This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  “Please,” Splendor protested, “I’m hardly interested in exhibitionism.” His eyebrows came down. “I was hoping you’d ask why then we should build the sewer when it’s not needed. And I trust I have proved it isn’t—except for the West Side, the one part of town where it will not go. The present facility in my home district is disgraceful. You can fake a new sewer elsewhere, because the old one does an adequate job, but—”

  Reinhart at last cleared things with his amour propre and sprang in here: “I get it, I get it!”

  “You don’t,” Splendor said coldly.

  “Wait a moment,” Reinhart cried. “Hear me out. Our funds may have been reduced by three months of fantastic graft, but we still have surely enough to put a new main through the West Side. That’s about half a mile at the outside, and it can link up with the trunk line just north of Mayberry Place.”

  “No, no, no,” shouted Splendor. “I an officer of the company building the Negroes a new sewer? How would that look? Collusion and influence-peddling all over again.”

  “Christ, you’ve got to benefit somebody. You mean, out of some highly abstract conception of honor we should make an altogether purposeless excavation in the middle of nowhere? That is what they call—”

  “Reductio ad absurdum.”

  Splendor pronounced it with so much satisfaction that Reinhart was moved to wail: “You read in Life magazine about those Existentialists and have become one.”

  Splendor just loved to be accused of something or other; he protested, but you could see it made him happy just to be charged. However, he really had improved, in his own way, ever since leaving jail: having Reinhart fined for littering the park was a means of striking back. Now he had grown beyond mere negative aggression and wanted to establish himself ethically, like one of Conrad’s young captains who yearns for bad weather to steer his ship through so as to prove his worth as mariner and man.

  Reinhart got his cigar butt from the ash tray where it had gone cold some time before.

  “Look here,” he said, “I am the legal president of this company. To put me where I would catch the blame, Claude and the Gibbons had to give me real power. There’s a lesson in that. I don’t know the Existentialist position on the matter, but a rather varied experience of life has shown me that one necessarily involves the other; power: obligation: honor. Now, since the responsibility is primarily mine in this case, I must make the decision. But I shall need you for the performance, my dear fellow. In fact, I must abandon the project if you refuse your aid.

  “We shall build an honest, efficient sewer, not to spite Claude or because we are good citizens and godfearing men or any such hot air, but because we have contracted to do so. We will restore the value of a man’s word!

  “Second, we shall dig it through the West Side, not because the residents there are more deserving than those elsewhere, or because the vice-president of our firm has personal interests in that district, but rather because that’s where it is needed.”

  Splendor tried to look sinister, to emphasize his warning: “You are prepared to lose your house?”

  “Not,” said Reinhart, “until I’ve used the tricks up my sleeve. If they fail, of course Claude will throw us out. But I’d rather see my child born in a cheap hotel room than have it grow up with a gutless father.” He gestured at his friend. “By the way, we’d like you to come to dinner, but you understand it is inconvenient for Gen, being pregnant.”

  “I apologize, Carlo, for accusing you of getting me wrong. Indeed we see eye to eye,” Splendor graciously admitted. “You know of course that we shall probably fail. Ranged against us are the mayor, the chief of police, and the biggest businessman in town; and Johnny Reo is essentially a gangster.”

  “None of that materialist talk,” cried Reinhart, using the tiny cigar butt as a saber.

  Reinhart felt much less confidence than he professed, but temporarily everybody else had a false sense of security and would not bother him, at least not for the rest of the day, Claude, Genevieve, and Splendor. Of course he must let Dad know without delay, who had really headed him for the new goal, just as he had steered him to the old. Way last March, Dad said, go to Humbold; and now, build a real sewer, and his son had acquiesced after only token resistance. As a result he no longer felt guilty about the old fellow, but just resented him for telling Why but not How. Very normal situation on both sides; he would get his revenge on his own son; and so the world keeps turning.

  Meanwhile, we all must do our jobs. Reinhart swore Splendor in as technical director and sent him off to the county engineer’s office, not neglecting to pave his way by phone and written authorization, lest that official be not as cooperative as Splendor had, to make a point, represented him.

