Shmucks

by Seymour Blicker

  “By the way, Mr. Pelzic, do you know anything about cars?”

  Pelzic shrugged. “A little bit.”

  “Well, what could you tell me about cleaning out my pipes?”

  Pelzic stared back at her blankly, not knowing what the woman was talking about.

  “The garage man told me that I could use a good pipe job as well. Yes, he told me to ask the mechanic to clean out my pipes, but the mechanic didn’t have a clue as to what that was. Inexperienced, I suppose, or perhaps over-specialization. Would you know of any garage that does that kind of work, Mr. Pelzic?”

  “No, I don’t know,” Pelzic replied curtly.

  “That’s too bad.”

  Pelzic looked back down at the letter. The front door opened, and Pelzic looked up to see a man wearing farmer’s overalls enter the office.

  “Yes, sir, can I help you?” Miss Peerega asked.

  “Je veux voir l’avocat, madame.”

  “Lequel? Il y’a deux dans ce bureau ci,” Miss Peerega said in her English-accented French.

  “Je ne sais pas la. Je viens de St.-Jérome la. Mon ami la, m’envoyé ici la.”

  “Oui, oui je comprends monsieur, mais à qui voulez-vous parler? A Monsieur Lecter ou Monsieur Chartrand?”

  “Je n’sais pas le nom la, mais . . . c’est le Juif, le Juif la.”

  “Oh, le Juif!” Miss Peerega exclaimed. “Oui, oui, ça c’est Monsieur Lecter,” she said smiling broadly.

  “C’est lui qui est le Juif?” the man asked.

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  “Bon. Je veux parler avec lui. Mon ami la m’a dit de parler seulement avec le Juif.”

  “Voulez-vous vous s’assoir monsieur,” Miss Peerega said.

  Pelzic sat there, having understood only the word Monsieur.

  The man in the overalls sat down just as the intercom buzzer sounded on Miss Peerega’s phone. She picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, said “right away, Mr. Lecter,” and put it down.

  “Would you like to come now, Mr. Pelzic?”

  Pelzic stood up and went into the lawyer’s office.

  WHEN PELZIC WALKED IN, Nort Lecter was sitting with his feet up on the desk, scowling.

  Pelzic smiled.

  “Siddown,” the lawyer said.

  Pelzic sat down. He noticed a loaded movie projector set up beside him on the desk. They were probably showing dirty movies, Pelzic thought. Then it occurred to him that his lawyer wasn’t smiling. In fact, he seemed a little angry.

  “Did I get the money?” Pelzic asked.

  For a moment Lecter didn’t respond. Then he stood up and walked over to the door. He flicked off the light switch and went slowly back to the projector.

  Pelzic turned to look at the small movie screen which was set up against the far wall.

  “Just before I show you this, I want to say a few things.”

  “What is this, a dirty movie?” Pelzic asked hopefully.

  “No, it’s not a dirty movie. We showed those yesterday.”

  “Well, what is it?” Pelzic was puzzled by the angry tone in Norton Lecter’s voice.

  “D’you remember what I told you when you came to ask me to handle the accident claim?”

  Pelzic shrugged. “You told me many things.”

  “Yes, I did tell you a lot of things, and you also told me a few things. You told me, for example, what bad luck you always had with the taxi inspectors from the Montreal police department and from the taxi companies. You mentioned that whenever you tried picking up a passenger out of your zone, you always seemed to pick up an inspector. You told me that whenever you tried to make a flat rate for a customer, an inspector would see your dome light off and make a spot check on you. You remember that?”

  “Yes, of course I remember.”

  “And if you remember some more, you’ll remember that I warned you the insurance companies also have inspectors. In fact, I stressed that they have very good inspectors. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Mr. Lecter. But why are you telling me all this?”

  “Why?” Lecter asked. “Watch.” He flicked on the projector.

  Pelzic was suddenly shocked to see a colour close-up of his own face on the screen. The camera drew back, and Pelzic saw himself getting out of his taxi in front of what looked like a hotel.

  “Here’s a picture of you picking up four heavy suitcases in front of the Mt. Royal Hotel, and carrying them to the car for the passenger.”

