Big Man

by Ed McBain

  “Yes, Mr. Carfon.” I didn’t know what that stereophonic or whatever was, but the rest was pretty clear. Andy knew too much. Period. “You want me to visit him and convince him he ought to stick around?”

  “It’s a little late for that. Celia seems to have convinced him that the righteous path is the true path, that being a father entails quitting a life of evil gain. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but …” He shrugged.

  “Well, what did you have in mind?” I said.

  “You understand that he is a dangerous man to have roaming around as a free agent?”

  “I understand.”

  “You understand, too, that I have tried wherever possible in the past to avoid unnecessary violence?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Carfon.”

  “You’ll remember what I said to you once, Frankie. I said I’d let you know when we could use your gun. We can use it now.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I want Andy killed,” Mr. Carfon said flatly. “As soon as possible.”

  I looked at him for a few seconds, and then I said, “Okay.”

  I walked around the streets a while before I went home. There’s something about New York late at night that gets me. It’s a real sad city late at night. There ain’t many cabs in the streets, and the buses run only once in a while, and there are people coming home from places, and you don’t see any lights on in the apartment buildings, except the lights in the small windows which are the bathrooms, and they only pop on every now and then and add to the sadness. You see a lot of drunks late at night, and they’re sad as hell, especially the old women. I kept expecting to find my own mother in an alley some night, her stockings all rolled down and her dress all cockeyed. Jesus, that’s depressing as hell. It’s sad, too, to look in the all-night restaurants and see guys sitting all alone drinking coffee. That’s very sad, I think, guys who have to drink coffee all alone at two o’clock in the morning.

  I guess I was feeling pretty miserable that night. I couldn’t understand what had happened between me and May, Jesus, I couldn’t for the life of me understand it. We’d started out so fine, you know, until she began nagging at me about quitting a job which was bringing in real loot. I guess the Riker’s Island bit had really snapped the cord. That had done it, all right. Before her husband was only a thief, sort of, but now he was also a jailbird. How could I explain to her that I was never going to jail again as long as I lived? How could I explain to her that all I was trying to do was get somewhere in the damn outfit? How could I even talk to her again after what she’d pulled tonight? What was I, a monster of some kind, she couldn’t even stand to have me making love to her? What kind of an attitude was that, anyway? Man, I felt miserable.

  I also felt miserable about another thing that was bothering me, and I guess it tied in with May harping on me all the time. She wanted me to quit, quit, quit. Okay, Andy Orelli had quit, quit, quit. And now Andy Orelli was slated for a coffin. So it wasn’t as easy as that to just walk out. If Andy knew more than me about the operation, I still knew quite a bit about it. So what was I supposed to do? Even if I wanted to walk out—which I didn’t—but which I maybe would have done to keep May happy, how could I? I not only was in up to my nostrils, but I was about to kill Andy, and then all I could do was hope that nobody made waves.

  I guess it also bothered me that Mr. Carfon had tapped me for the Andy kill. I mean, what the hell, I had nothing against the guy. But at the same time, I knew what it would mean with Andy out of the way. Somebody would have to move up. Either Weasel or me. And whereas it ain’t a good thing to rat on another guy, I didn’t see nothing wrong with going to Mr. Carfon and telling him that Weasel had slugged me that night in the jewelry store. Mr. Carfon would believe me. I knew he would. And he wouldn’t take too kindly to Weasel—who cost him a lot of money when you figure lawyers and all—who’d conked me for his own personal gain. So I thought about May, and about leaving the outfit, and about having to kill Andy, and about what it would mean with him out of the way, but I felt pretty miserable. So I decided to go home.

  May was waiting up for me.

  She was wearing a nightgown and a bathrobe, and she was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea and she was crying. I went to the bathroom first, and then into the kitchen. I stood near the stove and I looked at her and said, “What’s the matter?”

  She just shook her head and kept on crying.

  “What are you drinking there?” I asked her.

  “Tea,” she said.

  “Is there any more?”

  “There’s hot water on the stove,” she said. “And tea bags in the cabinet.”

  I fixed myself a cup of tea and then sat down opposite her at the table. “I hate to see guys sitting and drinking alone,” I told her. “It makes me sad.”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess it’s pretty good being married, huh? A guy comes home, he’s always got somebody to sit down and have a cup of tea with, huh? Rawther, old bean, wot?” I said, trying to kid her out of it. “Eh wot, old chap? Cup of tea, wot?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Come on. Dry up the tears. It ain’t the end of the world.”

  “I did a terrible thing tonight, Frankie,” she said.

  “It was all right.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “We both got a little excited, so what?” I said.

  “I feel like a … like a prostitute.”

  “Hey, hey, come on. Now come on, cut it out. Don’t talk like that about the girl I love. Drink your tea. Eh wot, old chap? Good tea, wot?”

  “Frankie, Frankie,” she said, and she threw herself into my arms and almost knocked over the hot cup of tea. “Forgive me, please. Please.”

  “You’re forgiven, okay?”

  “But Frankie, I’m so worried. I’m terrified. I thought I’d die when they put you away. Frankie, please, will you think about leaving Mr. Carfon? Will you seriously think about it?”

