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

  He awoke differently this time from an unknown nightmare to see the sun outside in one fat yellow bar. He bolted upright, his heart shaking. He had a terror of McMann, imaging the high-boned face, pink, impassive, the small blue eyes in pinkness that weren’t windows of the soul, weren’t anything, the lids constantly narrowed as if he didn’t use his eyes for sight. What went on behind those eyes, in that boxer’s skull? Damn his loose tongue. McMann might be stringing him along for a sucker. Christ, if he didn’t feel yellow as a louse. But Mac was T.N.T. and was no joke. Bill’s brain ignited into a flash of inspiration. McMann was out to get control of Duffy’s kids. That was it. And he was the way to do it…. His body reacted normally to the night before. His eyes were puffy, intricate with tiny red veins, the back of his neck ached. His tongue hung heavy in his mouth yet slid across something nauseous. He put his head under the clean fury of the jetting water, got into a fresh shirt frayed at the collar. It was almost five o’clock. Across the way the sidewalk sloped down to the gutter in a gradual diagonal, trucks and wagons backing up close to the building. The huge boxes on wheels were loading up. They were always busy across the way. The guy that owned that joint was one lucky stiff. The truck-drivers were working with the laborious grubbiness of their class, hefting and lifting. The black bars of the raised iron gate were shaking as the wind tore and shook them. He went downstairs into the afternoon. Beyond Greenwich, higher than the El, the autos sped down the elevated highway. Everything was overhead, trains, roadsters. The world beneath was trivial. Past the El, blocking out sight of the river, the great greenish gray buildings of the steamship and railroad companies usurped the lower sky. A flag was waving and his heart was desolate. The only path leading out of hell was the path of McMann’s….

  He was tense with resolve, wondering at his gift for the right thing even after so many blunders. He had a flat rent-free, and now he had an idea for a job for Joe. He waited on the El station for the uptown El finally rattling in, square and snaky-jointed. In the small pilot box in the first car the motorman was pale and steely. He got off at Forty-second. On the far side of Ninth, Wiberg transacted business. He grinned, fascinated by the granite endurability of the place they’d robbed. It showed no sign of last night’s holdup. Metz was a former tenant of his, his window architectured with round red cheeses and slabs of Swiss. Eggs were piled up, peculiarly and grotesquely similar to huge worthless pearls. Inside, the floor was fresh with sawdust and the smells of cheese, butter, milk. Two clerks in white aprons were behind the counter, their cheeks red. He thought of the story that Metz never permitted his help to go outside for lunch, compelling them to lunch on pot-cheese, rolls, buttermilk. What a diet! Joe’d be healthy working for Metz. Metz himself, wearing the straw hat that somehow was his official dairyman’s guild token, smiled, a small dark man with an unctuous flashing of teeth and a ceremony of hairy hands. “Billy Trent, ain’t it?”

  “What you think, Metz? C’mon in the back. I want to see you private.” He grinned, not expecting Metz to spill the beans about Wiberg, but hoping he might. “How’s geschaft since I quit hounding you for rent?”

  “So-so,” said Metz, his hands adding a commentary of: It might be worse. “You working?”

  “Part time for a friend of mine.”

  “Dot’s something. I always said it, the whole world can be on the breadline, but this Bill, he’ll have something to do.”

  “You’re wondering now why I want to see you privately. I want a Christmas favor from you. When I had the chance I did plenty for you.”

  “You should a businessman been,” said Metz, frowning with admiration. “I give you plenty Christmas presents, not only Christmas, but in July too.”

  “I want you to give me a break now. I don’t make much dough and my kid brother’s coming to live with me after the first. He’s nineteen, huskier than me, and not afraid of work. You got three stores. Give him a job.”

  “How can I, Bill? These fellers are all cockeyed relations of mine. My stores’re full of my wife’s relations. She should an orphan’ve been.”

  “You can take on one more clerk. He’s a goodlooking kid. He’d bring you trade. Don’t your Irish Dutch Wop customers complain about those schnozzolas?”

  “So long’s the merchandise is good I got no complaints.”

  “I can do you a favor, Metz.”

  “Lemme hear.”

  “How’d you like to get your rent cut again?”

  “Why not?”

  “This is a real Christmas gift. I know some facts about the people who hold the mortgage on this house and how a smart guy can get his rent cut.”

