He stood in the dark comer of the bar and ordered a double bourbon with water. The thing to do was get out of the River House bar fast. It was a hangout for political reporters, and some of them had sharp noses—not many, but some. He thought about Red, and laughed.
“No, Arky,” said the Captain stubbornly, “I’m through—all through.”
A dark cloudless night. Arky and Zand had driven to the closed filling-station out beyond Locust Grove to meet Dysen.
“Now listen, Captain,” said Arky quietly, “it’s up to us to run it. Run it, or get out. And I ain’t getting out. They killed him. Captain. Murdered him. And if they want me out of here they got to kill me, too.”
Dysen groaned. “When he was in, all right. But now that he’s gone, I got no belly for it, Arky. No belly at all. I’m going to quit—retire. I’m done. Done!”
“They run you out, eh? Listen, without you they can’t operate, Captain. As fast as they open you can knock them over. You’ll be a big hero in the newspapers—maybe Chief of Police.”
“I don’t want to be Chief of Police, Arky,” said Dysen with one of his hippopotamus groans. “I don’t want anything. I’m tired. I just want to rest. When he passed on, I lost my starch. All my starch, Arky. You’re just wasting your breath.”
“You and the Paymaster! Jellyfish—the only thing holding you up was the Mover.”
“The Paymaster’s a mighty sick man, I understand. Nurses day and night. He collapsed—just like that. Heart—I don’t know. But he collapsed, Arky—and let’s look at it fairly: all our asses are out with the Mover dead, and the Paymaster on his back in the hospital.”
“Mine’s not. They killed the Mover and they killed Anna, and they tried to kill me. They are now in bad trouble. I want the finger man. As soon as I figure out who he is, he’s dead.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, Arky. I’m still a police officer, you know.”
“Oh, come on, Captain. Cut it out, will you? Your wits leaving you?”
Dysen took his big head in his hands and groaned. “Yes, I think they are. I haven’t been myself for a long time—worry, worry; something hanging over my head ready to drop…”
Zand stared at the big police captain with astonishment, Arky with contempt.
“Snap out of it, Dysen, will you?”
The Captain lowered his hands and peered sadly at Arky, whose face was marble-pale and marble-hard in the bluish glow of the filling-station night light.
“I just don’t know what to do, Arky. I’ve come to a pass like that.”
“You’ll do just what I tell you,” said Arky, harshly. “We’ll run these guys out if we bust up the whole damn town doing it.”
“Why? For what?”
“For what!" Arky shouted, grabbing the Captain’s lapels and shaking them. “For the Judge, Goddamn it! He was a man if you ain’t—and I ain’t. He’s dead. They killed him. Don’t you understand?”
There was a long pause and the Captain stood breathing heavily in the semi-darkness. Finally he spoke in a low voice. “All right, Arky. All right. We’ll go ahead.”
“Good. Give you a ring.”
Dysen squeezed his huge bulk back into his little coupe and drove off toward the lights of Locust Grove.
“I wouldn’t give you a nickel for him,” said Zand. “He’s got the shakeroos. He’s a lost cause.”
“Just so he holds together for a while,” said Arky, “then he can fold if he likes.”
Arky tried to get into the driver’s seat, but Zand pushed him determinedly aside. “Not the way you’re feeling, brother. There’s enough guys in the hospital now.”
Arky did not argue, but got into the other seat. Zand drove back toward town.
“Never saw anything blow like this before,” said Zand quietly.
“Things are like that,” said Arky. “Sometimes one guy holds ’em together.”
Getting toward midnight; tugs moaning on the river; and the clamor from the Front—taxi horns, ringing traffic-signals, bus air-brakes, clanging surface-cars—drifted back faintly between the tenement buildings of the Ward in a steady medley of sound. Clouds low over the big buildings across the river, and an intermittent damp wind blowing, with a just-noticeable touch of fall in it.
Arky paced back and forth nervously in his bedroom, smoking one cigarette after another. He was so keyed up that he could not even force himself to sit down and try to distract his mind with a game of solitaire. He hadn’t had four straight hours of sleep for nearly a week.
