hustling me out of Armstrong’s. “This is celebration time,” he told me. “We don’t want to sit in one place till we grow roots. We want to bop a little.”

He had a car, and I just went along with him without paying too much attention to exactly where we were. We went to a noisy Greek club on the East Side, I think, where the waiters looked like Mob hit men. We went to a couple of trendy singles joints. We wound up somewhere in the Village, in a dark, beery cave.

It was quiet there, and conversation was possible, and I found myself asking him what I’d done that was so praiseworthy. One man had killed himself and another had confessed, and where was my role in either incident?

“The stuff you came up with,” he said.

“What stuff? I should have brought back fingernail parings, you could have had someone work voodoo on them.”

“About Cruz and the fairies.”

“He was up for murder. He didn’t kill himself because he was afraid they’d get him for fag-bashing when he was a juvenile offender.”

Tommy took a sip of scotch. He said, “Couple days ago, huge black guy comes up to Cruz in the chow line. ‘Wait’ll you get up to Green Haven,’ he tells him. ‘Every blood there’s gonna have you for a girlfriend. Doctor gonna have to cut you a brand-new asshole, time you get outa there.’”

I didn’t say anything.

“Kaplan,” he said. “Drew talked to somebody who talked to somebody, and that did it. Cruz took a good look at playin’ drop the soap for half the jigs in captivity, next thing you know, the murderous little bastard was on air. And good riddance to him.”

I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I worked on it while Tommy went to the bar for another round. I hadn’t touched the drink in front of me, but I let him buy for both of us.

When he got back, I said, “Herrera.”

“Changed his story. Made a full confession.”

“And pinned the killing on Cruz.”

“Why not? Cruz wasn’t around to complain. Who knows which one of ’em did it, and for that matter, who cares? The thing is, you gave us the lever.”

“For Cruz,” I said. “To get him to kill himself.”

“And for Herrera. Those kids of his in Santurce. Drew spoke to Herrera’s lawyer and Herrera’s lawyer spoke to Herrera, and the message was, ‘Look, you’re going up for burglary whatever you do, and probably for murder; but if you tell the right story, you’ll draw shorter time, and on top of that, that nice Mr. Tillary’s gonna let bygones be bygones and every month there’s a nice check for your wife and kiddies back home in Puerto Rico.’”

At the bar, a couple of old men were reliving the Louis-Schmeling fight, the second one, where Louis punished the German champion. One of the old fellows was throwing roundhouse punches in the air, demonstrating.

I said, “Who killed your wife?”

“One or the other of them. If I had to bet, I’d say Cruz. He had those little beady eyes; you looked at him up close and you got that he was a killer.”

“When did you look at him up close?”

“When they came and cleaned the house, the basement, and the attic. Not when they came and cleaned me out; that was the second time.”

He smiled, but I kept looking at him until the smile lost its certainty. “That was Herrera who helped around the house,” I said. “You never met Cruz.”

“Cruz came along, gave him a hand.”

“You never mentioned that before.”

“Oh, sure I did, Matt. What difference does it make, anyway.”

“Who killed her, Tommy?”

“Hey, let it alone, huh?”

“Answer the question.”

“I already answered it.”

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

“What are you, crazy? Cruz killed her and Herrera swore to it, isn’t that enough for you?”

“Tell me you didn’t kill her.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Tell me again.”

“I didn’t fucking kill her. What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. He closed his eyes, put his head in his hands. He sighed and looked up and said, “You know, it’s a funny thing with me. Over the telephone, I’m the best salesman you could ever imagine. I swear I could sell sand to the Arabs, I could sell ice in the winter, but face-to-face I’m no good at all. Why do you figure that is?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know. I used to think it was my face, the eyes and the mouth; I don’t know. It’s easy over the phone. I’m talking to a stranger, I don’t know who he is or what he looks like, and he’s not lookin’ at me, and it’s a cinch. Face-to-face, especially with someone I know, it’s a different story.” He looked at me. “If we were doin’ this over the phone, you’d buy the whole thing.”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s fucking certain. Word for word, you’d buy the package. Suppose I was to tell you I did kill her, Matt. You couldn’t prove anything. Look, the both of us walked in there, the place was a mess from the burglary, we got in an argument, tempers flared, something happened.”

“You set up the burglary. You planned the whole thing, just the way Cruz and Herrera accused you of doing. And now you wriggled out of it.”

“And you helped me — don’t forget that part of it.”

“I won’t.”

“And I wouldn’t have gone away for it anyway, Matt. Not a chance. I’da beat it in court, only this way I don’t have to go to court. Look, this is just the booze talkin’, and we can forget it in the morning, right? I didn’t kill her, you didn’t accuse me, we’re still buddies, everything’s fine. Right?”

Blackouts are never there when you want them. I woke up the next day and remembered all of it, and I found myself wishing I didn’t. He’d killed his wife and he was getting away with it. And I’d helped him. I’d taken his money, and in return I’d shown him how to set one man up for suicide and pressure another into making a false confession.

And what was I going to do about it?

I couldn’t think of a thing. Any story I carried to the police would be speedily denied by Tommy and his lawyer, and all I had was the thinnest of hearsay evidence, my own client’s own words when he and I both had a skinful of booze. I went over it for a few days, looking for ways to shake something loose, and there was nothing. I could maybe interest a newspaper reporter, maybe get Tommy some press coverage that wouldn’t make him happy, but why? And to what purpose?

It rankled. But I would just have a couple of drinks, and then it wouldn’t rankle so much.

Angel Herrera pleaded guilty to burglary, and in return, the Brooklyn D.A.’s Office dropped all homicide charges. He went Upstate to serve five to ten.

And then I got a call in the middle of the night. I’d been sleeping a couple of hours, but the phone woke me and I groped for it. It took me a minute to recognize the voice on the other end.

It was Carolyn Cheatham.

“I had to call you,” she said, “on account of you’re a bourbon man and a gentleman. I owed it to you to call you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“He ditched me,” she said, “and he got me fired out of Tannahill and Company so he won’t have to look at me around the office. Once he didn’t need me to back up his story, he let go of me, and do you know he did it over the phone?”

“Carolyn—”

“It’s all in the note,” she said. “I’m leaving a note.”

“Look, don’t do anything yet,” I said. I was out of bed, fumbling for my clothes. “I’ll be right over. We’ll talk about it.”

“You can’t stop me, Matt.”

“I won’t try to stop you. We’ll talk first, and then you can do anything you want.”

The phone clicked in my ear.

I threw my clothes on, rushed over there, hoping it would be pills, something that took its time. I broke a small pane of glass in the downstairs door and let myself in, then used an old credit card to slip the bolt of her spring lock.

The room smelled of cordite. She was on the couch she’d passed out on the last time I saw her. The gun was still in her hand, limp at her side, and there was a black-rimmed hole in her temple.

There was a note, too. An empty bottle of Maker’s Mark stood on the coffee table, an empty glass beside it. The booze showed in her handwriting and in the sullen phrasing of the suicide note.

I read the note. I stood there for a few minutes, not for very long, and then I got a dish towel from the Pullman kitchen and wiped the bottle and the glass. I took another matching glass, rinsed it out and wiped it, and put it in the drainboard of the sink.

I stuffed the note in my pocket. I took the gun from her fingers, checked routinely for a pulse, then wrapped a sofa pillow around the gun to muffle its report. I fired one round into her chest, another into her open mouth.

I dropped the gun into a pocket and left.

They found the gun in Tommy Tillary’s house, stuffed between the cushions of the living-room sofa, clean of prints inside and out. Ballistics got a perfect match. I’d aimed for soft tissue with the round shot into her chest, because bullets can fragment on impact with bone. That was one reason I’d fired the extra shots. The other was to rule out the possibility of suicide.

After the story made the papers, I picked up the phone and called Drew Kaplan. “I don’t understand it,” I said. “He was free and clear; why the hell did he kill the girl?”

“Ask him yourself,” Kaplan said. He did not sound happy. “You want my opinion, he’s a lunatic. I honestly didn’t think he was. I figured maybe he killed his wife, maybe he didn’t. Not my job to try him. But I didn’t figure he was a homicidal maniac.”

“It’s certain he killed the girl?”

“Not much question. The gun’s pretty strong evidence. Talk about finding somebody with the smoking pistol in his hand, here it was in Tommy’s couch. The idiot.”

“Funny he kept it.”

“Maybe he had other people he wanted to shoot. Go figure a crazy man. No, the gun’s evidence, and there was a phone tip — a man called in the shooting, reported a man running out of there, and gave a description that fitted Tommy pretty well. Even had him wearing that red blazer he wears, tacky thing makes him look like an usher at the Paramount.”

“It sounds tough to square.”

“Well, somebody else’ll have to try to do it,” Kaplan said. “I told him I can’t defend him this time. What it amounts to, I wash my hands of him.”

I thought of that when I read that Angel Herrera got out just the other day. He served all ten years because he was as good at getting into trouble inside the walls as he’d been on the outside.

Somebody killed Tommy Tillary with a homemade knife after he’d served two years and three months of a manslaughter stretch. I wondered at the time if that was Herrera getting even, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. Maybe the checks stopped going to Santurce and Herrera took it the wrong way. Or maybe Tommy said the wrong thing to somebody else and said it face-to-face instead of over the phone.

I don’t think I’d do it that way now. I don’t drink anymore and the impulse to play God seems to have evaporated with the booze.

But then, a lot of things have changed. Billie left Armstrong’s not long after that, left New York, too; the last I heard, he was off drink himself, living in Sausalito and making candles. I ran into Dennis the other day in a bookstore on lower Fifth Avenue full of odd volumes on yoga and spiritualism and holistic healing. And Armstrong’s is scheduled to close the end of next month. The lease is up for renewal, and I suppose the next you know, the old joint’ll be another Korean fruit market.

I still light a candle now and then for Carolyn Cheatham and Miguelito Cruz. Not often. Just every once in a while.

The best-friend murder

by Donald E. Westlake

Park Slope

(Originally published in 1959)

Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct chewed on his pencil and glowered at the report he’d just written. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like it at all. It just didn’t feel right, and the more he thought about it the stronger the feeling became.

Levine was a short and stocky man, baggily-dressed from plain pipe racks. His face was sensitive, topped by salt-and-pepper gray hair chopped short in a military crewcut. At fifty-three, he had twenty-four years of duty on the police force, and was halfway through the heart-attack age range, a fact that had been bothering him for some time now. Every time he was reminded of death, he thought worriedly about the aging heart pumping away inside his chest.

And in his job, the reminders of death came often. Natural death, accidental death, and violent death.

This one was a violent death, and to Levine it felt wrong somewhere. He and his partner, Jack Crawley, had taken the call just after lunch. It was from one of the patrolmen in Prospect Park, a patrolman named Tanner. A man giving his name as Larry Perkins had walked up to Tanner in the park and announced that he had just poisoned his best friend. Tanner went with him, found a dead body in the apartment Perkins had led him to, and called in. Levine and Crawley, having just walked into the station after lunch, were given the call. They turned around and walked back out again.

Crawley drove their car, an unmarked ’56 Chevy, while Levine sat beside him and worried about death. At least this would be one of the neat ones. No knives or bombs or broken beer bottles. Just poison, that was all. The victim would look as though he were sleeping, unless it had been one of those poisons causing muscle spasms before death. But it would still be neater than a knife or a bomb or a broken beer bottle, and the victim wouldn’t look quite so completely dead.

Crawley drove leisurely, without the siren. He was a big man in his forties, somewhat overweight, square-faced and heavy jowled, and he looked meaner than he actually was. The Chevy tooled up Eighth Avenue, the late spring sun shining on its hood. They were headed for an address on Garfield Place, the block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West. They had to circle the block, because Garfield was a one-way street. That particular block on Garfield Place is a double row of chipped brownstones, the street running down between two rows of high stone stoops, the buildings cut and chopped inside into thousands of apartments, crannies and cubbyholes, niches and box-like caves, where the subway riders sleep at night. The subway to Manhattan is six blocks away, up at Grand Army Plaza, across the way from the main library.

At one p.m. on this Wednesday in late May, the sidewalks were deserted, the buildings had the look of long abandoned dwellings. Only the cars parked along the left side of the street indicated present occupancy.

The number they wanted was in the middle of the block, on the right-hand side. There was no parking allowed on that side, so there was room directly in front of the address for Crawley to stop the Chevy. He flipped the sun visor down, with the official business card showing through the windshield, and followed Levine across the sidewalk and down the two steps to the basement door, under the stoop. The door was propped open with a battered garbage can. Levine and Crawley walked inside. It was dim in there, after the bright sunlight, and it took Levine’s eyes a few seconds to get used to the change. Then he made out the figures of two men standing at the other end of the hallway, in front of a closed door. One was the patrolman, Tanner, young, just over six foot, with a square and impersonal face. The other was Larry Perkins.

Levine and Crawley moved down the hallway to the two men waiting for them. In the seven years they had been partners, they had established a division of labor that satisfied them both. Crawley asked the questions, and Levine listened to the answers. Now, Crawley introduced himself to Tanner, who said, “This is Larry Perkins of 294 Fourth Street.”

“Body in there?” asked Crawley, pointing at the closed door.

“Yes, sir,” said Tanner.

“Let’s go inside,” said Crawley. “You keep an eye on the pigeon. See he doesn’t fly away.”

“I’ve got some stuff to go to the library,” said Perkins suddenly. His voice was young and soft.

They stared at him. Crawley said, “It’ll keep.”

Levine looked at Perkins, trying to get to know him. It was a technique he used, most of it unconsciously. First, he tried to fit Perkins into a type or category, some sort of general stereotype. Then he would look for small and individual ways in which Perkins differed from the general type, and he would probably wind up with a surprisingly complete mental picture, which would also be surprisingly accurate.

The general stereotype was easy. Perkins, in his black wool sweater and belt-in-the-back khakis and scuffed brown loafers without socks, was “arty.” What were they calling them this year? They were “hip” last year, but this year they were “beat.” That was it. For a general stereotype, Larry Perkins was a beatnik. The individual differences would show up soon, in Perkins’s talk and mannerisms and attitudes.

Crawley said again, “Let’s go inside,” and the four of them trooped into the room where the corpse lay.

The apartment was one large room, plus a closet-size kitchenette and an even smaller bathroom. A Murphy bed stood open, covered with zebra-striped material. The rest of the furniture consisted of a battered dresser, a couple of armchairs and lamps, and a record player sitting on a table beside a huge stack of longplaying records. Everything except the record player looked faded and worn and second-hand, including the thin maroon rug on the floor and the soiled flower-pattern wallpaper. Two windows looked out on a narrow cement enclosure and the back of another brownstone. It was a sunny day outside, but no sun managed to get down into this room.

In the middle of the room stood a card table, with a typewriter and two stacks of paper on it. Before the card table was a folding chair, and in the chair sat the dead man. He was slumped forward, his arms flung out and crumpling the stacks of paper, his head resting on the typewriter. His face was turned toward the door, and his eyes were closed, his facial muscles relaxed. It had been a peaceful death, at least, and Levine was grateful for that.

Crawley looked at the body, grunted, and turned to Perkins. “Okay,” he said. “Tell us about it.”

“I put the poison in his beer,” said Perkins simply. He didn’t talk like a beatnik at any rate. “He asked me to open a can of beer for him. When I poured it into a glass, I put the poison in, too. When he was dead, I went and talked to the patrolman here.”

“And that’s all there was to it?”

“That’s all.”

Levine asked, “Why did you kill him?”

Perkins looked over at Levine. “Because he was a pompous ass.”

“Look at me,” Crawley told him.

Perkins immediately looked away from Levine, but before he did so, Levine caught a flicker of emotion in the boy’s eyes, what emotion he couldn’t tell. Levine glanced around the room, at the faded furniture and the card table and the body, and at young Perkins, dressed like a beatnik but talking like the politest of polite young men, outwardly calm but hiding some strong emotion inside his eyes. What was it Levine had seen there? Terror? Rage? Or pleading?

“Tell us about this guy,” said Crawley, motioning at the body. “His name, where you knew him from, the whole thing.”

“His name is Al Gruber. He got out of the Army about eight months ago. He’s living on his savings and the GI Bill. I mean, he was.”

“He was a college student?”

“More or less. He was taking a few courses at Columbia, nights. He wasn’t a full-time student.”

Crawley said, “What was he, full-time?”

Perkins shrugged. “Not much of anything. A writer. An undiscovered writer. Like me.”

Levine asked, “Did he make much money from his writing?”

“None,” said Perkins. This time he didn’t turn to look at Levine, but kept watching Crawley while he answered. “He got something accepted by one of the quarterlies once,” he said, “but I don’t think they ever published it. And they don’t pay anything anyway.”

“So he was broke?” asked Crawley.

“Very broke. I know the feeling well.”

“You in the same boat?”

“Same life story completely,” said Perkins. He glanced at the body of Al Gruber and said, “Well, almost. I write, too. And I don’t get any money for it. And I’m living on the GI Bill and savings and a few home-typing jobs, and going to Columbia nights.”

People came into the room then, the medical examiner and the boys from the lab, and Levine and Crawley, bracketing Perkins between them, waited and watched for a while. When they could see that the M.E. had completed his first examination, they left Perkins in Tanner’s charge and went over to talk to him.

Crawley, as usual, asked the questions. “Hi, Doc,” he said. “What’s it look like to you?”

“Pretty straightforward case,” said the M.E. “On the surface, anyway. Our man here was poisoned, felt the effects coming on, went to the typewriter to tell us who’d done it to him, and died. A used glass and a small medicine bottle were on the dresser. We’ll check them out, but they almost certainly did the job.”

“Did he manage to do any typing before he died?” asked Crawley.

The M.E. shook his head. “Not a word. The paper was in the machine kind of crooked, as though he’d been in a hurry, but he just wasn’t fast enough.”

“He wasted his time,” said Crawley. “The guy confessed right away.”

“The one over there with the patrolman?”

“Uh huh.”

“Seems odd, doesn’t it?” said the M.E. “Take the trouble to poison someone, and then run out and confess to the first cop you see.”

Crawley shrugged. “You can never figure,” he said.

“I’ll get the report to you soon’s I can,” said the M.E.

“Thanks, Doc. Come on, Abe, let’s take our pigeon to his nest.”

“Okay,” said Levine, abstractedly. Already it felt wrong. It had been feeling wrong, vaguely, ever since he’d caught that glimpse of something in Perkins’s eyes. And the feeling of wrongness was getting stronger by the minute, without getting any clearer.

They walked back to Tanner and Perkins, and Crawley said, “Okay, Perkins, let’s go for a ride.”

They walked back to Tanner.

“You’re going to book me?” asked Perkins. He sounded oddly eager.

“Just come along,” said Crawley. He didn’t believe in answering extraneous questions.

“All right,” said Perkins. He turned to Tanner. “Would you mind taking my books and records back to the library? They’re due today. They’re the ones on that chair. And there’s a couple more over in the stack of Al’s records.”

“Sure,” said Tanner. He was gazing at Perkins with a troubled look on his face, and Levine wondered if Tanner felt the same wrongness that was plaguing him.

“Let’s go,” said Crawley impatiently, and Perkins moved toward the door.

“I’ll be right along,” said Levine. As Crawley and Perkins left the apartment, Levine glanced at the titles of the books and record albums Perkins had wanted returned to the library. Two of the books were collections of Elizabethan plays, one was the New Arts Writing Annual, and the other two were books on criminology. The records were mainly folk songs, of the bloodier type.

Levine frowned and went over to Tanner. He asked, “What were you and Perkins talking about before we got here?”

Tanner’s face was still creased in a puzzled frown. “The stupidity of the criminal mind,” he said. “There’s something goofy here, Lieutenant.”

“You may be right,” Levine told him. He walked on down the hall and joined the other two at the door.

All three got into the front seat of the Chevy, Crawley driving again and Perkins sitting in the middle. They rode in silence, Crawley busy driving, Perkins studying the complex array of the dashboard, with its extra knobs and switches and the mike hooked beneath the radio, and Levine trying to figure out what was wrong.

At the station, after booking, they brought him to a small office, one of the interrogation rooms. There was a bare and battered desk, plus four chairs. Crawley sat behind the desk, Perkins sat across the desk and facing him, Levine took the chair in a corner behind and to the left of Perkins, and a male stenographer, notebook in hand, filled the fourth chair, behind Crawley.