  Metz was still sleepy behind his glasses. “You always know plenty things,” he said heavily. “I wonder why you’re not a rich man.”

  “It’s the times. I’ll be rich. Don’t worry.” He stared at Metz. He had damned good dope, and Metz ought to chip in cash as well as a job. “First I want twenty-five bucks. I’d ask for more, but since you’re hiring my brother I’ll let it go.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “How much rent you pay, Metz?”

  “You know better’n me. Four hundred for this rotten corner, with the peoples all moving away to Long Island’n Brooklyn.”

  “I want your word I get twenty-five and my brother that job.”

  “I ain’t ever disappointed you.” He wrote out a check for fifteen. “I cash it soon you tell me, right here and now.”

  “Gypping me already.”

  “A job’s worth money. You don’t buy them.”

  “Keep this under your hat. The landlord’s in hot water. Yeh, Delhota, even him. He expects to drop this corner. Taxes and interest aren’t met by the rental. Strike him hard for a reduction and you’ll get it. Show him the color of a few hundred and you’ll get a nice new lease. He’ll be foreclosed anyway. What does he care?”

  “If it works out so, your brother gets the job. I’ll break him in. Twelve dollars a week. Nothink for overtime.” They went out to the cash register. Bill had a swift glance at the stacked greenbacks. “I keep my word.”

  “You’re a sap to keep all that dough in there.”

  Metz glared hot and wild for a second. “Ain’t you heard? Wiberg was hit on the nut last night. Took seven hundred, the bummers.”

  “That’s bunk. Where the hell’d he get seven hundred? Probably took five smacks and he claims the rest for the insurance people.”

  “No no no.” He waved a finger. “He’s dying for a cent, but I know they take three hundred for sure.”

  “How do you know it was three hundred and not one-eighty? You seem positive.”

  Metz smiled bashfully. “Take my word.”

  “Did you loan it to Wiberg? Did you loan him any?”

  “You should a Jew be. Some of you goyim is more Jewish than the Jews. Send your brother around, but if it don’t work out mit Delhota, no job.”

  “If you weren’t sure, you’d never shell out dough.”

  “Du bist a Yid,” cried Metz. “A Jew, nothink else.”

  Outside, Bill thought of McMann. He was lucky to get any money out of the Wiberg holdup. He felt smarter than the gang of gyps because he knew definitely he’d been rooked.

  He went to see Wiberg. That was the way to be. No softness, to work at crime as a scientist works in a lab. The hell with people. “I hear they’ve been working on you. Tough luck.”

  Wiberg had waited for the chance to explode. “They always pick on a poor man. Bang me on the head. A feller asks me for a pair lady stockings when bing! And I had lot of money. How they know cin Gott allein weisst.”

  “They get much?”

  “I should say. Seven hundred.”

  He stuck out his lower lip. “You been eating dope. Don’t kid me. When did this shop net you that in a year? You’d have to put dresses on half the behinds in town for seven hundred.”

  “They took it, I tell you.” He picked up his paper. “The police. Phooey on them with their radio cars. Who they catch? Nob
ody. But I remember that feller.”

  “Forget him. You’re insured. Maybe that holdup’s a Christmas present — that is, if they give you seven hundred.”

  He left the shop. He’d been rooked. He couldn’t forget it, thinking of McMann and Paddy with the cold calm ferocity of a scientist contemplating necessary guinea pigs. Otherwise it was a good day’s work. Fifteen bucks and a job for Joe. Metz wasn’t a bad guy. Neither was the dough in his till. On Saturday nights around midnight Metz ought to be good for five hundred. That was dough. He wondered how the kid’d fit in with his future? The clean honest kid, thinking of cleanliness and honor as qualities similar to skin pigmentation or the shapes of noses. He’d forgotten to interpret honesty either ethically or spiritually.

  He was a champ chiseler and Christmas Day he dropped in at the office. He was the prodigal come home, and everybody was tickled to see him. Christmas Day Stanger had a fatted calf for everybody. It was an old custom. A bottle was on the table and they were drinking conservatively under Stanger’s happy but moral eye, the rent-collectors and stenos gazing at one another, standing up like human beings and not shorn in two, leaning over desks like exhibits out of the Flea Museum. There was no fatted calf for Bill, but many handshakes and wonderings when he’d get a job. “I just dropped in to wish you all a merry Christmas and happy New Year.” He smiled so charmingly that Stanger called him into his private cubicle and slipped him ten bucks, despite strenuous protests that he’d dropped in for the spirit of the thing. He had a tough job keeping a straight face.