Below him in the darkened bookie room Turkey sat to one side of an open window with a sawed-off shotgun across his knees. Turkey was happy, living in clover. Plenty to eat; plenty spending money; nothing to do but keep his eyes open, and that was easy. Big doings—and he was in on it. This Arky—a great guy: none better. Just let somebody turn up. “I’ll halve the son of a bitch,” Turkey told himself grimly.
He thought about his former life with distaste: the crowded dirty flat with his mom and pop and six little brothers and sisters—Turkey was the oldest. Hair-raising stinks coming up the ventilator chute; family fights all around, yelling and screaming; dirty kids with no one to look after them; drunken bums falling down the sagging stairs; garbage in the gutter; little kids getting raped on the roof; police; inquiries; the can, with nobody worrying much whether you’re in or out, guilty or innocent.
“One thing about me,” Turkey told himself proudly; “never touched a girl under fifteen. Them guys must be crazy.”
Course there was always the club fights. It wasn’t the five bucks so much—not that that didn’t come in handy—but it was the fighting itself; fun, kicks; that’s why a guy was given strength and guts by the Lord, or whatever give it to him; and anyway in the 17th you had to be a fighter—you got nothing but the rind and abuse otherwise. Like this Arky; plenty tough boy, and rolling in dough. Always had a bankroll would choke a mule. Try and take it away from him!
Turkey chuckled to himself. Yeah, try! That’s the way you had to be.
He paused for a moment in his reflections and leaned forward to listen. A car was slowing down just outside in a rather suspicious manner; but in a second it picked up speed again and squeaked across the intersection just beyond. “That’s right,” said Turkey. “Keep moving, boys. It’s healthier.”
In the spare bedroom, Lola was face-down on the bed crying loudly. And Zand was walking the floor, waving his arms and cursing. The baby had been crying off and on for almost four hours; nothing seemed to pacify him. Lola had tried everything: jiggling him, singing to him, rocking him in his basket, pacing the floor with him; giving him water, formula, orange juice; massaging him with baby oil; and even bathing him in his bathinette. No matter what she. did, after a moment he started howling again.
“I’m telling you,” cried Zand, “pretty soon you got to make a choice, you hear what I’m saying? Ain’t the baby enough without you joining in? Be quiet. What the hell kind of life is this, anyway? I’m sick and tired of it, you hear me? All right. It’s nice living in this swell apartment—or it would be, if that damned Polack brat would shut up for two minutes so I could hear myself think!” Zand clutched his head. “Oh, God! There he goes again, hitting them high notes.”
Lola turned over, lay sobbing. “I don’t know what to do. What will we do, Zand?”
“Give him to somebody. Arky ain’t going to keep him. You know that—he just got stuck with him, that’s all. Arky’s got his own life to lead and so have I—and so have you I hope.”
“You mean you want to say something about it to Arky? You mean you...?”
“Yes,” said Zand. “Things are rough enough without this.”
Lola turned over on her face and began to cry again. “Oh, the poor little thing—the way he’s been passed around. It’s awful.”
“All right, all right, but you can’t handle him, Lola. You know that. No use kidding yourself, and it’s wearing you out. You’ve aged ten years.”
Lola sat up abruptly
and stared at Zand in dismay, then she rose, hurried to the bathroom and studied her face in the medicine-cabinet mirror.
In a moment she began to sob again. “Oh, I look awful! I didn’t realize…”
The baby drowned her out with piercing howls and Zand clutched his head again. At that moment the door was banged back and Arky came in.
“What the hell is going on back there?” he shouted.
Zand started but made no comment, a little worried by the look in Arky’s eyes, but Lola said hurriedly: “It’s Orv. He’s been crying for four hours. I don’t know what to do, Arky—I’m half-crazy with worry.”
Arky walked over and stood looking down at the fat blond baby, whose face was puckered up and purple in color. Ear-splitting howls were coming out of his little mouth, and he was sawing the air with his small fists. Arky poked him gently with a long forefinger. Making a blind grab, the baby caught the finger in his right hand and hung onto it. He stopped crying immediately, his face resumed its usual smooth fat placid look, and he stared up at Arky with blank round blue eyes.