Crawley’s first questions covered the same ground already covered at Gruber’s apartment, this time for the record. “Okay,” said Crawley, when he’d brought them up to date. “You and Gruber were both doing the same kind of thing, living the same kind of life. You were both unpublished writers, both taking night courses at Columbia, both living on very little money.”

“That’s right,” said Perkins.

“How long you known each other?”

“About six months. We met at Columbia, and we took the same subway home after class. We got to talking, found out we were both dreaming the same kind of dream, and became friends. You know. Misery loves company.”

“Take the same classes at Columbia?”

“Only one. Creative Writing, from Professor Stonegell.”

“Where’d you buy the poison?”

“I didn’t. Al did. He bought it a while back and just kept it around. He kept saying if he didn’t make a good sale soon he’d kill himself. But he didn’t mean it. It was just a kind of gag.”

Crawley pulled at his right earlobe. Levine knew, from his long experience with his partner, that that gesture meant that Crawley was confused. “You went there today to kill him?”

“That’s right.”

Levine shook his head. That wasn’t right. Softly, he said, “Why did you bring the library books along?”

“I was on my way up to the library,” said Perkins, twisting around in his seat to look at Levine.

“Look this way,” snapped Crawley.

Perkins looked around at Crawley again, but not before Levine had seen that same burning deep in Perkins’s eyes. Stronger, this time, and more like pleading. Pleading? What was Perkins pleading for?

“I was on my way to the library,” Perkins said again. “Al had a couple of records out on my card, so I went over to get them. On the way, I decided to kill him.”

“Why?” asked Crawley.

“Because he was a pompous ass,” said Perkins, the same answer he’d given before.

“Because he got a story accepted by one of the literary magazines and you didn’t?” suggested Crawley.

“Maybe. Partially. His whole attitude. He was smug. He knew more than anybody else in the world.”

“Why did you kill him today? Why not last week or next week?”

“I felt like it today.”

“Why did you give yourself up?”

“You would have gotten me anyway.”

Levine asked, “Did you know that before you killed him?”

“I don’t know,” said Perkins, without looking around at Levine. “I didn’t think about it till afterward. Then I knew the police would get me anyway — they’d talk to Professor Stonegell and the other people who knew us both and I didn’t want to have to wait it out. So I went and confessed.”

“You told the policeman,” said Levine, “that you’d killed your best friend.”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you use that phrase, best friend, if you hated him so much you wanted to kill him?”

“He was my best friend. At least, in New York. I didn’t really know anyone else, except Professor Stonegell. Al was my best friend because he was just about my only friend.”

“Are you sorry you killed him?” asked Levine.

This time, Perkins twisted around in the chair again, ignoring Crawley. “No, sir,” he said, and his eyes now were blank.

There was silence in the room, and Crawley and Levine looked at one another. Crawley questioned with his eyes, and Levine shrugged, shaking his head. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. And Perkins was being so helpful that he wound up being no help at all.

Crawley turned to the stenographer. “Type it up formal,” he said. “And have somebody come take the pigeon to his nest.”

After the stenographer had left, Levine said, “Anything you want to say off the record, Perkins?”

Perkins grinned. His face was half-turned away from Crawley, and he was looking at the floor, as though he was amused by something he saw there. “Off the record?” he murmured. “As long as there are two of you in here, it’s on the record.”

“Do you want one of us to leave?”

Perkins looked up at Levine again, and stopped smiling. He seemed to think it over for a minute, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Thanks, anyway. But I don’t think I have anything more to say. Not right now anyway.”

Levine frowned and sat back in his chair, studying Perkins. The boy didn’t ring true; he was constructed of too many contradictions. Levine reached out for a mental image of Perkins, but all he touched was air.

After Perkins was led out of the room by two uniformed cops, Crawley got to his feet, stretched, sighed, scratched, pulled his earlobe, and said, “What do you make of it, Abe?”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know that. I saw it in your face. But he confessed, so what else is there?”

“The phony confession is not exactly unheard of, you know.”

“Not this time,” said Crawley. “A guy confesses to a crime he didn’t commit for one of two reasons. Either he’s a crackpot who wants the publicity or to be punished or something like that, or he’s protecting somebody else. Perkins doesn’t read like a crackpot to me, and there’s nobody else involved for him to be protecting.”

“In a capital punishment state,” suggested Levine, “a guy might confess to a murder he didn’t commit so the state would do his suicide for him.”

Crawley shook his head. “That still doesn’t look like Perkins,” he said.

“Nothing looks like Perkins. He’s given us a blank wall to stare at. A couple of times it started to slip, and there was something else inside.”

“Don’t build a big thing, Abe. The kid confessed. He’s the killer; let it go at that.”

“The job’s finished, I know that. But it still bothers me.”

“Okay,” said Crawley. He sat down behind the desk again and put his feet up on the scarred desk top. “Let’s straighten it out. Where does it bother you?”

“All over. Number one, motivation. You don’t kill a man for being a pompous ass. Not when you turn around a minute later and say he was your best friend.”

“People do funny things when they’re pushed far enough. Even to friends.”

“Sure. Okay, number two. The murder method. It doesn’t sound right. When a man kills impulsively, he grabs something and starts swinging. When he calms down, he goes and turns himself in. But when you poison somebody, you’re using a pretty sneaky method. It doesn’t make sense for you to run out and call a cop right after using poison. It isn’t the same kind of mentality.”

“He used the poison,” said Crawley, “because it was handy. Gruber bought it, probably had it sitting on his dresser or something, and Perkins just picked it up on impulse and poured it into the beer.”

“That’s another thing,” said Levine. “Do you drink much beer out of cans?”

Crawley grinned. “You know I do.”

“I saw some empty beer cans sitting around the apartment, so that’s where Gruber got his last beer from.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“When you drink a can of beer, do you pour the beer out of the can into a glass, or do you just drink it straight from the can?”

“I drink it out of the can. But not everybody does.”

“I know, I know. Okay, what about the library books? If you’re going to kill somebody, are you going to bring library books along?”

“It was an impulse killing. He didn’t know he was going to do it until he got there.”

Levine got his feet. “That’s the hell of it,” he said. “You can explain away every single question in this business. But it’s such a simple case. Why should there be so many questions that need explaining away?”

Crawley shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “All I know is, we’ve got a confession, and that’s enough to satisfy me.”

“Not me,” said Levine. “I think I’ll go poke around and see what happens. Want to come along?”

“Somebody’s going to have to hand the pen to Perkins when he signs his confession,” said Crawley.

“Mind if I take off for a while?”

“Go ahead. Have a big time,” said Crawley, grinning at him. “Play detective.”

Levine’s first stop was back at Gruber’s address. Gruber’s apartment was empty now, having been sifted completely through normal routine procedure. Levine went down to the basement door under the stoop, but he didn’t go back to Gruber’s door. He stopped at the front apartment instead, where a ragged-edged strip of paper attached with peeling scotch tape to the door read, in awkward and childish lettering, superintendent. Levine rapped and waited. After a minute, the door opened a couple of inches, held by a chain. A round face peered out at him from a height of a little over five feet. The face said, “Who you looking for?”

“Police,” Levine told him. He opened his wallet and held it up for the face to look at.

“Oh,” said the face. “Sure thing.” The door shut, and Levine waited while the chain was clinked free, and then the door opened wide.

The super was a short and round man, dressed in corduroy trousers and a grease-spotted undershirt. He wheezed, “Come in, come in,” and stood back for Levine to come into his crowded and musty-smelling living room.

Levine said, “I want to talk to you about Al Gruber.”

The super shut the door and waddled into the middle of the room, shaking his head. “Wasn’t that a shame?” he asked. “Al was a nice boy. No money, but a nice boy. Sit down somewhere, anywhere.”

Levine looked around. The room was full of low-slung, heavy, sagging, over-stuffed furniture, armchairs and sofas. He picked the least battered armchair of the lot, and sat on the very edge. Although he was a short man, his knees seemed to be almost up to his chin, and he had the feeling that if he relaxed he’d fall over backwards.

The super trundled across the room and dropped into one of the other armchairs, sinking into it as though he never intended to get to his feet again in his life. “A real shame,” he said again. “And to think I maybe could have stopped it.”

“You could have stopped it? How?”

“It was around noon,” said the super. “I was watching the TV over there, and I heard a voice from the back apartment, shouting, ‘Al! Al!’ So I went out to the hall, but by the time I got there the shouting was all done. So I didn’t know what to do. I waited a minute, and then I came back in and watched the TV again. That was probably when it was happening.”

“There wasn’t any noise while you were in the hall? Just the two shouts before you got out there?”

“That’s all. At first, I thought it was another one of them arguments, and I was gonna bawl out the two of them, but it stopped before I even got the door open.”

“Arguments?”

“Mr. Gruber and Mr. Perkins. They used to argue all the time, shout at each other, carry on like monkeys. The other tenants was always complaining about it. They’d do it late at night sometimes, two or three o’clock in the morning, and the tenants would all start phoning me to complain.”

“What did they argue about?”

The super shrugged his massive shoulders. “Who knows? Names. People. Writers. They both think they’re great writers or something.”

“Did they ever get into a fist fight or anything like that? Ever threaten to kill each other?”

“Naw, they’d just shout at each other and call each other stupid and ignorant and stuff like that. They liked each other, really, I guess. At least they always hung around together. They just loved to argue, that’s all. You know how it is with college kids. I’ve had college kids renting here before, and they’re all like that. They all love to argue. Course, I never had nothing like this happen before.”

“What kind of person was Gruber, exactly?”

The super mulled it over for a while. “Kind of a quiet guy,” he said at last. “Except when he was with Mr. Perkins, I mean. Then he’d shout just as loud and often as anybody. But most of the time he was quiet. And good-mannered. A real surprise, after most of the kids around today. He was always polite, and he’d lend a hand if you needed some help or something, like the time I was carrying a bed up to the third floor front. Mr. Gruber come along and pitched right in with me. He did more of the work than I did.”

“And he was a writer, wasn’t he? At least, he was trying to be a writer.”

“Oh, sure. I’d hear that typewriter of his tappin’ away in there at all hours. And he always carried a notebook around with him, writin’ things down in it. I asked him once what he wrote in there, and he said descriptions, of places like Prospect Park up at the corner, and of the people he knew. He always said he wanted to be a writer like some guy named Wolfe, used to live in Brooklyn too.”

“I see.” Levine struggled out of the armchair. “Thanks for your time,” he said.

“Not at all.” The super waddled after Levine to the door. “Anything I can do,” he said. “Any time at all.”

“Thanks again,” said Levine. He went outside and stood in the hallway, thinking things over, listening to the latch click in place behind him. Then he turned and walked down the hallway to Gruber’s apartment, and knocked on the door.

As he’d expected, a uniformed cop had been left behind to keep an eye on the place for a while, and when he opened the door, Levine showed his identification and said, “I’m on the case. I’d like to take a look around.”

The cop let him in, and Levine looked carefully through Gruber’s personal property. He found the notebooks, finally, in the bottom drawer of the dresser. There were five of them, steno pad size loose-leaf fillers. Four of them were filled with writing, in pen, in a slow and careful hand, and the fifth was still half blank.

Levine carried the notebooks over to the card table, pushed the typewriter out of the way, sat down and began to skim through the books.

He found what he was looking for in the middle of the third one he tried. A description of Larry Perkins, written by the man Perkins had killed. The description, or character study, which it more closely resembled, was four pages long, beginning with a physical description and moving into a discussion of Perkins’s personality. Levine noticed particular sentences in this latter part: “Larry doesn’t want to write, he wants to be a writer, and that isn’t the same thing. He wants the glamour and the fame and the money, and he thinks he’ll get it from being a writer. That’s why he’s dabbled in acting and painting and all the other so-called glamorous professions. Larry and I are both being thwarted by the same thing: neither of us has anything to say worth saying. The difference is, I’m trying to find something to say, and Larry wants to make it on glibness alone. One of these days, he’s going to find out he won’t get anywhere that way. That’s going to be a terrible day for him.”

Levine closed the book, then picked up the last one, the one that hadn’t yet been filled, and leafed through that. One word kept showing up throughout the last notebook. “Nihilism.” Gruber obviously hated the word, and he was also obviously afraid of it. “Nihilism is death,” he wrote on one page. “It is the belief that there are no beliefs, that no effort is worthwhile. How could any writer believe such a thing? Writing is the most positive of acts. So how can it be used for negative purposes? The only expression of nihilism is death, not the written word. If I can say nothing hopeful, I shouldn’t say anything at all.”

Levine put the notebooks back in the dresser drawer finally, thanked the cop, and went out to the Chevy. He’d hoped to be able to fill in the blank spaces in Perkins’s character through Gruber’s notebooks, but Gruber had apparently had just as much trouble defining Perkins as Levine was now having. Levine had learned a lot about the dead man, that he was sincere and intense and self-demanding as only the young can be, but Perkins was still little more than a smooth and blank wall. “Glibness,” Gruber had called it. What was beneath the glibness? A murderer, by Perkins’s own admission. But what else?

Levine crawled wearily into the Chevy and headed for Manhattan.

Professor Harvey Stonegell was in class when Levine got to Columbia University, but the girl at the desk in the dean’s outer office told him that Stonegell would be out of that class in just a few minutes, and would then be free for the rest of the afternoon. She gave him directions to Stonegell’s office, and Levine thanked her.

Stonegell’s office door was locked, so Levine waited in the hall, watching students hurrying by in both directions, and reading the notices of scholarships, grants, and fellowships thumbtacked to the bulletin board near the office door.

The professor showed up about fifteen minutes later, with two students in tow. He was a tall and slender man, with a gaunt face and a full head of gray-white hair. He could have been any age between fifty and seventy. He wore a tweed suit jacket, leather patches at the elbows, and non-matching gray slacks.

Levine said, “Professor Stonegell?”

“Yes?”

Levine introduced himself and showed his identification. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute or two.”

“Of course. I’ll just be a minute.” Stonegell handed a book to one of the two students, telling him to read certain sections of it, and explained to the other student why he hadn’t received a passing grade in his latest assignment. When both of them were taken care of, Levine stepped into Stonegell’s crowded and tiny office, and sat down in the chair beside the desk.

Stonegell said, “Is this about one of my students?”

“Two of them. From your evening writing course. Gruber and Perkins.”

“Those two? They aren’t in trouble, are they?”

“I’m afraid so. Perkins has confessed to murdering Gruber.”

Stonegell’s thin face paled. “Gruber’s dead? Murdered?”

“By Perkins. He turned himself in right after it happened. But, to be honest with you, the whole thing bothers me. It doesn’t make sense. You knew them both. I thought you might be able to tell me something about them, so it would make sense.”

Stonegell lit himself a cigarette and offered one to Levine. Then he fussed rather vaguely with his messy desktop, while Levine waited for him to gather his thoughts.

“This takes some getting used to,” said Stonegell after a minute. “Gruber and Perkins. They were both good students in my class, Gruber perhaps a bit better. And they were friends.”

“I’d heard they were friends.”

“There was a friendly rivalry between them,” said Stonegell. “Whenever one of them started a project, the other one started a similar project, intent on beating the first one at his own game. Actually, that was more Perkins than Gruber. And they always took opposite sides of every question, screamed at each other like sworn enemies. But actually they were very close friends. I can’t understand either one of them murdering the other.”

“Was Gruber similar to Perkins?”

“Did I give that impression? No, they were definitely unalike. The old business about opposites attracting. Gruber was by far the more sensitive and sincere of the two. I don’t mean to imply that Perkins was insensitive or insincere at all. Perkins had his own sensitivity and his own sincerity, but they were almost exclusively directed within himself. He equated everything with himself, his own feelings and his own ambitions. But Gruber had more of the — oh, I don’t know — more of a world-view, to badly translate the German. His sensitivity was directed outward, toward the feelings of other people. It showed up in their writing. Gruber’s forte was characterization, subtle interplay between personalities. Perkins was deft, almost glib, with movement and action and plot, but his characters lacked substance. He wasn’t really interested in anyone but himself.”

“He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d confess to a murder right after he committed it.”

“I know what you mean. That isn’t like him. I don’t imagine Perkins would ever feel remorse or guilt. I should think he would be one of the people who believes the only crime is in being caught.”

“Yet we didn’t catch him. He came to us.” Levine studied the book titles on the shelf behind Stonegell. “What about their mental attitudes recently?” he asked. “Generally speaking, I mean. Were they happy or unhappy, impatient or content or what?”

“I think they were both rather depressed, actually,” said Stonegell. “Though for somewhat different reasons. They had both come out of the Army less than a year ago, and had come to New York to try to make their mark as writers. Gruber was having difficulty with subject matter. We talked about it a few times. He couldn’t find anything he really wanted to write about, nothing he felt strongly enough to give him direction in his writing.”

“And Perkins?”

“He wasn’t particularly worried about writing in that way. He was, as I say, deft and clever in his writing, but it was all too shallow. I think they might have been bad for one another, actually. Perkins could see that Gruber had the depth and sincerity that he lacked, and Gruber thought that Perkins was free from the soul-searching and self-doubt that was hampering him so much. In the last month or so, both of them have talked about dropping out of school, going back home and forgetting about the whole thing. But neither of them could have done that, at least not yet. Gruber couldn’t have, because the desire to write was too strong in him. Perkins couldn’t, because the desire to be a famous writer was too strong.”

“A year seems like a pretty short time to get all that depressed,” said Levine.

Stonegell smiled. “When you’re young,” he said, “a year can be eternity. Patience is an attribute of the old.”

“I suppose you’re right. What about girl friends, other people who knew them both?”

“Well, there was one girl whom both were dating rather steadily. The rivalry again. I don’t think either of them was particularly serious about her, but both of them wanted to take her away from the other one.”

“Do you know this girl’s name?”

“Yes, of course. She was in the same class with Perkins and Gruber. I think I might have her home address here.”

Stonegell opened a small file drawer atop his desk, and looked through it. “Yes, here it is,” he said. “Her name is Anne Marie Stone, and she lives on Grove Street, down in the Village. Here you are.”

Levine accepted the card from Stonegell, copied the name and address onto his pad, and gave the card back. He got to his feet. “Thank you for your trouble,” he said.

“Not at all,” said Stonegell, standing. He extended his hand, and Levine, shaking it, found it bony and almost parchment-thin, but surprisingly strong. “I don’t know if I’ve been much help, though,” he said.

“Neither do I, yet,” said Levine. “I may be just wasting both our time. Perkins confessed, after all.”

“Still—” said Stonegell.

Levine nodded. “I know. That’s what’s got me doing extra work.”

“I’m still thinking of this thing as though — as though it were a story problem, if you know what I mean. It isn’t real yet. Two young students, I’ve taken an interest in both of them, fifty years after the worms get me they’ll still be around — and then you tell me one of them is already wormfood, and the other one is effectively just as dead. It isn’t real to me yet. They won’t be in class tomorrow night, but I still won’t believe it.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Let me know if anything happens, will you?”

“Of course.”

Anne Marie Stone lived in an apartment on the fifth floor of a walk-up on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, a block and a half from Sheridan Square. Levine found himself out of breath by the time he reached the third floor, and he stopped for a minute to get his wind back and to slow the pounding of his heart. There was no sound in the world quite as loud as the beating of his own heart these days, and when that beating grew too rapid or too irregular, Detective Levine felt a kind of panic that twenty-four years as a cop had never been able to produce.

He had to stop again at the fourth floor, and he remembered with envy what a Bostonian friend had told him about a City of Boston regulation that buildings used as residence had to have elevators if they were more than four stories high. Oh, to live in Boston. Or, even better, in Levittown, where there isn’t a building higher than two stories anywhere.

He reached the fifth floor, finally, and knocked on the door of apartment 5B. Rustlings from within culminated in the peephole in the door being opened, and a blue eye peered suspiciously out at him. “Who is it?” asked a muffled voice.

“Police,” said Levine. He dragged out his wallet, and held it high, so the eye in the peephole could read the identification.

“Second,” said the muffled voice, and the peephole closed. A seemingly endless series of rattles and clicks indicated locks being released, and then the door opened, and a short, slender girl, dressed in pink toreador pants, gray bulky sweater and blonde pony tail, motioned to Levine to come in. “Have a seat,” she said, closing the door after him.

