“Ah could have made that little Swede,” Cass said, “oney ah was broke.”
Nubby sat crosslegged on his cot. Above his head a small night-light burned feebly, casting a sheen across his boot toes. He removed his right boot and fumbled in his sock for something.
“That’s the way with these cheap scurves every time,” he said, “what you an’ me got to do, Red, is to pull us a job. Then we’ll get us a couple real flooseys.”
Cass sat on the edge of the other cot. He watched Nubby fumbling in his sock, until he found what he sought. Then he slipped the boot back on and stood before Cass with a five-dollar bill in his hand.
“This is about all what’s left out o’ my kangaroo money, son. I must have kangarooed forty-six guys in that jailhouse before you ever bust into it.” He regarded Cass closely. “But we spent it all together, didn’t we, son? We got my boots soled an’ my tattooin’ jazzed up, an’ you mooched a little now an’ then, an’ we got through the whole summer—Didn’t we, son?”
Cass nodded. He wanted to say that he’d done a little kangarooing once or twice, and that Nubby might have nothing at all now had it not been for the help of others in a jailhouse tank. He wanted to say that the money should have gone for groceries in the jail; he wanted to say that he too would like to be tattooed sometime. But he said nothing at all, he both feared Nubby and depended upon him. He knew that Nubby wouldn’t let him crawfish out even if he wished to, now that the money was so nearly gone. Cass didn’t want to be alone in the world again, ever.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “We spended it t’gether awright ah guess—but don’t call me ‘son’ no more, Nub. It hurts mah feelin’s perty bad sometimes, an’ you ain’t so much older’n me anyhow.”
“Mebbe not. But I seen twice as much an’ got most the brains, besides havin’ all the gut there is between us. You ain’t gettin’ cocky just ’cause you mooch a little here an’ there, are you, son? ’Cause there’s lots bigger things than that a man got to learn before he’s a real white man; I’ve told you that before.”
Cass stood up slowly and advanced. He shoved his face within an inch of Nubby’s, and replied with the whine suddenly gone out of his voice.
“Y’all been talkin’ on all summer now ’bout how much you seen an’ what you done an’ all the tanks you been in. Well, ah ain’t been in oney one jail, an’ mebbe ah ain’t seen so much—but ah sure got gut! Ah’m all gut! Ah’m a Texas hell-roarer! Y’all don’t even know what the sheriff back home used to call me!”
Nubby backed up just an inch. No, he didn’t know that. Then he saw that the boy was bluffing a little, and he smiled inwardly. The boy was coming along pretty fast of late.
“‘Bad-Hat’ is what he called me there! Bad-Hat on account ah’m so bad! Don’t never call me ‘son’ no more.”
Lovingly, Nubby fingered his bill. He had kept it in his sock so long that it smelled wholly vile now. During their summer together he had shown Cass this bill several times, and each time its odor had seemed stronger to Cass. Nubby spoke resignedly, fingering his love.
“Well, I s’pose I might have knowed you’d turn on me sooner or later. I’ve done my best to make a white man out of you, but you got no more use for me now. I could’ve learned you how moochin’ is only chicken-dribble comparin’ to what we could’ve got, with my brains an’ your guts. Why, I could even of spent this fin on a drunk fer the two of us. Only I see now you don’t want to go ’long with me now no more an’ if I spent the fin I’d be broke—an’ then where’d I be? I wouldn’t have someone to help me earn it back an’ you’d be off somewheres gettin’ drunk off somebody else. Maybe I could get it back by moochin’ o’ course—but you know how I like moochin’. I got too much pride in me fer that game, son. An’ besides it’s only chicken-dribble comparin’ to what we could get.” Nubby glanced down at his fin. His face held a pious and wistful light beautiful to see.
Cass’s eyes went rubbering about the room as though seeking some hidden thing in its corners. “Ol’ Nub ain’t got the slight-test idee how tough ah been in mah time,” he mused. “Me an’ ol’ Olin’d make Nub look like chicken-dribble.”
“Ah didn’t do so bad moochin’ down State the other mornin’, Nub,” he said aloud, “six-bits—that’s lots more’n jest chicken-dribble.”
“You was talkin’ pretty loud a minute ago, wasn’t you, son?”
Cass looked at the fin in Nubby’s paw. He thought of five-dollar bills, many five-dollar bills, fifty-five fins all rolled neatly together, each one his own; each one rather smelly.