  Next Reinhart placed a call to the number that the office book listed opposite the name of Johnny Reo. At length this got him a phone booth in the rear of the Star Tavern and Grill.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Whadduh yuh sure?” asked the bartender. “Don’t I know when I walk all the way back here?”

  “I wonder,” said Reinhart, “how I happened to get this number for Johnny Reo, the sewer subcontractor.”

  “Maybe because he’s usually in the booth alongside only not now gimme your phone he’ll call yuh.”

  Reinhart did so and hung up. He was now about to draw his ace from the hole, and his audacity had not yet reached his throat: if he talked just now, his voice would quaver. At the same time he grew maniacally horny, and believed that if the secretaries had returned (they had not) he might have violated them both in the outer office, in full sight of passers-by. However, it was the compensatory lust of little faith, rather than a symptom of overconfidence—when you are married, you learn such things—and after two quick shots from the bottle he kept in his desk as an antidote for self-doubt, it went away.

  He seized the telephone again and dialed Long Distance.

  “Listen, Operator, I want to place a person-to-person call to James T. Marsala, Brooklyn, New York. I have his number.”

  She rang and buzzed and clicked, and eventually someone answered from deep in that terra incognita. Another bar & grill. Party referred them to a numbah rin Bridgeport, Conn. Jimmy apparently then was back from the Army; Reinhart’s hopes rose. The Bridgeport phone was in a barbershop. The proprietor said: “He ain’t in Bridge-a-port. Gone to New Jerse,” gave an address, added: “I don’ wan’ no troub’,” and rang off.

  “Shall I try this Whoopee Club in Hamhurst?” asked the operator with her noli me tangere diction.

  “Naturally,” Reinhart answered, taking another shot of booze with his right hand. He had always understood that Jimmy’s brother was the hood, and taken even that as a bit of forgivable hyperbole.

  “Yeah, he’s here, wait a minute,” said the male answerer at the Whoopee Club, and in a moment there was the voice of Marsala himself, the great old Army buddy whom Reinhart hadn’t seen since his last day in Berlin, September 1945.

  “Awright,” Reinhart bawled, “your bunk looks like a hoor’s nest, you jerk. What do you think this is, a guinea holiday?”

  “Aw no,” said Marsala, a man of infinite sentiment, and choked up. “You goddam crummy rummy Carlo Reinhart, I know ya voice everywhere. Wadduh yuh doing in Newark? Come on over and we’ll eat a steak.” But it still took him a while to cope with the miraculous event, and here and there throughout their subsequent conversation he pronounced the ingenious obscenities for which he had been famous in the 1209th General Hospital.

  “I’m calling from Ohio, Jimmy, and will give you the whole story in a minute. But first, Come sta? When did you get back? What are you doing?”

  “Listen, you know you need money, what’s mine is yours, you goddam punk. I stick a check in the mail. Ain’t I your mother-loving buddy, you Kraut bastid? Hey how about that little Trudy hoor in Berlin! She gave me the clap after you left. Where did she pick it up, you dirty college guy? You goddam lousy stinking Carlo Slob Reinhart.” There follo
wed several incestuous epithets. “It’s worth a grand to talk to ya, you old schmuck. Hey I wanna bring you up here at my expense. Whatdduh yuh, fly? Or you like the train? Shit, I buy ya a car, a nice ass-wagon all your own. My brother’s got a Gigantic dealership. I been back since November ‘45. Why dint you get in touch befah? I hang around this club for Mr. Esposito, kind of like a collection agent. Hey, you getting much? Them college broads lay for yuh?”

  “I’m married now.”

  Marsala groaned. “Oh Jesus, I’m saw-ry, Carlo. Oh shit, no offense to your lovely wife.”

  “Let me get a word in edgeways, Jim. I’m doing pretty well myself, so while I sure appreciate your generosity, I don’t need a loan. I’ve also got a Gigantic, as it happens, at least for a while yet. Let me brief you on the situation.”

  After Reinhart had pretty well sketched it out, Marsala asked: “Lemme get this straight, Carlo. You with or against the law?”