“Little bastard,” said Arky, grinning. “Look at him hanging on to my finger. Say—he’s got quite a grip—this kid.”
Zand and Lola exchanged a quick look behind Arky’s back, and Lola shook her head warningly, but Zand spoke up anyway. “Ark,” he said, “this is getting too rough—for Lola I mean. It’s wearing her out. She worries all the time and she don’t get half enough sleep. Look at her. Hardly looks like the same girl.”
Arky turned and studied both of them. “I thought you were so set up about having this kid, Lola.”
“I was—I am,” Lola stammered. “But ... I don’t know. I guess I’m just not up…”
“Well, hell, who’s going to look after him?” Arky demanded. The baby began to howl again, and Arky stared down at him in dismay, then poked him again with his forefinger, but this time the baby ignored the finger and began to kick wildly, throwing off half his covers.
Lola hurried over to him, cooing, and tried to work his blankets back into place, but he kept kicking them off.
“Maybe he’s sick,” said Arky. “Maybe he’s caught a disease or something. I ain’t got enough to worry about—now I got to worry about him, too... got any gin up here, Zand?”
The abrupt change of tone and sense startled Zand for a moment and he stared; then he came to himself and said: “Yeah. I got a pint. Want it?”
“Yeah.”
“Arky,” cried Lola, “you’re not going to give that baby gin!”
“No! No!” exclaimed Arky in disgust. “It’s for me. Sometimes when I take a shot or two of gin it relaxes me and I can get some sleep.”
Zand brought him the bottle of gin and he slipped it into his coat pocket. The baby was crying loudly.
“Tell you what,” Arky went on, “you better call Doc Fiaschetti, Zand. Have him come take a look at this baby. If he’s sick, we ought to know about it. If you ain’t going to look after him, Lola, I’ll have to get a nurse or something.”
“You mean you’re dead set on keeping him?” asked Zand.
“What do you want me to do—throw him out in the gutter?”
“No, but... look, we run all over hell and gone trying to get rid of him for you.”
“That wasn’t getting rid of him. That was giving him back to his father and mother.”
“But you told me yourself he’d be better off in an orphanage.”
“Than with most people around here. He would be.”
“I don’t get it,” said Zand. “But if you want to keep him, Lola’ll look after him till she drops or I blow my topper.”
“All right. We’ll figure it out. Go call the Doc.”
Zand went out, shaking his head.
“I’ll be only too glad to look after him, Arky,” said Lola, “but... it’s sure wearing me down.”
Arky studied Lola for a moment; she certainly seemed washed out and sagging. But wasn’t it a woman’s business to take care of a baby? Back home they looked after them, and did all the housework; and not just one kid, maybe six. Lola just wasn’t cut out for it; or maybe she’d lost her woman’s touch after years of lying around the big town, drinking and staying out all hours, and trying to live like a man.
“I’ll hire you a girl, Lola,” he said at last, then: “Pick him up, why don’t you? Jounce him around a little. That’s the way they do back home.’'
Lola said nothing. No use to explain to Arky that she’d done everything under the sun. She picked the baby up, rocked him gently in her arms, and sang to him in what was left of her voice. The baby stopped crying immediately and went to sleep, and even gave off thin little wheezing snores.
“You see?” said Arky, then he turned and went out.
Lola could not trust herself to speak, or hardly to think.
Arky awoke with a start and looked about him in bewilderment. He was sitting in the armchair beside his bed and all the lights were on. The Racing Form he’d been reading had fallen to the floor. The gin had relaxed him and done the trick, but he felt a little uneasy; sleep seldom crept up on him like that, and this was a bad time to be dropping off without meaning to.
Zand, looking very tired and drawn, was in the doorway.
“The Doc just left, Arky. You were snoring when he got here, so I let you snore.”
Arky cleared his throat and got himself together. “Doc? Yeah. How’s the baby?”