  “Yes, yes, I see. So?”

  “So?” Lecter sounded like he was choking on something. “So these shots were taken by an insurance inspector four days after your accident. Your right arm was supposed to be severely injured. We were claiming 5% permanent partial incapacity. The bulk of our claim was based on the 5% p.p. Look how you’re throwing those valises around. Look, look now,” Lecter exclaimed and pointed at the screen. “There you are arm wrestling in the Carmen Restaurant with some guy. Look, you’re actually beating him. Look at the arms on the zhlob. Look you put him down . . . with your right arm yet. Why couldn’t you use the left one?”

  “I used the left one after.”

  Lecter sighed disgustedly. “Look, look now! There you are jacking up your taxi after you got a flat tire. Again with the right arm. What is it with you and the right arm? D’you have something against the left arm? To jack off you probably use the left one, but to jack up he has to use the right.” Lecter motioned with his hand as though addressing an imaginary person in the room. “Look how you’re throwing the flat tire into the trunk! With one hand yet! I told you, they don’t fuck around, these momsers. I told you, stay home a little bit. Put the hand in a sling. Don’t take it outa the sling. Look, look now! There look at you–leaning over to open the back door for a fare with the right hand again. What d’ya have ta be so polite for! She could have opened the door herself.”

  “She was a fat lady, she was having trouble,” Pelzic protested.

  “Fat lady?! Let her go on a diet and learn to open doors by herself.”

  Pelzic shrugged. He was very close to tears. He knew what the movie was leading up to: no money.

  “We’ll be lucky if they give us three days total temporary.”

  “What does dat mean?” Pelzic asked, trying to keep his voice from breaking.

  “It means we’ll be lucky if we get two or three hundred bucks, of which you’ll get, if you’re lucky, maybe a hundred.”

  Pelzic stood up. He didn’t want to see or hear any more.

  “You should have cut a hole in your right side pants pocket and played with your putz.”

  “Please, Mr. Lecter, I must go now.”

  “Okay, okay go. I’ll call you and let you know how things turn out. But don’t expect much. We don’t stand a chance in court against this evidence. Do you agree?”

  Pelzic nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll try to get four hundred bucks from them. If we’re lucky, we’ll get three.”

  “Goodbye. Thank you,” Pelzic said and turned towards the door.

  As he walked out, he caught a final glimpse of himself on the screen. He saw himself strolling out of Warshaw’s fruit market carrying a gigantic watermelon, traylike on his right hand. Alone in the elevator, he let loose his frustration and anger by defacing several of the walnut panels with his car keys.

  This action did nothing for him. His anger seemed to grow as he got outside and stood on the sidewalk. He sensed somehow that if he could cry now he would feel a lot better, but he knew he was incapable of crying. He hadn’t done that in over 25 years. He walked slowly to the lot where his car was parked. He handed his ticket to the attendant who punched it in the time clock, studied it for a moment and then said, “That’ll be $2.60, sir.”

  “But I haven’t even been an hour,” Pelzic protested weakly, not really caring.

  “Yes, sir, you have. You’ve been here sixty-two minutes. It’s 85c the first half hour, 75c the second half hour, and $1.00 the next hour.”

  Pelzic paid. He got int
o his car and began to drive.

  HE DROVE FOR SEVERAL HOURS without paying any attention to where he was going. He went all over the city. A part of his mind was aware of people flagging him. Most he ignored, some he shook his fist at and cursed in Romanian, saying such things as futuţi mama mâtii, or du-t-n pizda mâtii; others he gave the gesture of the upraised third finger.

  He picked up no one. His mind was occupied with trying to figure out why he couldn’t make it–why an Iggy Retzic could be successful after a week in Canada and he was still failing after twelve years. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made any sense, he thought.

  It wasn’t as if he were stupid, a moron. He went over his life–the early years in Romania, his first years in Canada–but could come to only two conclusions: something was wrong somewhere, and it wasn’t fair.

