Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde Page 6

  Paddy, smoking a big cigar, vanished gradually behind blue smoke. “Free stuff,” he moaned. “Jeez believe me, I’m givin’ it free.”

  “Cut the crabbin’,” said McMann.

  “Always did like the young uns,” Paddy shouted at Bill.

  “Merry Christmas,” said Bill.

  “Chris’mas? Holy hell!” exclaimed Madge with profound unbelief. They hurried through the tenement smell, down the dark corridors with the pair of doors at each end like blind hopeless eyes. McMann pounded down the steps ahead of everybody. Bobbie giggled.

  Out on the street, Bill’s head cleared. McMann took Bobbie and went on ahead. Bill snickered at the swagger of her hips, the good full-meated zest of her, the shapely poundage that had once rested on the lap of a corpse. Me for that, he thought; fannies for me and I’m for fannies. He grabbed Madge’s arm.

  Her head was lowered, downlooking like a nun’s, the features in profile soft and delicate, the Irish tilted nose, her lips and eyes reminding him of pictures of women painted long ago. He trembled.

  “You’re not so bad for a kid. Of course, you’re not a real woman.”

  “Go hop yourself.”

  “Sure, if you help along.”

  She laughed. “I seen you lots of times at Paddy’s and you never give me a tumble but a coupla times only.”

  “How old are you, Madge?”

  “Almos’ seventeen.”

  “I’m not used to the fast life and fast dames like you.” She liked that crack. “You’re some kid.” He suddenly blazed with laughter. “I almost forgot and I bet you did too. Remember the night at Paddy’s when Gene fixed that ginzo?”

  “I saw nothin’.”

  “I only saw you. I like you; that’s why I’m so nosey. C’mon, sister, tell papa about yourself.”

  “Bobbie said I musta been dumb as hell. I musta been. Bobbie says even the girls they pull outa the schools is smarter. I was dumb. I lived in Brooklyn.”

  “That’s awful dumb.”

  “Don’t let ‘em kid ya. Brooklyn’s a lively burg.” She laughed proudly. “I knew the ropes. They were linin’ me up two years ago and yet I fell. I was dumb.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “It’s this way. One night I goes ridin’ with a coupla fellers, not kids I hung out with reg’lar, but strange fellers. They brought me to Paddy’n he paid two hundred for me. But, man, was I dumb? Bobbie says even the school kids knows better, most of them, than go ridin’ with strange fellers they never seen before.” She glanced at him serenely, her face calm, with a quality like innocence. “Now, you punk, don’t bother me. Bobbie says every stinker’s always wantin’ to find out about a girl.”

  He stared at her and then said:

  “Where’s McMann going?”

  “To the Greek’s. He nuts about Greeks’n their cabbyrets. Them Greeks stink. Coffee ain’t bad, naw the lamb chops. But me, I like Broadway, but McMann’s always heelin’ around Eighth like a cheap skate.” He laughed. The night was fantastic. All along he’d been thinking Madge a little school kid who’d been raped by some devils and made a whore. His laughter burst into the night, strong and animal.

  “You’re a queer,” she said simply. “You’re a queer.”

  “Give me another chance, honey.”

  “You’re a new guy, ain’t ya? You usta shake Paddy down. I saw ya. You was a rent-collector or somethin’.”

  “I’m a dummy. I’m cockeyed. I’m a baby. I’m singing my hymns and feeling sorry and I’m a fool for that. By God, I can’t get it straight in my bean that every business is a business. Only dummies don’t know that.”

  “You give me a pain.”

  “I’ll give you more than that.” McMann had turned the corner into a sidestreet. Three stone steps descended from the sidewalk towards a curtained door. The narrow window was lettered in Greek. Madge whispered they meant a good time. A glare came through the curtains. They stood a second like supplicants waiting for charity. McMann knocked again, cursing the damn Greeks for keeping a party like them kicking their heels. The door opened on plaintive wailing music.

  “I like jazz,” said Madge. “This Greek stuff is lousy. Cats in a yard.” Bobbie meowed, and they laughed with the idiocy of people ready to laugh at any crack. The music whined out of a big brown victrola. Twenty tables surrounded a cleared space in the center. No one was performing right now, although the crowd was staring at the waxed space hopefully. It looked as if some act were just over. The diners were mostly Greeks.

