Big Man

by Ed McBain

“Hello, boys,” he said. “Are we all here?”

  “We’re all here, Mr. Carfon,” Milt said, and he smiled that big smile again. Well, we weren’t all there because I still didn’t see Turk anywhere around, but I guess I was the only guy who noticed this, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Think the host can get something to drink?” Mr. Carfon said, and the boys all laughed. Andy brought Mr. Carfon a Scotch and soda, and he drank a little of it, and then walked around chatting with the boys, clapping Milt on the shoulder every now and then. I still didn’t see Turk around, so I naturally figured Mr. Carfon was waiting for him before he called the meeting to order. But along around nine o’clock, Mr. Carfon cleared his throat and said, “Well, boys, I’d like to make a little announcement.”

  Milt smiled, and Andy smiled, and all the boys shut up and started paying attention to what Mr. Carfon was saying.

  “Starting now,” he said, “starting right this minute, you’ll be taking your orders equally from me and Milt Hordzig.”

  Well, man, you could have knocked me down with a Mack truck! I looked at Milt, and he just stood there smiling ear to ear, and Andy was still smiling too, and I wondered just what the hell had become of Turk. Nobody was asking, though, so I figured I’d just better keep my mouth shut.

  “Yes,” Mr. Carfon went on, “Milt is moving up. And because he’s moving up, Andy Orelli will move up, too. I thought you’d all like to know about it, and that’s why I called you together tonight. Now, there won’t be any more speeches. Drink, enjoy yourselves, and if there’s anything you desire—I mean anything—just see me or Milt about it.”

  Well, the boys all began laughing it up, patting Milt and Andy on the back, congratulating them, and then hitting the bottles in earnest. We drank for a long time, getting happier and happier, with no one asking anything about Turk. But I’m like the cat, you know? I got a big curious nature. So I went over to Andy along about eleven o’clock or thereabouts, and I took him aside and said, “What about Turk?”

  “What about him?” Andy said thickly.

  “He ain’t been … you know?”

  “No. He’s still with the organization.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “He was on H,” Andy said.

  “Heroin?”

  “Mmm. And Mr. Carfon found out. Mr. Carfon don’t like no hophead in the upper brackets.”

  “Turk was a hophead?”

  “From here to China and back,” Andy said.

  “So that’s no reason to dump him. I mean, hell, what about the Chicago bunch? You sure Mr. Carfon did the right thing?”

  “The Chicago bunch has been with Mr. Carfon for the past six weeks. Turk was as necessary as a hole in the head. Besides, he’s a junkie, and Mr. Carfon don’t like it. Period. That’s all she wrote. Listen, I’m not complaining. This brings me up to three bills a week. Man, I’m tickled Turk digs heroin.”

  “Yeah, but still—”

  “Mr. Carfon didn’t like the idea,” Andy said, whispering now. “There’s a lot of things Mr. Carfon don’t like.”

  Milt came reeling over to us. Man, he was stoned. Well, what the hell, it ain’t every day you get to be a real big man. “Wha’s the matter?” he said. “Wha’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Andy said. “We was just talking.”

  “But what happened to Turk?” I asked Andy. “You said he was still in the organization.”

  “Turk?” Milt said. “You mean old Turk the hophead? Why sure Turk is still in the outfit. Why, didn’t you know that, boy? Mr. Carfon give him a choice. Mr. Carfon said, ‘Now, Turk, we don’t like hopheads around here in command posts. Now you got to go, Turk. Now if you’re thinking you’re gonna take all that Chicago bunch with you, you got another guess, Turk, because that Chicago crowd knows where that good bread is buttered and I got that whole crowd right in my pocket now. So I’m giving you a choice. You can go, and I mean really go, I mean go, man, goodbye—or you can take a job we find for you in the outfit someplace, where you can go on puffing that weed of yours and sticking that spike in your arm, but where you can’t do no harm to nobody else in the outfit. Now which do you want, Turk? Which one? Take your choice.’ That’s what Mr. Carfon said.”

