A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  “You,” said the screw when he shined the bullseye in through the window slit, “step back from there and get your cup.”

  Shoe took two steps back, then located a tin cup on the floor by the door. The narrow spout of an oil can was poked through the bars, waggled.

  “Come get it.”

  Shoe brought the cup under the spout and the screw tilted the can for a moment before pulling it out, leaving less than a finger’s thickness of water in the cup.

  “What’s this?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “That’s all I get?”

  “One gill,” said the screw, “twice a day.”

  “Can’t nobody live on that.”

  “Do your best,” said the screw, and moved on to the next cell.

  The water barely wet his mouth, not enough to work up a full swallow. He pressed his face against the window bars, just able to see the screw shining the bullseye lamp into the last cell in the dungeon corridor, then turning to head back his way.

  “How long I got to be here?” he asked, trying to push the desperation from his voice.

  “Keep count of your water,” said the keeper as he opened the door to the south wing, then extinguished the lantern and let it swing back into the dungeon. “One gill twice a day, you keep count. When we let you back into the population you can figure the time.”

  The door to the wing slammed shut, the key grinding in the lock, then darkness again and the rumble of the dynamo and Shoe smelling his own puke in the tiny cell. He threw his cup hard and listened to it ping off the wall and rattle on the metal floor and then he lay down, rivets digging into his hide, stripping his filthy jacket off to roll into a cushion for his head. He lay for some time, probably awake cause who could dream such a monotonous hell and then there was a new voice, deep and echoing, singing in what he thought might be Yiddish.

  “Who the fuck is that?” he called out from the floor.

  “Number Three,” answered the con in the cell to his left.

  “I thought he didn’t talk.”

  “Singin aint talkin.”

  The song was strange and mournful, full of quick risings and fallings and things that sounded more like moans than words.

  “How long does he go at it?”

  “No saying.” The echo from the vaulted chamber made it sound like the singer was everywhere, like the cell was Shoe’s head and the con was inside of it, wailing. “But when he stops you kind of miss it.”

  Shoe was there long enough to learn to sleep through the singing, or to work it into his constant nightmare, was there when Number Two got pulled out and sent back to the tiers, a little gimpy con he later got to know was Pete Driscoll, was still in stir the day they came for Kemmler and made history with their electric death chair. A regular crowd come into the vault that day, four screws for an escort and a holy joe mumbling from his Bible, Shoe only getting a glimpse of the condemned man’s back as they led him out through the other door, the one that led to the shock shop.

  It was the last he ever pulled cooler time. If he could con college-educated pigeons out of their pocket stuffing he could convince a bunch of dimwit screws he was a square egg, a new man. It was still your life, zebra suit or no, and you had to make the best of it.

  The crows are restless in the afternoon, shifting from tree to tree, scolding each other, bending the branches with their weight. Shoe reaches the administration building and halts in front of Riordan.

  “Shoemaker, sir. On an errand for Sergeant Kelso. Second floor.”

  The keeper nods and he enters, climbs the stairs. There are no more than a half dozen runners assigned on First Work, and the day-shift turnkeys are used to seeing him loose. He knocks before entering and then stands just inside the bullpen door, waiting, with eyes locked on nothing, for them to cop to his presence. Dortmunder has his jacket unbuttoned, straddling the bench by his locker, his huge belly resting on the pine.

  “It took us some time to perfect the procedure,” he says, “but now they come from all over the country, all over the world to observe it. You’ll get a go at it soon enough.”

  Flanagan is there, and Gratz who the cons call Der Captain after the guy with the walrus moustache in the comic panels and a new one nobody has a nickname for yet.

  “When we did our first it hadn’t been used on anything bigger than a dog.”

  “There was that trolley worker in Rochester,” offers Flanagan.

  “Oh, there was no doubt the juice would do for the job, no doubt at all. But the trolley fella was an accident, left smoking on the cobblestones with his hair stuck out like a scalded cat. A stray bolt from a thundercloud would have done the same to him. But an execution is a solemn business, a state function, and we had no idea if the contraption they’d rigged together down there was capable of completing the task in a dignified manner.”

  “Ax-murderer, as I recall,” says Gratz.

  “A brute of a man. You were here then, weren’t you, Shoe?” Flanagan somehow knowing he is there without turning to look.