  “It’s complicated, Jim. I don’t know if I can make it clear, but you see the law is against the law. The police chief is party to a fraud.”

  Marsala chuckled. “Then you got nothing to worry about, kid.”

  “No,” said Reinhart. “See, I want to dig this sewer, and they are trying to stop me. Now at that point I thought of you. There is this subcontractor Johnny Reo, who is in with them, but I need him and his work crews to excavate and pour the concrete—what do I know about that sort of thing? I have a fellow on my side who claims to be a technical expert, but I don’t trust him.” Well, at least he didn’t say Splendor was a Negro.

  “Jesus, what do I know?” asked Marsala. “But I could let you talk to Patsy Romano when he shows up, whose old man Black John’s a contractor in Leonia. Wait a minute.” Offstage he shouted: “Hey, Gazzo! Dov’e Pdsquale? Yeah? Succhia questo, somonabitch! … Carlo, lemme have him call you.”

  “That’s not quite it, Jim. I could hardly learn the business talking to a guy on the phone for fifteen minutes. I have to get Reo to stay on the job, and thought you might have some idea how it could be done.”

  “You need Reo himself, I guess,” Marsala said regretfully. “Becawss I was gonna say we could have him knocked off and that would settle it.”

  “Oh never!” gasped Reinhart. “I don’t suggest that for a minute.” Yet it certainly was thrilling to hear, and very useful for one’s fantasies to know he could pull a trigger, so to speak, by remote control. “What I had in mind was just some sort of pressure.”

  “Sure, kid, sure. Though I say this: you always got to show some muscle, see. That’s the point, if you don’t wanna have just some comedy, get me? See, there’s the talk, like you do so good being college and all, what we call square, no offense. And then there’s this Other. Now you got to make up your mind whadduh yuh want. Why don’t you let me talk to Mr. Esposito and call you back? He might know this Reo. He’s got friends everywhere. A real great guy. You come up here and I’ll innerduce you and he’ll buy you a steak. So all right kid. Keep your ass on ice for another hour. You’ll definitely hear from me soon.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. You’re a friend.”

  “Ya crummy bastid, I love ya.” He broke the connection with a crash.

  Reinhart poured himself another drink. He heard the secretaries creep back to work in the outer office. They would flee again when they discovered what he was up to. Nobody defied Humbold except him, Reinhart. He could have people knocked off: not even Claude could say that, whose power consisted in part of money, but mainly in a kind of magic which probably should be called love. Opposition to Claude really was heretical, atheistical, and seditious, as he charged; and no sooner did you plot against him than you found yourself at least considering crimes of violence, in distinction to those of the pieties that he practiced. But Mr. Esposito also represented a solid American tradition, in another line of endeavor. And Reinhart was already beginning to think of himself as a synthesis of these two strains, that is, no longer culture and commerce, but fraud and force, and of course directed towards the achievement of progressive ends like a new sewer for the Negroes.

  Reinhart always remembered the exact terms of a promise, and Marsala’s had been to get in touch again soon: he did not, during the rest of that day or on the next. Reo insolently ignored the request to call and sent a flunkey to the office with more spurious documents for Reinhart to sign. Splendor frequented the county engineer’s office, and telephoned in occasionally with technical details that Reinhart couldn’t make head nor tail of but didn’t let on so as not to discourage the poor devil.

  Wednesday still showed no change, though Reinhart stayed at the office till nine P.M. waiting for the phone to jingle, the bleakest hope of modern man. Trouble was, he had no strategy beyond putting the pressure on Reo. There were probably other contractors extant, but Reo had already been paid, near as could be figured, forty thousand dollars for making ten Potemkin manholes. He owed them something—besides, Reinhart wanted to avoid the complication of trying to get more tax money from Claude, the Gibbons, and their captive town council. The district attorney he didn’t seriously consider, being no fink, though he intended to threaten Claude with the idea, to ensure keeping the house till the child was born. Actually he might have finked had he any assurance that it wouldn’t backfire on himself, one twenty-two-year-old veteran versus the entire town administration. The D.A. was probably in political cahoots with the Gibbons, for example, and Reinhart’s signature, altered or not, appeared on every obligating paper.

