Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde Read online

  “For April Fool’s Day? Ain’t it?”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t’ve cracked that? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Oh, you little fool.”

  “Go to hell, you’re too snotty.”

  “That’s why you love me.”

  What’d she do if he were spotted? She’d do nothing, go back to work, look for another guy. He’d do the same if she were dead. He was proud as Lucifer of their self-sufficiency….

  Afterwards, returning to Leroy, he felt like a tourist coming back again to old streets with valises in both hands pasted with foreign labels.

  “Hello,” said Joe.

  “Hello,” said Bill, with a death between them. He patted the dog, incredulous to be remembered, he’d been away so long; what memories beasts had!

  “How’s it going to end, now, with that red-headed guy chasing you early in the morning? God’s sake, why don’t you quit?”

  “What you screeching for? Don’t mind me. I’m so damn busy I’m losing track of you. What you been doing?”

  “I’d like to work.”

  “What do you do all day?” Bill persisted as if he was fresh from Siam or Australia and was quizzing old friends. “You must do something. Yes, a handsome kid.” (Just like Hanrahan, thought Joe.) “How about Cathy?”

  “I see some of her. What you driving at?”

  “You like her, kid, don’t you?”

  “Aw, cut it.” He was red to the eyes, his hands, his forehead up to the yellow shock his hair rooted in red.

  “I wish you luck. That’s what we all need in life.”

  “Are you sick? You’re talking groggy.”

  “Both of you young and goodlooking. Why not?” His manner was comparative, like a traveler’s noting the likeness between love in Siam and in the home town. “My dough’s running low, but I’ll have more later. Take this fiver. Gwan.” He moved to the door despite Joe’s pleading, not even listening to the names of the words, so that it seemed one big sound spouting at him, low, monotonous. Behind the voice Joe’s mouth was open, his teeth set in even pearly lines. “Sorry, I got a date to address a political organization. Your brother’s becoming a big shot. Good-by.”

  “More dirty money,” shouted Joe at the closing door. He grinned. Whatever Bill was, he was a sport. Thinking of Cathy, the sweet limbs of virgins, new fruit, new creation, so that loving them was like dreamy sleeping under springtime apple trees in the scent of beginning. He hummed to himself. A scent as if of apple blossoms rose in the flat.

  After supper he was happy to pluck her from her parents. They went up to the hotel room. Bill’s money was needed to pay for it, you bet it was. It wasn’t her who walked with him. She was still afraid, a girl child with blushing face. The one who came was the ghost of her not yet materialized, the woman who was to be, was becoming with each step down the lengthy hotel corridor. Inside he was alone with a woman, the virgin child shivering and crouching at the door, the virgin child the ghost. The reality was a woman whose hands he took, her body moving towards him without compulsion, as if there were a mechanism in both of them that could only function when they were together. He was hearing the roar in his head like wheels turning, the movements of heavy ominous things. The machinery was spinning. Like the memory of a good summer, the scent of their youths lingered, mingling.

  He kissed her slowly, both of them burrowing deep into passion. Digging deep, the world left high on top, a surface world where there were families, priests, brothers, problems, the agonies and compunctions. But here there was only warmth and the dense pressure of their bodies packing them together. Distant from outside contact, they made love, endlessly innocent of time until, in passion spent, he stared down at her with sobering eyes. Seeing him stare at her, suddenly aware of time, with time in his stare, she covered herself up, no longer innocent.

  They listened to the city. Through the lowered shades they felt the weight of a million eyes, and all sight belonged to priests, mothers, censorious persons. “It’s a sin,” she moaned. “I’m no good.”

  “The thousandth time you’ve said it. Nothing wrong in my loving you, is there?” He gripped her close, his lips in hard oval kisses like little mouths declaiming: Of course there’s nothing wrong, Cathy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THESE were the last days before April, and April was the name of spring, awakening.

  The kids hadn’t said a word in dissent at the meeting. Holy God, McMann spotted. Tough. The word leaked out. They considered the fact of Duffy and McMann wiped out in so short a space, right after one another. Who was left? That’s what counted. The clubhouse counted. Bill and Spat were buddies. So what? The kids didn’t give a damn about the killings. They were the results of some godly battle out of their understanding. What they wanted was leaders. And dough. It looked like they were set for bigger things. The clubhouse was going to open on the dot. Jobs were scheduled soon after. Bill was smart. Didn’t even McMann usta call him brain guy? And Spat was a good muscle if there ever was. O.K.