  “Two cells down from him on the Row.”

  Dortmunder squints his eyes. “You? In the punishment block?”

  Shoe shows them a wistful smile. “Before I got wise to how the joint operates.”

  “It was just at sunrise,” Flanagan recalls. “ ‘Take your time, boys,’ says he, ‘and do it right.’ He even asked us to snug up the electrode on his head.”

  “This is before we knew to stuff a bit of wet sponge in there,” says Dort-munder to the rookie screw. “To improve your connectivity.”

  “Then we dropped a hood over his face, so as not to upset the witnesses present—”

  “A full house that morning, two dozen at least. Novelty will always pack them in.”

  “And as soon as we had him squared away they yanked the lever for the first jolt.”

  “It took more than one?” asks the new man.

  Dortmunder sighs. “We didn’t have our own dynamo then, and a belt came loose on the one they’d borrowed. Kemmler only got a prick of the devil’s tail and it stopped.”

  “He must have been scared.”

  “One might suppose so,” says Gratz. “But we stuck a scrap of shoe leather between his teeth before the hood went on, and he was unable to share his observations.”

  “So they fixed the generator—”

  “In a flash. And the second helping—well, there were members of the press observing and the effectiveness of the device to be established—”

  “It must have been at least four minutes.”

  “Full power?”

  “Oh, he yanked the lever all the way down, all right.”

  “Just to be certain. It was ‘Molly, ye’ve burnt the roast’ in there.”

  “The whole body stiffens,” says Gratz, tensing his muscles and arching his head and shoulders backward, “and if it wasn’t for the straps fastened tight it would fly clear across the room.”

  “And the smoke—”

  “That’s your resistance,” says Dortmunder. “I’ve discussed it at length with the electrician fella—”

  “Davis.”

  “Him. And he explained to me that different bodies present different resistance to the electrical current. For instance, electricity will pass through copper wire—”

  “Like shit through a tin horn.”

  “So to speak—”

  “What I don’t understand,” says Flanagan, squeezing his brow into a frown, “is why a tin horn would have shit in it in the first place?”

  “We’re getting off the subject here, gentlemen.” Dortmunder heaves a thick leg over the bench and pulls himself to his feet. “The greater the resistance the electricity has to pass through, the greater the heat generated. So if a great deal of electrical current—voltage is the word for it—attempts to pass through a body of great resistance—an ax-murderer, let us say—you can imagine the heat that might result.”

  “So a stouter man—”

  “�
��will burn hotter than a little wisp like this Goulash fella, should it come to that. It’s scientific fact.”

  “Is McKinley on his way out?”

  They all turn then and look at Shoe.

  “And to what do we owe your presence here, Shoemaker?”

  Shoe straightens slightly. “Sergeant Kelso requests that I bring him the newspaper, sir.”

  Dortmunder jerks his head toward the jumble of early edition lying on the end of the bench. “And when did Kelso learn to read?”

  Shoe steps forward to gather up the entire pile. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, green corn through a goose, I understand,” says Flanagan, brow still knitted. “It paints a lively picture. But shit in a horn, or any other musical instrument for that matter—”

  Dortmunder rolls his eyes to Shoe and jerks his head toward Flanagan. “And you cons complain about the Rule of Silence.”

  In the anteroom Shoe nicks a stub of a pencil, slipping it through the string dangling by the roster sheet on the wall. He stops on the stairway landing halfway down, out of sight but able to hear any movement from the bulls, and makes his kites, scribbling on scraps torn from the newspaper and folding them a dozen ways before slipping them into his jacket pocket. He sees that there is both the Auburn paper and the Buffalo News and quickly separates the local rag and stuffs it under his shirt.

  He drops one of the kites, without breaking stride, only inches from Lester Gorcey’s grass snippers as he passes.

  “I sent you for the newspaper,” Kelso complains when Shoe steps back into the shop, “not for an Easter egg hunt.”

  “Your brothers in blue were shooting the breeze.” He hands Kelso the News. “It took a while to get their attention.”

  “Like a bunch of old hens.” The keeper disappears behind the unfolded sporting pages. “It’s a wonder the lot of yez don’t scarper over the wall some day while they’re up in the bullpen floggin their gums.”