  “Sure, I will,” I said. “But not right now. Okay?”

  “Because I can’t see it getting anything but worse, Frankie. The things you have to do, and the people you have to associate with. Don’t you see? There’s good in you, Frankie, and decency, and they’re robbing it from you. And from me. I hated you tonight, Frankie. I hated you with every bone in my body.”

  “So what? You should have hated me. I was a slob. What the hell kind of a way was that to behave, huh? What am I, a rape artist or something?”

  “That’s just it, Frankie. It wasn’t you tonight, it was somebody else, the other person you … you can become. And I hated him. If you’d have touched me again, I’d have killed you, Frankie.”

  “Ho, listen to the big murderer.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry, honey. It won’t happen again, believe me. If you don’t feel like it, I’ll leave you al—”

  “No, I don’t want to be left alone. I want to love you. I want to give you all the love I have, Frankie.”

  “Then we got no problem, right?”

  “If you’ll promise to think about it seriously. About leaving Mr. Carfon. About getting a … a good job someplace. Where … where we can act normal and … and be normal.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll give it serious thought. I really will, May. Listen, are you finished with your tea?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then why don’t we hop off and get some crumpets, wot?”

  “I really love you, you goof,” she said, and she kissed me, and so we made up that night, and I guess I really loved her, too. I guess I did.

  10

  It’s hard to explain New York to somebody doesn’t live there. It’s so different from a small town, it’s amazing. There are lots of people who say it’s really only a big small town, but that ain’t so. In a small town, the way it’s laid out, there’s usually just one big lighted section where there’s the business district, and the movies, and the restaurants and like that. On
ce you leave the lighted section, you have your houses and that’s the whole town. But in New York, it’s different. New York is like a string of small towns, but none of the small towns is a town in itself. You put them all together, and you got New York. I’m not talking about the boroughs, of which there are five, and of which Brooklyn is the most famous, God knows why. But I’m talking about the various sections of the city. Like, for example, if you start all the way downtown, you got the Wall Street section which is a little town all by itself. Then the city quiets down, and there ain’t much jumping until you hit the Fourteenth Street section further uptown, and then more quiet until you hit Thirty-fourth, and then Grand Central, and then Columbus Circle and then Seventy-second and then Eighty-sixth and like that all the way uptown.

  The Bronx has its own spots of light, too, if you’re familiar with that particular borough. In grammar school, the teachers in New York make sure you say The Bronx, and not just Bronx. If you’re writing a letter, it’s a big sin you should say Bronx and leave out the The. But in the Bronx you’ve got 149th and then Tremont Avenue and then Fordham Road and places like that where suddenly there’s neons and a lot of people and movie houses and restaurants and ice-cream joints. That’s the way New York is.

  I’m explaining all this because I want you to understand where Andy and Celia were living. They didn’t live on Tremont or Fordham Road or the Grand Concourse or Mosholu or any of the pretty busy bustling areas. They lived up in the tail end of the East Bronx past Gun Hill Road. Gun Hill is a wide street, but it don’t really class with Tremont or Fordham. It’s got a new housing project now, and the church built a school, and there’s Evander Childs High School a little further up the block, but Gun Hill Road is still a pretty quiet street, and they lived even past Gun Hill, up on 217th Street between Barnes Avenue and Bronxwood Avenue. They lived in a two-story frame house right opposite the junior high school. It was a very dark street at night, and a very quiet one.

  There were front steps to the house, of course, and a wide driveway on the left of the house which led to the back steps. Andy and Celia lived on the second floor, and you had to climb a long flight of wooden steps to get up to the kitchen door. The people downstairs had a fig tree in the back yard. Nine out of ten times, if the owners of a house are Italian, you’ll find they got a fig tree in the back yard. They cover it up with tarpaper in the wintertime. It looks ugly as hell. In the summer, it brings them a little piece of Italy, they should go back there they love it so much instead of planting trees which they cover with tarpaper and make look ugly in the winter.

  There was a pretty strong wind the night I went to see Andy. I didn’t get up to that part of the Bronx until about ten thirty. I was driving the car Mr. Carfon had given me and I was driving carefully. I found the house without any trouble. I always had a good sense of direction, especially in New York where I know every street like I know the back of my hand. I parked the car right in front of the house, and then I got out and took my gloves from where they were on the seat and put them on. I had already checked the .45, so I knew there was a full magazine in it. I closed the car door and walked up the driveway to the back of the house and then up the rickety wooden steps. I had to hang on to the banister because the wind was very strong at the back of the house and it almost knocked me off the steps. That would have been too bad, getting knocked down that long flight of steps. There was a little landing at the top of the steps, a sort of an open porch, maybe six feet by six feet with a little bench against the railing and a milk box near the steps. There was a storm door which I opened, and then there was the regular kitchen door with four panes of glass, and a shade pulled down inside. There was no light in the kitchen but there was a light coming from someplace in the house. I rapped on the glass.

  There wasn’t an answer right away, so I rapped again.