  “They’re all getting presents,” said Stanger. “I want you to take it. Why haven’t you been around for lunch with Joe? Mrs. Stanger has asked me many times to get in touch with you down on Leroy, but there’s no phone and somehow I never got around to writing.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Stanger. Thanks for the free rent. It’s swell of you.”

  “Listen, you must come around for dinner.”

  Later he said: “Merry Christmas” again. No use losing a contact like Stanger. Ten bucks…. That night he went to a party with Madge. McMann was there, and so were a few of Duffy’s kids, Schneck and Ray. He’d noticed Schneck and Ray were thick friends. Duffy of course was too big to show up. McMann told him on the sly he’d invited the kids up. “Might be needn’m soon. Free booze and grub and they’ll be eatin’ outen our hands.” After the party, McMann, Bobbie, and Madge and himself went to a joint in Harlem. The ten bucks went like a light.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BILL put down the valise and opened the dog-box his brother had lugged in from Easton. For a moment the two brothers didn’t look at each other, tacitly filling in the strangeness of meeting after so long by concentrating on a third and neutral object.

  The dog was a mongrel puppy, normally happy with an inane blue-eyed youth, but now disconsolate. It ran about the flat, lifting its nose in sorrow for its abduction to a place that didn’t smell of grass. Its white coat was spotted with black like a Dalmatian, the ears and eyes those of a sad hound.

  “He misses the country,” said the kid brother.

  “What’d you bring him in for? A dog in the city — hell.”

  “You’re not sore, Bill?”

  “Did I say I was?”

  “I’m awfully glad to be here.”

  “You were always a lover of animals.”

  “So were you. Don’t you remember?”

  “It’s so long ago I’ve forgotten.” The brothers raised their eyes from the puppy waddling on its inept legs, from Joe’s single shiny valise, and stared at each other across the distance of two years. The distance was infinite because Easton was less than a hundred miles from New York and Bill could have easily visited if he’d wanted to. Seeing his flesh and blood on Leroy Street, Bill thought of his own appearance. Joe wasn’t a mirror likeness of himself, but there was enough duplication for him to feel a sudden longing, a certain sense that this boy was his brother and no one else. The kid’s hair was lighter than his own, almost yellow, but he was not quite as husky or as tall. His eyes were the same color of blue. He was his brother all right. He ached at the impact of Joe’s youth, the nineteen years that were enough like himself to cause the years to retreat, leaving something green and sunny in heart. In a way he was seeing the Bill that had been four years ago, seeing himself not in memory, but in the flesh. This smooth eager face, this courageous kid that was now his brother, had once been himself. The bitter age that had nothing to do with five or ten years, but was ageless as time, now lay on his shoulders like an impossible burden.

  “How’s College Hill? Everything sleepy as ever? You’ve grown. Last time I saw you — that summer two years ago, it was — you were a head shorter.”

  “We had a dandy time that summer.”

  “Things are different now. I lived in a hotel then and we did the town like gentlemen, but now I’m poor as a mouse. Poorer.”

  “I don’t care, Bill. I’m tickled to be here.”

  “How are those relatives of ours? Not so hot?”

  Joe insisted they were all right. “Like hell they are,” said Bill. “They probably made you feel punk once in awhile.” Joe seemed bewildered at his talk, the queer stresses upon quiet words shaped into sounds of things ominous, sounds echoing of Paddy, of McMann, of his brother’s new life, cold, brutally phlegmatic.

  “Spotty doesn’t like it here,” said Bill.

  “It’s the city,” said Joe apologetically as if to say that Spotty’s reaction wasn’t his own. “I’m glad to be here. Back home they were decent, but somehow — well, I wasn’t in the way, but somehow I felt I was in uncle’s wife’s way a little bit. There wasn’t anything definite. She was decent. I don’t know if I’m making it clear. I hate to sound like a crab or to have you think I was some orphan at the mercy of hard relations. Not that at all. They were decent. Maybe it was my fault. I didn’t feel close to them nor they to me — not very close that is, for we all liked each other. Honest, I’m glad I’m here, though.” His eyes shone. He patted the double bed. “We’ll sleep together like when we were kids.”

  Bill gulped, and the old kid times of father and mother streamed up from his blood and marrow. “You bet.”