  DiNucci is finished with his work, putting his equipment away. He raises his chin to Shoe, who flicks a kite into the Dago’s box. Nose will be cutting at the broom shop next and can whisper the news to the boys there. Shoe takes a quick peek at the News headlines about the assassination attempt.

  “Jeffries versus Ruhlin,” muses Sergeant Kelso from behind his wall of paper. “What d’ye make of it, Shoe?”

  First Work ends and Shoe heads up Kelso’s company, full-stepping to the shithouse to retrieve their cleaned buckets and full-stepping back to the north wing to be counted and single file up the iron stairs to the tier and waiting, counted again, till they step into their cells and are locked down. There is a half-hour before dinner and Shoe carefully works the stub of pencil into the lining of his cap just behind the bill where it won’t show and reads through the Auburn paper he’s smuggled. He’ll need to lay that off during Second Work. They search the cells while you’re out, picking one or two at random and going over them with a jeweler’s loupe, even his own. There is no trust in trustee anymore, not enough confidence left in the world to work a paying dodge.

  The bulls on the outside, in the old days, understood the game. Oh, they’d give you a whack on the noggin if they caught you below the Dead-line south of Fulton without a pass from the Chief, or if you were late with your contribution, but they understood that if the marks were on the square there was no way to beat them. Green goods, the glimmer drop, gold bricks—if they got no larceny in their hearts they’ll walk straight away from you. And if you trimmed the wrong bird, somebody connected, the word came down and an envelope appeared on the desk of the local Tammany chief, every cent accounted for, the offended party reimbursed, minus handling, and then it was back to business. Byrnes ran the detectives then, and was as square as you could ask for, insisting on solid evidence before he beat a confession out of you. But once the Lexow Report come out and they put that little four-eyes Roosevelt in charge it was every man for himself. No order left in the game, no sense of proportion. Like the play that bought him this bit.

  The high hat from Philly and his midget sidekick are practically begging to be taken, three rows ahead in the swells’ box and piping Shoe and Al’s conversation, till finally the high hat turns and hoists an eyebrow at them. “I gather that you gentlemen are searching for an investor?”

  Al Garvin playing sore and thumping Shoe on the chest. “I told you to keep your voice down, you mutt.”

  And Shoe, feigning sly and stupid at the same time. “Look, Mister, it’d be better if you didn’t hear nothin, see?”

  The high-rollers all gathered for the Stakes at Saratoga and every dip and swindler on the East Coast gathered to take a swipe at them. Fred Taral was favored riding Archduke but the suckers were leaning toward Willie Sims up on Ben Brush—the little goat could fly on a dry track—and him and Al discussing a proposition about buying the race, just loud enough to be overheard by Mr. Silk Drawers and the one who keeps braying that he’s the Gold King of the Yukon.

  “What he said, Mister,” echoes Al. “Forget you heard it.”

  “I didn’t hear an amount mentioned,” says the sidekick.

  You set the hook right and they practically choke trying to swallow it.

  He and Al trade another look, like now that they been caught at it there’s no use lying.

  “Too rich for our blood,” says Al.

  “Perhaps we could be of service,” the high hat says, winking to show it’s only a lark, a trick that naughty boys might play. “But of course we’d need to be assured of the outcome.”

  “We can’t guarantee you Ben Brush wins,” Shoe cuts in. “Only that Arch-duke don’t.”

  “It’s four grand,” says Al. They have moved up a couple rows and lean on the divider behind the swells now. “But we only got three-fifty, maybe four hundred between us.”

  If you can get them adding and subtracting, working percentages, you’re more than halfway home.

  “And if we were to make up the deficit—?”

  “Then the Archduke gets assassinated in the backstretch.”

  The tall one and the runt trade a look.

  “We’ll need to witness the transaction,” says the swell.

  Garvin stands then, swiveling around like he’s peeping the stands for Pinkertons. “I’ll go square it with Taral. Catch up with me in ten.”

  Shoe is left to hold the pigeon’s wings.

  “Woman troubles,” he explains. “Alla these jockeys they’re crazy for women. Get used to all that power between their legs, if you know what I mean.”

  The sawed-off character, who has informed them and everybody within shouting distance that he is Flapjack Fredericks and that he made a pile in the gold fields, winks then, digging an elbow into the high hat. “Women can be an expensive hobby.”