  Ray and Schneck were sorry about McMann because Spat mightn’t like them much. But Spat wasn’t the big cheese. You could see it with both eyes shut. Bill was the gink to heel. Bill said every guy was due for a break. Ray and Schneck listened at the meeting, and once Bill looked at them, talking to them the most, even with the words meant for the crowd. Ray and Schneck said that meant somepun. It was oke. If things didn’t work out so hot, they could quit. Not a thing was lost.

  Everybody felt fine when the meeting was over. It had gone off the nuts. Everybody had a hunch there’d be tons of easy kale. Hell, and they’d hardly noticed that Bill. He usta be quiet with McMann around. But them quiet guys. Hell. They noticed him plenty. He was O.K. Any guy to fix Duffy and McMann was some guy, hadda be O.K.

  The meeting was over and the last days of March like the final waters of a flood tide carried all the torrents in its wild course.

  Busy with plans, the clubhouse, Bill was always aware of that heart of his ticking out the story, recapitulant, all the long story since he’d lost his job and become a brain guy. Tick tock, telling the story of McMann and the robberies, the murders, tick tock the past, April first, the club, telling the tales of March and April and May, all the months to come as if time had no hold on his heart. Greater than time it told the story of the days to come, ticked the prophecies in a strange dour tongue. What would it be? A fool to worry about the future. If McMann had foreseen his murder, if he’d foreseen blood on his hands…. Hell with the future. Hanrahan might clip him, or Spat, or Ray, or some new leader led at the moment. Or he might be lucky and make dough. A decent sum, three thousand, say, enough to quit on, go west, south, anywhere. The clubhouse was prepared. He ate and slept with Madge….

  He wasn’t surprised Joe looked sick. His world was in crisis, and Joe was part of it. He, Bill, was the world, and when he was stricken, all felt the impact. Joe glanced up from slicing the grapefruit. “I’m in trouble, Bill. I got Cathy in trouble. She says her mother’s getting wise. She wants to run away. She don’t want to hurt them.”

  Bill laughed. “We spread hope and goodwill wherever we go.” And he smiled sadly at the clean seducer before him, his brother Joe. He himself was the seducer above all, not Joe. “How long’s it been going on? My eyes’ve been shut.”

  “It’s done. What shall I do?”

  Bill was sorry for the Gebhardts, sighing, sympathy cold in his heart. All he could do was act the outer shell, nodding his head. “Why don’t you marry her? She’s a good kid. She might do you some good.”

  “That’s a joke. You saying that.” He stared at Bill as Bill remembered he used to stare at McMann.

  “Why not?” McMann was in him now. The tempters never died, passing from body to body. McMann lived. “Want to ruin her life? If you don’t give her a break she’ll hit the gutter. How the hell do you think they keep up the whore supply in town?”

  “I was thinking of living with her — that is, if you don’t mind. You see, I love her.”
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  “Why not marry her, Joe?”

  “Who the hell wants to marry?” he said bitterly. “I’m your real brother, Bill.”

  Bill’s heart thumped miserably, the shell of sympathy radiating inwards, warming the core of his heart. A sadness spoke to him. No use kidding himself. He’d ruined his brother, murdered a life. “I’m not arguing. I’m not keeping you and any mistress. You marry the kid. You love her. Marry her and I’ll help you out until you get a job.”

  “I want a job. I’m sick hanging around this damn town living on you. Get me any job.” He laughed suddenly. “Where you work.”

  “Where I work?”

  “I’m being polite.”

  Maybe Spat could get Joe a route, have Joe collect numbers. That was respectable, almost. “I’ll see what I’ll do. Will you marry her?”

  “We’ll see,” said Joe, grinning like his brother so that they looked like a mirrored reflection of each other.

  Bill laughed softly. “It beats me why you asked me for advice when you’re so set.” And that was over, passing into the swirl of those last days, and there was this to be done and that to be done, their lives floating chips on the river of his purpose. He was the river and held all of them, floating himself on time’s huger torrent. Every day it was nearer April.