“Thank you.” Levine sat in a new-fangled basket chair, as uncomfortable as it looked, and the girl sat in another chair of the same type, facing him. But she managed to look comfortable in the thing.

“Is this something I did?” she asked him. “Jaywalking or something?”

Levine smiled. No matter how innocent, a citizen always presumes himself guilty when the police come calling. “No,” he said. “It concerns two friends of yours, Al Gruber and Larry Perkins.”

“Those two?” The girl seemed calm, though curious, but not at all worried or apprehensive. She was still thinking in terms of something no more serious than jaywalking or a neighbor calling the police to complain about loud noises. “What are they up to?”

“How close are you to them?”

The girl shrugged. “I’ve gone out with both of them, that’s all. We all take courses at Columbia. They’re both nice guys, but there’s nothing serious, you know. Not with either of them.”

“I don’t know how to say this,” said Levine, “except the blunt way. Early this afternoon, Perkins turned himself in and admitted he’d just killed Gruber.”

The girl stared at him. Twice, she opened her mouth to speak, but both times she closed it again. The silence lengthened, and Levine wondered belatedly if the girl had been telling the truth, if perhaps there had been something serious in her relationship with one of the boys after all. Then she blinked and looked away from him, clearing her throat. She stared out the window for a second, then looked back and said, “He’s pulling your leg.”

Levine shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

“Larry’s got a weird sense of humor sometimes,” she said. “It’s a sick joke, that’s all. Al’s still around. You haven’t found the body, have you?”

“I’m afraid we have. He was poisoned, and Perkins admitted he was the one who gave him the poison.”

“That little bottle Al had around the place? That was only a gag.”

“Not anymore.”

She thought about it a minute longer, then shrugged, as though giving up the struggle to either believe or disbelieve. “Why come to me?” she asked him.

“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. Something smells wrong about the case, and I don’t know what. There isn’t any logic to it. I can’t get through to Perkins, and it’s too late to get through to Gruber. But I’ve got to get to know them both, if I’m going to understand what happened.”

“And you want me to tell you about them.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you hear about me? From Larry?”

“No, he didn’t mention you at all. The gentlemanly instinct, I suppose. I talked to your teacher, Professor Stonegell.”

“I see.” She stood up suddenly, in a single rapid and graceless movement, as though she had to make some motion, no matter how meaningless. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Thank you, yes.”

“Come on along. We can talk while I get it ready.”

He followed her through the apartment. A hallway led from the long, narrow living room past bedroom and bathroom to a tiny kitchen. Levine sat down at the kitchen table, and Anne Marie Stone went through the motions of making coffee. As she worked, she talked.

“They’re good friends,” she said. “I mean, they were good friends. You know what I mean. Anyway, they’re a lot different from each other. Oh, golly! I’m getting all loused up in tenses.”

“Talk as though both were still alive,” said Levine. “It should be easier that way.”

“I don’t really believe it anyway,” she said. “Al — he’s a lot quieter than Larry. Kind of intense, you know? He’s got a kind of reversed Messiah complex. You know, he figures he’s supposed to be something great, a great writer, but he’s afraid he doesn’t have the stuff for it. So he worries about himself, and keeps trying to analyze himself, and he hates everything he writes because he doesn’t think it’s good enough for what he’s supposed to be doing. That bottle of poison, that was a gag, you know, just a gag, but it was the kind of joke that has some sort of truth behind it. With this thing driving him like this, I suppose even death begins to look like a good escape after a while.”

She stopped her preparations with the coffee, and stood listening to what she had just said. “Now he did escape, didn’t he? I wonder if he’d thank Larry for taking the decision out of his hands.”

“Do you suppose he asked Larry to take the decision out of his hands?”

She shook her head. “No. In the first place, Al could never ask anyone else to help him fight the thing out in any way. I know, I tried to talk to him a couple of times, but he just couldn’t listen. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to listen, he just couldn’t. He had to figure it out for himself. And Larry isn’t the helpful sort, so Larry would be the last person anybody would go to for help. Not that Larry’s a bad guy, really. He’s just awfully self-centered. They both are, but in different ways. Al’s always worried about himself, but Larry’s always proud of himself. You know. Larry would say, ‘I’m for me first,’ and Al would say, ‘Am I worthy?’ Something like that.”

“Had the two of them had a quarrel or anything recently, anything that you know of that might have prompted Larry to murder?”

“Not that I know of. They’ve both been getting more and more depressed, but neither of them blamed the other. Al blamed himself for not getting anywhere, and Larry blamed the stupidity of the world. You know, Larry wanted the same thing Al did, but Larry didn’t worry about whether he was worthy or capable or anything like that. He once told me he wanted to be a famous writer, and he’d be one if he had to rob banks and use the money to bribe every publisher and editor and critic in the business. That was a gag, too, like Al’s bottle of poison, but I think that one had some truth behind it, too.”

The coffee was ready, and she poured two cups, then sat down across from him. Levine added a bit of evaporated milk, but no sugar, and stirred the coffee distractedly. “I want to know why,” he said. “Does that seem strange? Cops are supposed to want to know who, not why. I know who, but I want to know why.”

“Larry’s the only one who could tell you, and I don’t think he will.”

Levine drank some of the coffee, then got to his feet. “Mind if I use your phone?” he asked.

“Go right ahead. It’s in the living room, next to the bookcase.”

Levine walked back into the living room and called the station. He asked for Crawley. When his partner came on the line, Levine said, “Has Perkins signed the confession yet?”

“He’s on the way down now. It’s just been typed up.”

“Hold him there after he signs it, okay? I want to talk to him. I’m in Manhattan, starting back now.”

“What have you got?”

“I’m not sure I have anything. I just want to talk to Perkins again, that’s all.”

“Why sweat it? We got the body; we got the confession; we got the killer in a cell. Why make work for yourself?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored.”

“Okay, I’ll hold him. Same room as before.”

Levine went back to the kitchen. “Thank you for the coffee,” he said. “If there’s nothing else you can think of, I’ll be leaving now.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Larry’s the only one can tell you why.”

She walked him to the front door, and he thanked her again as he was leaving. The stairs were a lot easier going down.

When Levine got back to the station, he picked up another plainclothesman, a detective named Ricco, a tall, athletic man in his middle thirties who affected the Ivy League look. He resembled more closely someone from the District Attorney’s office than a precinct cop. Levine gave him a part to play, and the two of them went down the hall to the room where Perkins was waiting with Crawley.

“Perkins,” said Levine, the minute he walked in the room, before Crawley had a chance to give the game away by saying something to Ricco, “this is Dan Ricco, a reporter from the Daily News.”

Perkins looked at Ricco with obvious interest, the first real display of interest and animation Levine had yet seen from him. “A reporter?”

“That’s right,” said Ricco. He looked at Levine. “What is this?” he asked. He was playing it straight and blank.

“College student,” said Levine. “Name’s Larry Perkins.” He spelled the last name. “He poisoned a fellow student.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ricco glanced at Perkins without much eagerness. “What for?” he asked, looking back at Levine. “Girl? Any sex in it?”

“Afraid not. It was some kind of intellectual motivation. They both wanted to be writers.”

Ricco shrugged. “Two guys with the same job? What’s so hot about that?”

“Well, the main thing,” said Levine, “is that Perkins here wants to be famous. He tried to get famous by being a writer, but that wasn’t working out. So he decided to be a famous murderer.”

Ricco looked at Perkins. “Is that right?” he asked.

Perkins was glowering at them all, but especially at Levine. “What difference does it make?” he said.

“The kid’s going to get the chair, of course,” said Levine blandly. “We have his signed confession and everything. But I’ve kind of taken a liking to him. I’d hate to see him throw his life away without getting something for it. I thought maybe you could get him a nice headline on page two, something he could hang up on the wall of his cell.”

Ricco chuckled and shook his head. “Not a chance of it,” he said. “Even if I wrote the story big, the city desk would knock it down to nothing. This kind of story is a dime a dozen. People kill other people around New York twenty-four hours a day. Unless there’s a good strong sex interest, or it’s maybe one of those mass killings things like the guy who put the bomb in the airplane, a murder in New York is filler stuff. And who needs filler stuff in the spring, when the ball teams are just getting started?”

“You’ve got influence on the paper, Dan,” said Levine. “Couldn’t you at least get him picked up by the wire services?”

“Not a chance in a million. What’s he done that a few hundred other clucks in New York don’t do every year? Sorry, Abe, I’d like to do you the favor, but it’s no go.”

Levine sighed. “Okay, Dan,” he said. “If you say so.”

“Sorry,” said Ricco. He grinned at Perkins. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “You should of knifed a chorus girl or something.”

Ricco left and Levine glanced at Crawley, who was industriously yanking on his earlobe and looking bewildered. Levine sat down facing Perkins and said, “Well?”

“Let me alone a minute,” snarled Perkins. “I’m trying to think.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” asked Levine. “You wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“All right, all right. Al took his way, I took mine. What’s the difference?”

“No difference,” said Levine. He got wearily to his feet, and headed for the door. “I’ll have you sent back to your cell now.”

“Listen,” said Perkins suddenly. “You know I didn’t kill him, don’t you? You know he committed suicide, don’t you?”

Levine opened the door and motioned to the two uniformed cops waiting in the hall.

“Wait,” said Perkins desperately.

“I know, I know,” said Levine. “Gruber really killed himself, and I suppose you burned the note he left.”

“You know damn well I did.”

“That’s too bad, boy.”

Perkins didn’t want to leave. Levine watched deadpan as the boy was led away, and then he allowed himself to relax, let the tension drain out of him. He sagged into a chair and studied the veins on the backs of his hands.

Crawley said, into the silence, “What was all that about, Abe?”

“Just what you heard.”

“Gruber committed suicide?”

“They both did.”

“Well — what are we going to do now?”

“Nothing. We investigated; we got a confession; we made an arrest. Now we’re done.”

“But—”

“But hell!” Levine glared at his partner. “That little fool is gonna go to trial, Jack, and he’s gonna be convicted and go to the chair. He chose it himself. It was his choice. I’m not railroading him; he chose his own end. And he’s going to get what he wanted.”

“But listen, Abe—”

“I won’t listen!”

“Let me — let me get a word in.”

Levine was on his feet suddenly, and now it all came boiling out, the indignation and the rage and the frustration. “Damn it, you don’t know yet! You’ve got another six, seven years yet. You don’t know what it feels like to lie awake in bed at night and listen to your heart skip a beat every once in a while, and wonder when it’s going to skip two beats in a row and you’re dead. You don’t know what it feels like to know your body’s starting to die, it’s starting to get old and die and it’s all downhill from now on.”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“I’ll tell you what! They had the choice! Both of them young, both of them with sound bodies and sound hearts and years ahead of them, decades ahead of them. And they chose to throw it away! They chose to throw away what I don’t have any more. Don’t you think I wish I had that choice? All right! They chose to die, let ’em die!”

Levine was panting from exertion, leaning over the desk and shouting in Jack Crawley’s face. And now, in the sudden silence while he wasn’t speaking, he heard the ragged rustle of his breath, felt the tremblings of nerve and muscle throughout his body. He let himself carefully down into a chair and sat there, staring at the wall, trying to get his breath.

Jack Crawley was saying something, far away, but Levine couldn’t hear him. He was listening to something else, the loudest sound in all the world. The fitful throbbing of his own heart.

The men in black raincoats

by Pete Hamill

South Slope

(Originally published in 1977)

It was close to midnight on a Friday evening at Rattigan’s Bar and Grill. There were no ball games on the television, old movies only made the clientele feel more ancient, and the jukebox was still broken from the afternoon of Red Cioffi’s daughter’s wedding. So it was time for Brendan Malachy McCone to take center stage. He motioned for a fresh beer, put his right foot on the brass rail, breathed in deeply, and started to sing.

The song was very Irish, sly and funny, the choruses full of the names of long-forgotten places, and the regulars loved Brendan for the quick jaunty singing of it. They loved the roguish glitter in his eyes, his energy, his good-natured boasting. He was, after all, a man in his fifties now, and yet here he was, still singing the bold songs of his youth. And on this night, as on so many nights, they joined him in the verses.

Outside, rain had begun to fall, a cold Brooklyn rain, driven by the wind off the harbor, and it made the noises and the singing and the laughter seem even better. Sardines and crackers joined the glasses on the bar. George the bartender filled the empties. And Brendan shifted from jauntiness to sorrow.

The mood of the regulars hushed now, as Brendan gave them the song as if it were a hymn. The bar was charged with the feeling they all had for Brendan, knowing that he had been an IRA man long ago, that he had left Ireland a step ahead of the British police who wanted him for the killing of a British soldier in the Border Campaign. This was their Brendan: the Transit Authority clerk who had once stood in the doorways of Belfast, with the cloth cap pulled tight on his brow, the pistol deep in the pockets of the trenchcoat, ready to kill or to die for Ireland.

The voice was a healthy baritone, a wealth of passion overwhelming a poverty of skill, and it touched all of them, making the younger ones imagine the streets of Belfast today, where their cousins were still fighting, reminding the older ones of peat fires, black creamy stout, buttermilk in the morning. The song was about a vanished time, before rock and roll and women’s liberation, before they took Latin out of the Mass, before the blacks and the Puerto Ricans had begun to move in and the children of the Irish had begun to move out. The neighborhood was changing, all right. But Brendan Malachy McCone was still with them, still in the neighborhood.

A little after midnight two strangers came in, dressed in black raincoats. They were wet with rain. They ordered whiskey. Brendan kept singing. Nobody noticed that his voice faltered on the last lines of “Galway Bay,” as he took the applause, glanced at the strangers, and again shifted the mood.

The strangers drank in silence.

At closing time the rain was still pelting down. Brendan stood in the open doorway of the bar with Charlie the Pole and Scotch Eddie, while George the bartender counted the receipts. Everyone else had gone home.

“We’ll have to make a run for it,” Charlie said.

“Dammit,” Scotch Eddie said.

“Yiz might as well run, cause yiz’ll drown anyway,” George said. He was finished counting and looked small and tired.

“I’ll see you gents,” Charlie said, and rushed into the rain, running lumpily down the darkened slope of 11th Street to his home. Eddie followed, cutting sharply to his left. But Brendan did not move. He had seen the strangers in the black raincoats, watched them in the mirror for a while as he moved through the songs, saw them leave an hour later.

And now he was afraid.

He looked up and down the avenue. The streetlamp scalloped a halo of light on the corner. Beyond the light there was nothing but the luminous darkness and the rain.

“Well, I’ve got to lock it up, Brendan.”

“Right, George. Good night.”

“God bless.”

Brendan hurried up the street, head down, lashed by the rain, eyes searching the interiors of parked cars. He saw nothing. The cars were locked. He looked up at the apartments and there were no lights anywhere and he knew the lights would be out at home too, where Sarah and the kids would all be sleeping. Even the firehouse was dimly lit, its great red door closed, the firemen stretched out on their bunks in the upstairs loft.

Despite the drink and the rain, Brendan’s mouth was dry. Once he thought he saw something move in the darkness of an areaway and his stomach lifted and fell. But again it was nothing. Shadows. Imagination. Get hold of yourself, Brendan.

He crossed the avenue. A half block to go. Away off he saw the twin red taillights of a city bus, groaning slowly toward Flatbush Avenue. Hurry. Another half block and he could enter the yard, hurry up the stairs, unlock the door, close it behind him, undress quickly in the darkened kitchen, dry off the rain with a warm rough towel, brush the beer off his teeth, and fall into the great deep warmth of bed with Sarah. And he would be safe again for another night. Hurry. Get the key out. Don’t get caught naked on the stairs.

He turned into his yard, stepped over a spreading puddle at the base of the stoop, and hurried up the eight worn sandstone steps. He had the key out in the vestibule and quickly opened the inside door.

They were waiting for him in the hall.

The one in the front seat on the right was clearly the boss. The driver was only a chauffeur and did his work in proper silence. The strangers in the raincoats sat on either side of Brendan in the back seat and said nothing as the car moved through the wet darkness, down off the slope, into the Puerto Rican neighborhood near Williamsburg. They all clearly deferred to the one in the front seat right. All wore gloves. Except the boss.

“I’m telling you, this has to be some kind of mistake,” Brendan said.

“Shut up,” said the boss, without turning. His skin was pink in the light of the streetlamps, and dark hair curled over the edge of his collar. The accent was not New York. Maybe Boston. Maybe somewhere else. Not New York.

“I don’t owe anybody money,” Brendan said, choking back the dry panic. “I’m not into the bloody loan sharks. I’m telling you, this is—”

The boss said, “Is your name Brendan Malachy McCone?”

“Well, uh, yes, but—”

“Then we’ve made no mistake.”

Williamsburg was behind them now and they were following the route of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway while avoiding its brightly lit ramp. Brendan sat back. From that angle he could see more of the man in the front seat right — the velvet collar of his coat, the high protruding cheekbones, the longish nose, the pinkie ring glittering on his left hand when he lit a cigarette with a thin gold lighter. He could not see the man’s eyes but he was certain he had never seen the man before tonight.

“Where are you taking me?”

The boss said calmly, “I told you to shut up. Shut up.”

Brendan took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. He looked to the men on either side of him, smiling his most innocent smile, as if hoping they would think well of him, believe in his innocence, intervene with the boss, plead his case. He wanted to tell them about his kids, explain that he had done nothing bad. Not for thirty years.

The men looked away from him, their nostrils seeming to quiver, as if he had already begun to stink of death. Brendan tried to remember the words of the Act of Contrition.

The men beside him stared out past the little rivers of rain on the windows, as if he were not even in the car. They watched the city turn into country, Queens into Nassau County, all the sleeping suburbs transform into the darker emptier reaches of Suffolk County, as the driver pushed on, driving farther away, out to Long Island, to the country of forests and frozen summer beaches. Far from Brooklyn. Far from the Friday nights at Rattigan’s. Far from his children. Far from Sarah.

Until they pulled off the expressway at Southampton, moved down back roads for another fifteen minutes, and came to a marshy cove. A few summer houses were sealed for the winter. Rain spattered the still water of the cove. Patches of dirty snow clung to the shoreline, resisting the steady cold rain.

“This is fine,” the boss said.

The driver pulled over, turned out the car lights, and turned off the engine. They all sat in the dark.

The boss said, “Did you ever hear of a man named Peter Devlin?”

Oh, my God, Brendan thought.

“Well?”

“Vaguely. The name sounds familiar.”

“Just familiar?”

“Well, there was a Devlin where I came from. There were a lot of Devlins in the North. It’s hard to remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, it was. It was a long time ago.”

“Aye.”

“And you don’t remember him more than just vaguely? Well, isn’t that nice? I mean, you were best man at his wedding.”

Brendan’s lips moved, but no words came out.

“What else do you vaguely remember, McCone?”

There was a long pause. Then: “He died.”

“No, not died. He was killed, wasn’t he?”

“Aye.”

“Who killed him, McCone?”

“He died for Ireland.”

“Who killed him, McCone?”

“The Special Branch. The British Special Branch.”

The boss took out his cigarettes and lit one with the gold lighter. He took a long drag. Brendan saw the muscles working tensely in his jaw. The rain drummed on the roof of the car.

“Tell me some more about him.”

“They buried him with full military honors. They draped his coffin with the Tricolor and sang “The Soldier’s Song” over his grave. The whole town wore the Easter Lily. The B-Specials made a lot of arrests.”

“You saw all this?”

“I was told.”

“But you weren’t there?”

“No, but—”

“What happened to his wife?”

“Katey?”

“Some people called her Katey,” the boss said.

“She died too, soon after — the flu, was it?”

“Well, there was another version. That she died of a broken heart.”

The boss stared straight ahead, watching the rain trickle down the windshield. He tapped an ash into the ashtray, took another deep drag, and said, “What did they pay you to set him up, Brendan?”

He called me Brendan. He’s softening. Even a gunman can understand it was all long ago.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play games, Brendan. Everyone in the North knew you set him up. The British told them.”