  “You’re telling me,” Shoe returns, and then the fourth race ends, Taral picking his nag up by the tail and dragging it into third.

  “Money problems or no,” muses Shoe, “he’s a hell of a horse-pilot.”

  Shoe takes them on the fox hunt then, in and out of doors, under the stands for a while, lots of nosing out to peep both ways and then wave them ahead. Give the ginks a thrill. They come out by the far end of the paddocks and there is Garvin with little Sammy Chase dressed like Fred Taral—the green silks from the last race splattered with turf, whip resting over his shoulder—deep in conversation. Shoe whistles low and Al pricks his ears up and hustles over, mopping sweat off his dome with a rag. Nobody could sweat on cue like Al Garvin.

  “The guy is impossible,” he sighs. “He wants another two beans.”

  Shoe is steamed at Al for upping the ante without squaring it beforehand. He’d done it once before, playing the nag-doctor who’d lost his license and was willing to dope the favorite for a modest sum, and almost queered the grift.

  “From each of youse,” adds Al.

  “Greedy little midget,” hisses Shoe.

  “I don’t think that should pose any difficulty,” says the high hat, holding up a hand.
If there was anything else quicker than a glacier in the race it would be a tough sell, but everybody agrees it’s strictly Ben Brush and Archduke, with the rest of the tailbangers left back at the gate.

  “Also he worries you might be a pair of plainclothes bulls,” says Al. “So he don’t want to meet you.”

  The high hat pulls out a card, presents it. “This should allay his fears.” Like a Pinkerton couldn’t print up a phony greeter.

  Shoe is able to peep that it says YARDLEY ENTWHISTLE JR. with a Philly location and then something about legal services. Shysters make good pigeons cause they think they know all the angles.

  “I don’t carry a card,” Fredericks admits, not to the manor born. “But where sporting men gather to match their greenbacks, I am legendary.”

  Al nearly chokes on this one, but keeps up his game. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says, “but I’d bet my mother he don’t act so suspicious if we let him sniff the kale up close.”

  Garvin can turn on the color if that’s what they’re looking for, give them a story to tell back at the club.

  So Yardley surrenders a thin stack of hundreds that look like they been ironed and the Gold King peels off his green from a wad that could choke an alderman and Al scampers back with that and the calling card. There’s a little back and forth and then Sammy snatches the bills, looks over, and raises his whip. A nice touch, the jockey salute to seal the deal.

  “The thing is,” confides Shoe as he leads the swells, lighter by several grand, back to the stands, “we don’t any of us want to lay our action with the same book. They get wise and the odds are gonna tumble.”

  “I have a personal wager in mind,” winks the high hat, in very high spirits. “A gentleman of my acquaintance who merits a good fleecing.”

  Shoe seconds the high hat’s grin. “I’d like to see his face when Taral puts the collar on that oat-burner in the stretch,” he says. “That boy can make a horse run backwards.”

  Shoe shakes hands then and thanks them for being so white about the whole deal. He and Garvin and Sammy Chase are at the station waiting for the westbound by the time the post horn blows for the Stakes.

  There is always the chance with the Lovesick Jockey that the pigeon will make out, that whatever gluepot he’s put his cheese on will have its best day ever and outrun the favorite to the wire. Ben Brush was small and ugly but nobody’s dog, all heart and flying hooves, and with the Dueling Dinge up on his back he had a shot. As it happened, though, Archduke not only took him but took him from behind in the stretch, Fred Taral driving him through a crowd with the whip and the Duke kicking turf in everybody’s faces by the finish. The Gold King just laughs it off, says We been skinned, buddy, but Mr. Yardley Entwhistle Jr. is honor-bound to fork over another grand or two to the gink he’d planned on trimming. A man without humor, he calls a judge he happened to go to a high-toned diploma mill with and makes noise about heading up a commission to probe and castigate and the judge tells his pals in Albany who get a healthy rake-off from Saratoga and immediately passes on not only a verbal description of the three of them but a drawing—seems Yardley is a wizard with the pen and ink—all so quick that no word goes out, no warning, no Send back the take and we’re square, just they all get pinched stepping out of a Pullman in Poughkeepsie and run before that very same judge.