by Tom Epperson
He took out a Kleenex and wiped his hands off.
“I hate hospitals. Full of fucking germs.”
“You really give money to this place?”
“Sure. Jews make the best damn doctors in the world. A joint like this makes you proud to be a Jew. I give money to a lot of Jewish stuff. The Jewish Home for the Aged. The Hamburger Home for Young Women. Things like that.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, you see, I ain’t a total crumb.”
I saw my shadows in the red Buick/black Pontiac standing on the other side of the lobby, smoking and casting sheepish looks in our direction.
“Who are those guys?” I said.
“Them? That’s Freddie Kornblum on the left. The other guy’s his brother Mousie. They call him that ’cause of the way he eats. Kinda nibbles his food real fast, like a mouse. I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel when I got dumb cocksuckers like the Kornblum brothers working for me, but I ain’t got no choice. All my best guys is getting killed or going over to work for my enemies. That’s why I’m lucky I got you. When you called me up and told me about Darla, I felt like my balls had turned into lead and they was dropping right through the fucking floor. I’m so stuck on that broad it ain’t even funny. But I can see now everything’s gonna be okay. You handled things real good, Danny. You took care of Darla. I can always count on you.”
Now he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, you look beat. Why don’t you go on home. Get a little shut-eye. Take the rest of the day off.”
I was reluctant to leave Darla.
“I’ll be glad to stick around, Bud. Keep you company.”
“Beat it, kid,” he said, taking out a Kleenex to wipe his fingers off after touching me. “That’s an order.”
My car looked like a crime scene. I drove into the nearest gas station. The owner, looking disgusted, said it was gonna cost me. I said fine. While they cleaned up the car I drank a Coke, and watched the traffic go by.
Chapter 3
THE NEXT MORNING I went to a building in the shape of a flower pot on Melrose Avenue that sold plants and flowers. I bought a bouquet of white and red and yellow snapdragons, then went to the hospital.
Nucky Williams was out in the hallway guarding Darla’s room. He grinned at the flowers.
“Aw, how’d you know it was my birthday?”
I reached for the doorknob. He stepped in between the door and me. His mashed-in face and flat chicken eyes were just a few inches away.
“Get outa my way, Nucky.”
But he didn’t budge.
“All us guys been trying to figure out what your secret is. You got one of them foot-long peckers? Or maybe it’s just that Darla’s hot for gimps. What do you say, Limpy? If I was to shoot myself in the foot, would Darla let me fuck her too?”
I grabbed his right shoulder with my right hand and forearmed him out of the way. He pretended to stumble and be afraid.
“Easy there, Danny! Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!”
Darla looked up from a magazine as I came in. She was lying in bed in a white hospital gown with her blue-eyed, red-bowed lamb beside her. She smiled faintly.
“Hi, Danny.”
“Hi. How you feeling?”
She shrugged. I handed her the flowers. She sniffed them dutifully.
“They’re nice. Thanks.”
“They’re snapdragons.”
“I like snapdragons.”
The room was filled with flowers, red roses mostly. It was big and airy, with nice furniture, and watercolors of sailboats and sunsets and misty mountain ranges on the wall. I dropped my hat on a gleaming mahogany table.
“This is a pretty ritzy room for a hospital,” I said.
“You know who stayed in this room?”
“Who?”
“Guess.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt?”
“Clark Gable.”
“Yeah? When?”
“Last summer. He got his gallbladder taken out.”
“No kidding.”
“This nurse told me about it. And she said this other nurse was such a big fan of Clark Gable that she didn’t throw his gallbladder away like she was supposed to.”
“What did she do with it?”
“She put it in a jar filled with formaldehyde. She keeps it in a drawer at home. Every now and then she takes it out of the drawer just to look at it.”
“Jesus. What a nut.”
“Yeah.”
We both laughed a little. Then it became quiet. The room smelled like roses and disinfectant. Darla looked at the lamb. Plucked at the red bow around its neck. Her eyes filled up with tears.
“Darla?”
I sat down on the bed and she leaned into me and I put my arms around her and she began to cry.
“It was so awful,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“He gave me laughing gas. I don’t know why they call it that. I didn’t laugh. The light from the window started spinning around. It got smaller and smaller till it was just this teensy little point of light, and I knew that when that little bit of light disappeared, I would disappear, and I ripped the mask off. The doctor said, ‘Calm down, you stupid girl,’ and he put the mask back on and he held it there. And then it was like I went on this trip through the universe, and this voice was telling me that everything you’ve ever been told is a pack of lies. And the voice was saying, look, this is how things really are! And it was like I was passing from one hell to another, from hell to hell to hell to hell. And everything was hopelessness and pain. Anger and evil. And then it was like I was falling into a giant volcano. I saw the lava below me, it was red and bubbling, and I could feel the heat and my skin started burning, then I heard the doctor say, ‘You can stop squirming, you stupid girl, I’m done now.’”
The door opened. I looked around and saw Bud. He said: “What’s going on?”
I stood up. I could see Nucky in the hallway behind Bud; he grinned at me then shut the door. Bud walked toward us, as Darla looked at him, sniffling and wiping her swollen eyes.