“It was a long time ago, Mister. There were a lot of lies told. You can’t believe every …”

The boss wasn’t really listening. He took out his pack of cigarettes, flipped one higher than the others, gripped its filter in his teeth, and lit it with the butt of the other. Then he tamped out the first cigarette in the ashtray. He looked out past the rain to the darkness of the cove.

“Shoot him,” he said.

The man on Brendan’s left opened the door a foot.

“Oh, sweet sufferin’ Jesus, Mister,” Brendan said. “I’ve got five kids. They’re all at home. One of them is making her first Communion. Please. For the love of God. If Dublin Command has told you to get me, just tell them you couldn’t find me. Tell them I’m dead. I can get you a piece of paper. From one of the politicians. Sayin’ I’m dead. Yes. That’s a way. And I’ll just vanish. Just disappear. Please. I’m an old man now, I won’t live much bloody longer. But the weans. The weans, Mister. And it was all thirty years ago. Christ knows I’ve paid for it. Please. Please.”

The tears were blurring his vision now. He could hear the hard spatter of the rain through the open car door. He felt the man on his right move slightly and remove something from inside his coat.

The boss said, “You left out a few things, Brendan.”

“I can send all my earnings to the lads. God knows they can use it in the North now. I’ve sent money already, I have, to the Provisionals. I never stopped being for them. For a United Ireland. Never stopped. I can have the weans work for the cause. I’ll get a second job. My Sarah can go out and work too. Please, Mister. Jesus, Mister …”

“Katey Devlin didn’t die of the flu,” the boss said. “And she didn’t die of a broken heart. Did she, Brendan?”

“I don’t—”

“Katey Devlin killed herself. Didn’t she?” Brendan felt his stomach turn over.

The boss said, very quietly, “She loved Peter Devlin more than life itself. She didn’t want him to die.”

“But neither does Sarah want me to die. She’s got the weans, the feedin’ of them, and the clothin’ of them, and the schoolin’ of them to think of. Good God, man, have ye no mercy? I was a boy then. My own people were starvin’. We had no land, we were renters, we were city people, not farmers, and the war was on, and … They told me they would only arrest him. Intern him for the duration and let him out when the fightin’ stopped, and they told me the IRA would take care of Kate while he was inside. Please, Mister, I’ve got five kids. Peter Devlin only had two.”

“I know,” said the man in the front seat right. “I was one of them.”

For the first time he turned completely around. His eyes were a cold blue under the shock of curly dark hair. Kate’s eyes in Peter’s face. He stared at Brendan for a moment. He took another drag on the cigarette and let the smoke drift through his nose, creating lazy trails of gray in the crowded car.

“Shoot him,” he said.

The man on his left touched Brendan’s hand and opened the door wide.

Part III

Wartime Brooklyn

Tralala

by Hubert Selby, Jr

South Brooklyn

(Originally published in 1957)

I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?

Song of Solomon 3: 2, 3

Tralala was 15 the first time she was laid. There was no real passion. Just diversion. She hungout in the Greeks with the other neighborhood kids. Nothin to do. Sit and talk. Listen to the jukebox. Drink coffee. Bum cigarettes. Everything a drag. She said yes. In the park. 3 or 4 couples finding their own tree and grass. Actually she didnt say yes. She said nothing. Tony or Vinnie or whoever it was just continued. They all met later at the exit. They grinned at each other. The guys felt real sharp. The girls walked in front and talked about it. They giggled and alluded. Tralala shrugged her shoulders. Getting laid was getting laid. Why all the bullshit? She went to the park often. She always had her pick. The other girls were as willing, but played games. They liked to tease. And giggle. Tralala didnt fuckaround. Nobody likes a cockteaser. Either you put out or you dont. Thats all. And she had big tits. She was built like a woman. Not like some kid. They preferred her. And even before the first summer was over she played games. Different ones though. She didnt tease the guys. No sense in that. No money either. Some of the girls bugged her and she broke their balls. If a girl liked one of the guys or tried to get him for any reason Tralala cut in. For kicks. The girls hated her. So what. Who needs them. The guys had what she wanted. Especially when they lushed a drunk. Or pulled a job. She always got something out of it. Theyd take her to the movies. Buy cigarettes. Go to a PIZZERIA for a pie. There was no end of drunks. Everybody had money during the war. The waterfront was filled with drunken seamen. And of course the base was filled with doggies. And they were always good for a few bucks at least. Sometimes more. And Tralala always got her share. No tricks. All very simple. The guys had a ball and she got a few bucks. If there was no room to go to there was always the Wolffe Building cellar. Miles and miles of cellar. One screwed and the others played chick. Sometimes for hours. But she got what she wanted. All she had to do was putout. It was kicks too. Sometimes. If not, so what? It made no difference. Lay on your back. Or bend over a garbage can. Better than working. And its kicks. For a while anyway. But time always passes. They grew older. Werent satisfied with the few bucks they got from drunks. Why wait for a drunk to passout. After theyve spent most of their loot. Drop them on their way back to the Armybase. Every night dozens left Willies, a bar across the street from the Greeks. Theyd get them on their way back to the base or the docks. They usually let the doggies go. They didn’t have too much. But the seamen were usually loaded. If they were too big or too sober theyd hit them over the head with a brick. If they looked easy one would hold him and the other(s) would lump him. A few times they got one in the lot on 57th street. That was a ball. It was real dark back by the fence. Theyd hit him until their arms were tired. Good kicks. Then a pie and beer. And Tralala. She was always there. As more time passed they acquired valuable experience. They were more selective. And stronger. They didn’t need bricks anymore. Theyd make the rounds of the bars and spot some guy with a roll. When he left theyd lush him. Sometimes Tralala would set him up. Walk him to a doorway. Sometimes through the lot. It worked beautifully. They all had new clothes. Tralala dressed well. She wore a clean sweater every few days. They had no trouble. Just stick to the seamen. They come and go and who knows the difference. Who gives a shit. They have more than they need anyway. And whats a few lumps. They might get killed so whats the difference. They stayed away from doggies. Usually. They played it smart and nobody bothered them. But Tralala wanted more than the small share she was getting. It was about time she got something on her own. If she was going to get laid by a couple of guys for a few bucks she figured it would be smarter to get laid by one guy and get it all. All the drunks gave her the eye. And stared at her tits. It would be a slopeout. Just be sure to pick a liveone. Not some bum with a few lousy bucks. None of that shit. She waited, alone, in the Greeks. A doggie came in and ordered coffee and a hamburger. He asked her if she wanted something. Why not. He smiled. He pulled a bill from a thick roll and dropped it on the counter. She pushed her chest out. He told her about his ribbons. And medals. Bronze Star. And a Purpleheart with 2 Oakleaf Clusters. Been overseas 2 years. Going home. He talked and slobbered and she smiled.

She hoped he didnt have all ones. She wanted to get him out before anybody else came. They got in a cab and drove to a downtown hotel. He bought a bottle of whiskey and they sat and drank and he talked. She kept filling his glass. He kept talking. About the war. How he was shot up. About home. What he was going to do. About the months in the hospital and all the operations. She kept pouring but he wouldnt pass out. The bastard. He said he just wanted to be near her for a while. Talk to her and have a few drinks. She waited. Cursed him and his goddamn mother. And who gives a shit about your leg gettin all shotup. She had been there over an hour. If hed fucker maybe she could get the money out of his pocket. But he just talked. The hell with it. She hit him over the head with the bottle. She emptied his pockets and left. She took the money out of his wallet and threw the wallet away. She counted it on the subway. 50 bucks. Not bad. Never had this much at once before. Shouldve gotten more though. Listenin to all that bullshit. Yeah. That sonofabitch. I shoulda hitim again. A lousy 50 bucks and hes talkin like a wheel or somethin. She kept 10 and stashed the rest and hurried back to the Greeks. Tony and Al were there and asked her where she was. Alex says ya cutout with a drunken doggie a couple a hours ago. Yeah. Some creep. I thought he was loaded. Didju score? Yeah. How much? 10 bucks. He kept bullshitin how much he had and alls he had was a lousy 10. Yeah? Lets see. She showed them the money. Yasure thats all yagot? Ya wanna search me? Yathink I got somethin stashed up my ass or somethin? We/ll take a look later. Yeah. How about you? Score? We got a few. But you dont have ta worry aboutit. You got enough. She said nothing and shrugged her shoulders. She smiled and offered to buy them coffee. And? Krist. What a bunch of bloodsuckers. OK Hey Alex … They were still sitting at the counter when the doggie came in. He was holding a bloodied handkerchief to his head and blood had caked on his wrist and cheek. He grabbed Tralala by the arm and pulled her from the stool. Give me my wallet you goddamn whore. She spit in his face and told him ta go fuckhimself. Al and Tony pushed him against the wall and asked him who he thought he was. Look, I dont know you and you dont know me. I got no call to fight with you boys. All I want is my wallet. I need my ID Card or I cant get back in the Base. You can keep the goddamn money. I dont care. Tralala screamed in his face that he was a no good mothafuckin sonofabitch and then started kicking him, afraid he might say how much she had taken. Ya lousy fuckin hero. Go peddle a couple of medals if yaneed money so fuckin bad. She spit in his face again, no longer afraid he might say something, but mad. Goddamn mad. A lousy 50 bucks and he was cryin. And anyway, he shouldve had more. Ya lousy fuckin creep. She kicked him in the balls. He grabbed her again. He was crying and bent over struggling to breathe from the pain of the kick. If I dont have the pass I cant get in the Base. I have to get back. Theyre going to fly me home tomorrow. I havent been home for almost 3 years. Ive been all shot up. Please, PLEASE. Just the wallet. Thats all I want. Just the ID Card. PLEASE PLEASE!!! The tears streaked the caked blood and he hung on Tonys and Als grip and Tralala swung at his face, spitting, cursing and kicking. Alex yelled to stop and get out. I dont want trouble in here. Tony grabbed the doggie around the neck and Al shoved the bloodied handkerchief in his mouth and they dragged him outside and into a darkened doorway.

He was still crying and begging for his ID Card and trying to tell them he wanted to go home when Tony pulled his head up by his hair and Al punched him a few times in the stomach and then in the face, then held him up while Tony hit him a few times; but they soon stopped, not afraid that the cops might come, but they knew he didnt have any money and they were tired from hitting the seaman they had lushed earlier, so they dropped him and he fell to the ground on his back. Before they left Tralala stomped on his face until both eyes were bleeding and his nose was split and broken then kicked him a few times in the balls. Ya rotten scumbag, then they left and walked slowly to 4th avenue and took a subway to manhattan. Just in case somebody might put up a stink. In a day or two he/ll be shipped out and nobodyll know the difference. Just another fuckin doggie. And anyway he deserved it. They ate in a cafeteria and went to an allnight movie. The next day they got a couple of rooms in a hotel on the east side and stayed in manhattan until the following night. When they went back to the Greeks Alex told them some MPs and a detective were in asking about the guys who beat up a soldier the other night. They said he was in bad shape. Had to operate on him and he may go blind in one eye. Ain’t that just too bad. The MPs said if they get ahold of the guys who did it theyd killem. Those fuckin punks. Whad the law say. Nottin. You know. Yeah. Killus! The creeps. We oughtta dumpem on general principles. Tralala laughed. I shoulda pressed charges fa rape. I wont be 18 for a week. He raped me the dirty freaky sonofabitch. They laughed and ordered coffeeand. When they finished Al and Tony figured theyd better make the rounds of a few of the bars and see what was doin. In one of the bars they noticed the bartender slip an envelope in a tin box behind the bar. It looked like a pile of bills on the bottom of the box. They checked the window in the MENS ROOM and the alley behind it then left the bar and went back to the Greeks. They told Tralala what they were going to do and went to a furnished room they had rented over one of the bars on 1st avenue. When the bars closed they took a heavy duty screwdriver and walked to the bar. Tralala stood outside and watched the street while they broke in. It only took a few minutes to force open the window, drop inside, crawl to the bar, pickup the box and climb out the window and drop to the alley. They pried open the box in the alley and started to count. They almost panicked when they finished counting. They had almost 2 thousand dollars. They stared at it for a moment then jammed it into their pockets. Then Tony took a few hundred and put it into another pocket and told Al theyd tell Tralala that that was all they got. They smiled and almost laughed then calmed themselves before leaving the alley and meeting Tralala. They took the box with them and dropped it into a sewer then walked back to the room. When they stepped from the alley Tralala ran over to them asking them how they made out and how much they got and Tony told her to keep quiet that they got a couple a hundred and to play it cool until they got back to the room. When they got back to the room Al started telling her what a snap it was and how they just climbed in and took the box but Tralala ignored him and kept asking how much they got. Tony took the lump of money from his pocket and they counted it. Not bad eh Tral? 250 clams. Yeah. How about giving me 50 now. What for? You aint going no where now. She shrugged and they went to bed. The next afternoon they went to the Greeks for coffee and two detectives came in and told them to come outside. They searched them, took the money from their pockets and pushed them into their car. The detectives waved the money in front of their faces and shook their heads. Dont you know better than to knock over a bookie drop? Huh? Huh, Huh! Real clever arent you. The detectives laughed and actually felt a professional amazement as they looked at their dumb expressions and realized that they really didnt know who they had robbed. Tony slowly started to come out of the coma and started to protest that they didnt do nothin. One of the detectives slapped his face and told him to shutup. For Christs sake dont give us any of that horseshit. I suppose you just found a couple of grand lying in an empty lot? Tralala screeched, a what? The detectives looked at her briefly then turned back to Tony and Al. You can lush a few drunken seamen now and then and get away with it, but when you start taking money from my pocket youre going too far sonny. What a pair of stupid punks … OK sister, beat it. Unless you want to come along for the ride? She automatically backed away from the car, still staring at Tony and Al. The doors slammed shut and they drove away. Tralala went back to the Greeks and sat at the counter cursing Tony and Al and then the bulls for pickinem up before she could get hers. Didnt even spend a penny of it. The goddamn bastards. The rotten stinkin sonsofbitches. Those thievin flatfooted bastards. She sat drinking coffee all afternoon then left and went across the street to Willies. She walked to the end of the bar and started talking with Ruthy, the barmaid, telling her what happened, stopping every few minutes to curse Tony, Al, the bulls and lousy luck. The bar was slowly filling and Ruthy left her every few minutes to pour a drink and when she came back Tralala would repeat the story from the beginning, yelling about the 2 grand and they never even got a chance to spend a penny. With the repeating of the story she forgot about Tony and Al and just cursed the bulls and her luck and an occasional seaman or doggie who passed by and asked her if she wanted a drink or just looked at her. Ruthy kept filling Tralalas glass as soon as she emptied it and told her to forget about it. Thats the breaks. No sense in beatin yahead against the wall about it. Theres plenty more. Maybe not that much, but enough. Tralala snarled, finished her drink and told Ruthy to fill it up. Eventually she absorbed her anger and quieted down and when a young seaman staggered over to her she glanced at him and said yes. Ruthy brought them two drinks and smiled. Tralala watched him take the money out of his pocket and figured it might be worthwhile. She told him there were better places to drink than this crummy dump. Well, lez go baby. He gulped his drink and Tralala left hers on the bar and they left. They got into a cab and the seaman asked her whereto and she said she didnt care, anywhere. OK. Takeus to Times Square. He offered her a cigarette and started telling her about everything. His name was Harry. He came from Idaho. He just got back from Italy. He was going to — she didnt bother smiling but watched him, trying to figure out how soon he would pass out. Sometimes they last allnight. Cant really tell. She relaxed and gave it thought. Cant konkim here. Just have ta wait until he passes out or maybe just ask for some money. The way they throw it around. Just gotta getim in a room alone. If he dont pass out I/ll just rapim with somethin — and you should see what we did to that little ol … He talked on and Tralala smoked and the lampposts flicked by and the meter ticked. He stopped talking when the cab stopped in front of the Crossroads. They got out and tried to get in the Crossroads but the bartender looked at the drunken seaman and shook his head no. So they crossed the street and went to another bar. The bar was jammed, but they found a small table in the rear and sat down. They ordered drinks and Tralala sipped hers then pushed her unfinished drink across the table to him when he finished his. He started talking again but the lights and the music slowly affected him and the subject matter was changed and he started telling Tralala what a good lookin girl she was and what a good time he was going to show her; and she told him that she would show him the time of his life and didnt bother to hide a yawn. He beamed and drank faster and Tralala asked him if he would give her some money.

She was broke and had to have some money or she/d be locked out of her room. He told her not to worry that hed find a place for her to stay tonight and he winked and Tralala wanted to shove her cigarette in his face, the cheap sonofabitch, but figured she/d better wait and get his money before she did anything. He toyed with her hand and she looked around the bar and noticed an Army Officer staring at her. He had a lot of ribbons just like the one she had rolled and she figured hed have more money than Harry. Officers are usually loaded. She got up from the table telling Harry she was going to the ladies room. The Officer swayed slightly as she walked up to him and smiled. He took her arm and asked her where she was going. Nowhere. O, we cant have a pretty girl like you going nowhere. I have a place thats all empty and a sack of whiskey. Well … She told him to wait and went back to the table. Harry was almost asleep and she tried to get the money from his pocket and he started to stir. When his eyes opened she started shaking him, taking her hand out of his pocket, and telling him to wakeup. I thought yawere goin to show me a good time. You bet. He nodded his head and it slowly descended toward the table. Hey Harry, wakeup. The waiter wants to know if yahave any money. Showem ya money so I wont have to pay. You bet. He slowly took the crumpled mess of bills from his pocket and Tralala grabbed it from his hand and said I toldya he had money. She picked up the cigarettes from the table, put the money in her pocketbook and walked back to the bar. My friend is sleeping so I dont think he/ll mind, but I think we/d better leave. They left the bar and walked to his hotel. Tralala hoped she didnt make a mistake. Harry mightta had more money stashed somewhere. The Officer should have more though and anyway she probably got everything Harry had and she could get more from this jerk if he has any. She looked at him trying to determine how much he could have, but all Officers look the same. Thats the trouble with a goddamn uniform. And then she wondered how much she had gotten from Harry and how long she would have to wait to count it. When they got to his room she went right into the bathroom, smoothed out the bills a little and counted them. 45. Shit. Fuckit. She folded the money, left the bathroom and stuffed the money in a coat pocket. He poured two small drinks and they sat and talked for a few minutes then put the light out. Tralala figured there was no sense in trying anything now so she relaxed and enjoyed herself. They were having a smoke and another drink when he turned and kissed her and told her she had the most beautiful pair of tits he had ever seen. He continued talking for a few minutes, but she didnt pay any attention. She thought about her tits and what he had said and how she could get anybody with her tits and the hell with Willies and those slobs, she/d hang around here for a while and do alright. They put out their cigarettes and for the rest of the night she didnt wonder how much money he had. At breakfast the next morning he tried to remember everything that had happened in the bar, but Harry was only vaguely remembered and he didnt want to ask her. A few times he tried speaking, but when he looked at her he started feeling vaguely guilty. When they had finished eating he lit her cigarette, smiled, and asked her if he could buy her something. A dress or something like that.

I mean, well you know … Id like to buy you a little present. He tried not to sound maudlin or look sheepish, but he found it hard to say what he felt, now, in the morning, with a slight hangover, and she looked to him pretty and even a little innocent. Primarily he didnt want her to think he was offering to pay her or think he was insulting her by insinuating that she was just another prostitute; but much of his loneliness was gone and he wanted to thank her. You see, I only have a few days leave left before I go back and I thought perhaps we could — that is I thought we could spend some more time together … he stammered on apologetically hoping she understood what he was trying to say but the words bounced off her and when she noticed that he had finished talking she said sure. What thefuck. This is much better than wresslin with a drunk and she felt good this morning, much better than yesterday (briefly remembering the bulls and the money they took from her) and he might even give her his money before he went back overseas (what could he do with it) and with her tits she could always makeout and whatthehell, it was the best screwin she ever had … They went shopping and and she bought a dress, a couple of sweaters (2 sizes too small), shoes, stockings, a pocketbook and an overnight bag to put her clothes in. She protested slightly when he told her to buy a cosmetic case (not knowing what it was when he handed it to her and she saw no sense in spending money on that when he could as well give her cash), and he enjoyed her modesty in not wanting to spend too much of his money; and he chuckled at her childlike excitement at being in the stores, looking and buying. They took all the packages back to the hotel and Tralala put on her new dress and shoes and they went out to eat and then to a movie. For the next few days they went to movies, restaurants (Tralala trying to make a mental note of the ones where the Officers hungout), a few more stores and back to the hotel. When they woke on the 4th day he told her he had to leave and asked her if she would come with him to the station. She went thinking he might give her his money and she stood awkwardly on the station with him, their bags around them, waiting for him to go on the train and leave. Finally the time came for him to leave and he handed her an envelope and kissed her before boarding the train. She felt the envelope as she lifted her face slightly so he could kiss her. It was thin and she figured it might be a check. She put it in her pocketbook, picked up her bag and went to the waiting room and sat on a bench and opened the envelope. She opened the paper and started reading: Dear Tral: There are many things I would like to say and should have said, but — A letter. A goddamn LETTER. She ripped the envelope apart and turned the letter over a few times. Not a cent. I hope you understand what I mean and am unable to say — she looked at the words — if you do feel as I hope you do Im writing my address at the bottom. I dont know if I/ll live through this war, but — Shit. Not vehemently but factually.