He thought of two white girl-hands, cupping peanuts in their palms.
“Yore jest callln’ me ‘son’ now to get me riled, Nub,” he said reproachfully.
Nubby laughed shortly, and spoke hard.
“Don’t stall me, son. Is it yes or is it no? Do we get high together? Or do you sleep in Lincoln Park tonight? Say, don’t you figger you owe me anythin’?”
Cass gulped, so that for a moment he could not reply. “What night you been figgerin’ on, Nub?” he asked, wholly without heart. Nubby had his answer ready before Cass had finished speaking.
“Tonight’s as good as any I know, Bad-Hat,” he said; and then it was Cass’s move.
“Well,” Cass temporized, “O’ course there wouldn’t be so much cash as on Sattiday, an’ . . .”
Nubby cut him off.
“Wednesday night is perty good too,” Nubby said, “an’ so long as yer gettin’ kind o’ anxious to go, we might as well spend the fin fer a rod an’ get high Sattiday instead. No use us wastin’ time, is there, Bad-Hat?” He took Cass’s hand before Cass could offer it.
“They used to call me ‘Scarface’ sometimes too,” Cass said, without seeming so sure that they really had. Nubby’s fingers felt damp to his.
As they went down the musty staircase Nubby spoke over his shoulder, but Cass didn’t hear his words very distinctly. Then they were downstairs, walking past the desk where the night-clerk sat.
“We won’t be back tomorrer, Droopy-Drawers,” Nubby barked at the old man as they passed, “We’re movin’ into a high-class hotel.” Nubby waved the clerk a brief farewell.
“So long, Old Cootie-Chaser,” Cass added, with a similar wave.
The old clerk failed to wave in reply. He was hoping that neither bum had left seam-squirrels on his cot. He would have to wash the crumbs out with naphtha in the morning if either had.
Wells Street windows were darkened now. On either side the tenements, like lean old beggars waiting in a row, stood bowed above the street. Cass saw the unclaimed children of Chicago’s tenement-town begging and selling. He heard a young boy offering himself to a pervert in front of a cheap hotel. He saw a Negro girl on a doorstep who shot out her tongue like a snake as they passed; and he saw an aged white woman who tapped her hps and smiled horribly, in an unnatural invitation.
“Don’t we need a heat or somethin’?” Cass ventured to whisper in Nubby’s ear after they had boarded a southbound car.
“That’s right where we re goin’ now, Red. To get us one big blow.”
Nubby knew every dive, every joint, every hole-in-the-wall from Twenty-Second and Wabash (The Four Deuces) to Sam Hare’s Delis in Morton Grove. And he sat so silently sullen all the way into Blue Island that although there were questions Cass wished to ask he forebore out of a fear of being mocked.
On Western Avenue in Blue Island Nubby led the way into a pool-hall. A clock on the wall read 1:55. Cass waited in front, watching an Irish boy and an Italian playing rotation, and wishing that he had fifteen cents for a pack of Camels. He was tired of rolling his own all the time, a nickel a sack, like some hick from the country.
In less than five minutes (the clock had not quite reached two) Nubby came out wearing a crooked grin on his face and a portentous bulge on his hip. His silence and sullenness had vanished; he was almost bursting with information.
“They gave it to me fer four bucks,” his voice was amazed at his fortune—“f
our bucks an’ four bits an’ a dime an’ two nickels, an’ then the one they call Turk thrun in the jimmy to show he’s all on the square.”
They paused in an unlit cranny between two stores and Nubby withdrew the bar from his hip.
“Here,” he instructed. “You take the wreckin’-bar an’ I’ll take the heat on account it’ll be my job to keep off bulls from you. That’s the main job so it’s mine. Slip it down yer pants, Bad-Hat ol’ boy, make a hole in yer pocket an’ keep holt of the end so’s you won’t drop it front of the police station an’ make a noise like afternoon of Judgment day.”
“Migosh, Nub, you don’t give me credit fo’ knowin’ nothin’,” Cass protested.
Nubby tucked him under the chin. “Is oo angwy wif papa again, Weddy-Weddy?” he asked, “Don’t oo even want papa to tell oo how to do?”
Cass brushed Nubby’s finger away. “Are we gonna go, Nub, or ain’t we?” he demanded irritably. Nubby laughed and hooked him by the arm. As they stepped up into a westbound bus Cass felt the steel of the bar glide against his thigh.