  He put on the gray homburg he had purchased at the first cool breeze of early October and wore to work though nowhere else lest pretentiousness be implied. It was his first hat since a prewar semi-zoot number, and gave him the look of a national chairman of the Democratic Party. If he pulled off this current effort, he might indeed have a future in politics. National affairs had never before been of interest for the simple reason that he couldn’t see a connection between them and himself, except in the case of the late war. He was intrigued by his habit of going on to greater ambitions when lesser ones had flopped. Marsala likely would never call, yet Reinhart was already in the White House.

  He left the building, locking the glass door, and took a deep draught of night air at the curb alongside the Gigantic. It smelled of pencil: the wind had changed. Using his lungs to full capacity made his head swim briefly. He was a fine figure of a man but could use some exercise. He sucked in his belly but there wasn’t much of a place for it to go.

  “Hey, mister,” said a weak voice behind him.

  He had been alone on the side walk until that instant. This person must have issued from the passageway between the buildings. Reinhart looked him over in the fair light of the street lamp: a mousy individual, haggard with worry.

  “Could you gimme a hand?” asked the man. “We took the short cut through the back lot. I don’t know what happened. I can’t budge her alone.” Being small, he was probably married to one of those buffaloes.

  “Sure,” Reinhart heartily averred. “Twisted her ankle, I guess.” He followed the little fellow behind the building, where the light of a bleary moon was dim but sufficient to show an automobile alone on the plain of gravel.

  “There she is,” said the man. “Stopped dead. Probly the carburetor.”

  “I thought you meant your wife.” Shrugging, Reinhart went to the hood. He was on the point of asking the man how she opened, through the grille or from inside, when several other human beings leaped out of concealment behind the auto and set upon him in furious attack. And after a moment it developed that they weren’t people so much as genuine thugs efficiently practicing their métier. Unfortunately, the judo stuff Reinhart had been taught in the Army required your opponent to stand stock-still while you fitted a hold onto him or simulated kneeing his testicles. These adversaries declined to cooperate: they punished Reinhart without giving him a turn. Something limited Reinhart’s anger—he learned something even while being beaten half to death: that receiving aggression makes you a lot less angr
y than handing it out, the popular conception to the contrary notwithstanding.

  By now, his hat was off and he lay on his back, in real trouble. Just as well he was in bad condition: the layer of excess fat was all to the good as padding. Not that he wasn’t fighting back. He was, but his enemies had every advantage, including rolls of dimes inside their fists. His great strength was therefore harnessed by a number of straps: surprise, ignorance, respectability, and a bourgeois concern for his topcoat and homburg. He was not even able to count how many men he stood up against, or fell down for. A number of hard feet descended upon him, and he had enough and passed out.

  Whenever it was he came to, he felt for his wallet first and looked second to see whether the assailants had gone. Indeed they had, but not with his billfold. With difficulty he sat up and picked gravel from his hair, feeling as a peach must after falling from the branch. If they hadn’t wanted cash, then the thugs must have been hired by his enemies to do to him what he had tried to arrange for Johnny Reo. Ha, there was a certain justice in it. When Reinhart was hurt he had a tendency towards moralism.

  He found his poor homburg and corrected its crush, but could not deal with the torn brim. Topcoat apparently a total loss: in his position one couldn’t go about with patches on the tail. A necktie more or less was of course no great problem. Would he could have said the same for the trousers to his decent gray-herringbone suit!

  He staggered around to the street and, having luckily retained the doorkey in the lining of his coat though the pocket was ripped away, re-entered the office. The washroom mirror reflected the image of a wartorn priest: not only had the tie disappeared, but his collar was severed from the neckband and turned half-circle. No marks on his face though it hurt fearfully. He drew a basin of water but could not get his head into it because of the faucets in the way—an inconvenience that fictional detectives never seem to suffer. Neither was a towel in evidence. Those asinine secretaries had concealed the supply, probably to discourage Splendor from washing there. Finally he had to shake himself dry like a dog.