  “So Turk took the job,” Andy said.

  “Which job?”

  Milt began laughing like an idiot. “Which job? A job in Chicago. Listen, what difference does it make? He’s lucky he’s still walking around. Mr. Carfon must have been feeling kind. Listen, Turk’s lucky they ain’t pulling him out of the East River.”

  “How come they ain’t?” I said.

  “He’s a hophead,” Milt said. “The outfit’ll keep him on the junk, and he’s like a vegetable. You ever try to hold a conversation with a vegetable? Impossible. Turk ain’t gonna be talking to nobody. Besides, he’s being watched. One false move—zing. Listen, did somebody call Angelo?”

  “I called him,” Andy said.

  “Did you tell him we want tall girls? I like tall girls,” Milt said.

  “I told him tall girls.”

  “Good man,” Milt said, and he clapped Andy on the shoulder.

  The girls arrived maybe about a half-hour later. They were very tall girls. They were maybe the tallest girls I ever seen in my life. They got right in the swing of things. One thing about the girls Angelo got, you never felt they were sluts. I mean, these girls were all dressed very refined, and they began drinking like ladies, and then circulating around the room, just like ladies. It began to get a little rougher later on, of course. I mean, they weren’t there to play bean bag. But even hanging around guys’ necks or sitting on their laps, they still didn’t look like sluts. That’s what I liked about the girls Angelo got. I tell you the truth, I was getting a little bored with the redhead who was hanging around me. I was thinking of Celia, and how I’d see her tomorrow night. I guess it showed on my face. I ditched the redhead to get a drink.

  “Are you enjoying yourself, Frankie?” I heard someone say.

  I turned. Mr. Carfon was standing at my elbow, smiling, the gold tooth gleaming.

  “Sure, Mr. Carfon,” I said. “I’m having a swell time.”

  “Good. I understand more entertainment will be here shortly.”

  “Yes.” He was referring to a dancer who was supposed to come.

  “I imagine you’ll enjoy that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You haven’t been very active lately, have you, Frankie?”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “I’ve got something for you,” Mr. Carfon said. “For tomorrow night.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night. A whiskey shipment. It’s so simple you could probably handle it alone. But Weasel and Carrie will go along with you.”

  “Tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Yes. Now listen to me, Frankie, and listen closely. Andy won’t be going on any of these … ah … expeditions any more. Now, I certainly trust all the other boys, but they’re lacking a little in the upstairs department, do you follow?” He tapped his temple with one finger. “I can’t entrust big things to men with small brains. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Carfon,” I said. I was wondering how I could break the news to Celia, how I could tell her about not being able to make it again tomorrow.

  “You’re a smart boy, Frankie,” Mr. Carfon said, and I stopped wondering about Celia right then and there, and I began thinking instead of what he’d just said, and—jumping the gun—about what he was going to say. It all at once came to me clear as a bell. I could have read his speech even before it came out of his mouth.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I try to keep on my toes.”

  “And you do. Which is why I’d like you to take Andy’s place on any caper. Sort of supervise. Do you understand?”

  “I sure do,” I said.

  “Good. I like you, Frankie. I like you a lot. There’s room for you at the top. You can be a big man, Frankie, a really big man.”

  And that was it
. I’d been tapped. I was made right that minute, and I knew it. This was no promise from a fat-assed Jobbo or a guy with the horns on him like Andy. This was straight from the horse’s mouth, straight from Number One, straight from Mr. Carfon who ran the whole damn shooting match. And what he said was there was room at the top. What he said was I could be a big man if I kept on being smart.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, and I had all I could do to keep from jumping right through the ceiling and starting to scream like a bird. But I kept calm because I’d bargained with this cookie before and always come out on the short end of the stick. From here on in, Mr. Carfon wasn’t never going to know what this boy was thinking or what this boy wanted. From here on in, it was cool, but the coolest.

  “Say, I didn’t think to ask,” Mr. Carfon said, smiling. “You didn’t have any other plans for tomorrow night, did you?”