  He drove from one end of the city to the other, from downtown to Bout de L’Isle and back up to the west end again where he went up to Mount Royal Park. There he left his car and walked around Beaver Lake for a few hours watching the ducks and the people and the dogs. Then he got into his taxi and drove east again past the stinking oil refineries all the way to the end of the Island.

  As he passed Richelieu race track, he was overcome by a great urge to go inside and try to place a bet. For some reason he felt that there was a good chance that he would be lucky. He went into the track with the objective of playing one race. He had approximately twenty dollars in his wallet. He would bet ten dollars on one race and then leave, win or lose.

  By the time he got inside, the second to last race was in progress. That meant he would have close to half an hour before he had to put his bet down. Pelzic, however, felt it wasn’t necessary to study the horses in the race. He chose one immediately because the stable colours were the same as the Romanian flag. Something told him with absolute certainty that his horse was going to win. He put his ten dollars down immediately, went to the railing near the finish line, and clutching his tickets tightly in his hand, he waited for the race to begin.

  The pace car came onto the track and the drivers followed it around, guiding their sulkies into position as they moved around to the starting pole. As the pace car pulled away and the drivers opened up, Pelzic’s horse suddenly drew up short and began to defecate on the track.

  Finally, after the other trotters had progressed to the quarter-mile pole, Pelzic’s horse began to move and raced after the pack at a stumbling gallop while the driver, half standing in the sulky, rained blows on its backside and screamed curses at it.

  Pelzic left the track, got into his car, and headed back for the centre of the city. He had fallen into a very subdued mood. The fact that he had lost his bet at the track hadn’t made him more angry, but in fact had seemed to make Pelzic feel somewhat quieter.

  He drove, watching the road unconsciously as though some small part of his mind was paying attention while the remainder was still occupied with a myriad of thoughts and memories of the past years.

  Somewhere on Notre Dame Street, not far from St. Emilion Street, he ran out of gas. That was only the second time in six years that this had happened to him. The first time had been almost five years before, and then he had been so disgusted and angry with himself that he had thrown a cursing fit. Now, however, he calmly got out of the car, locked it and began walking to find a gas station. He walked along Notre Dame for close to half an hour before he finally found one that was open.

  The attendants was there alone and so, after having purchased three dollars worth of gas and having left a five-dollar deposit for the container, he had to walk all the way back to his car.

  Forty minutes later he dropped off the empty tank at the gas station, got back his deposit, and continued on to downtown. It was a quarter to eleven when he finally got back to the centre of Montreal.

  For a while he drove around the general area bounded by de Maisonneuve, Guy, St. Catherine and Peel. He observed the people out on the town, sitting in the sidewalk cafés, lined up outside the fashionable discotheques, walking, talking, enjoying themselves.

  He began to feel lonely. He had been driving around without passengers for close to ten hours. Now he wanted some company. He wanted to hear someone’s voice, he wanted to be asked to go somewhere specifically. He began watching for fares. He made a pass along de Maisonneuve without success. He headed up Guy to McGregor. He drove past the consulates and stopped for a red light at the corner of Mountain Street.

  As he waited there for the light to change, a man and a woman came out of the corner apartment. The man motioned to him. The couple approached the cab and got in. The man mumbled something very rapidly in French to Pelzic.

  “Pardon?” Pelzic replied using one of the half-dozen French words he knew. The man quickly repeated the same sentence.

  This time Pelzic managed to pick up the word St. Catherine and assumed the man wanted to go somewhere east since St. Catherine was a one-way street going east.

  The light changed. Pelzic put on the meter and headed for Stanley Street where he turned right. He continued down Stanley. Halfway down the hill, the man in the back seat suddenly said, “Ou vas-tu?”

  Pelzic nodded, not understanding the man’s question.

  “Qu’est-ce qu’il fait?” the woman asked in surprise.

  “Sais pas,” the man replied.

  “Ou vas-tu, estsi?” the man asked.

  “Okay, monsieur, oui,” Pelzic replied, smiling and nodding his head.

  “I asked where you are going, my friend,” the man said angrily.

  “Oh, of course. You said St. Catherine Street,” Pelzic replied.

  “Tabernac. I said Motel St. Catherine which happens to be in Laval.”