“Whatsamatter?” he said.
“I’m just feeling kinda blue, Bud.”
“Aw, baby, I’m sorry. Maybe this’ll make you feel better.”
He handed her a heart-shaped box of Whitman’s chocolates.
“Thanks.”
“How you doing, Danny?”
“Okay.”
“Lookit, I got a thing or two to talk over with Darla. You mind, uh…?”
“Sure, Bud,” I said, and picked up my hat.
“But don’t go far. I wanna talk to you too,” then he turned to Darla. “Hey baby, open the box up. Give Danny some candy before he goes.”
Still sniffling, Darla glanced at me, then pulled the ribbon off the box. She took its top off reluctantly, like it might be filled with spiders or dead mice.
Not that I really wanted one, but I selected a dark rectangular chocolate, and bit it in half. Bud watched me chew.
“What kind you get?”
I showed him the half I was still holding. “Kind of an orange cream.”
Bud looked pleased. “You’re lucky, kid. That’s a good one.”
Chapter 4
BUD AND I sat in the back of his black Lincoln as it glided down Santa Monica Boulevard. Nello and Bo Spiller were up front. I had no idea where we were going. All Bud had said when we left the hospital was he wanted to show me something.
He was very quiet, and kept casting thoughtful glances at me. Maybe he’d finally caught on to how I really felt about Darla, and seeing me hugging her was just the last straw. Maybe they were taking me out in the desert like I took Doc out in the garden.
Nello and Bo weren’t saying a word either. I stared at the blank backs of their heads and hats, and wondered which one would do it. Bo, probably. The mad-dog killer.
To break the silence, I said: “You know when your trial’s gonna be?”
“I got a hearing next we
ek. That’s when they’ll set the date for the trial. Blinky’s feeling pretty good about it He says the D.A. ain’t got a leg to stand on but Fay Wray, and he’ll tear him to pieces once he gets him up on the stand.”
“You shoulda put both his fucking eyes out,” said Nello.
“Maybe I still will.”
Bo laughed loudly. Now Nello slowed down and turned off Santa Monica, and I saw a sign that said: HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL PARK. We passed through a gate. It was a pretty place to spend forever. Acres of well-tended green lawns with gray and brown tomb-stones sprouting out of them. A little lake. Palm trees and evergreens.
Nello drove down a blacktopped lane that took us along the western edge of the cemetery. “Stop here,” said Bud. He and I got out, while Nello and Bo stayed in the car.
We strolled along the lane. I started feeling more relaxed, since it was clear I wasn’t about to be knocked off.
“This here’s for Jews,” said Bud. “It’s called the Beth Olam Cemetery.”
I looked at the names on some of the stones. Laskowitz. Rosen. Meltzer. Bloom.
“Why’d you bring me here?”
“Like I said. To show you something.”
The sun was nearly straight overhead in another cloudless sky. I could feel sweat trickling down the middle of my back.
“I been thinking about my ma a lot lately,” said Bud. “She had a cancer. It started in her mouth and then it started eating up her whole face. So here she is dying at the end of a lousy, fucked-up life, but all she keeps saying is: ‘I just want to live.’ At the end she couldn’t talk no more, all she could do was write notes. And the last note she wrote was: ‘I just want to live.’”
I saw that his eyes had welled up. I’d never seen that before.
“So the city took her body off and buried it where they bury winos and bums and other people without no money. I tried visiting her once, but I couldn’t find no tombstone, no nothing. She shoulda had a nice grave, with lots of flowers. But instead she just got dumped in some hole in the ground like she was some kinda animal.
“Then I didn’t have nobody. Now I’m starting to realize how much I’ve missed not having a family. Who can you count on but your own family? It’s more important than anything. I believe in God, but I think He ain’t as important as your family is. It’s like that story in the Bible, where God tells that guy to sacrifice his son. He was just testing his faith and shit, seeing if that guy would really go through with it. And when God seen the guy was actually gonna do it, He called it off, right at the last second. Well, I never woulda gone along with it. If God ever told me to sacrifice my son, I’d just tell God to go fuck Hisself.”
“But I don’t get it,” I said, then stopped myself.
“You don’t get what?”
“Well, if you want a family, I don’t get how come you sent Darla to that chiropractor.”
“That was all her idea. I told her I was all for having a kid with her, but she said if I didn’t help her get rid of it she was gonna throw herself down the stairs and get rid of it that way. So what’s the deal, Danny? She tell you it was my idea? Broads,” he snorted. “They’re just good for two things: fucking, and fucking things up.”
At the end of the lane, in the southwest corner of the cemetery, was a long, low mausoleum. A row of thin cypress trees stood in front of it. Behind it rose the huge sound stages of Paramount Pictures.
We went inside. You might think of mausoleums as being dark creepy places, but this one was bright and beautiful. We walked slowly down a polished marble floor between rows of crypts that went all the way up to the ceiling. Sunlight poured in through stained-glass skylights.
“Nice, huh?” said Bud. I nodded. We passed Glasbands, Schinagels, Ginsburgs, and Fishes.
“Hey, here’s a guy named Hamburger,” I said. “You think maybe he had something to do with the Home for Young Women?”