  I could have said “No” as quick as I could have said my own name. Celia was a great thing, don’t misunderstand me. But there’s an old proverb like, man, you should never lose your head over a piece of tail, and I wasn’t going to lose what was coming my way over nobody—but nobody!

  I made like I was thinking it over.

  Then I said, “No, Mr. Carfon. No plans at all.”

  6

  So I didn’t get to see Celia that next night, and I didn’t get to see her for the next week either because Mr. Carfon sent me to Pennsylvania to supervise the loading of some stuff going up to Canada. And then, when I got back I somehow didn’t feel like calling Celia. I felt like calling May.

  I suppose the head shrinkers could make something of that if they wanted to. I personally think that head shrinkers are only priests, and I stopped going to church when I was thirteen years old. The reason I stopped going to church was that I had just laid a girl named Josephine and when I went to confession I wanted to know something about it because this was the first time it happened to me and because my old man had never discussed anything like this with me, the way fathers in Scarsdale discuss these things with their sons who are on the goddamn junior varsity and who are making it with blond, blue-eyed cheerleaders who live in twenty-room mansions.

  I went to the priest because I figured he could set me straight, but he didn’t set me straight at all. I kind of came out of that confession box feeling I done something very dirty and this was puzzling because it didn’t feel dirty at all while I was doing it. So I automatically figured the priests had the wrong slant, and I stopped going to confession and then after a while I stopped going to church, too. I didn’t miss it at all. It was good to sleep late on Sundays. I began eating meat on Fridays, too. There was only one danger to this. Like if you ordered a meat sandwich in a restaurant on Friday, people might think you was a Jew. I got enough troubles without people thinking I’m a Jew. So whenever I ordered a meat sandwich on Friday in a restaurant, I made sure the meat was ham. That way there wasn’t no mistakes.

  But what I’m driving at is that head shrinkers are only a new kind of priest. I heard through the grapevine that Mr. Carfon had a head shrinker, but not for me, man. Can you imagine laying on a couch and telling somebody about how you used to wet your pants when you were four years old and your old man one time beat you with a broom because you spoiled a brand-new mattress and made it stink of piss? Just dig me doing that! It would be just the same as going to confession—except there’s no Hail Marys afterward.

  So I called May instead of Celia, and I picked her up about seven thirty that night. She looked real crazy that night. She was wearing a pale blue sweater and a big bulky tweed skirt. It was still pretty mild in New York: sometimes New York gets like that, where it don’t get real cold until maybe November or December, where you can walk around like it’s still spring in September. She had only lipstick on her face, and her hair was brushed careless, but very careful naturally, so that she looked as if she’d been caught in a strong wind.

  “I thought you’d forgotten me again,” she said, smiling and taking my arm.

  “No. I was out of town for a while. You look real pretty tonight, May, you know that?”

  “Why, thank you,” she said.

  We walked downstairs to the stoop, and I waited for the surprise to register on her face. For a minute, it didn’t take. So I walked over to the car and opened the door, and then those brown eyes of hers opened wide and she said, “Is it yours?”

  “Yeah. You like it?”

  “Oh, it’s adorable,” she said.

  It was just a little Ford, not a new model, but with a new paint job. It had been waiting for me when I got back from Pennsylvania, together with a raise to a hundred a week. Mr. Carfon said it was a sort of bonus for the fine job I’d done during the loading. I suspected the car was hot, but that didn’t bother me none. If it was hot, I was sure it had been snatched somewhere on the West Coast, or maybe even in China for all I new. Mr. Carfon don’t take chances, you see.

  “Wasn’t it terribly expensive?” May asked.

  “It was a gift,” I said. “My boss gave it to me.”

  She climbed in, and I started the heap and then began driving uptown. After a little while, May asked, “Who do you work for, Frankie?”

  “A nice guy,” I said.

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “All different kinds,” I said.

  She paused a minute. “Legal?”

  “What?”