  Life was grand. Life was elegant. It goes on. That was the swell thing about it. It never sits down on its pants to ask: Who am I? What am I doing? It just goes on, and I’m a hunk of life. I’m not Bill. I’m not a guy, I’m just a miscellaneous blind hunk of life, and what the hell if I am? When I get five thousand I’ll quit and become Bill again, not a hunk of life. But now I’m a blind hunk, and one harvest’s in for good or bad, and on Fool’s Day I’ll be planting another harvest, and here’s hoping it nets me big dough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FOR an hour the Armenian tailor who occupied the ground floor of the Young Hamilton Democrats Club, had looked up from his pressing-machine at the young Democrats trooping up to their headquarters. To his experience they were a little young for citizens, but maybe the Young covered that. They were eighteen, nineteen, and in their early twenties, exactly alike, slim, hard-faced, kidding around. They’d be damn particular about clothes, and the Armenian figured how much there’d be in it for him. Plenty bad bets in that crowd, sure to be some who’d cheat a poor man out of his just pay.

  Upstairs the two floors of the club presented the spiffy exhilarating flash of newness. The light buff paint was fresh, the floors shellacked. Each of the floors had been prepared for Hamiltonian democracy. A few chairs, a lounge, kegs of beer. It was a very political sight. The kids who’d been awed in the beginning at their importance (although joking to beat the band as if they had a clubhouse on every block) began to shout: “Swell,” “This is what’s what,” and otherwise applaud the arrangements. The dirty mouths among them got busy.

  It was swell. On the second floor it was extra swell. One of the flats had been fitted up as an office with a plain desk for Bill. A regular office, big-time in the bargain. The other flat had two beds, the younger kids wiggling their wrists in the sign language that meant: Plenty, hey, kid? the worldlier exclaiming: “Looka them hot bastards.” Downstairs rushed the mob, maybe thirty guys gathering around Bill and Spat, who appeared as if they were on soapboxes ready to spiel them. Hooray! Speech. Speech.

  “Speech, Bill,” cried Schneck from the window, his wide body in a blue serge suit, his fat Germanic face seeming without a neck. Near him, Ray’s sharp eyes met Bill’s. He spotted the two of them, smiling at the young grinning, shouting crowd, thinking: There’s the trouble to come.

  “This is the first meeting of our new club,” he said. “No business’ll be discussed tonight. But in a coupla days there’ll be work for those who wants it.” They roared. “This club’s backed by some big shots. You’ll be in soft if you follow orders. There’s beer and hard stuff. Go to it. Later we’ll have some dancers for those that like them.” They yelled, the eager groups of young men, their faces downy, crisp as spring leaves, their bodies straight up and down with hardly any hip. They began to circulate among the rooms, some meandering into the rear flats, others staying where they were. They slumped in the new chairs, filling the fresh-painted rooms with smoke. What kinda club was it without plenty smoke, huh? In the dense blueness they drank beer and spat at the brass spittoons on little rubber mats covered with sand. Some gink turned on the radio, and between bellows and wisecracks the radio played dance music.

  The kid called Mike returned with a huge leg of roast beef. Another kid like an assistant chef lugged big loaves of sliced sandwich bread. Mike dropped the roast on the table, the wolves packing in, begging like kids for an apple core: “Don’ forget me, Mike.”

  “I’m a pal, Mike.” Mike cut off hunks of beef. They grabbed the slices, gulping beer. Jesus, it was a swell party. Another kid brought in a dozen quarts of gin and rye. The shouts were jubilant; what a party, what style, classy as anything! Nobody cared where the gifts were from. In their brains there was a vague idea that the beef, the booze, emanated from some kind god, some overbeing known as the big guy. They accepted the gifts and were grateful.

  A kid puked; a wild cannibal cry banging against the walls. They coulda mobilized him, cursing the puke for a son-of-a-bitch. Where the hell did he get that stuff, stinking up the new clubhouse? They concentrated on the sissy, made him clean up his filth.

  This was only the start, the party was pepping up. They cracked dirty jokes, the one of the wise philosophical parrot whose throat was cut and then thrown into the toilet…. They ragged about the dames they’d had and the dames ready to be had. Kids circulated along the staircases from one flat to another with the boozy swelldom of plutocrats on a spree in sumptuous quarters. They cheered, tottering from one room to another, happy, laughing, fighting with other guys sprawling up like ghosts. They ganged to the second floor and squatted on the stairs, and after songs and explorations, returned to the first flat, where the grub and drinks were dispensed. On the second floor, in the flat with the beds, a bunch got steamed up and were going to lizzy up one of the younger kids who had a girl’s complexion. They’da fixed his wagon, only some bozo remembered that the office was on that floor, and Bill’n Spat might be around.

  The first hour or so Spat and Bill wound in and out among the kids. They were slapped on the back and asked to drink, the kids genial as politicians and the sons of Irishmen. Spat and Bill grinned like wardheelers, easing out to the next gang with their cheery cry: Got enough to eat and drink?

  Spat and Bill shut the door behind them in the office. Bill swung his feet on the desk. A few minutes later Ray, Schneck, McQuade, the Chisel, marched in uneasy as applicants for a job. None of them were very drunk. It was the meeting of a war staff that might be torn by dissension. Bill said that they were the natural leaders, that’s what they were and they knew it; when they said anything, the other kids opened their ears. He glanced from thin malicious Ray, whose face was memorable of McMann, to Schneck smoking like a burgher. The Chisel was a little runt with a big crop of hair immediately differentiating him from the other, close-cropped kids, he wasn’t saying a thing, smiling as if to assure the others he was listening. McQuade nodded, a toughened-up chorus boy in looks. It was a silence of secret thoughts. Was Spat with him? Who gave a damn? Caught by his own story, he was believing in the story of the higher-ups of whom he was the appointed instrument.

  “Wonder McMann ain’t here at his own party,” said Ray.

  Bill slapped him hard and viciously. Ray jumped up and sat down. “McMann ain’t coming to parties, Ray.”

  “Maybe I had it comin’?”

  “You damn well did.” They banded against Ray, even his buddy Schneck, wolves against Ray because he was wounded and nobody had any use for the wounded.

  “Once and for all,” said Bill, “as if Ray didn’t know it, the bastard wise-guy, McMann’s wiped. We were the leaders. And Duffy’s gone and a coupla others you guys don’t
know about. Wiped because they tried to bust loose from guys bigger than them. Spat and me’s here because we take orders. The big guys who rented this house, who’re supplying the eats and drinks, are tough to fool around with. McMann and Duffy were wise-guys.”

  “I had it comin’,” said Ray.

  They were leery in the office because the symbol of force, the flame of sudden death, was in Bill. He was boss and they listened respectfully because boss meant power. It was Bill now and Spat with him. It’d been Duffy and McMann yesterday. And tomorrow they’d be on their knees before somebody else.

  “That’s all,” said Bill. “I don’t need none of you, but I figured I’d start with you four, give you guys the first break. In a week we work. Dough for workers, and something else for the lice. Now scram, there’s a party here tonight.”

  They scattered among the flats, glad the meeting was over. Hell with tomorrow. The Chisel began drinking with Mike McQuade; Ray and Schneck formed another coalition. They herded together. Only Spat and Bill were powerful enough to venture their own ways, joking, acting as if they were a mob in themselves.

  Bill pulled down the shade in one of the rear flats. The bare yard with its lonely tree calmed him. “You boys, keep it down. The neighbors might get sore.” A kid pushed a bottle at him and he drank. “The women’ll be here soon, so you guys keep it down.” They cheered, the swaying drunken hands walling him in. He walked out, the bunch staring after him as if he were the colors of a parade. He stepped along the corridor, his hand sliding on the banister. He made the round of his kingdoms, getting groggy himself. There’s McMann here tonight, but they call him Ray. McMann’s ghost is Ray. Ray is Ray. We’re McMann’s children, and this bastard Ray is a son. I know he’s a son, that’s all to it…. His drunken positiveness struck him as an instinctive wisdom. Ray and McMann, with the same stone courage. Schneck was a big tough egg and could be made to toe the line. Not Ray. The Chisel was a slimy little skunk whispering in everybody’s ears. McQuade? Spat? Hell with my buddies. I don’t need be feared. Ask Spat for a job for Joe? Joe the policy book…. He took another drink, mournfully walking out on a bunch jabbering at his heels like apparitions he had created and could never be rid of. Joe must marry Cathy. Yes u’no. Oh, my God, give me a rest. “Say, you kids,” he bellowed, “I told ya to keep the noise down.”