“I dunno. Maybe.” After a while we stopped, and Bud pointed up at a crypt with no name on it on the top row.
“That’s gonna be mine. Number 656.”
We craned our necks as we stared up at it.
“Not that I’m planning on kicking the bucket any time soon. But a guy in my line of business, you never know.”
“How come you wanna be in here and not outside? With the grass and the trees and everything?”
“I hate dirt. Why would I wanna be buried in the fucking dirt?”
“Why so high?”
“When I was a kid, I loved climbing on fire escapes and up on the roofs of buildings and looking down at everybody. So I guess it’s the same kinda thing.
“The one next to it,” he said, pointing. “Six fifty-four. I bought that one too.”
“For somebody in particular?”
“Well, at first I was thinking I’d put Darla in it. But that’s not gonna work ’cause she ain’t Jewish. They won’t let you in a Jew cemetery if you ain’t a Jew. But now I’m thinking,” and then he stopped. He looked at me for a long moment.
“I’m thinking now—I mean, if you wanna—you can have it.”
I was taken aback.
“You’re saying I’m Jewish?”
He nodded.
“But Danny Landon’s not a Jewish name, is it?”
“No. But that ain’t your name.”
Chapter 5
BUD AND I turned away from 656 and 654, and started walking back the way we had come. Over the polished marble, under the radiant glass.
“I figure the time has come to level with you. I don’t know why he done it, but Tommy told you the straight truth. I did bring you back here on a train. I brung you back from New York. That was after your ma wrote me a letter and told me how you’d got beat up. How your head was hurt.”
“Who was she? My mother?”
“’Member me telling you about heisting them anchovies? And how I got hot and had to get outa town? And how I had a girlfriend and she gave me some dough and then I never seen her again? Well, that was your ma. I didn’t know she was gonna have a baby when I left. She didn’t know neither. I didn’t know nothing about you until last summer.
“You coulda knocked me over with a fucking feather when I opened up that letter and it was from her. She said she’d read about me in the papers, that’s how she tracked me down. She was in a real jam, she said. They was trying to throw you outa the hospital ’cause you didn’t have any dough. And she was real sick and she couldn’t work no more and she didn’t have any money neither. And so she didn’t have no place else to turn to but me. The next train to New York, I was on it.”
“What happened to me? How’d I wind up in the hospital?”
“Well, you got beat up by some guys, just like I always told you. ’Cept it happened in New York. There was this old Greek guy, he had a dry cleaners. One day these guys jumped him, they was beating him up and was gonna rob him, but then you happened along. You tried to help him out. That’s when you got knocked in the head with a lead pipe.”
We came to the mausoleum entrance, and went out. Looking directly down the lane you could see in the hills the Hollywoodland sign. We turned right, and walked along the southern edge of the cemetery.
“Your ma said that trying to help out that old man, that was just the kinda guy you was. You was the prince of the neighborhood, she said. Everybody liked you, everybody looked up to you. Everybody thought you was really gonna go places. You was going to college, you was planning on being a lawyer. You talked about being the mayor of New York someday. But then when your mother got sick you had to quit college and get a job.”
“You know what kind of job?”
“Yeah. In a shoe-polish factory.”
I was quiet a moment, letting it all sink in. The prince of the neighborhood. A shoe-polish factory.
“Did she have any family? I mean, besides me?”
Bud shook his head.
“Her mother and father, when she told ’em she was having a baby, they wanted her to go to one of them home for unwed mother
places. You woulda ended up in an orphanage. But she wanted to keep you. So they just threw her out on her fucking ear.
“No telling what woulda happened to her, but she ran into this guy. This little mick. He was eating a hot dog in the park. He seen her watching him, and seen how hungry she was, so he bought her a hot dog too.
“He was a lot older than her. He was a bookkeeper. When he found out what the deal was, he said he’d marry her and he’d raise the kid as his own. And that’s what happened.
“Your ma said he treated her like gold, and he was a real good father to you. She said you never knew the truth about who your real pa was. She said the three of yuz was all real happy together. But then when you was five or six, he was just walking down the street and this big chunk of limestone fell off a fucking building and killed him.
“So it was just your ma and you. She got a job working as a salesgirl in a ladies’ hat store. And she stayed there till she got sick.”
“What was the matter with her?”
“Consumption. Her lungs was rotting out. When we was both kids and she was my girl she was gorgeous. But when I first seen her last summer I didn’t hardly recognize her. She was so skinny she was like a skeleton.”
“What did she look like? When she was young.”
“Well, she had blue eyes. Light-brown hair. A little nose. She didn’t really look like a Jew, if you know what I mean.” He smiled a little. “You look like her, not me. Lucky for you.”
“Did she have a scar?” I said, and I touched my left cheek. “About here?”
“Yeah. She said she got hit in the face with a seesaw or something when she was a kid.” He eyed me curiously. “So you’re starting to remember stuff?”
“Some stuff.” And then I said: “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, kid. Sorry. Couple weeks after I got there she started coughing up blood. Lots of blood. Then she passed out. She never did wake up again. She died that night. I was there with her. Then it was just you and me.