“Hell, he’s fine,” said Zand wearily. “And Doc ought to know. He’s got eight of ’em himself. Doc says Orv’s as husky a kid as he’s seen in a long time; most of ’em round here are pretty weedy. Doc says he ought to get more sun-baths, though, and take vitamins. He left a prescription. You just drop the stuff in his milk, like a mickey.”
Arky laughed shortly, then said: “Okay. But why does he cry and yell so much?”
“Doc says the healthier they are the more they yell, and the louder. Great, eh? We got to end up with the healthiest baby in the Ward. Look, Ark. We got to do something about this. Doc put Lola to bed. She’s got a temperature—maybe virus, or something. Doc says maybe it’s only exhaustion, but is that good? I know you got your troubles and all, Ark, and this is a hell of a time for Lola to blow up on you, but she’s just human—if she can’t, she can’t.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll get her a girl. Good God! Back where I come from a woman has a baby one day and scrubs the floor the next.”
“I can’t help that,” said Zand. “Besides,” he added bitterly, “I just got no more home life than a rabbit.”
Arky studied Zand for a moment. “What you mean is, you wish the baby to hell and out of here, is that right?”
“Well,” said Zand, “where’s the percentage? You ain’t even married or anything, Arky. Why don’t you think it over? What in hell are you going to do with him?”
Alky waved his hands impatiently. “Look, I’ll think about that some other time. You tell Lola I’ll get her a girl—maybe right away; then all she’ll have to do is tell the girl what to do.” Arky got up, yawning and stretching. “I’ll go down and talk to Turkey. He knows every girl in the Ward. If it don’t work out, we can get a nurse. But I don’t want some smart nosy dame around here if I can help it. One from the neighborhood’s better.”
“I don’t get it,” said Zand, then he turned and went back down the hallway to the spare bedroom.
Arky wasn’t sure he “got it” either. Why was he being so stubborn? The last thing in the world anybody would think he’d want would be a baby. Maybe it was because Orv now seemed like a part of Anna—all that was left.
Arky shook his head, puzzled; then he put on his coat and went down the stairs toward the bookie room. As he was a few steps from the bottom, the door opened below, and Arky caught a foreshortened glimpse in the dim night-light of Turkey, whose head, seen from above, looked like a musk-melon.
Turkey glanced up. He had the shotgun gripped tightly in his right hand.
“Mister,” he said, “there’s a guy
asking for you—a nigger.”
“Where is he?”
“Alley door, waiting. Seems like a nice polite fellow.”
Arky shrugged and followed Turkey back through the bookie room, which was dark except for the dim glow of a street-light just outside.
“Where did he come from, do you know?” asked Arky.
“I heard him pull into the alley,” said Turkey, “so I took a quick look—big car. Think maybe there’s a couple other people in it.”
Turkey unlocked the alley door and opened it a few inches. An arc-light in the alley gave off a feeble whitish illumination, and against it a tall man in dark clothes was silhouetted.
“Yeah?” said Arky, stepping up to him.
The colored man was about forty, with a lean face and a self-assured manner.
“Mr. Ark? There’s a man in the car up the alley would like to talk to you. You come along with me.”
“Look fellow,” said Arky, “if he wants to talk to me tell him to come here to the door.”
“I don’t know. I’m just doing what he said. He’s a pretty important man, Mr. Ark, and he’s sick.”
“He can walk, can’t he?”
The colored man gave Arky a rather contemptuous look. “I’ll see what he’s got to say,” he said, then he turned and went back up the alley.
There was a long wait. At a gesture from Arky, the Turk went back to his place by the side-street window, and sat hardly moving with the shotgun across his knees. Big stuff. Big doings!
Arky lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall beside the doorway, smoking. He had the belly-gun in his coat pocket just in case, but actually he wasn’t worried by this visit. Nobody would be stupid enough to step out into an alley to get shot. That wasn’t the pitch. It was something far different, he was sure. But what?
In a moment he heard rapid light footsteps coming down the alley toward him: a car door slammed. High heels? Arky started slightly. A dame? Funnier and funnier.
Little Men, Big World Page 18