“Poke me when we get to 146th,” Nubby instructed after they were seated, “I always got to catch up on my tighteye before I pull a job.” Nubby feigned sleep, his mouth hanging wide and his eyes so tightly closed that they wrinkled.
Cass thought, “Bluffin’ again. He’s jest as skeered-like inside as me, any time. He wouldn’t have the guts to pull what me an’ Olin done once t’gether.”
When they piled out of the bus in Harvey it was drizzling. They walked south to 154th and turned east.
Nubby’s boots went clicking swiftly along the pavement; he never discarded these, El Paso winter or Chicago summer. Twice a year he had them resoled, and every dime he could spare went for a liquid polish called Brownglow. He seldom used this polish without remarking to Cass, “Brownglow, it’s my own special brand.”
“This is a good ol’ street,” he commented, increasing his stride a little, “I was raised in this neighborhood. When I got to be fourteen me an’ my brother joined the Boy Scouts, Eagle Troop Sixty-six, an’ our first really good deed was to roll a old drunk guy comin’ down this street. We knew how already then, Elmy an’ me. That was in the war-time, an’ we was pertendin’ he was a spy till we finally got to thinkin’ he really was, I guess. Every night fer a week we waited fer him in the alley, an’ fin’lly we got him. Honest, me an’ Elmy was like a couple young coyotes in them days. Elmy was six years oldern’ me, an’ he sure learned me lots. Only sometimes I think I ain’t got as much gut as I had then, an’ then I feel sad. We weren’t scared of nothin’ then, us two. Elmy always stuck up fer me too, even against the old man sometimes. We’d go home about once a week an’ the old man’d kick us both out an’ cuss from here to Gary.” Nubby laughed lowly, in recollection. “We stole a streetcar out of the Hammond barns one night, after the motorman got off, an’ we run it fer eight blocks clear to the end of Hammond like hell on wheels, with Elmy bangin’ the gong with his heel an’ throwin’ on the sand an’ singin’, an’ me swingin’ along the straps like a little monkey in the zoo-house an’ all the cops in Hammond chasin’ us down Homan Street. I guess it must of been the Fourth of July, ’cause I remember hearin’ firecrackers goin’ while we was ridin’. We went to St Charles fer that, me an’ Elmy, an’ that’s where I got my nub. But we learned a lot down there, if I got to say so myself. If I got to say so myself I ain’t been caught fer a lot of things since. Only sometimes I wonder where Elmy is, if he ever comes around the old places any more, if he ever got caught much since.”
It was a street lined by small stores: two real-estate offices, a grocery, a butcher shop, a bakery. In each small nightlights burned.
“Real-estate offices has always got a safe-full,” Nubby divulged. “They collect a couple er ten thousan’ dollars at twelve o’clock on Sattiday night an’ then they hide it all in a little tin safe ’cause all the banks is closed by then. Only I got nothin’ to crack a safe with tonight, so the real-estate places is out. Come on, son, don’t slow down an’ don’t start gawkin’, make off like yer goin’ some’eres real fast. You got to learn how to case a joint just by walkin’ past it real fast; that’s how first-raters does.”
They walked on for two more blocks, until Cass noticed a store that had no nightlight burning. It was a delicatessen on the other side of the street. He pointed.
“Fer Christ’s sake, son, don’t never point a place like that. Honest, son, you gimme the weak-trembles sometimes. Seems like you don’t learn quick er somethin’. A place like that ain’t good fer cowcrap. People sleeps in the backs of them kind with four burglar alarms an’ a dog an’ a janiter an’ nothin’ inside the register but plugged pennies anyhow. We want some place where ain’t no light lit, where ain’t no dog, where ain’t nobody sleepin’. And where is lots of the ol’ McCoy.”
They walked on in silence for several minutes, Cass reflecting all the while.
“Say, Nub,” he finally said, “Ain’t that butcher’s place back there like y’all say we want? All ah ever seen o’ butcher shops never had nothin’ in the back ’cep’ a ice-box mebbe, or a place to kill roosters that’s all. Ah reck’n they don’t have no dawg neither, on account the dawg’d eat up all the sausages on ’em, don’t y’ reck’n?”
The logic was irrefutable, but Judge O’Neill did not wish to appear hasty. He deliberated the matter now with his practiced ponderosity.
“They was a light burnin’ in there, son.”