  “Who is it?” Andy yelled, and then I could hear him coming into the kitchen.

  “It’s me, Andy,” I said. “Frankie Taglio.”

  “Who?”

  “Frankie.”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “Oh, just a second, Frankie.” I could hear him walking through the apartment. I couldn’t figure why until he opened the door. He was wearing a bathrobe, so I figured I surprised him in his underwear, and he went back to put something on. Nothing’s as ridiculous as a guy in his underwear. Sometimes when I see the underwear ads, I almost bust out laughing even though they try to make the guy look glamorous in his shorts. It’s impossible to make any guy look glamorous in his shorts, and that includes Rock Hudson and Elvis Presley and anybody. Put a guy in shorts, and he becomes ridiculous. So it was understandable why Andy went back to put on a bathrobe.

  He seemed very happy to see me. He took my hand and said, “Come in, Frankie. Boy, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  I went into the kitchen with him, and he locked the door behind me, and then we walked through to the living room. The apartment was a railroad flat, first the kitchen, then the living room, and then a closed door which I supposed went into the bedroom. The television set was going, but it was turned on very soft.

  “I was watching the TV,” Andy said. “What brings you around, Frankie?”

  “Oh, I had an errand up around 238th,” I told him. “I got done early and figured I’d take a chance maybe you was still up.”

  “Gee, I’m glad you came,” Andy said. “It’s been very quiet.”

  “Where’s Celia?”

  “She’s in bed already.” He shrugged. “You know. She’s got a condition. Listen, you want something to drink? Glass of beer? Some wine?”

  “What kind of wine you got?” I said.

  “Dago red.”

  “Good.”

  He went back in the kitchen and took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. He brought back two glasses also, and he poured for both of us. Before he sat down, he turned off the television.

  “You like it chilled?” he said.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He raised his glass. “Well, here’s luck.”

  “Drink hearty,” I said, and we drank. It was good wine. I told him so.

  “My father makes it,” Andy said. “Every year, he makes it by hand. Hardly nobody bothers to do that anymore, you know. But every year, those crates of grapes arrive, and the old man crushes them himself and puts the wine up in barrels in the basement of his house on a Hun’ Twentieth. You got to give him credit. One year, he had the whole batch spoil, turn to vinegar, but that don’t stop him. It’s good wine, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s very good.”

  I don’t know why I was sitting there throwing the bull with Andy, but I’ll tell you the truth I didn’t have much heart for the job. He wasn’t looking good, Andy. He needed a shave, and he’d lost some weight and, I don’t know, he had the look of a guy who just hangs around the house all day doing nothing. I felt kind of sorry for him.

  “What you been doing?” I asked him.

  “Oh, you know.”

  “You working?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it ain’t easy. I got a record, you know. I don’t know if you knew that or not.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, I done two years. This was right after Celia and me was first married. I was just a kid at the time. I done it at Sing Sing, you ever see that joint?”

  “No.”

  “It’s up the Hudson. It’s quite a joint. Anyway, a guy finds out you’re an ex-con, it ain’t so easy to get a job. I almost got a job running an elevator downtown yesterday. It was a building on Eighteenth Street. But it didn’t work out because the owner found out I got a record. It’s rough, Frankie, believe me.”

  “So why’d you leave the outfit?” I said.

  “Well, what was I gonna do? You want more wine?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Have another glass.”

  “All right. Just a little.” He poured, and I said, “Tha
t’s enough.”

  “Celia’s gonna have a baby, you know, and … well … you know you begin thinking a little about the future, I guess.” He shrugged.

  “You can still come back,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t want to. No. I think I’m doing the right thing.”

  “I think you’re being foolish, Andy.”

  “Ain’t you never felt like starting a family, settling down?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “So how you gonna do it with the outfit? You got to raise kids decent, don’t you?”

  He looked sad as hell. I felt real sorry for him. I felt like going over and patting him on the shoulder or something. “Listen,” I said. “I wish you’d come back. I really wish you’d change your mind.”

  “No … no, I couldn’t.”

  “Sure, you could. I could talk to Mr. Carfon. I could tell him how you realized you made a mistake.”

  “But I didn’t,” Andy said. “I didn’t make no mistake. I done the right thing.”

  “Oh, come on, Andy. You just now told me you can’t even get a job.”

  “I’ll get one,” he said.

  “Where? Doing what?”

  “Someplace. I ain’t proud. I’ll do something. I’ll clean out toilets if I got to.”

  “That’s a great job, all right. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m just looking forward to having the kid, that’s all.”

  How the hell can you kill a man when you’re sitting with him drinking his wine and talking friendly? I began to realize I made a mistake. I should have let him have it when he opened the door. Now we’d been throwing the bull around and getting friendly and now it would be hard. How can you shoot a man when you ain’t sore at him? Or when he ain’t sore at you?

  “I’m kind of hoping it’ll be a boy,” Andy said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I got all sisters in my family. Nobody to carry on the name. My father feels real bad about that. About my being the only son. If I don’t produce some boys, bingo, there goes the line. So he’s really banking on me. He’s tickled Celia is pregnant.”