  “Is what you do legal?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I hesitated, and then I decided to play it straight, take it or leave it. “It’s illegal,” I said. “Except sometimes. Mostly, it’s illegal.”

  “I see.”

  “You want me to take you home now?”

  “No. No, let’s drive.”

  “I’m kind of broke,” I said. “I don’t think we can—”

  “That’s all right. A drive’ll be nice.”

  I had about seven bucks in my pocket, and I knew I wouldn’t be paid until Saturday. Mr. Carfon was very strict about salary advances. He said he gave us a decent wage, and he expected it to last a week. If it didn’t we could look for work elsewhere. He was very fair that way, Mr. Carfon.

  I drove uptown to the Grand Concourse, and then I kept going past Fordham Road, and then onto Mosholu Parkway, and then onto the Saw Mill. May was quiet for a long time.

  At last she said, “What illegal things do you do, Frankie?”

  “May, I don’t want to talk about it. Mr. Carfon don’t like us to talk about it with outsiders.”

  “Am I an outsider?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “Suppose … suppose we were married, Frankie? Would I still be an outsider?”

  “Married?” I digested this for a couple of minutes. One thing you had to say for May, she didn’t believe in playing footsie. She got right to the point. “I never gave it much thought,” I said.

  “Think about it,” she answered.

  “Well, a couple of the boys are married,” I said.

  “Would you like to marry me, Frankie?”

  “I thought it was the guy supposed to make the proposal,” I said. I was getting a little nervous. I mean, I don’t mind aggressive dames, but you know marriage is a serious thing.

  “I’m not proposing,” May said.

  “Well, it sounds like it. Besides, my work is illegal. I don’t think a wife—”

  “You’re young,” May said. “You can change.”

  “This is a good deal,” I told her. “I don’t think I’d want to change it.”

  “We’ll see,” she said. “Why don’t you park someplace, Frankie?”

  “Okay,” I said. I drove along until we came to the next parkway exit. We hadn’t yet hit the Merritt. We were still up around Rye someplace or maybe Port Chester. I turned off and then cruised around until I found a dark street. I yanked up the emergency brake and before I could even turn on the seat, May was in my arms.

  “Kiss m
e, Frankie,” she said.

  I kissed her. It was different from Celia. It was young and sweet and … I don’t know … honest, I guess. It surprised me, her kiss. It surprised me because it was as if everything she was and everything she felt was in the sweetness of her mouth. I looked at her in surprise, and then I touched her lips with my fingers, and I said, “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I liked that.”

  “Then do it again.”

  I kissed her again.

  “I love you, Frankie,” she said. “Do you know that?”

  “No. I didn’t—”

  “For a long time,” she said, her voice very low. “From when I first moved into the neighborhood. I used to watch you playing stickball on Sundays. You played first base.”

  “Yes …”

  “And do you remember the time you had a fight with Leo? When he broke your pusho. I watched you then, Frankie, and I was cheering you. I wanted to kill him myself, that mean—”

  “I was just a little snotnose then,” I said.

  “I know. But I loved you. When you first asked me out, I thought I’d die. I thought you’d never notice me. And then you seemed to like me—at least you kept asking me out. And I thought, maybe, maybe there’s a chance.” She stopped. She caught her breath. “Is there a chance, Frankie?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t.

  “Do you think you could love me, Frankie?”

  “We’re talking too much,” I said.

  She kissed me again, and I held her close to me, and there was the smell of soap in her hair, and the smell was very clean. And then she just snuggled up with her head buried in my shoulder and we listened to the radio music, and I could hear her gentle breathing, like a little kitten purring. It was nice. It was real nice.

  I dropped her off about midnight. Her father was very strict, and he set limits about what time she should be home, especially on weekdays. Because it was so early, I looked around for some of the boys. I ran into Carrie first, down the poolroom. He had suckered some jerk into a game, and he was chalking them up like crazy, sinking one ball after the other. I waited until he finished his run, and then I took him aside.