  “We’ll start in together, Bill. Just as you wrote. The rent’s free and you have a little money and then this Jewish fellow has a job for me. Gee, you must be a wonder to get a job. Back home they don’t exist.”

  “It wasn’t anything.”

  “Who lives in this house, Bill?”

  “Hardly anybody. It’s half empty, but there are some poor families with kids, all plugging. And the Gebhardt family. They got a pretty daughter.” Joe laughed. “I wish I could get a job for myself. Everyday I see some important people, and if I get a break I’ll be in the money again. Then, as I told you at the Pennsy, I make some side money doing some nighttime bookkeeping. Don’t worry, we’ll get along.”

  “That’s why your eyes are shot. You ought to take care of them. That bookkeeping must be hard on them.”

  They smiled at each other, over the ridiculous puppy sniffing at musty floor smells, their eyes meeting and remembering a fogged sad time of kid days, looking into the future, puzzled, Joe a little sentimental, Bill wondering what Joe was really like. A nice kid, but what was under Joe’s skin? Joe could never guess what a bunko artist he was.

  “We’re in Greenwich Village,” said Joe.

  “Hardly. The artists are further east. It’s poverty mostly.” He sighed. “I’ll be back at six. I’m going to see Metz.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you better not. I’ve got to see some other people after that. You wash up and then we’ll have a regular meal, spaghetti, antipasto.”

  “Can we afford it?”

  “The Ritz is our next stop, kid.” He buttoned up his camel-hair coat, edging down the three small rooms to the door. From the bedroom Joe looked as if he wouldn’t see him for a year. He narrowed his eyes with the wonder of it. Joe was nuts about him. What a good kid! �
��So long, Joe.”

  “Hurry it, Bill.” He wouldn’t drag Joe in the dirt for the world. He grinned sickly, feeling, knowing, that somehow or other he’d get Joe in dutch. It always happened that way. It was the natural thing. What a big brother he was! By God, he wouldn’t make a play for Metz if it was the last store on earth. He hoped he’d keep this New Year resolution. The El pillars on Greenwich were bolted right in the sidewalk. Almost above his head a train hit his sight with the might of a movie train pounding straight at the audience. He felt tiny inside. So Joe had come to town. Hoorah! It didn’t make so much difference. He was awed at the velocity of his direction. Would McMann be home? There was another store lined up, and Mac ought to hear about it. He had a hunch Mac had a good bean on his shoulders.

  At six they rubbed their wet faces dry with towels, smelling like new suits, and went downstairs for dinner. Icy air blew in from the river. Beyond the elevated highway, the cars zizzing home from work, the west wind humming in steady. The river was out of sight, but Bill guessed Joe was dreaming of the river’s immense gray sweep. He was that kind of kid. Joe was excited, his eyes jerking up to the warehouse and printing plant, seeing with so new a vision that Bill also realized their significance. It struck him that these eight-story fortresses, the opaque windows wired for strength, in contrast to their own shabby down-at-heel house, were the goals of all endeavor. Their house. The stoop with the black cast-iron rails, the iron picket fence, the garbage pails, all reiterating the poverty of the “last of the Trents”; rubbing destitute elbows with other junky tenements on either side of them a row of beggars kowtowing and sucking around before the industrial brutes across the way. A fellow had to get his pile by hook or crook. Anything was fair. The only thing that counted, as the churches and colleges and government knew, was dough. “We’ll get out of here, soon,” Bill said.

  A speakeasy had moved into the tenement on Hudson and Leroy, next to the coffee-pot. Inside, the kids were staring through the window covered with the ice lace of winter, the kids also dreaming of dough. Joe’s eyes had the far-away abstraction of one peering ahead to a legendary freedom. He’d get used to it. He’d get used to the city and to Bill. On Hudson Street a wire meshing ten feet high surrounded the school playground. Beyond the yard, full of the gray miserable cindery gravel of city playgrounds, the school was shuttered up. They followed Leroy eastwards. Elegant high-stooped houses like those on Washington Square, red brick, the brass polished, with a sense of dark rich corridors and servants, gave way to tenements. Leroy curved on itself towards the Village and spaghetti. Joe nearly always followed the same street afterwards, even when he didn’t see much of Bill, stepping in the footprints of that first night. Leroy was always a winter street to him, of dusk and pleasant hunger.