She dropped the letter and rode the subway to Brooklyn. She went to Willies to display her finery. Ruthy was behind the bar and Waterman Annie was sitting in a booth with a seaman. She stood at the bar talking with Ruthy for a few minutes answering her questions about the clothes and telling her about the rich john she was living with and how much money he gave her and where they went. Ruthy left occasionally to pour a drink and when she came back Tralala continued her story, but soon Ruthy tired of listening to her bullshit as Tralalas short imagination bogged down. Tralala turned and looked at Annie and asked her when they leter out. Annie told her ta go screw herself. Youre the only one who would. Annie laughed and Tralala told her ta keep her shiteatin mouth shut. The seaman got up from the booth and staggered toward Tralala. You shouldnt talk to my girl friend like that. That douchebag? You should be able ta do betteran that. She smiled and pushed her chest out. The seaman laughed and leaned on the bar and asked her if she would like a drink. Sure. But not in this crummy place. Lets go ta some place thats not crawlin with stinkin whores. The seaman roared, walked back to the table, finished his drink and left with Tralala. Annie screamed at them and tried to throw a glass at Tralala but someone grabbed her arm. Tralala and Jack (he was an oiler and he …) got into a cab and drove downtown. Tralala thought of ditching him rightaway (she only wanted to break Annies balls), but figured she ought to wait and see. She stayed with him and they went to a hotel and when he passedout she took what he had and went back uptown. She went to a bar in Times Square and sat at the bar. It was filled with servicemen and a few drunken sailors smiled at her as she looked around, but she ignored them and the others in the bar ignored her. She wanted to be sure she picked up a live one. No drunken twobit sailor or doggie for her. O no. Ya bet ya sweetass no. With her clothes and tits? Who inthehell do those punks think they are. I oughtta go spit in their stinkin faces. Shit! They couldnt kiss my ass. She jammed her cigarette out and took a short sip of her drink. She waited.

She smiled at a few Officers she thought might have loot, but they were with women. She cursed the dames under her breath, pulled the top of her dress down, looked around and sipped her drink. Even with sipping the drink was soon gone and she had to order another. The bartender refilled her glass and marked her for an amateur. He smiled and was almost tempted to tell her that she was trying the wrong place, but didnt. He just refilled her glass thinking she would be better off in one of the 8th avenue bars. She sipped the new drink and lit another cigarette. Why was she still alone? What was with this joint? Everybody with a few bucks had a dame. Goddamn pigs. Not one ofem had a pair half as big as hers. She could have any sonofabitch in Willies or any bum stumbling into the Greeks. Whats with the creeps in here. They should be all around her. She shouldnt be sitting alone. She/d been there 2 hours already. She felt like standing up and yelling fuck you to everybody in the joint. Youre all a bunch of goddamn creeps. She snarled at the women who passed. She pulled her dress tight and forced her shoulders back. Time still passed. She still ignored the drunks figuring somebody with gelt would popup. She didnt touch her third drink, but sat looking around, cursing every sonofabitch in the joint and growing more defiant and desperate. Soon she was screaming in her mind and wishing takrist she had a blade, she/d cut their goddamn balls off. A CPO came up to her and asked her if she wanted a drink and she damn near spit in his face, but just mumbled as she looked at the clock and said shit. Yeah, yeah, lets go. She gulped down her drink and they left. Her mind was still such a fury of screechings (and that sonofabitch gives me nothin but a fuckin letter) that she just lay in bed staring at the ceiling and ignored the sailor as he screwed her and when he finally rolled off for the last time and fell asleep she continued staring and cursing for hours before falling asleep. The next afternoon she demanded that he giver some money and he laughed. She tried to hit him but he grabbed her arm, slapped her across the face and told her she was out of her mind. He laughed and told her to take it easy. He had a few days leave and he had enough money for both of them. They could have a good time. She cursed him and spit and he told her to grab her gear and shove off. She stopped in a cafeteria and went to the ladies room and threw some water on her face and bought a cup of coffee and a bun. She left and went back to the same bar. It was not very crowded being filled mostly with servicemen trying to drink away hangovers, and she sat and sipped a few drinks until the bar started filling. She tried looking for a liveone, but after an hour or so, and a few drinks, she ignored everyone and waited. A couple of sailors asked her if she wanted a drink and she said whatthefuck and left with them. They roamed around for hours drinking and then she went to a room with two of them and they gave her a few bucks in the morning so she stayed with them for a few days, 2 or 3, staying drunk most of the time and going back to the room now and then with them and their friends. And then they left or went somewhere and she went back to the bar to look for another one or a whole damn ship. Whats the difference. She pulled her dress tight but didnt think of washing. She hadnt reached the bar when someone grabbed her arm, walked her to the side door and told her to leave. She stood on the corner of 42nd & Broadway cursing them and wanting to know why they let those scabby whores in but kick a nice young girl out, ya lousy bunch apricks. She turned and crossed the street, still mumbling to herself, and went in another bar. It was jammed and she worked her way to the back near the jukebox and looked. When someone came back to play a number she smiled, threw her shoulders back and pushed the hair from her face. She stood there drinking and smiling and eventually left with a drunken soldier. They screwed most of the night, slept for a short time then awoke and started drinking and screwing again. She stayed with him for a day or two, perhaps longer, she wasnt sure and it didnt make any difference anyway, then he was gone and she was back in a bar looking. She bounced from one bar to another still pulling her dress tight and occasionally throwing some water on her face before leaving a hotel room, slobbering drinks and soon not looking but just saying yeah, yeah, whatthefuck and pushing an empty glass toward the bartender and sometimes never seeing the face of the drunk buying her drinks and rolling on and off her belly and slobbering over her tits; just drinking then pulling off her clothes and spreading her legs and drifting off to sleep or a drunken stupor with the first lunge. Time passed — months, maybe years, who knows, and the dress was gone and just a beatup skirt and sweater and the Broadway bars were 8th avenue bars, but soon even these joints with their hustlers, pushers, pimps, queens and wouldbe thugs kicked her out and the inlaid linoleum turned to wood and then was covered with sawdust and she hung over a beer in a dump on the waterfront, snarling and cursing every sonofabitch who fucked herup and left with anyone who looked at her or had a place to flop. The honeymoon was over and still she pulled the sweater tight but there was no one there to look. When she crawled out of a flophouse she fell in the nearest bar and stayed until another offer of a flop was made. But each night she would shove her tits out and look around for a liveone, not wanting any goddamn wino but the bums only looked at their beers and she waited for the liveone who had an extra 50¢ he didnt mind spending on beer for a piece of ass and she flopped from one joint to another growing dirtier and scabbier. She was in a South street bar and a seaman bought her a beer and his friends who depended on him for their drinks got panicky fearing he would leave them and spend their beer money on her so when he went to the head they took the beer from her and threw her out into the street. She sat on the curb yelling until a cop came along and kicked her and told her to move. She sprawled to her feet cursing every sonofabitch and his brother and told them they could stick their fuckin beer up their ass. She didnt need any goddamn skell to buy her a drink. She could get anything she wanted in Willies. She had her kicks. She/d go back to Willies where what she said goes. That was the joint. There was always somebody in there with money. No bums like these cruds. Did they think she/d let any goddamn bum in her pants and play with her tits just for a few bucks. Shit! She could get a seamans whole payoff just sittin in Willies. People knew who she was in Willies. You bet yasweet ass they did. She stumbled down the subway and rode to Brooklyn, muttering and cursing, sweat streaking the dirt on her face. She walked up the 3 steps to the door and was briefly disappointed that the door wasnt closed so she could throw it open. She stood for just a second in the doorway looking around then walked to the rear where Waterman Annie, Ruthy and a seaman were sitting. She stood beside the seaman, leaned in front of him and smiled at Annie and Ruthy then ordered a drink. The bartender looked at her and asked her if she had any money. She told him it was none of his goddamn business. My friend here is going to pay for it. Wontya honey. The seaman laughed and pushed a bill forward and she got her drink and sneered at the ignorant sonofabitchin bartender. The rotten scumbag. Annie pulled her aside and told her if she tried cuttin her throat she/d dump her guts on the floor. Mean Ruthys gonna leave as soon as Jacks friend comes and if ya screw it up youll be a sorry sonofabitch.

Tralala yanked her arm away and went back to the bar and leaned against the seaman and rubbed her tits against his arm. He laughed and told her to drinkup. Ruthy told Annie not ta botha witha, Fredll be here soon and we/ll go, and they talked with Jack and Tralala leaned over and interrupted their conversation and snarled at Annie hoping she burns like hell when Jack left with her and Jack laughed at everything and pounded the bar and bought drinks and Tralala smiled and drank and the jukebox blared hillbilly songs and an occasional blues song, and the red and blue neon lights around the mirror behind the bar sputtered and winked and the soldiers seamen and whores in the booths and hanging on the bar yelled and laughed and Tralala lifted her drink and said chugalug and banged her glass on the bar and she rubbed her tits against Jacks arm and he looked at her wondering how many blackheads she had on her face and if that large pimple on her cheek would burst and ooze and he said something to Annie then roared and slapped her leg and Annie smiled and wrote Tralala off and the cash register kachanged and the smoke just hung and Fred came and joined the party and Tralala yelled for another drink and asked Fred how he liked her tits and he poked them with a finger and said I guess theyre real and Jack pounded the bar and laughed and Annie cursed Tralala and tried to get them to leave and they said lets stay for a while, we/re having fun and Fred winked and someone rapped a table and roared and a glass fell to the floor and the smoke fell when it reached the door and Tralala opened Jacks fly and smiled and he closed it 5 6 7 times laughing and stared at the pimple and the lights blinked and the cashregister crooned kachang kachang and Tralala told Jack she had big tits and he pounded the bar and laughed and Fred winked and laughed and Ruthy and Annie wanted to leave before something screwed up their deal and wondered how much money they had and hating to see them spend it on Tralala and Tralala gulped her drinks and yelled for more and Fred and Jack laughed and winked and pounded the bar and another glass fell to the floor and someone bemoaned the loss of a beer and two hands fought their way up a skirt under a table and she blew smoke in their faces and someone passedout and his head fell on the table and a beer was grabbed before it fell and Tralala glowed she had it made and she/d shove it up Annies ass or anybody elses and she gulped another drink and it spilled down her chin and she hung on Jacks neck and rubbed her chest against his cheek and he reached up and turned them like knobs and roared and Tralala smiled and O she had it made now and piss on all those mothafuckas and someone walked a mile for a smile and someone pulled the drunk out of the booth and dropped him out the back door and Tralala pulled her sweater up and bounced her tits on the palms of her hands and grinned and grinned and grinned and Jack and Fred whooped and roared and the bartender told her to put those goddamn things away and get thehelloutahere and Ruthy and Annie winked and Tralala slowly turned around bouncing them hard on her hands exhibiting her pride to the bar and she smiled and bounced the biggest most beautiful pair of tits in the world on her hands and someone yelled is that for real and Tralala shoved them in his face and everyone laughed and another glass fell from a table and guys stood and looked and the hands came out from under the skirt and beer was poured on Tralalas tits and someone yelled that she had been christened and the beer ran down her stomach and dripped from her nipples and she slapped his face with her tits and someone yelled youll smotherim ta death — what a way to die — hey, whats for desert — I said taput those goddamn things away ya fuckin hippopotamus and Tralala told him she had the prettiest tits in the world and she fell against the jukebox and the needle scraped along the record sounding like a long belch and someone yelled all tits and no cunt and Tralala told him to comeon and find out and a drunken soldier banged out of a booth and said comeon and glasses fell and Jack knocked over his stool and fell on Fred and they hung over the bar nearing hysteria and Ruthy hoped she wouldnt get fired because this was a good deal and Annie closed her eyes and laughed relieved that they wouldnt have to worry about Tralala and they didnt spend too much money and Tralala still bounced her tits on the palms of her hands turning to everyone as she was dragged out the door by the arm by 2 or 3 and she yelled to Jack to comeon and she/d fuckim blind not like that fuckin douchebag he was with and someone yelled we/re coming and she was dragged down the steps tripping over someones feet and scraping her ankles on the stone steps and yelling but the mob not slowing their pace dragged her by an arm and Jack and Fred still hung on the bar roaring and Ruthy took off her apron getting ready to leave before something happened to louse up their deal and the 10 or 15 drunks dragged Tralala to a wrecked car in the lot on the corner of 57th street and yanked her clothes off and pushed her inside and a few guys fought to see who would be first and finally a sort of line was formed everyone yelling and laughing and someone yelled to the guys on the end to go get some beer and they left and came back with cans of beer which were passed around the daisychain and the guys from the Greeks cameover and some of the other kids from the neighborhood stood around watching and waiting and Tralala yelled and shoved her tits into the faces as they occurred before her and beers were passed around and the empties dropped or thrown and guys left the car and went back on line and had a few beers and waited their turn again and more guys came from Willies and a phone call to the Armybase brought more seamen and doggies and more beer was brought from Willies and Tralala drank beer while being laid and someone asked if anyone was keeping score and someone yelled who can count that far and Tralalas back was streaked with dirt and sweat and her ankles stung from the sweat and dirt in the scrapes from the steps and sweat and beer dripped from the faces onto hers but she kept yelling she had the biggest goddamn pair of tits in the world and someone answered ya bet ya sweet ass yado and more came 40 maybe 50 and they screwed her and went back on line and had a beer and yelled and laughed and someone yelled that the car stunk of cunt so Tralala and the seat were taken out of the car and laid in the lot and she lay there naked on the seat and their shadows hid her pimples and scabs and she drank flipping her tits with the other hand and somebody shoved the beer can against her mouth and they all laughed and Tralala cursed and spit out a piece of tooth and someone shoved it again and they laughed and yelled and the next one mounted her and her lips were split this time and the blood trickled to her chin and someone mopped her brow with a beer soaked handkerchief and another can of beer was handed to her and she drank and yelled about her tits and another tooth was chipped and the split in her lips was widened and everyone laughed and she laughed and she drank more and more and soon she passedout and they slapped her a few times and she mumbled and turned her head but they couldnt revive her so they continued to fuck her as she lay unconscious on the seat in the lot and soon they tired of the dead piece and the daisychain brokeup and they went back to Willies the Greeks and the base and the kids who were watching and waiting to take a turn took out their disappointment on Tralala and tore her clothes to small scraps put out a few cigarettes on her nipples pissed on her jerkedoff on her jammed a broomstick up her snatch then bored they left her lying amongst the broken bottles rusty cans and rubble of the lot and Jack and Fred and Ruthy and Annie stumbled into a cab still laughing and they leaned toward the window as they passed the lot and got a good look at Tralala lying naked covered with blood urine and semen and a small blot forming on the seat between her legs as blood seeped from her crotch and Ruthy and Annie happy and completely relaxed now that they were on their way downtown and their deal wasnt lousedup and they would have plenty of money and Fred looking through the rear window and Jack pounding his leg and roaring with laughter …

The boys of Bensonhurst

by Salvatore La Puma

Bensonhurst

(Originally published in 1987)

1942

The angel whispering in Frankie’s ear warned him to be careful going to New Jersey, but he said, “Scram,” to the pest, which the other guys thought might be a fly, and they all went up from the BMT subway to Times Square, where lights on billboards, movie houses, restaurants, and shops blinked nervously, and where even the scrounging pigeons were hemmed in. Mobs of people drifted out of step but mostly in two-way lanes, and nearly everyone, including the legless beggar man squatting and rolling along the sidewalk, seemed to know exactly where he belonged, and cars looked packed in the streets as in lots at Yankee games.

They went west on 42nd Street: Frankie, the oldest at seventeen; Nick, the altar boy; Rocco, the killer in the ring and with dames; and Gene, wild on the drums and the youngest at fifteen.

“I love this place,” said Rocco, shadowboxing in the street.

“Lots of dames around,” said Frankie.

Cardboard dames in underpants and bras were posted by the lurid movie houses, and live dames in split skirts and open blouses were in doorways, all looking for customers. Bells were ringing in arcades for pinball, miniature bowling, and peep shows. Greasy smoke blew from narrow shops grilling hot dogs, hamburgers, and knishes, shops which would be closed for a few hours before dawn with see-through steel gates. White-hat hawkers urged the guys to buy beers, orange drinks, cotton candy, caramel popcorn, and homemade fudge. Almost anything a guy could want was for sale.

The pedestrians were all sizes, ages, colors, sexes, rich and poor. They gawked at the hustlers and pimps who gawked back. Horns and tail pipes played flat, while loudspeakers from record shops played the hits so far in 1942. In a bookstore window the nudist magazine Sunbathers had on its cover naked dames with pubic hair. So the guys went inside. Frankie Primo often read magazines and books, rode on an old Harley, was secretly in love with an older dame, and didn’t want to go in the Army. Of Sicilian blood, he was a little ashamed that he wasn’t eager to kill Japs and Nazis. Every other Sicilian guy he knew of couldn’t wait.

“You ever read this?” said Frankie.

“It must be about screwing,” said Nick Consoli, who wanted to be one of the boys, and often went along, but at the crucial moment he could hold back, remembering what sin was, as he was doing now, shaking his head. “Screwing’s bad for the soul.”

“Everything’s about screwing,” said Frankie, acting the man of the world.

The man in charge crooked his finger at them, so Frankie and his friends moved to the shadowy back of the store. There the man dealt out cards face-down on the glass showcase like hands of poker. When he flipped them over, they weren’t aces and kings; they were snapshots of naked dames turning themselves inside out to show how they were made. The guys got frog eyes.

“How much?” said Frankie.

“A fin,” said the man.

“Five bucks for pictures?” said Frankie. “You’re kidding?”

“Get out,” said the man. “Out. Before I kick asses. Scummy kids.”

Farther down 42nd was the bus terminal with snaking lines at ticket windows, with sitters on suitcases and hard benches, and blind-looking people hurrying somewhere, and others dragging, unhappy to go where they were going. Not knowing which line to get in, the boys went to Information.

“You don’t want the Greyhound,” said the colored guy. “It don’t stop in Union City. You want the Madison line. It’s red and white. It goes to Jersey by the Skyway.”

At the first and only stop in Union City everybody got off, as if the only reason to go there was to see the show. It was almost June and the light was still out, and they all went up the hilly street, passing old brick buildings with boarded-up windows, dark warehouses where nothing useful could be kept, scurrying rats, and drunks nursing like babies from bottles in paper bags.

“Poor bastards. We ought to help them out. But we ain’t got time,” said Frankie, and his angel whispered her agreement.

The boys kept their eyes peeled in case a derelict should pounce from a doorway with a filthy proposition. They were a little scared, except for Rocco Marino. He threw a left jab at an invisible opponent to dare trouble to come out. But then, without being asked, Rocco gave a dollar to the old man with a balding beard and one-tooth grin.

“I got dough from my fights,” Rocco said to his friends, who didn’t have as much. He didn’t want them to think he was a show-off.

When the crowd turned the corner, the street was in the glaring spotlight of thousands of burning white bulbs on the Hudson Theater’s marquee, reading in capital letters:

BURLESQUE

“We have half an hour still,” said Frankie.

“How about a beer?” said Gene Dragoni, hoping the bar next to the theater wouldn’t find him too young.