  Just as the man said this, Pelzic crossed Sherbrooke Street.

  “Stop the car, estsi!” the man said curtly.

  “Why?” Pelzic asked, slowing down. “I’ll turn around in the lane.”

  “Colis, I said stop the fucking car tabernac.”

  Pelzic brought the car to a halt.

  “Here, estsi. The meter is fifty cents. I give you fifty cents. I don’t give you no fucking tip, estsi.” He threw two quarters onto the front seat.

  “How you get your fucking license if you don’t speak no fucking French, eh? Mon estsi de colis de tabernac de moods criss de calvire.” He opened the back door and got out, holding his hand out to help the woman.

  “I speak French,” Pelzic protested.

  “Tu parle français tway?” the man asked, derisively.

  Pelzic looked back blankly.

  “Siss mes gosses,” the man said laughing, and slammed the door in Pelzic’s face.

  Pelzic didn’t know what the man had said with his parting words, but he suspected it wasn’t something nice.

  What did they want from him? he wondered. He wasn’t good at languages. He had tried to learn French but he wasn’t very successful at it. He still had trouble with English, and he wasn’t even that fluent in Romanian, his native tongue.

  So I can’t speak French very well, he thought. Does that mean they have to shout at me, to insult me, to get out of my cab?

  He sat there at the side of the road for a few minutes trying to relieve the anger that seemed to be recurring. Then he decided to cut through the alley that connected Stanley and Peel. He’d make a pass by the Mount Royal Hotel. He turned into the alley. The moment he entered it, he had to hit his brakes.

  The driver of an outcoming car had also applied his brakes and stopped about thirty feet away. Pelzic sat there for a moment, waiting for the other driver to back up. He didn’t know why he expected the other driver to back up, but somehow he thought it would happen momentarily. After about twenty seconds, Pelzic realized that the other driver had no intention of backing up.

  As soon as this thought registered in Pelzic’s mind, he felt a rage explode inside him. This anger rose up so suddenly and so violently that for a moment Pelzic didn’t think he had any control over himself and didn’t seem to care. He was on th
e verge of screaming–and the thought of accelerating his car and crashing full force into the other vehicle flashed through his mind.

  Then, in an instant, he became very calm. He knew he wasn’t going to move. The only person who would move him at that moment would be a policeman with his revolver drawn. Nothing less. He couldn’t take it anymore. It was as though everywhere he went, everything he did, someone or something was there to frustrate him, to push him around. It had to stop. He was going to stop it here, now. Once and for all, he was going to take a stand, to hit first and ask questions later. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

  He wasn’t going to back up. He was going to come out frontwards onto Peel Street if he had to stay there all night, all week, all year!

  Pelzic shut off his motor, closed his lights and stretched himself out on the front seat. As he did this, he felt a surge of pleasure such as he hadn’t experienced in years.

  CHAPTER 3

  LEVIN LIT ANOTHER CIGARETTE and looked at his watch. It was 12:30. They had now been parked in the alley for an hour and a half. It seemed more like five or six hours. The time was passing so slowly.

  Levin sat up and changed the radio station. It was going to be a long night. His adversary in the taxi hadn’t shown even the slightest sign of moving from his prone position. He must be some kind of fanatic, Levin mused, a dangerous rival. Levin shut off his car lights, figuring he had already repaid the taxi driver in full on that score. He turned off the car motor. It was suddenly very quiet in the alley. The only sound now was his own radio. He turned it down low. He wanted to leave.

  It still bothered him that the girl had left. Maybe she had gone back to the club to find another guy. If he hurried there, perhaps he might catch her. He forced these thoughts out of his mind as he invoked the sensation of shame he knew he would feel if he left the scene. No, he would stay–all night if necessary.

  He reached into the back seat and took the Montreal Star out of his briefcase. He turned on the courtesy lights and spread the newspaper. The headlines were basically the same as the lead news items on the radio. He skimmed over the front page and turned to page two. It was mostly a continuation of the first page. He peered down at page three and scanned a synopsis of several cases which had come up that day in criminal court. Then his eye was attracted by a small box at the bottom of the page: