Kings of Broken Things

by Theodore Wheeler

  When Jake returned from Iowa, Mecklenburg’s was already half-full. The barroom would be packed by 6 a.m. Trucks lined the curb, with dozens of voters crammed on hay-strewn flatbeds. Streetcars from the train stations were full of Pendergast’s men. Joe Meinhof and Ingo Kleinhardt lined them up inside and meted out booze. Suitcase still in hand, Jake stayed in the back until it was time to instruct the voters, when Ingo escorted them to two basement rooms separated by a narrow doorway. The basement had been an afterthought, dug roughly and bricked in. As a former tunneler himself, Jake recognized the work. A light hung from a rafter. Its wire snaked in from a hole drilled in the floor above.

  “Listen up!” Meinhof slammed the door. Each election man held the standard issue: a baseball bat with the handle cut short, the barrel splintered and dented rusty from past elections.

  “The polls open soon and you got to know what to do. You’re going to vote today. Here’s who for.” Ingo passed out cards that had the names of the Square Seven printed on them, and—as these were voters from Kansas City—he gave each a paper slip that had a name and address, so they would know on whose behalf to vote. “We can’t help once you’re in there. That’s against the rules. You got to sign the registry—”

  “We know what to do,” one of the voters cut in, a squatty Swede with a flat scar scored into his chin. “Cut the shit. We’ve done this before.”

  “Shut it!” Meinhof poked his bat under the Swede’s chin. “Do as you’re told or the big Hun will take you outside.” He pointed to Jake. “You understand, yeah? He was a storm trooper before we got him. Don’t think he’d hesitate to stick you if you don’t do like we say.”

  Only a few of them had the guts to look Jake in the eyes, if they wanted to see what a real murderer looked like. Jake’s blond hair trimmed up the side of his skull, his eyes grayish, bloodshot, scanning the room for threats. Jake’s mastiff hands in fists at his side, this son of the Prussian flag. In their sheepishness, the way one of them shook—a young one, a teenager—Jake could see these men believed what Meinhof said. He didn’t challenge the conceit. He too was struck dumb, standing back, mysteriously holding a suitcase in one of his giant fists.

  Meinhof smiled his nervous smile, his grimace-grin. The bat was raised to see if any voter had the backbone to say more.

  “It’s close enough to time. Start the roll.”

  The polling room was an airless ten-by-twelve-foot cell on the other side of the door. This was a gambling room any other day of the year. There was a phone on the wall, used to call in bids on a policy game. Behind the table, where the roll was taken, two slot machines sat dormant under green blankets. Jake stowed his suitcase under the blankets too. He felt eyes on his back as he did this, as if the men dreamed what ingenious new weapon he carried.

  Voters crowded to sign the roll book. They were given a ballot and shuffled to a corner to fill in the blanks. An election official was there, some junior clerk from the county courthouse, to make sure each voter knew the address that corresponded with the name he was claiming (that he read it off a slip didn’t matter) and that the voter filled in the ballot on his own. These were the only rules that needed to be enforced. As far as the official was concerned, there was no other room at Mecklenburg’s than the one he sat in. He was deaf to the instructions Meinhof shouted, deaf to the barroom hopping above. After a voter finished marking the slate, the ballot was exchanged for a slip that certified he’d voted. This wasn’t anything official. It entitled him to whiskey and sausage at the bar upstairs.

  It was like this all day. Jake and Meinhof moved them from room to room. Bouncers pushed the rowdy ones to the curb, to streetcars running express back to Union and Burlington Stations. These voters would be out of state before anyone else knew they were here.

  The sun shined through the front windows in the afternoon. This surprised Jake when he came up to the barroom. He’d been underground since 5 a.m. Before that he’d been riding in the dark most of the night. He soaked in the sunshine that washed through the big front glass. More than a few election workers sat on car fenders in the street. They drank Irish coffee and pawed at plates of sausage and cheddar cheese. Most of these had never owned a vehicle, so the pride of driving a new car—Model Ts and Packard Twins—showed on their ruddy faces. Even if they were exhausted from working thirty hours straight, the exhilaration of Election Day kept them going. This was something they’d talk about the rest of their lives. The time they drove a Studebaker around the Ward on behalf of Tom Dennison and their beloved, infamous mayor, Cowboy Jim Dahlman. The lieutenants traded stories. It was boyish fun. To see them joking, staying up night and day to help a politician. One could almost forget what happened at the Santa Philomena. There was no stain of violence in a man’s smile as he chatted up a potential vote. No melee on Clandish, no sabotage, no Cypriot dying. (Not unless you had the eyes to see them.)

  Jake sat at the bar until the votes needed to be counted. He picked at some fried potatoes and ham, a beer in front of him he didn’t drink. It was late afternoon. Many election workers made their way to Mecklenburg’s, having finished for the day. Jake saw them in the mirror behind the bar. Some were his friends, Ingo and Rudi, men he’d hired. They didn’t invite him to join them. They were busy boasting of capers they pulled. A smutty poem about a priest and nun they’d printed—with a forged endorsement from the opposition on the back—and distributed in Catholic neighborhoods. A circular they mailed last week in hostile districts, falsely notifying voters that the election had been moved to Wednesday, and that a man could vote by phone if he wished. All of them buzzed at how they busted up Josie Washburn’s speech the night before. They marveled at how they’d pitted rivals against each other, at how quickly fighting was stoked and debate stifled. They tipped beers in celebration. Unbuttoned their shirts halfway. Let cigarette smoke drift out their nostrils.

  Ingo saw Jake watching. He smiled and lifted his drink. Ingo was amused at what he saw, Jake realized. He understood this amusement once he saw himself in the mirror. He looked like shit. He was tired, decrepit in a way. He hadn’t shaved in a week. Jake had been on a mad dash two days and accomplished nothing. He hadn’t even managed to run away. The suitcase was in the basement waiting while he sat on a bar stool eavesdropping. The truth of the matter was that Jake was at war in Omaha. He owed money. He’d crossed people who shouldn’t be crossed—and they knew about his escape plan. No amount of imagination could change this.

  Once the polls closed, the election official went upstairs at Ingo’s request and drank on the house while Jake and Meinhof counted votes in the basement. The ballots were kept in a steel lockbox, but Meinhof had a key. He dumped ballots on the table when they were alone. “Let’s get to it,” he said.

  The first time through they separated the ballots into two piles—those supporting Tom Dennison’s Square Seven and those supporting the reform slate. The counting was easier like this. Few ballots split either ticket. The first count showed a victory for Dahlman and the Square Seven, but before they restored the ballots to the box, and the box to the clerk, Meinhof called Dennison’s office with the numbers. From the way Meinhof’s face dropped, it was clear there was a problem. The numbers weren’t coming in right. Districts outside the River Ward were going to their opponents in staggering numbers. Normally the machine relied on something close to a split in the outlying districts—with the Ward tipping the results in their favor. That wasn’t the case this time. The reform politicians, the churches—they’d gotten their people out. It put pressure on the Ward to produce.

  “We’ve got to do it again,” Meinhof said, the telephone on its hook.

  “Again?”

  “Yeah! That’s what I said. Go through the box. Find more that aren’t right and toss them out. Make them wrong yourself if you have to. That’s what Billy said.”

  Meinhof called again after they recounted. Jake knew the gain wouldn’t be enough. He’d heard Tom talk about what might happen on Election Day, and he knew,
as Meinhof slammed down the receiver, that the worst-case scenario was coming true. The deficit was insurmountable. No matter what margin the River Ward delivered, it wouldn’t carry the day.

  “Screw it,” Meinhof said. He stomped around and swore. His face twisted as he rushed to the table and swept a mound of voting slips to the floor, ones marked for the reform ticket. “We’ll make the numbers,” he said. There was nothing wrong with these ballots, they hadn’t been altered. Meinhof tore them in half and kicked them in among the carpet of stomped cigar stubs, then stopped, hands gripped under the beveled edge of the table, the flop of his hair undone. Meinhof smiled, maybe aware of the furniture turned over, the dust prints from his boots on opposition ballots. He dropped the table on its feet and looked like he might laugh.

  “What are you doing?” Jake asked. “If you were going to fix the numbers, why—?”

  “Get out,” Meinhof said. “I’ll finish without you.”

  Jake squeezed the suitcase handle. He tried to relax but couldn’t. His anger embarrassed him. So he turned and climbed the stairs without looking back. Let Meinhof fix the numbers. It wouldn’t make a difference, not even if the machine claimed the Ward was unanimous in its support of Dahlman. The switch was in. It was over.

  Evie didn’t know what she’d say if he came for her. She didn’t really want to go away and would have to explain her change of heart. How she’d needed a job—that was the way it started. How the math had been simple in those days, but then things changed. It wasn’t right to take money from Billy Nesselhous after Jake was sick. After she fell in love. So she told the gamblers to shove it, she wouldn’t take their money anymore. She thought Jake had something to get by on. He was stealing from the gamblers, she knew that, but she’d hoped he could keep his strings running, because if he couldn’t, she didn’t know what they’d do to survive. Maybe Jake didn’t understand how things worked, he was young, but Evie should have known better. Life intervened in all plans. Her life intervened and changed the rules. That was what the gamblers counted on, in their way of thinking, that a guy would let something slip he wouldn’t otherwise to a girl he fell for. Only natural. The gamblers played the odds that way, bringing in a chaos girl as a hedge. They ran interference on their own schemes, on their own men, as a way of finding out who was strong and who would fail. Evie found out too, by and by, because she was in the middle.

  Evie should have known better than to let things go as far as they did with Jake. She knew there was a limit to love, but she ignored what she knew and then went and did something stupid like tell off the gamblers. What would she do now? Her own money was running out. She had to go away, didn’t she? Even though it was a harebrained plan. That was what she thought on election night—she was going to run with Jake—at least early in the night. She was. She’d talked herself into it. But then he didn’t show up, and that gave her time to think. Where was he? Was he dead? Did the gamblers get him? Would he still come for her? Did she want him to? Did she wish he’d never come back?

  She was in bed when Jake found her, spread out on her stomach. Her pink kimono rode up her body to expose an arc of hips, the sloping meadow lines of ass and thighs. An old habit, posing like that. She heard him come in but didn’t move. She tried to not even breathe. A paper lamp made the room glow orange, particularly her. Her bare legs and feet. Jake held a hand to her mouth to feel if she still breathed. She wanted to laugh but she wouldn’t move. He pinched a bead of sweat from her top lip and rubbed it into his fingertips.

  Evie held her breath but smiled in spite of herself. She’d tricked him, hadn’t she?

  Jake shifted his weight off the bed to remove his jacket. She took a heavy breath, silk sliding over her legs as she rolled to watch him. He parted the lace curtains and glanced down at the street below but didn’t bother to raise the window. She didn’t like to have the breeze come in at sundown. It gave her a chill.

  “Is this for me?”

  He’d left a wax paper package on the bed. She was eating when he turned around, Muenster and mustard on white rye. It was good, warm and formed, the cheese soft. She tore a sliver of cheese from between the bread and smiled as she tasted it. She plucked a rye grain off the blanket and crushed it between her front teeth. Her hair clumped lopsided.

  “You like it?” Jake sat next to her on the bed and took her hands between his. He was much calmer than before. All the urgency was gone out of him. “If you want more,” he said, “you can send out. Get whatever you want.”

  “I’m half-starved. A whole apple orchard sounds nice.”

  “Sure,” he said. He bent and kissed the top of her head. “Make it two.”

  She went to the other room and stepped behind the divider to change clothes. She felt safe behind the divider. Its etched parchment made the light white, it removed the incandescent glare. She felt safe, hidden, but not comfortable. Jake asked why she hadn’t packed.

  Her rooms were as always, she realized. The high-backed chair and low-slung sofa. The kitchen, her bedroom with the brass bed and legless vanity and mirror. All more or less the same. A lamp in front of the divider. In a corner was the cutting table, the woman-shaped wire cage. Around the doorway were several bolts of bright fabric. She was so handy with a needle and those giant shears. It would take some planning to package the tools and bring them along somewhere else. The heavy oak table would have to be left behind if she moved.

  She slipped around the screen in the same stained robe she wore before and nudged the suitcase with the side of her foot.

  “Where’d you pick this up from?”

  She smiled in a far-off way.

  “It’s late. I’m sorry.” He pulled a single bill from his pocket. “Don’t you believe what I said before? I have this. It will take us a long way from here.”

  She took the note and examined it in the orange light. “Is this play money?”

  She handed it back. Who’d heard of such a thing as a thousand-dollar bill? Jake tried to make her hold the money, but she wouldn’t. The thousand dropped in among her blankets.

  He sat sideways on the bed, leaning crooked over his hip. “I told you. We can go off someplace we’ve never been. We’ve got that thousand. It’s cash. We could get some land somewhere and farm. It’s enough to get started on anything we—”

  Evie waved him off. She went to the kitchen, where the ring was, and handed it back to him. “I don’t want this,” she said. She left him standing there. His face lengthening. He was terrified, she saw this. Evie didn’t know what she was doing. She hadn’t convinced herself to break things off—giving back the ring just happened. She didn’t know why Jake was late in coming for her. He could have done so many things against the gamblers, stupid things. He could have sealed his fate for all Evie knew, and hers too. He could be in real trouble, and the smart thing would be to distance herself. She saw this. Jake couldn’t protect her.

  She ran water for the tub. Under the sink basin was a green bottle. She tipped it to her mouth until she reached the dregs then let it clunk against the tile floor as she eased into the water. Hot water filled over her, splashing off her feet as it dumped from the spout.

  Jake followed. He sat on the toilet cover, the room filling with steam. The toilet chain hung down from a sweaty upper tank.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

  “We agreed already. We’ll leave. Then we won’t have to worry.”

  “There’s two alternatives, you should know.” Evie spun to wet her front, then over again. “Either I jump in the river or find some way to pay the rent. That’s how it is. Frankly, I don’t care much for the drowning option.”

  She took on a mocking accent, like she’d grown up on Broadway instead of in Kansas. “This isn’t the farm you came from,” she said. “We do things different down here in America.”

  Jake rubbed the shape out of his hair, head in his hands. He was shaking. He was falling apart.

  “You got a lot to learn about keeping a woman.
I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Why do I deserve you talking to me like this?”

  “What makes you think it’s about deserving? You think anyone deserves what they get? You think I deserve this?”

  Evie knew there was nothing Jake could say that would make things better, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Her anger was coming out, and she couldn’t stop. This was his fault. She felt a tear pool on her cheekbone, then drip off. She’d begged him to find her a job.

  Jake straightened to look Evie in the eyes. She sucked her tears back and reached under the water to feel her legs.

  “You deserve too, Jake. Did you forget about Ugo? Is that why you ask about injustice? Because you got no memory? Did you ever think what it was like for him? Running for his life. All those strangers trying to kill him because of a rumor. Only a rumor. And they’d cut his throat in case there was a reward.”

  They didn’t really know each other, did they? She’d been with other men longer, probably knew more about them. Why did Evie presume she loved this one?

  He’d never asked about Ugo, and she never volunteered information. Jake didn’t know how they met. Whether Ugo picked her off the streets or out of the dance hall where she worked, or whether their meeting was smartly arranged by the gamblers to feel like serendipity, as was the case. Jake never asked where Evie lived before she came here. He didn’t want to know how she’d come to be the Cypriot’s kept woman, did he? But she was unavoidable in the tub. Alive and present. A complication to his scheme.