“First, let’s get tickets,” said Nick. “If they sold out while we’re sipping suds, it would be a waste. After that trip.”

They got in line. But the seats weren’t reserved. So instead of drinking their beers in Little Lil’s Bar, bought from Lil herself, who was built like a wrestler and who winked at Gene although she knew they were all underage, they took their bottles to seats in the third row of the balcony.

The orchestra’s lower half was already mostly filled, though not entirely by servicemen and other men. Dames too were in the audience, with dates, or in groups of dames together. That girls were there at all seemed to the guys a little odd. But at the back of their minds they knew things existed that they couldn’t explain yet. They hoped that later on, when they weren’t boys any longer, they would understand such minor mysteries.

Two rows down and over to the side in the balcony were two dames by themselves not much older than Frankie and his friends, and one had rusting blonde hair. The guys couldn’t take their eyes off the dames, and the dames, not taking their eyes off the guys either, even waved first. The guys elbowed each other and thought they were easily recognizable as Romeos. They talked about moving their seats next to the dames, or asking them up to seats in their row. But they were filled up on each other’s friendship and were anticipating the pleasure of other dames showing off their legs, breasts, and behinds, so for now they just didn’t need these dames.

People in the aisles were still looking for seats when a guy in a white jacket and black tie came onstage. His grin was so broad it was almost a mirror reflecting flashes in code. “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a sensational offer. The most sensational in the history of the Hudson Theater. Tonight we have this lovely box of delicious Whitman’s chocolates made with imported chocolate. Crunchy nuts. Chewy carmels. Buttery creams. All for one dollar. Let me repeat this sensational bargain price. All for one little dollar. This special sale is from the maker exclusively to you, to introduce their fine quality. And not only one pound of chocolates, but in each ten boxes is a special bonus. A Bulova watch. Can you believe your good luck? One out of ten leaves here tonight with a Bulova worth $25 on his wrist. What a terrific deal. I’m buying ten boxes myself. And even if you don’t win, these delicious chocolates make you feel like a winner. So, please, have your dollars ready. We have only seventy-five boxes for this limited offer. When we’re sold out, there just won’t be anymore.”

“Let’s split one,” said Rocco, taking out a dollar. The other three each passed him a quarter.

“But who gets the watch?” said Nick, believing it possible to win one.

“We can toss for it,” said Gene, since the laws of chance, unlike arm wrestling, would favor them equally.

“No watches in those boxes,” said Frankie. “It’s the worm on the hook.”

The box had space for twice as much candy as was there, not a pound, but eight pieces, quickly chewed, as the boys shrugged off their disappointment.

Another guy came onstage in his white jacket which was a little too long. He was short and square and talked up to the microphone. “All you people who didn’t win the watch. In case you won one, you can’t be in on this. This is only if you didn’t buy the candy, or if you did, you didn’t get a Bulova, which now you can get. Really, really cheap. But only one to a person. I know people here want to buy two, three to take home to their wife, and to their mother. But we have to limit one each, since we don’t have too many. It’s the most fantastic deal Bulova ever made. For just two dollars. That’s right, two American dollars, you get a 100 percent guaranteed Bulova. You never heard such a bargain. How can we do it? Very simple. They have more watches than orders. But they couldn’t get rid of the extras through the stores which sell them for the high price. In fact, you’ll notice the name Bulova doesn’t appear on the face of this watch. It doesn’t want regular stores knowing how cheap they’re selling them here tonight. In stores you pay $25. But tonight, for one night only, you pay just two dollars. The man’s. Or the lady’s. Solid gold-plated. Genuine leather strap. But we have to move fast, ladies and gentlemen. Only ten minutes to curtain time. So have your money ready, please. Don’t miss this amazing offer. It won’t happen ever again.”

“We should get a watch,” said Nick, the altar boy.

“I have one,” said Gene.

“Me too,” said Rocco. “But for two bucks, it sounds good.”

“It’s probably a Dick Tracy,” said Frankie. “I wouldn’t buy anything from these guys.”

“My mother could use a watch,” said Nick. “I’ll get the lady’s.” He fished out his money. Then they all looked at the watch imprisoned in cellophane and staples. Frankie cut the paper with his Barlow knife. The watch was definitely a watch.

So Nick started winding it. He was winding it and winding it. When it didn’t come to an end, he handed the watch to Frankie. Frankie looked at it for a minute and then tapped it in his palm. Then he passed it to Rocco, who shook it with his featherweight grace. Then Gene weighed it in his hand and passed it back to Nick. Gene didn’t want to be unkind to his friend Nick and didn’t say that the watch felt empty.

Nick was still trying to get it to run when the curtain went up and the lights went out. To the beat from the orchestra in the pit, the line of dames kicked onstage with pink feathers in their hair and sparkling sequins on their underwear. They weren’t dolls exactly. The guys were expecting to see the beauties who existed in their imaginations, but instead they saw average dames, with all the mistakes Mother Nature makes in faces and figures. Since they looked so human, the boys felt slightly embarrassed, as if they were leering at their own mothers or sisters, and they drooped a little.

“One on the end’s cute,” said Nick.

“Too skinny,” said Rocco. “But mama mia, the one in the middle.”

“No,” said Frankie. “The blonde.”

The blonde’s smile looked sincere, while the other smiles looked like something was too tight, or a snapshot in the hot sun was about to be taken. The girls in the chorus were showing their teeth as if the audience was a convention of dentists. They pranced and kicked and then they bowed their behinds to applause. Frankie thought none was as sexy as Sylvia tightening her garter in her office when once he just happened to walk in.

Then the stage went dark and the spotlight was on two hands holding a sign that read miss sugar buns. The spotlight danced to the other side of the stage where a bride in her wedding gown danced out to a jazzy wedding march. One glove, one button, and one thread at a time was a slow boil for the crowd, and she was still in her underwear ten minutes later. The drumbeat seemed to be in her hips and breasts where she was big, and every guy was raving. Gene, who played the drums in his school orchestra, was thinking that he might come here to the Hudson Theater when he graduated in a few years and get a job at the skins in the pit from where he could look up at dames every night until, if it were ever possible, he would get his fill.

Miss Sugar Buns was down to her hairnet bra and spangled G-string, and the guys were quiet as if words had more value now by their absence. The theater was heating up and everyone was sweating and holding his breath. The drum rolled. Poised in the spotlight, to clashes of the symbols, the stripper tore off her hairnet bra. Then her G-string. The boys thought they saw everything, but from the balcony, it was hard to be sure. She didn’t seem to have any pubic hair. And it all happened so fast. But they acted to each other as if they had seen the most precious thing a man would want to see.

Altogether, they saw four comedy acts, the chorus six or seven times, and three other strippers. The last was Miss Floppy Candy. Then the show was over and the guys were almost dead from loving all the dames. They had loved even the ugly ones, which a few were, but noses, love handles, bowlegs, and buck-teeth had been disguised by the music and by their dreams of dames.

The crowd moved up the aisles, and when the guys were out on the sidewalk in front of the theater their eyes lit up again. The two dolls from the balcony were licking ice cream cones, bought from the Good Humor Man at the curb. One was almost a Miss Sugar Buns herself, and the other was blonde, but not as pretty close up.

“It’s kind of late,” said Frankie, worried about the time as usual, and reminded by that wispy voice that strange dames could be carrying strange germs.

“Let’s go over,” said Rocco.

“They won’t give us the time,” said Nick, who thought of the pain of confessing his sins that weren’t even too bad.

“What can we lose?” said Gene, who aspired to brazen acts.

Frankie for his reasons, and Nick for his, hung back, and Frankie said, “We’ll go take the bus. You guys can stay.”

But Nick, not ready to admit he wouldn’t screw one of the dolls, said, unconvincingly, “They’re something.”

“They are,” said Frankie. “But not for me.”

Rocco said, “Go have a beer, you guys. Let me and Gene try.”

“Okay,” they said.

Before Rocco and Gene could approach the girls, the girls came to them. The blonde said, “It’s five dollars apiece. That’s the discount price if we take you four.”

The guys had thought the dolls admired them as handsome young lions who stood out for their Sicilian dark looks, thick manes, and straight backs. The boys had money in their pockets to pay the dolls for their services, and they weren’t cheap about spending it. But they felt insulted now that the dolls weren’t wanting to be kissed and petted in their tight arms. The dolls just wanted their five bucks. “Shit,” said Rocco, in a mutter. So they all got on the bus and went back to Bensonhurst.

“It’s nice you let me come over. I was thinking who I could talk to,” said Frankie in the hall.

Sylvia Cohen wasn’t asking him inside. She was looking him over, trying to guess what he would say and what she would do with him. He didn’t work for Tony Tempesta or other gangsters, but delivered small packages between them on his Harley. Frankie had swaggered into Sylvia’s olive oil office unafraid of anything, but his grin said he wouldn’t swat a fly, and both those things tickled her.

“Saturday night’s a lousy time to call a girl. The only reason I’m here’s the guy got a flat. But I was going out anyway,” said Sylvia, her lipstick chewed off and her hair in a mess, and Frankie guessed she wasn’t going anywhere like that.

“This thing’s been on my mind,” he said.

“So what is it?” she said.

“You think we could sit down?”

“Look, Frankie, just because we had an ice cream a couple of times and you held my hand once, don’t mean we can hang out. You’re seventeen, for Pete’s sake. Everybody’ll say Sylvia’s hard up. And I ain’t. So I hope you ain’t planning on asking me on no date.”

She eyed him as if he was a crook, but one who wanted to steal only a fresh baked pie, and she thought she might spare a slice if he was nice and polite.

“I was just wanting to talk. You always give me a big smile,” said Frankie, now worried that he wouldn’t get her interested, since she thought he was a kid even though he had a heavyweight’s build. Besides, she was too beautiful, with her buttery hair and stripper’s figure, to give it all away easily.

“I’m thirsty. You thirsty? C’mon in the parlor. I’ll get something.” She didn’t leave, but instead, they stood on the parlor rug, wondering what they were doing there together.

“You have iced tea?” said Frankie.

“Last night this guy was feeding me brandy alexanders. Which I loved. And he thought he was going to get somewhere. He’s an accountant. So he thinks each day’s a sheet in his ledger. He’s so boring. His voice comes out a word at a time. You could die waiting. Almost I could’ve screamed. Then I had another brandy. So, actually, I’m glad to talk to you. You’re not boring, but I sure wish you was older.”

“I’m sorry I’m not,” said Frankie. “But then I’d be drafted.”

“Sit down,” said Sylvia. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be quiet so I won’t wake anybody.”

“Yeah. Be real, real quiet. But even if you was loud, they wouldn’t hear you. My folks went to Miami Beach,” said Sylvia, walking away swinging her hips.

“No kidding?” said Frankie, dropping to the sofa and crossing his feet on the coffee table. Chinese-pagoda lamps and cupid lamps were on the tables, and porcelain poodles, cats, teacups, dishes, vases, World’s Fair trylons and perispheres were on shelves in the corner.

The artificial flowers and artificial fruits on two tables saddened Frankie, although he didn’t know why, since they were beautiful in their own right. Before Sylvia came back, he hid the flowers behind one stuffed chair, and then hid the fruit too. He helped himself to a cigarette from the brass box on the coffee table, but when Sylvia was coming back he took his feet off the table.

“I do it myself. Except I take my shoes off,” she said, slipping out of hers.

They both put their feet up on the coffee table and slouched back in the plush sofa and sipped tea. Frankie was crazy about Sylvia because she always acted herself. There was no bullshit to work through. And to find out if she would be anxious to be rid of him in a few minutes, or whether she was lonely and would talk for hours, Frankie tested her by saying, “I won’t stay long. Since you’re going out someplace?”

“You know what they do in Miami?” she said, ignoring his question and asking one of her own, which she was prepared to answer herself. “My mother and father? They go sit on the sand. The men talk business. Jewish men always do. The women play Mah-Jongg. They go for Christmas. And now they go in the water. I went once. Almost died for something, anything, to happen.”

“Didn’t guys on the beach come over?”

“They were old enough to be my father. I just turned twenty-two. Last Saturday. May 21.”

“I didn’t even know you had a birthday,” said Frankie. “You suppose a birthday kiss a week late is okay to give?”

“Here on the cheek,” she said.

He kissed both gardenia-smelling checks, and then she steered him back to his place on the sofa and took his hand to keep him in check.

“You smell good,” he said.

“Holding hands is one of the nicest things,” said Sylvia. “It has to be somebody you like. Then it feels right. So what’s on your mind, Frankie?”

He had wanted her opinion of his dilemma, since she lived on 18th Avenue and wasn’t connected to any Sicilian family on 79th Street, and wouldn’t have their same ideas, and wouldn’t gossip. But they were having a good time now and no one else was home, and no telling what miracle might happen. Still, he had to prove that he wasn’t just making it up that he wanted to talk to her, so he told her.

“I’ll be eighteen in three months,” he said. “Then I get drafted. But I don’t want to kill nobody. So I don’t know what to do.” He was surprised that Sylvia looked interested.

“Somebody has to kill the Nazis,” she said.

“They should be killed,” he said. “But I can’t be the guy pulls the trigger.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“It ain’t against your religion?” she said.

“No. What’s worse, guys from the neighborhood can’t wait to get in. Their mothers cry, but they want their sons to go. It’s patriotic. We have to show we don’t side with Italy.”

“What does your father say?”

“I asked him. He said it’s up to me. That it’s bad either way. It’s which trouble I can handle. My father ran away from Sicily so he wouldn’t go in. He took care of my mother three years. In bed, in the parlor, where there’s more light and people passing by. I watched her dying but couldn’t do anything.”

“Maybe you’re a weak guy,” said Sylvia.

“Maybe that’s true,” said Frankie, but he knew he really wasn’t a scared rabbit, and seeing his mother dying, he wasn’t even scared of dying himself.

“Can’t you go work in a hospital? Instead of the infantry?”

“I asked that,” said Frankie. “The draft board said my beliefs need proof. Which I don’t have. They can’t accept my word. And, besides, even if they did, a Sicilian guy who won’t put up his hands, or won’t kill Nazis, everybody figures is a fairy.”

“Are you, Frankie? I heard some fairies ride Harleys. Tony says cops on them are. Personally, I wouldn’t know. I met one once in Miami. He did my hair. And he wasn’t so bad. My motto is, Live and let live. So I wouldn’t care if you was.”

“I don’t know if I am,” said Frankie, sensing the door of opportunity swinging open. “I hang around with guys. And we like each other. And I’m a little shy with dames.”

“You called me,” said Sylvia. “And when I said to come over, you did. You ain’t shy.”

Frankie thought his guardian angel might have followed him into the house to stand behind the sofa to protect him from sin, but when he looked around he didn’t see her. He thought she looked like the nun he had for catechism when he was seven. The angel had been trailing him since his mother died. He tried burning candles and saying rosaries for years, to send her away, but she kept whispering in his ear, but at least she wasn’t behind the sofa.

“I don’t think of you as just a dame,” he said.

“Then what as?” said Sylvia, her femininity never before challenged by any male. And while a catty friend couldn’t hurt her, it was much harder to shrug off Frankie’s sting. “I ain’t a dame?”

“You’re a person a guy can talk to,” said Frankie.

“I appreciate that,” said Sylvia. “But if you don’t see me as a dame, you have a problem.”

“It could be.”

“There’s nothing I can do. And it’s getting late. So why don’t you go to a burlesque? See how it makes you feel?”

“That’s a good idea,” he said.

“If you went in the Army, you might like the boys. That would be a pity.”

“I like holding your hand, Sylvia. And kissing your cheek.”

“That doesn’t count. Let me know how it comes out.”

“Any chance you could give me a test? I might be turning queer and not know it. Jesus, if you saved me, I’d respect you all my life.”

“I can’t,” said Sylvia. “This guy, works for Tony, he’s married. He’s Sicilian too. And, you know, he’d get sore. He ain’t no pussycat, which’s, I guess, why I like him. But I wouldn’t want him on my bad side.”

“I see,” said Frankie, crushed that another guy was in the picture. He could still secretly love her, but he couldn’t compete with a gangster.

Sylvia observed his sinking face, but couldn’t guess how deep was his disappointment. She might encourage Frankie now, if not with a test, possibly with a sample. He could be a fine man someday. He could love women who all needed to be loved. He could fight just battles. Many such men were already in the service, and it worried her slightly that if she helped him he would go too. But someone should help him. It was the right thing to do. Otherwise, he could be a miserable coward, and miss the pleasure of having a woman in his bed, and sharing his daily life.

“I’ve an idea,” she said. “We’ll go in my bedroom. And talk privately. Which wouldn’t feel right here in the parlor.”

“You’re wonderful,” said Frankie.

“Don’t think I’m double-crossing my boyfriend.”

Sylvia put the light on. On her ruffled bed were dolls from newborns to first-graders. Frankie thought his first visit to a dame’s bedroom might be an intrusion on her privacy. Her bra and underpants were on her bedroom chair, and her slip, stockings, and nightgown made a pink puddle on the floor. She sat on the edge of her bed and patted the space next to her. His heart upped its beat. Then he worried that nothing ever was as easy as he thought. Never having done it before, would he be nervous? And would his angel kick him in the ass?

“Sicilian girls ain’t so beautiful as you,” he said.

“A girl in a bathing suit excite you?” she said.

“Is she supposed to?” he said, faking.

“Suppose she’s in underclothes?”

“I’ve never seen any girl like that.”

“Would you like to?” She turned on other lamps, filling the room almost with sunlight near midnight. Standing a few feet from Frankie, she dropped her skirt, and then her blouse. Miss Sylvia Cohen could be Miss Double Cones.

Frankie’s biological system reacted as it hadn’t at the burlesque, but he stayed icy to wait for the scoops themselves to be presented. Then he grinned. When she pulled down her underpants, he went to take her in his arms. She examined him from the outside and she was pleased.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he blurted out.

“Well, that’s healthy,” she said, not believing it, but taking it as a compliment to her figure. “I think you’re just a little too sensitive, Frankie. Which a girl wouldn’t expect, the way you’re built. Sensitive’s nice, but we all have to grow up, and go to war, in one way or another. Now, you have to go home, Frankie.”

“Don’t make me,” he said.

“I gave you a show and you sneaked a feel, but that’s that. Kids brag.”

Since she kept her lips out of reach, Frankie kissed her neck like a starved madman. Then her shoulders turned down. She was surrendering, but then, mustering her resolve, she pushed free. They stood there, he in all his clothes and she naked.

“I wouldn’t ever tell anyone.”

“You had enough.”

“Okay, I’ll go,” said Frankie. “But you think … I’m embarrassed asking, but could I, you know, take a look? I could be sure then. That I ain’t queer. I might even volunteer for the Army.”

Sylvia sat on the bed and Frankie kneeled, but she was shy and kept her feet together. So he put his cheek on her thigh and kissed the white pillow that was her belly. Then she fingered his hair and closed her eyes. And he looked. Her thighs were warm petals on his cheeks. Her hair was darker blonde, curlier, and in a halo. She hummed while Frankie seemed to be praying. Then she pulled his hair, not to hurt him but to draw him up to the bed.

“I love you, Sylvia.”

“I love you too, Frankie,” she said, about a mild illness that would cure itself. “The nice Jewish boys I went to school with, that my mother said I should marry one, they’re in the service. Two are gold stars hanging in their windows. Sometimes I cry thinking about guys I had bagels with. Not that I loved them, or even kissed them.”

Frankie thought he could grow old there, holding her breasts until he died, and he thought Sylvia was the most perfect thing in the world, and that maybe women everywhere were the most perfect things God ever made. “Can we always be friends, Sylvia? Can we do this again?” And, not seeing his guardian angel in the room, he made his move with Sylvia and she didn’t try to stop him.

“Only one other guy touched me,” said Sylvia. “Which wasn’t right I let him. But I liked him so much. And now you. There must be something wrong with me that I chose that other guy. And that I chose you.”

“I appreciate you chose me,” said Frankie.

“You loved me good,” said Sylvia. “So I doubt you wouldn’t do the right thing.”

“Let’s again,” he said.

“You mustn’t ever tell anyone,” she said. “Bruno would kill me.”