  A skinny waiter, with an oily skin that reminded Bill of anchovies, got them a table. He was happy, hungry, glad to be with Madge. The joint was fun. Foreign, but fun. Little Greece. The swarthy gambler faces, the black eyes gleaming over tiny cups, reminded him of Pop’s down in the ghetto. He was moving in highclass circles.

  The waiter brought food, plates of lamb chops broiled brown, cups of Turkish coffee, bottles of wine. They smoked and ate. Both hands free, McMann attacked the food lustily. Hell with women, food came first. That McMann knew how to live the real life, the caveman modern life of grub, dames, murders. Bill held a greasy bone in his fingers, tearing at the meat with his teeth, his lips slimed with animal fat. Bobbie and Madge were no slouches either, packing it away. All of them were like animals eating as if they weren’t sure when they would eat so hearty again. Someone shut off the main flow of light. In the mysterious room each table was alone in space, solitary as an island in the night, the red lamps burning. The small and large glowing eyes of cigarettes and cigars shifted about like wild eyes.

  McMann shouted: “Hey, kid, not here.” His voice laughing with Bobbie’s. The dark had one memorial usage. Before he actually realized what he was doing, Bill grabbed Madge, kissing her full on the lips. “You sonufabitch, your lips’ greasy as a pig. Phew, you greaseball.” A spotlight stabbed quick, instantaneous as lightning. Here and there skulls were picked out as if the spotlight had struck them dead or half-dead, the eyes black holes, the cheekbones savage and gaunt. The glare traveled around the room. Opposite him, McMann’s head was a geometry of planes and angles. McMann didn’t seem human but a devil put together of hard woods. Bobbie was almost comely, a plump ghost, but Madge was the same. The dancer sidled out, her long powdered legs moving to the heartbeats of the spectators. She was almost naked, her body dead-whitened with powder. Her black hair loose upon two breasts solid as apples. She did not dance, but swayed to the erotic sighing music. At all the tables the men smoked or sipped wine, their male gestures a chorus.

  As the woman’s body sang of its beauty and desire, the solid apple breasts wavered in Bill’s mind. Her heavy thighs followed the winged naked feet, white and strong, the five toes distinct from one another. His own toes were prisoned one to the other. Summertimes the beaches were ugly with thousands of female feet civilized in tight shoes. He whispered groggily something about the glory that was Greece, not these greaseballs, the ancient Greece with all her glories.

  “You gimme a pain in the behind,” said Madge.

  “I’ll bust you in the jaw.”

  “Sh,” whispered McMann.

  The dance ended, his heart remembering the apple-breasted woman in her stark moment of beauty. The house applauded. He clapped his hands, confused, as if the dance had happened somewhere else, and drank more wine. The lights flashed on like sharp slaps. The place was jammed with anonymous good friends, guzzling, smoking. He sat with the pals of a lifetime, immortal buddies of his. McMann had slipped his arm about Bobbie. Madge squeezed tight against him, her hands teaching him her kind of love, humming a song similar to: “I can’t give you anything but love, baby.”

  They all staggered out finally, up the three stone steps into a cab spinning out of the night. The men flopped on the seat, holding the women on their laps. Bill was insisting he couldn’t let Mac treat, no sir, when the cab seemed to hit a wall, stopping, McMann pushing everybody out. Madge and Bobbie jigged on their heels, it was that cold. They were on Twenty-third Street. Bill
said the Greek’s had been warm, and this weather was a blizzard, and he was going to divvy up or know why. The cabbie slipped McMann his change. McMann announced he was glad to put dough in circulation. The cab rolled west under the El. Ninth Avenue was only a half-block away, the station lonely above the street.

  “You’re spending all your dough.”

  “Aw, dry up. It ain’t mine.”

  Bobbie shivered and wanted to go where it was warm. “Whose dough is it?” Madge asked, pressing tight against Bill. He gripped her around the waist and told her to mind her damn business. The crosstown trolley banged down the street and he thought of Wiberg falling down like an empty suit. On this very night. He stared at the street, the quiet rows of brownstone fronts across the way, the tailors and Chink laundries spaced in dark stone, and then they were all trooping upstairs. McMann unlocked the door of his two-room apartment. It smelled male. A pair of silk stockings hung on a chair. McMann hauled off his overcoat. The bedroom faced the street. The second room could be used for sleeping. Bobbie yanked off the cover of the studio couch and made it up as a bed, plumping down the two couch pillows, tucking the blankets in. Not the first time for Bobbie, thought Bill, but was Madge always dame number two? “Hit the hay, kid,” McMann advised, “and don’t fix her more’n fifty times. Boy, I’m tired.” He unbuttoned the shirt on his white chest. He didn’t wear an undershirt. His red hair tousled like a married man’s at bed hour, he walked into the bedroom, trailed by Bobbie, her hips broad and matronly. She shut the French door and began to undress behind the curtains. She might’ve been concealed by a high wall, already out of her dress, yawning from the wine, in a pink brassiere and step-in. A second later he doused the lights. Bill sprawled in one of the chairs. “What a guy! He’s burned cig holes all over the joint.” He was talking big because he felt uneasy, his heart bursting. His body wanted to shake violently. Maybe because he didn’t go about these things in just this way? He had to get used to it. And then a fellow shouldn’t stay on the wagon so long.

  Madge sat on the studio couch, her thin green dress folding over her legs. Her thighs were spread far apart. She nodded her head, the narrow triangle of face with the slightly oriental eyes staring at him with some female knowledge that almost provoked him into shouting: What the hell you thinking of? “Hell with landlords,” she said.

  “I’m nuts about you.” He pulled his jacket and vest off, aware she was observing him with a knowledge more certain than truth. What the hell was she finding out? He was plain crazy. Why should he feel she was getting into the core of him? It was a lousy trick of women when about to give themselves. The only way to hide himself from her was to fix her. Damn her, so young and acting so smart.

  He imitated McMann, chucking his shirt on the table, his bare arms haired yellow, stuck out of his jersey.

  “Hey, you,” he said, “get outa your dress.”

  “O.K.”

  “You’re a skinny runt.”

  “Nuts to you.”

  “Hell, you’re tough.” He hated the idea that she had lived life more strongly than himself. “C’mon, strip.”

  She crossed her white legs, again contemplating him with her immense calm. “You’re a bad boy, ain’t you?”

  He thought of the crowds that had slept with her, youth or no youth. What was her idea about things, about himself? He was just another guy. “You think you’re slick. You’re just a kid.”

  “Yeh, what you think?”

  He glanced at her. She knew more than him. She knew ten times as much, kid or no kid. He remembered her story, the lineups in Brooklyn, the abduction, and now whoring it regular. His knowledge, gross with age, with stale usage, with death.

  “C’mon,” said Madge. “What you mopin’?”

  “I’m wondering.”

  “About what?”

  “About you, you poor little bitch.”

  “You got fever sure as hell. Aw, come to bed. You act worse’n a kid.”

  “I’m thinking I am one.” His voice was soft.

  Her eyes lost their diabolical sure knowledge of the male animal, her nose wrinkling like a puzzled child’s. “You’re a funny feller.”

  “I’m Save-a-Soul Billy.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “You like me?”

  “How do I know how you act up in bed? I seen some of the huskiest turn out punks.”

  “Let’s find out.” He laughed, switching off the light, stumbling down the black room, his bare feet sliding along the rug. He sat down next to her, feeling her cold thigh against his own. “You poor kid.”

  She hugged him. “You crazy galoot.” In the dark she was made of silver and he wasn’t sorry for her or himself any longer.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE AWOKE to McMann’s hand shaking his shoulder, snapping awake with that sense of loss of one sleeping in a strange place. McMann yawned, although his hard-surfaced face showed no fatigue. Bill got off the couch immediately. “Hello.”

  “Sh, Bobbie’s still snorin’ inside, the ole pig.” He winked like a small boy. “I like ‘em hefty. Madge’s skinny, but she’ll be all right in a coupla years.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Madge was asleep, turned on her side towards the wall. He marveled at the quietude of her face. A voice like Mac’s ought to wake the dead. Even his whisper had guts to it. It was early afternoon, the air frosty and clean. “How’d you wake up, McMann?”

  “My belly hurt. I near starved.”

  Bill scrubbed his face in the bathroom, soaking his hair and sleeking it down. They were cozy inside the bathroom, just the two of them, McMann boasting of his private toilet, the class to it, no chasing out in the halls for him, he liked to live nice. Bill squeezed a pink worm of toothpaste on his finger and mauled his gums, combing his hair. They gazed kindly at one another with the peace of men after a night with women.

  McMann shut the door gently behind on last night’s old smell, walking downstairs into sunlight. The crosstown tracks glinted. People’s ears were nipped red. The windows of the stores were bright with sunny winter. The hanging wooden flags, advertising furnished rooms, swayed in the wind.

  “Le’s grab some food, kid.”

  “You bet. You were saying how you like to live nice. What about last night, then? Suppose you get pinched or shot?”

  “Gotta make a livin’.” That didn’t have nothing to do with living nice. The best thing was not to worry and not to expect too much. “An’ here’s another thing. Forget Madge.” That dame wasn’t settled down like Bobbie. He wanted a dame to stick by him. They saw each other in daylight the first time, their eyes shining two kinds of blue. McMann ordered bacon and eggs in the corner coffee-pot. It was a male place, although a floosie was sitting at a table watching the guys feeding at the counter.

  “I don’ like stinkin’ around with women when I got no use for ‘em,” said McMann, monastic, healthy. He always beat it out early as he could. When the dames cleared out, he went back for a nap. They cut into their eggs, the yellow dripping on the hot bacon. Maybe he should’ve let Bill sleep? But he figured Bill figured the way he did.

  It was exciting meeting this new McMann, who wasn’t drunk or tough, but was almost gentle, a human being. McMann wasn’t more than twenty-five or six. Last night he’d seemed ageless. Bill sighed, one buddy with another. “You slug, Mac, I’m paying for this. Last night nicked you for plenty.”

  “Hell, if I didn’ wanta treat I’d asaid so. I don’t go blowin’ my dough away for nothin’.” They got up from the counter, chewing on toothpicks.

  “Want to come over my place?”

  “Naw. I’ll chase them skirts out.”

  “Well, I’m beating it. Kiss them for me.”

  “Sure thing, kid.”

  “Don’t you kid me. I’m old as you.”

  “O.K. See you at Paddy’s some time.” Spitting out soggy bits of toothpick, he added casually: “You got stuck the other night, but them guys had to get their slice. Nex’ tim
e we’ll do it ourself or maybe borrer Duffy’s kids. Get me? Me’n you can knock off a joint easy. Lotsa stores. That dairy guy Metz got dough. S’long.”

  McMann was the devil and he’d been fooled because the sun was out. He foresaw himself led by McMann into the unarrived tomorrows. That was swell to think about. What could he expect? McMann knew his inside dope was worth something. His dope’d help Mac to live nice, to pay for the private toilet. He walked up Leroy Street as Mrs. Gebhardt came out into a world not his own. He distinctly felt the difference. The light eyes in her peaceful face angered him. She’d gone to bed at ten and guessed maybe he’d been bumming. “Every time I see you you’re fresh as a daisy.” She didn’t thank him. It wasn’t a compliment.

  “You don’t see us so often.”

  “I’m busy buying Christmas presents. Sure, a present for myself. I bought myself a job.” He went upstairs and undressed. McMann and him could make dough. Was he a sap? Saps had thought the same thing and been socked with lead. How many saps’d been bopped because they thought they were wise? He was getting to talk like McMann even. Hell. The luck was with him. He’d be careful and luck’d do the rest. His veins were rested. He was healthy, tired, successful, even if only to the tune of twenty-two bucks. He hopped into bed, his arm feeling for Madge, and fell asleep with the profundity of one whose heart and future are arrogant with youth. Did he dream of Duffy’s dopey kids shooting pool? The dopes waiting for a break, Schneck, Ray, Mike, shooting pool? Did he dream that he was the boy who gave them the break? His pipedreams broke up into darkness. He slept.