“But they’re lights in ’em all, Judge.”
“Just to investigate conditions then,” Nubby compromised curtly, “like the gran’ jury done that time.” At the corner they turned and walked back on the other side of the street. By the butcher’s clock, hanging directly under the nightlight above the register, the time was 3:25. They slipped into the alley and around to the rear.
“Only got a hour before light now, so we got to work fast,” Nubby hissed. “First thing you want to do now, Red, soon’s I get the window high enough up, is to douse that light up front. Don’t go stoppin’ an’ gawkin’ around to see is somebody gonna see ya doin’ it, ’cause if ya do, then, sure enough, somebody will see ya. So just tiptoe up soft an’ slap her head off, same as ya would a old whore what’s give ya clap.” He perceived Cass’s trembling and spoke more gently. “Tomorrer night we’ll go up to the dance-place, Bad-Hat. Betcha that little Swede of yours’ll be glad to see her man come ’round again, eh?” He nudged Cass, and Cass tittered. “But tonight we both got to take our chances, you the same as me, Bad-Hat. Need a cig’rette?” Cass thought of a hundred dance-tickets, all in one string, all his own. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
“I guess you seen where the cash-box is settin’ all right,” Nubby added. “So I’ll wait here an’ head off bulls, on account it’s my roscoe and I could shoot straighter anyhow.”
“Ah seen it, where it was,” Cass acknowledged.
With a stone scarcely larger than a pebble, Nubby broke the window. Neatly. The sound of its breaking was so brief that for one second after Cass was uncertain that it had really been broken. A small round hole above the catch was the only evidence of the stone’s course. Nubby began working the window up against its second catch while Cass held the revolver.
“If someone comes up sudden on you, Red,” Nubby cautioned while he strained at the sill, “don’t shoot ’em dead right off. Just shove the steel against his neck for a second an’ give him a chance to reach for the roof. When ya let him feel cold steel right up against him like that, then he’ll know ya mean business all right. An, when ya get inside—’member—the button that opens the box is the one way down farthest over. Always.”
As the lock gave the window groaned out piteously in the early morning air; both men stood as though paralyzed. Cass whimpered softly. Then, “Bust ’er with this, Red, an’ remember—she give ya buboes an’ crinkums an’ the bloody-blue flux is why ya doin it.” Cass disguised his whimper with a faint tittering, and lowered himself i
nside with no especial grace. “Once a fellow called me Hell-Blazer,” he said hollowly, “on account ah copped a shirt off a line for him in New York.” Nubby handed him the jimmy with a final word of warning.
“If anythin’ goes wrong, son, I’ll meet ya front of the hotel day after t’morrer. Remember: front of the hotel, in the afternoon.”
In the unfamiliar dark Cass smelled old meat. He groped toward a long crack of light in the wall. The wall was a thin partition, he found, for it wobbled when he shoved against it. Once he stumbled face-forward, stumbling through darkness and old-meat smell, and hit the floor with outspread fingers into a heaped soft-sharpness. He smelled the soft-sharpness, ran his hands through it, let it trickle through his still outspread fingers. Sawdust. Mechanically, he brushed his clothes of the stuff. Then he struck a match and saw, by holding it in the creel of his hands, that he stood next to a pile of crates stacked behind the partition’s end. Through boxes he glimpsed the cash register standing in the full glow of the nightlight. Boy! Would he bust that! He edged around the crates, strode up the inside of the counter, and smashed the globe just like Nubby said to do; then he punched the lowest key on the right-hand side.
Money. Bills. Pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters and half dollars. Packets of quarters, packets of halves, packets of pennies and nickels and dimes.
He cocked his head on one side and he gaped, with his mouth hanging wide and his shoes full of sawdust.
Then he said, “Oooo”—like a small boy spying a bright coin in the gutter.
He’d gone along to prove himself game, he’d gone along on bluff—and he’d found money! Dimes and dollars and halves and quarters. He’d found it all, so it all was his. All his. Tentatively, as though fearing it might disappear like a dream, he picked out one dime, brought it close to his eyes, rang it once on the counter—and then he went half-mad: he scooped up furious handfuls, whole handfuls fell to the floor; he dropped bills, bent to retrieve them, banged his head twice on the counter in bending, padded on all fours down the length of the counter to recover one nickel, and came all the way back, on his knees, padding, with the jimmy still gripped in his hand.
Somebody in Boots Page 23