“I promise, Sylvia. I’ll never say anything. But I’m asking you to be my steady, even though I know it’s impossible. Would you?” She didn’t answer, but they made love again, and were still in each other’s arms, not wanting to untie the knot. It was a comforting illusion to think that one was part of the other. Then Sylvia was crying and sniffling. “Did I hurt you?” he said.

“You did it nice,” she said, laughing now, tears running down her cheeks. “Someday I’ll marry an accountant. I’ll have a boy and a girl. I’ll get a little fat. And I’ll go to Miami Beach.”

“Maybe I’ll marry you,” said Frankie.

“You’re a goyim. No good Jewish girl marries a goyim. You’re not even circumcised.” She laughed. “Maybe one of these days the war’ll be over.”

For a long while they lay in bed, not sleeping. Sylvia wasn’t crying or laughing now, and they weren’t talking, but their naked sides still touched.

Sylvia thought about the Jewish boys in the Army, about Frankie who was too young to be her lover, and about Bruno in bed with his wife. Nothing good would ever come from Bruno. She liked Bruno’s looks and that he was smooth on the dance floor and sure of himself. But now she had a boy who wasn’t sure of himself, and it wasn’t as awful as she thought it might be, and, in fact, was kind of nice. Sylvia wasn’t sure now that she could give up Frankie as easily as she thought she could give up Bruno.

With just one lamp on, and both Sylvia and Frankie under the bed sheet, Frankie thought he was no nearer to deciding whether or not to put on the uniform. But he was deliciously drowsy from love’s wine, which also made him feel manly, strong, and knowing. Then he turned on his belly to sleep while Sylvia was still on her back, and he put his arm lightly around her. “You asleep, Sylvia?” Her slow regular breathing convinced him that she was, so he didn’t ask again. “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, and heard someone’s distant radio playing love songs.

The war was in the newspapers, on every radio, in classrooms, in newsreels and movies, in letters from guys in the service, in most conversations between housewives buying chickens, workers building ships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and between the old men at the Sicilian Social Society. Young men lied about their youth or health to dress their punches in olive drab in order to knock out the enemy sooner.

Gene Dragoni was planning to join up that summer before coming of age. He took the elevated downtown to the Marine Corps recruiting office on Fulton Street. The recruiting sergeant said, “Fill this out. Answer every question.” The sergeant didn’t believe that Gene was seventeen and a half, the minimum age, but he accepted the application anyway, and would tell his captain later.

Gene went home to wait for his notice. Then, he thought, he would leave a note for his parents saying he was running away, and would go into boot training as a recruit. A week later a letter came from the Marine Corps captain. He said he appreciated Gene’s patriotism, but that he had called the teacher Gene put down as a character reference and the teacher had told him Gene’s true age. So Gene would have to wait for a few years. Then the Marines would be proud to have him.

Next, Gene decided to be a fighter pilot. Hearing of a Navy program that would train Utrecht graduates to fly, he went downtown again. The chief petty officer with a bunched-up old rug for a face put a nickel in the vending machine and handed a Her-shey’s to Gene and slapped him on the back. “Send in your older brother,” he said. And after he thought for a moment, added, “You have any sisters at home?”

Gene wouldn’t give up trying to get into uniform, to do the manly thing, as he saw it. He had grown up with his father’s uniform, a cop’s, around the house or in the closet, but he didn’t see himself as a cop, since his father as a cop was often scolded by his mother for being away day and night. But the cop’s uniform, and all uniforms, but especially the Marines’ dress blues, seemed to bestow on the men who wore them modern-day knighthood. Rocco scoffed at that.

The uniform could put a guy on equal footing with his father, could make him as tall as a cop, and mitt-to-mitt with a heavyweight champ. Rocco didn’t buy that either.

“I’ll go in in two years. When my notice comes,” said Rocco, but he wasn’t crazy about fighting for a private’s pay when he was making three, four times that with his gloves, and with much less chance of coming home in a pine box.

Some 79th Street kids, when they tried to hit a homer, or get an A, but failed, next time didn’t even try, and thereby avoided the failure too. Others, such as Rocco, who was flattened to the canvas a few times, always got up to win the fight. And Gene wouldn’t quit either. So when he heard on the radio that the 69th Regiment of the New York State Guard was asking for volunteers, he went to their armory.

The sergeant, a grocer in daytime, was forming his new company. Most of his soldiers so far were older guys like himself who wouldn’t be drafted because they had kids, flatfeet, a punctured eardrum, or a weak heart. Still, they would do their bit in the Guard, which didn’t give physicals, and would protect the home shores in case the enemy got some crazy idea it could invade. So when Gene Dragoni showed up, the grocer-sergeant had high hopes that some young blood would be coming in too.

“You’re seventeen?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’re you joining?”

“To get training. For when I get drafted.”

“You ever shoot a gun?”

“No. But I ain’t afraid to.”

“You sick or anything?”

“I’m an ox,” said Gene, who was more like a bantam.

“Let’s go meet the colonel.”

The chicken colonel wasn’t saying much. Through his thick glasses, he looked at the paper on which Gene had written his name, address, and religion, not required to give references this time. The colonel glanced up a few times and then went back to reading the paper. Gene thought that if the colonel didn’t hurry up he would piss in his pants, partly because he was nervous. He thought the colonel knew he was too young, but was taking him anyway.

Finally, the colonel stood up and shook hands, and Gene thought it was a puny shake. “Welcome to the Guard, Private Dragoni,” said the colonel.

With the signed requisition in his hand, Private Dragoni was sent to the quartermaster. That sergeant worked during the day in Macy’s men’s wear stockroom. The quartermaster asked Gene his sizes and loaded up his duffel bag with two sets of olive-drab fatigues for training, a khaki uniform for summer parades, and dress olive woolens for winter parades, and Gene stored his clothes in Rocco’s garage.

He went to three meetings in fatigues, and marched around the armory, which was as big as St. Finbar’s if all the pews were taken out. The recruits were instructed on how to strip down a rifle, clean it, oil it, and reassemble all the parts. Not only did they learn to do it, but they had to do it very fast. Gene was getting fed up with doing it over and over, and with marching back and forth.

Then the regiment was going upstate for the weekend. They would fire weapons. That ignited Gene’s interest again. He convinced his father that he was going to pick vegetables for the war effort, as he had done once before as a class project one weekend.

The M-1 was almost as tall as he was when he brought it down from carrying it on his shoulder. He got into the standing shooting position as ordered, as the other recruits did too, hoisting the butt end against his shoulder, sighting down the barrel, getting ready to fire.

“It has a kick,” said the sergeant. “You have to lean into it. Cup it inside your shoulder.”

“Like this?” said Gene, who didn’t have much weight to put behind the butt.

“And spread your feet, to keep your balance when it comes back on you.”

“I can do it.”

“You men, you each got a clip. When you hear the whistle, fire at will from the standing position. When you hear it again, you stop. Even if you ain’t fired all your rounds. Ready. Aim. Fire.”

The sergeant blew the brass whistle hanging from his neck. The live men shot at the cardboard men against the hill. The hill sponged up the bullets that went through the targets or missed them. Gene drove the bolt forward, and then, as he had learned, squeezed the trigger gently. The rifle fired with a small explosion, but it recoiled violently, knocking him on his ass, and the weapon was almost out of his hands. Taking his stance again, he pushed on the bolt to load the chamber, but forgot to squeeze. The pulled trigger exploded the round and the rifle shot back, again knocking him down.

“It takes getting used to,” said the sergeant.

“My arm hurts too,” said Gene.

“Your size, you should have a carbine. But only a noncom gets it. If you made corporal you’d have it. And it ain’t so heavy.”

“I don’t think I can shoot in the prone position now. I hurt.”

“Get down there, Private Dragoni.”

“I don’t think I can run anymore, sarge.”

“Get the lead out of your ass, private.”

By the time the weekend was over, Gene had had enough of being a soldier. But he had been sworn in, as in the regular Army, and he had been at the lecture that warned against going AWOL, which could land a guy in the stockade the same as a GI in the South Pacific leaving to screw a native girl. The sergeant had put it that way to give them a piece of candy on the side. The guys puffed their chests to show they were loyal GIs who wouldn’t run out on the sergeant. They also wanted to show they were the kind of guys that, if they had a legitimate pass signed by the CO, would go out to the grass huts and knock off a piece of native tail.

At church on Sunday, Gene asked God to get him out of the Guard. He was too young. He was too small. He was too bored. When he grew up in a few years, he would be happy to be drafted at eighteen. Then he would serve his country as other guys on the street were already doing. It was his duty too. He had no doubt of that, but in the meantime, if God could arrange a miracle and get him honorably discharged, he would say a novena to St. Anthony and wouldn’t ever go to another burlesque show.

With all the suffering in the world, God didn’t have time to get back to Gene, who was more impatient after another Guard meeting. He was lectured on how to clean his brass buttons and his brass belt buckle, polish his boots, and arrange his underwear and personal items in his footlocker. He thought he was too quickminded to worry about such crap. He wanted to do something daring and brave, but knew now that he had to wait.

When Frankie was grinding up 79th on his Harley one evening, Gene flagged him down, but Frankie was going too fast as usual and couldn’t stop, so he made a U-turn up ahead, and even though 79th was one-way, rode his motorcycle back the wrong way to talk to Gene.

“You’re oldest,” said Gene, “so I have to ask for some advice. I wouldn’t trust asking guys my own age. They can be dumb. And I can’t ask my father, since he thinks I’m smart.”

“Shoot,” said Frankie.

Gene winced, but it meant he should get on with it, so he did. “I joined up, but I hate it. I got to get out.”

Frankie turned his bike the legal way and got off and took off his black leather jacket that was warm in the cold wind generated by his speeding. But the jacket was too warm now that they were going to talk on New Utrecht’s steps across the way. Gene told him his story from the beginning, and a few times Frankie laughed, especially since he was the opposite of Gene and wanted to stay out of the service. For a while Frankie was stumped about how he could help, but then his own birthday coming up gave him an idea.

The night of the next meeting, they packed all Gene’s Guard clothes from Rocco’s garage and strapped the duffel bag on Frankie’s Harley. Gene straddled the duffel bag and held on and they rode to the armory. An hour early, Gene shouldered his stuff and they went in. Ten minutes later the colonel came in, and Gene saluted and asked for permission to speak to the commanding officer.

“At ease,” said the colonel. “Say your piece.”

“I hate to admit this, sir.”

“Yes?”

“I lied when I joined up, sir.”

“So?”

“So I’m too young, sir.”

“You took the oath, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’re in the Guard, private.”

“But I can’t be in, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t grown up yet, sir.”

“You’re the right age. I don’t think you lied. You’re dismissed now,” said the colonel. He picked up a piece of paper and began reading through his heavy glasses. Then he looked up and Gene was still there. “I said you’re dismissed, soldier.”

Now Frankie stepped up and sat on the corner of the officer’s desk. He snapped another piece of paper in the colonel’s face. “What I have here, sir,” said Frankie, “is my friend’s birth certificate.”

“So what?” said the colonel.

“So look at it,” said Frankie.

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but get off my desk and out of this government building or you’ll be thrown out.”

“This is your last chance,” said Frankie.

So then the colonel grabbed the certificate, glanced at it, and said, “It’s a forgery.”

“We’ll go to the New York Times. Show them Gene’s birth certificate. And say you, Colonel Whitcomb, are holding him in the Guard against his wishes.”

The colonel took the birth certificate again and studied it for such a long time that Gene was sure he would piss in his pants now.

“I have no use for crybabies in my command,” said the colonel, finally. “We’ll send you your goddamned discharge. And don’t ever come back here again.”

After Frankie slept with Sylvia that Saturday night, he called her every night of the next week. Two of those nights she said for him to come over when it was dark. He should walk, since his Harley made a racket and people watched where it went. If the porch light was off, it meant a neighbor had dropped by and he should come back in twenty, thirty minutes.

In the subsequent weeks and months they ate, talked, played games and cards together, and they went to movies, restaurants, a picnic on Long Island, with Sylvia driving her old Studebaker, and across the George Washington Bridge to Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, and they rode the 69th Street Ferry from Brooklyn to Staten Island. If her parents weren’t going out of town, they made love in their rented room in Borough Park, and Frankie learned that Sylvia wasn’t a moll even though her other boyfriend was a gangster. She was just a little too hungry for excitement and a little too sad over the war from which her fellow Jews were running for their lives. Otherwise, she was a little tough, medium sweet, and very smart, and he loved her a little more now that he knew her human weaknesses.

For her part, Sylvia learned that Frankie kept his word, that if he said he would arrive at six he did, if he said he would bring wine he did, and that he hadn’t told his friends he was sleeping with her. They grew used to each other, and loved each other, and were careful that Bruno didn’t find out. Since Bruno was married and, according to him, had a Sicilian wife who would roast his nuts in olive oil, he wasn’t around much, and Sylvia, using her clever mind, cut back even on the few demands he did make. She slept with him twice in June (including Frankie’s graduation night) and twice in July and twice again in August, and by then Bruno was making her sick.

The only thing that Bruno was doing differently was making the most of the few times they had together. But Sylvia was feeling more and more like the whore who screws for money but doesn’t get paid. If she was paid by Bruno, perhaps she could go on with it, especially if she bought gold jewelry with the money. But Bruno didn’t even bring her flowers, which Frankie did, from his father’s garden, once a fragrant bunch of lilies of the valley, and another time zinnias with the colors of crayons.

“I’ll tell him something,” she said.

“It’s better I talk to him man-to-man.”

“Don’t be dumb, Frankie. He carries a gun. He’ll blow your brains out.”

“Better me than you,” he said, and the voice in his ear said indeed it would be him and not her.

“That’s very brave,” she said.

“He doesn’t scare me.”

“I know that.”

“So I’ll go have it out with him.”

“You won’t. That’s an order.”

“I don’t take orders.”

“You will from me.”

“Sylvia, I can’t let you risk your pretty neck.”

“Kiss my toes.”

“Jesus.”

“Kiss them. You said you would if I asked. So do it.”

“What’s that going to prove?”

“That you love me enough to do what I say. I’m waiting.”

Frankie got down on his knees and kissed her red painted toenails. Her toes didn’t smell sour as his could, but of perfume, which seemed to be hidden everywhere on her body.

“I could almost make love to your toes,” he said, getting up and rewarded with a deep kiss.

“The bum’s a bully,” she said. “So we have to play him careful. So neither of us gets hurt.”

“Tell him it’s over.”

“He won’t accept that. He’d keep after me, thinking he said something wrong, or did something. He’d apologize. Slobber over me. Hoping everything would be hunky-dory.”

“Write a letter. Say you’re pregnant. Going to Puerto Rico for an abortion. You don’t want to get knocked up again.”

“Are you kidding? With him Sicilian? You think he’d let me get an abortion of his kid? He’d pass out cigars. My God, I’d never get rid of the bum.”

“So then what?” said Frankie.

“I could always shoot him. With his own gun. In the motel. He always signs in as Jones.” She seemed very serious, looking Frankie in the eyes.

“Jesus.”

“After we do it, he passes out. Then I’d hit him between the eyes. He wouldn’t know he got killed.”

“No. No, Sylvia. Jesus, no.”

“You believed me?”

“I did.”

“I really wouldn’t.”

“Don’t, Sylvia.”

“Hey, Frankie, I’m not that kind of girl. I couldn’t do that, take his gun and kill the SOB, even if he is a rat by trade.”

“I’m glad. Killing is the worst thing. It makes us rotten as him. My father says that.”

“Not that I’m saying it’s right in this case, Frankie. But you have to kill rats sometimes, or they can nibble a person to death.”

“Jesus. Don’t do it. Not for my sake,” he said.

“It ain’t only for your sake. It’s for mine too. And I just got a great idea. It’s getting us out of this mess. Out of Bruno’s clutches.”

“Yeah? What’s the idea?”

“I can’t tell you yet. After I figure out all the answers to all his questions.”

“You sure I can’t tell him nice myself?” said Frankie.

“You want to kiss my toes again?”

“Something else this time.”

“You listening to me? And not talking to Bruno?” she said.

“I’m listening to you,” he said.

“Good. Later we’ll go out for macaroni and clams.”

For her performance Sylvia bought a nice sensible dress that came up to her neck and down to her knees and had plenty of room for her breasts. Ordinarily, her breasts were pushing against the fabric. She was just too big-busted, the shopgirls in the dress stores would say. And her new dress was also in white to look cherry. She had had a sexy look since puberty but had kept her cherry until giving it to Bruno, which was the biggest mistake of her life.

Actually, Sylvia had two plans. If the first didn’t work, then she would ask Tony to get Bruno off her back. Bruno would kiss Tony’s toes. Bruno worked for Tony, and was scared of Tony. And Tony had told Sylvia, who was his secretary in the olive oil office, that whatever her problem, it didn’t matter if it was money or love or hate, he, Tony Tempesta, wanted first crack at solving it for her. Even though she was Jewish, she was in his family like his sister and he wouldn’t let any harm come to her.

Before Bruno asked for their next date at the motel on Long Island, she asked him to have a drink when she got off. She was in her modest white dress and almost looked like a nun in the summer habit, and Bruno didn’t give her the usual slap on her ass as soon as they were alone, and not getting it now, Sylvia knew her idea was working. He took her in his Caddie to The 19th Hole on the corner of 14th Avenue across from the Dyker Heights Golf Course. At the back of the bar they took the red leather booth where no one else was around.

Bruno’s long black hair was combed straight back, his teeth were slightly irregular, his face was square and strong, and he still wasn’t fat from all the food he ate, and he had the kind of smile that one minute could love a person to bits and the next minute could chop a person in pieces. The bad part of Bruno’s smile came from his eyes, which were brown, but not warm as brown eyes often are. His eyes were like dried blood, scabby and mean, and if they weren’t disguised by his smiling mouth, then the average person could feel a chill that no amount of clothing could warm up.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Bruno.”

“So tell me. I won’t bite.”

“I got this marriage proposal,” said Sylvia, very calmly. “He’s a nice guy.”

“He screw you?” he said.

“You know I wouldn’t,” she said.

“But he wants to get hitched anyway?” he said.

“Yeah. He’s Jewish.”

“I thought my Sicilian cock converted you.”

“He’s an accountant. He’ll make a good father for my kids someday,” she said.

“Accountant. That’s pretty good. So you’re quitting your job?” he said.

“Not till I get pregnant.”

“I wouldn’t screw up your wedding plans.”

“I knew you’d understand, Bruno.”

“Hey, I ain’t no animal. I respect a woman who tells me what she has to do in her life. So, do I get an invite to the wedding? Like I’m just a friend from the office?”

“It’s going to be a civil ceremony. At city hall. Just us.”

“When you set the date and all, you let me know. So I can give you a wedding present. What can I give to show I appreciate all the good times we had?”

“I wouldn’t ask for anything, Bruno. I had good times too. But thanks just the same.”

“You finishing your drink?” he said.

“I had enough.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’ll drop you off at your house. Don’t worry, I ain’t asking for a last piece of nookie. By the way, what’s his name?”

“His name?” she said. “He’s just a guy.”

“I’m curious.”

“Oh. Herbie.”

“Herbie what?”

“Herbie Schwartz,” she said, biting her tongue too late.

“So, pretty soon, you’re going to be Sylvia Schwartz. Is that the truth, Sylvia?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s pretty good for Herbie. Not so good for Bruno. But what the hell, I’m married anyway. Maybe I’ll go give Marie a good screwing for a change. You know, that butterball, she gained another five pounds last month.”

Frankie and Sylvia waited for weeks to see if anything would go wrong from her dumping Bruno. Then they had a rip-roaring celebration, just the two of them, at Le Petit Cabaret in Greenwich Village. There Frankie spent his money on French champagne, escargots, and calf brains in brown butter. The show had Apache dancers, cancan girls, a comedian, and a canary, blonde, small, but with the voice of a choir.

They sat close, touching hands and thighs under the table, and saying clichés they meant. They danced cheek-to-cheek on the crowded floor. But their golden hour wouldn’t last. Frankie, in order not to spoil the evening, didn’t mention the greetings from the draft board in his pocket. He would tell her, if not that night, and not when they awoke in the morning in their rented room with other things on their minds, then another night.

A week went by and, not being able to tell her his notice had come, he just handed it to her. She read the place, Whitehall Street in downtown Manhattan by the financial district, and the date, Monday, November 30, 1942, at 8:00 a.m., and she wept.

Frankie now had another reason to resist going into uniform: his furious and singular passion for Sylvia, equally matched by her passion. That reason, of course, wouldn’t excuse any man from the service. So he had no acceptable excuse, and they both knew it.

“I’m going in.”

“We could run away. Change our names. Get a forged 4F card,” she said.

“I couldn’t,” said Frankie, and was surprised to hear his angel say that Sylvia’s plan was pretty good and that he should take her up on it.

“If you go, and won’t kill them, you won’t last. Not five minutes. The Nazis will aim at you first. You can’t go in, Frankie.”

“It would be a disgrace to Bensonhurst.”

“Screw Bensonhurst,” she said.

“We still have fifty days,” he said.

“Think about it, honey. We could set up housekeeping. Get jobs in a war factory. What a wonderful time we could have.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, but he knew he wouldn’t change his mind. The right thing to do, as everyone saw it, was to go in and be a soldier.

To store up on love and lovemaking, they were together every free minute. Frankie even met her for lunch a few times in the next weeks, and once Bruno got a glimpse of them. And they moved into the rented room and played house, cooking on a hot plate and going down to the basement to do the laundry. They put the calendar in the trash and lived as if it hadn’t been invented.

When Frankie came home one evening with cartons of chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork, carried from the restaurant on his Harley, Sylvia wasn’t there. Neither were her clothes and things. Her note said she couldn’t see him for a while, but that she would explain everything in her letter when she had time to write it, and that she still loved him and always would.

For Frankie, losing the woman he loved was no easier at eighteen than it would be for another man losing his wife after decades. He brooded for a night and a day, not leaving the room. The mystery of her departure finally drove him into the street and he phoned her house, but her father said she wasn’t there. Then Frankie had to make a run to Tony Tempesta’s office where Sylvia was the secretary, but she wasn’t on the job either. So then he really got worried and went and rang her father’s doorbell. When no one answered, he went to the back door and jimmied the lock with his Barlow knife and went inside to Sylvia’s bedroom. She was in bed in bandages.

“Jesus! What happened?”

“How’d you get in? You shouldn’t’ve come here. Leave, Frankie, leave.” Sylvia was a little hysterical, which was unlike her.

“I ain’t leaving,” he said, sitting on her bed, touching the gauze on her face and arms. “Does it hurt? How’d you get all that?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll heal. Then I’ll do what I have to,” said Sylvia.

“Were you in an accident?” said Frankie, who had the true explanation in his ear, but as always it was something he didn’t want to hear.

“Yeah, an accident,” she said. “And I don’t want you getting in one too. So don’t come around no more. But write me which camp you go to. Maybe I’ll send you cookies, and if it ain’t too far, come and see you.”

“Make a list of anything you need. I’ll come back tomorrow. And bring you roses. Red roses.”

“You’re my honey,” she said.

“You ain’t getting in no more accidents,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” she said, sitting up, extending her arm, and he came back and took her hand again.

He loosened up to put on his wouldn’t-swat-a-fly grin. “You know that angel? She’s been a pain. So I’m leaving her here. And she’ll watch out for you.”

Frankie looked around the room, looked under Sylvia’s bed, but in her closet he thought he saw her. She was a frail and pretty young thing, with bright round eyes of sky, which she dimmed shyly.

“You stay here,” said Frankie. “Don’t leave Sylvia. If you follow me this time I’ll get sore. And besides, you could get hurt out there too.”

Sylvia said, “You have a screw loose, Frankie?”

“It could be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I made one mistake. Herbie’s name.”

“Is Herbie okay?” he said.

“Yeah. He just shit in his pants.”

“I won’t.”

The next morning Frankie was a hot boiler with a head of steam that had to be let out, so he raced his Harley to the olive oil office, but Bruno wouldn’t be in until two. Tony could feel Frankie’s anger, so slowly Tony prodded him. Then Frankie realized that Tony didn’t know the real reason Sylvia wasn’t on the job, and remembering that Tony would watch out for her, he told him what had happened.

“Beating up Sylvia wasn’t nice,” said Tony. “You go home, kid. I have a talk with Bruno. He belongs to me.”

Frankie was still steaming when he rode off. He tried to cool down by bringing the roses to Sylvia, but when he saw her bandages again his steam rose a few more degrees. Getting back on his bike, he charged around too fast and almost spilled, but he couldn’t decide on a place to go, so he steered back to the olive oil office. He had to give that bully a broken nose.

He had been waiting outside the office for a half hour, straddling his bike, when he saw Bruno walking up the street. Without any planning, Frankie turned on the ignition, gunned it, shifted into first, and, speeding up, shifted into second. With his bike roaring like a cannon going off, he aimed it at Bruno. Bruno didn’t jump out of the way soon enough to avoid the bike entirely. One leg was hit.

Frankie had tried to kill Bruno by running him down, but he had killed himself instead, by missing Bruno and hitting the brick wall beside the plate-glass windows of the office. His neck was broken.

Tony came out. When he saw that Bruno was still alive, he helped him inside and away from the crowd. In the back room where the counterfeit olive oil was mixed, Tony sat Bruno on the work bench and lit a smoke for him. When he returned from the front room with coffee, Bruno sipped it. Then, with a pistol that had a silencer, Tony shot Bruno in the head and put the body in an empty oil drum.

Frankie was laid out at the Califano Funeral Parlor and, in her bandages, Sylvia sat next to his father, Giovanni, for the three days that the body was on view. Gene, Rocco, and Nick were also there every day, in suits and ties, not knowing what to say to anyone. They had known Frankie better than they had the members of their own families. They had loved him as boys do each other, simply and without question, before they must turn to the richer love of a man for a woman, complicated and always questioning.

The last night of their vigil, an hour before the funeral parlor locked its doors for the night, Rocco hid himself in an unused room. Then, Gene at the handlebars of Frankie’s Harley and Nick behind him in a swiped priest’s cassock, they rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. Following the Madison bus on the Skyway, they arrived in Union City and at the Hudson Theater once again. As they had anticipated, the priest’s cassock got Nick in the stage door when he said to the guard, “It’s an errand of mercy.”

Miss Sugar Buns believed that Nick was a priest, and since he was also willing to pay her $50 to perform for a dying man, she said, “Why the hell not?”

She straddled the Harley too, showing her thighs that Nick, behind her, thought were like moonlight in bottles, and with the cassock flaring out behind him like a ghost in the night trying to keep up with them, Nick was holding on around her waist as she held onto Gene in front, who was letting all the untamed juice out of the Harley and speeding in a race of one. Nick was deciding now that he was too old to be an altar boy anymore. He wanted girls, dozens, hundreds of girls.

“This isn’t a hospital,” said Miss Sugar Buns, as Gene knocked three times on the funeral parlor’s back door, and then repeated it.

“You still get fifty bucks,” said Gene.

“What took you guys so long?” said Rocco, letting them in. “I was getting scared in here by myself.”

“God, he’s dead,” she said. “He won’t enjoy it.”

“Give him a chance,” said Gene, doing a practice drum roll, his drums unpacked by Rocco while he was waiting.

“He can’t see so good lying down,” said Rocco. “Let’s get him up.”

“He’s too big,” said Nick, standing at the casket.

“Give me a hand,” said Rocco, at Frankie’s head.

“Where to? His legs’re stiff,” said Nick.

“Let’s stand him some place,” said Rocco, looking around, as he and Nick gripped Frankie at each end.

Miss Sugar Buns said, “First, let’s see the scratch.”

“You ain’t only seeing it,” said Gene, taking out the money, “but you’re getting it. In advance.”

“That’s sweet. I never been paid in advance.” She stashed the bills in her purse.

Frankie was a heavy and stiff lead soldier that Rocco and Nick were standing in the corner now, where they pried open his aggie eyes. To keep Frankie from keeling over, they straddled chairs at each side of him. Then, by candlelight, less noticeable from the street than electric light, and by Gene’s drumbeat, Miss Sugar Buns loosened and discarded, stretching it out, peeling one garment so slowly, bumping and grinding, for the pleasure of the dead Frankie.

She stripped off all her clothes, until she got down to her hairnet bra and spangled G-string. She wore them even under her street clothes when she went to buy groceries. And when those gossamer items flew from her body, the guys all nodded. They thought they had again seen everything she had, although the funeral parlor wasn’t ablaze in a spotlight, and their eyes weren’t dry, and their view was filtered, on purpose, through the fingers of Frankie’s angel.

Steelwork

by Gilbert Sorrentino

Bay Ridge

(Originally published in 1970)

1941

To Arms

McGinn

On Pearl Harbor Day, McGinn heard the news of the attack playing touch football in the playground. The Japanese had done it! There they were out there. Far away. He didn’t quite know what they looked like but they had big swords and shit like that. Rising Sun? They tortured the Chinese a lot. He remembered the War cards he had collected for years.

Naked Chinese charging across a bridge against machine guns. The card’s dominant color was red, for the blood. All the cards had a lot of red in them. Severed heads, children in Barcelona? with ragged holes where their eyes should be. A lot of crazy jigs in the desert throwing spears at Italian planes. Let the boogies an wops kill each other, Cockroach once told him.

Now America was in it. He’d get to go in, too. Get the fuck away from here an kill some fuckin Japs. Or somebody. He was sixteen and could easy make it. The war wouldn’t end so quick.

They were out there. They sneaked in, the yella basteds, right in an bombed the shit outa all the ships, on Sunday! Sunday! They got no rules, rape kids an nuns. There were nuns on the War cards. He thought of Sister Margaret Mary, dirty little basteds running after her. He stood in front of them an kicked their balls off! The rat fucks.

Maybe he could even get in now. School was a mystery to him and his grandma might be able to sign a paper or something. Get to be a pilot and bomb the ass off them, with a scarf. Plenty of snatch back on leave. You could fly off a carrier.

He started to run to Yodel’s where he could talk about it. Jesus Christ! A fuckin war!

1946

Monte the Count

The Baptism

McGinn leaned, drunk, against the bar in Lento’s. His right eye was swollen shut where a cop had laid a nightstick across his face two nights before. Under and around the metal plate in his head there was an unwavering current of sharp pain that wouldn’t stop, that, in fact, the liquor seemed to intensify. I should be dead, he thought. I should be dead far away from here, far away, O far away … she loved him in the springtime and he’s far far away, he sang, and downed his shot. Black Mac turned to look at him. Have another John, he said, I got some money, have another.

McGinn rubbed at his swollen eye tenderly and moved his hand up to the cold, shiny surface of the plate covering his brain. My head hurts me, Mac, he said. Jesus, I mean it hurts me terrible. Ah, ya fuck, ya got all that disability money comin soon for the resta ya life. You got it by the balls. He signaled the bartender for two more boilermakers, then turned to continue talking with Ziggy.

It was red in front of McGinn’s eyes after he had drunk the whiskey. He retched, then calmed, then retched again, but finally kept the shot down. Then he very carefully set the shot glass down, picked up his beer and drank it all slowly. As he was setting the beer glass down, it got very red. He looked at Mac and saw him as if he were looking at him through a piece of red cellophane. Like when they were all kids before the war, looking at the green park through the cellophane, the new world, intense, red and weird before them. It was silent, he saw everybody’s mouth moving but he could only hear the jukebox, clear, day clear, the mouths, the movement of the men at the bar, Frank the bartender drawing two beers. The pain in his head was down in his ears now, in his neck, clean and sharp into the swollen eye. I should be dead.

He was standing on the bar now, surprised to find himself there and the noise of the saloon came back. The pain in his head was gone and he saw them all clearly, they had sent him to the war. You bastards! he shouted, you bastards! You ain’t got a plate in your head! Mac was touching, gently, his ankle, motioning with his head for him to get down, and Frank was drying his hands patiently, giving McGinn time to get down by himself. A good kid he was, got hurt a little in the war but a good kid.

You bastards, McGinn shouted. The bar was dead quiet now, the jukebox stopped, the customers watching him standing there, high above them. He lifted his hand up over his head, gloriously, and saw himself, outside himself, above them all, the men of the king’s guard, McGinn in a cloak, soft boots, a rapier elegant, pointed straight up. He raised his hand high. I am the Count of Monte Cristo! he shouted, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! He kicked at Mac’s drink and smashed it to the floor, then kicked at the glasses next to him on the bar, hearing them break, shouting through the absolute clarity now in his head, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! You bastards, you sent the Count to the war! He was screaming now, and someone at the far end of the bar started for the door. Hold it, you bastard! Hold it! You ain’t callin no bulls on me! The man stopped, shrugged, walked back to the bar. Frank began moving quietly and casually down toward McGinn, smiling sickly. I am the Count! I am the Count, he was crying now, weeping freely, his arms at his side, the pain back in his head, his eye, his ears, the bar had gone silent to him, there were movements, feet scuffling, he saw them through the tears, out there they moved through their lives in dead silence, I am the Count of Monte Cristo, you mothers’ cunts! he screamed, the tears running down his face, dropping down on his faded fatigue jacket, dark stains spreading on its front as Mac and Frank helped him to the floor.

1951

Fading Out

Monte the Count

His open Irish face had become coarsened and brutalized, and he frequently, now, forgot his name, his real name. He always answered to “Monte” or “Count.” A broken nose, reddened face with the ruptured capillaries speckling its surface. At times, through the alcoholic murk, the pain screwing his face up.

Let the pricks jus hit me one good shot on the toppa the head. Jus one, jus one. He would cry at times, racked with sobbing, holding himself together, one hand on his belly and the other on top of his head, squeezing the life back into himself. (Beeoo Gesty! Beeoo Gesty! Cantering down toward Pep.)

Hermes Pavolites, one of three brothers who shot pool in Sal’s, fair sticks, hit him a hard uppercut in the Melody Room one night, while Monte was looking at the bar in a daze, his head on his chest. Some bitter revenge taken at an opportune moment, for some old wrong done in the years just after the war. His two brothers stood near, in case Monte got up, but he simply sagged and oozed across the bar, spilling his beer and change into the rinse water. Everyone watched the Greeks walk out, laughing, then the place emptied.

Monte tried for months to find out who’d creamed him. Nobody had been there. Not me, Monte, I heard about the lousy fuckin thing, musta been some spicks come inna bar. To watch him walk the streets, asking questions, then finally stop, just look accusingly at everyone. One night he hit Frank Bull in Henry’s, and Frank simply tore the arms off his shirt, laughing at him.

A little while later, the cops broke his arm outside Papa Joe’s, one kneeling in the small of his back, holding his face down, pressed into the sidewalk, while the other casually whaled at his arms and legs with his nightstick. He broke Papa Joe’s front window with the cast when he got out of Raymond Street jail.

1951

Monte the Count

The Last Stand

After he smashed Papa Joe’s window with his cast, he stood for a moment, then, very wisely, walked rapidly down the block toward the bay. It would take a while for the cops to come, he’d sit in some driveway till morning, then just go down to the ferry and ride back and forth a while. It was almost five anyway. But he stopped in the middle of the block and started back, stood then on Papa Joe’s corner and watched the prowl car coming down Third Avenue, slow to a halt. The first cop got out, swinging his nightstick, grinning at him. Monte walked over slowly, humbly, then when he got to within a few feet of the cop, kicked him in the balls. He fell backward, and Monte smashed him across the skull with the cast. Then he ran around to the driver’s side as the cop was getting out there, the door just about a foot open, the cop’s foot grazing the street. Monte kicked at the door with all his strength, slamming the cop’s ankle between it and the car frame. He saw the cop’s face go white and he started to laugh. The cop drew his gun and leveled it at Monte, pushed the door all the way open, his nightstick high over his shoulder in his other hand. Monte drew the cast back to paste him and the cop put the stick across the side of his head and laid him out. He sat in the open door of the car, the gun still trained on him, thinking about firing.

About the contributors:

Lawrence Block is one of the acknowledged masters of the mystery genre, winning numerous accolades, including the Edgar, Maltese Falcon, Nero Wolfe, and Shamus awards. His column on fiction writing was a popular feature of Writer’s Digest magazine for many years, and his books for writers include the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. A longtime New Yorker, his books about Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr, like his big New York novel Small Town, span the five boroughs. Block lived on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a year and a half in the early ’80s; these days he’s at home in Greenwich Villege.

Maggie Estep has published five books, most recently Gargantuan, the second in a series of crime novels involving horse racing. She is currently working on a third crime novel as well as a nonfiction book entitled Bangtails: Ten Dazzling Horses and the American Rogues Who Raced Them. Maggie lives in Brooklyn.

Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935. He is for many the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many bestselling books, including the novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He currently divides his time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Salvatore La Puma was born in Brooklyn in 1929. A novelist and short story writer, La Puma received the 1987 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and a 1988 American Book Award for his first story collection, The Boys of Bensonhurst. That book was followed in 1991 by A Time for Wedding Cake, a novel, and in 1992 by a second story collection, Teaching Angels to Fly. Most of La Puma’s fiction takes place in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, his own neighborhood until 1959. He now lives in Santa Barbara, California.

H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. Frequent illnesses in his youth disrupted his schooling, but Lovecraft gained a wide knowledge of many subjects through independent reading and study. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction — three short novels and about sixty short stories — has exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. Lovecraft lived in Brooklyn from 1924 to 1926, and he died in Providence in 1937.

Tim Mcloughlin was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still resides. He is the author of Heart of the Old Country (Akashic, 2001), a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and winner of Italy’s Premio Penne Award. McLoughlin edited the first Brooklyn Noir anthology, to which he also contributed the story “When All This Was Bay Ridge.”

Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. He dropped out of school at age fifteen and joined the Merchant Marine. Physically disabled by tuberculosis, he lost a lung at the age of eighteen and was sent home, not expected to live long. For the next decade, Selby remained bedridden and frequently hospitalized with a variety of lungrelated ailments. Unable to make a living due to health concerns, Selby decided to become a writer. After the publication of Last Exit to Brooklyn in 1964, Selby became addicted to heroin, a problem that eventually landed him behind bars. After his release from prison, he moved to Los Angeles and kicked his habit. Selby was married three times and had four children. In recent years, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream have been adapted to film. He died in Los Angeles of chronic lung disease in April 2004.

Irwin Shaw was born in 1913 in the Bronx and moved early in life to Brooklyn. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1934 and began his career as a scriptwriter for popular radio programs of the 1930s, before moving to Hollywood to write for the movies. Disillusioned with the film industry, Shaw returned to New York. His first piece of serious writing, an antiwar play entitled Bury the Dead, was produced on Broadway in 1936. His first collection of stories, Sailor off the Bremen and Other Stories (1939), earned him an immediate and lasting reputation as a writer of fiction. His first novel, The Young Lions, published in 1948, won high critical praise as one of the most important books to come out of World War II. The commercial success of the book and the movie adaptation brought Shaw financial independence and allowed him to devote the rest of his career to writing novels, among them The Troubled Air (1951), Lucy Crown (1956), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), and Acceptable Losses (1982). His stories are collected in Short Stories: Five Decades (1978). He died in Davos, Switzerland in 1984.

Gilbert Sorrentino was born in Brooklyn in 1929. He has published over thirty volumes of fiction, poetry, and essays. For much of the 1950s and ’60s he published literary journals and magazines, and in 1965 he took a job at Grove Press where his first editing assignment was Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Sorrentino’s first novel, The Sky Changes, was published in 1966 and was soon followed by Steelwork, in which he draws upon memories of his Brooklyn childhood. He taught literature at Stanford University for many years, and rumor has it that he is currently living in Brooklyn.

Donald E. Westlake was born in Brooklyn, but didn’t stay long, moving to Manhattan, Yonkers, Albany, Binghamton, and Manhattan again, before returning to deepest Brooklyn, a.k.a., Canarsie. That was a two-year stay, followed by Manhattan, Queens, Manhattan, New Jersey (the dark years), more Manhattan, a year in London, Manhattan again, and finally Columbia County in upstate New York. What he was doing among all those moves was attending college (no degrees) and the Air Force (no medals), getting married more than once, raising children, and writing. He has published about forty-five novels, others under different names, along with movie scripts, notably The Grifters, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Westlake has won four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America — for best novel, best short story, best screenplay, and Grand Master. In 2002 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America, East, but kept on writing anyway.