Big Man

by Ed McBain

  There was only Mr. Carfon, Milt Hordzig, and me.

  Number Three.

  Me. Frankie Taglio.

  I can’t tell you how I felt that afternoon. First of all, I went to about four bills a week, which ain’t potatoes, my friend. Second, I was a pretty big man now, though not so big as Milt, but pretty big. And I done it all in a very short time. I was somebody, do you follow me? At last I was somebody. And maybe you think it’s funny that I wanted to tell my mother about it first, but that’s who I wanted to tell.

  So I went back to the old building in Harlem, and I climbed the steps like I must have done ten thousand times when I was a kid. I stopped outside the door, and I knocked, and my mother said, “Come in.”

  I went into the living room. She wasn’t drunk. She was just sitting on the sofa and staring across at the small window where outside you could see the dirty brick wall of the next building.

  “Hello, Ma,” I said.

  “Frankie?”

  She turned and looked at me. I hadn’t seen her for a long time, not since May and me moved up to the Bronx. I’ll tell you, like every time I seen her before, it was painful. This time, it was different. She was sober this time, and she looked a little bit—just a very little bit—like her old self.

  I sat down alongside her on the sofa.

  “How you been, Ma?” I said.

  “Fine,” she answered. “I get tired a lot, but I’m fine.”

  My mother speaks fine English, even though she’s Italian. In fact, she ain’t really Italian. She was born right here in New York City. It was my father who was born in Naples, which makes him a real ginzo if he was still alive.

  “How’s May?” my mother asked.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “She’s a good girl.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “Ma, the reason I came around, I wanted to tell you I got a promotion today.”

  My mother nodded.

  “I’m getting four hundred dollars a week now, Ma,” I said.

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It sure is,” I said.

  “And all you have to do to earn it is kill people,” my mother said.

  For a minute, I didn’t answer her. Then I said, “Aw, where’d you get that?”

  “May was here.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday, the day before. I don’t remember.”

  “What the hell did she want?”

  “She asked me to talk to you. She asked me to tell you to quit.”

  “She’s crazy,” I said. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with her?” I hesitated again. “What’d you say to her?”

  “I told her I don’t have a son,” my mother said. “I told her you haven’t listened to me since the time you were ten, and there was no reason to think you would now.”

  “Aw, that ain’t true,” I said.

  “I never touched a drop since she came to see me,” my mother said. “She told me you killed Andy Orelli and his wife.…”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  “A man who grew up here in the neighborhood. Him and his pregnant wife. She said you killed them, Frankie.”

  “She’s nuts!”

  “That’s what she said you did. And when she left, I began to wonder. My Frankie a killer. A murderer. It made me feel like a murderer, Frankie. It made me feel as if I killed that poor man and his wife.”

  “Don’t believe what May tells you. For Christ’s sake, do I look like a killer?”

  My mother looked at me long and hard.

  And then she said, “Yes.”

  “Me? Me, Ma? This is Frankie! Now come on, don’t talk like that. I’m making a lot of money now. I’ll be able to get you a nice place to stay, and nice clothes and—”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” my mother said.

  “What kind of a way is that to talk to your own son, Ma? Just because—”

  “I have no son,” she said.

  “Ma, come on …”

  “Do you know what I wish, Frankie?”

  “What?”

  “I wish you get hit by a car. I wish you get hit by a car and killed.”

  “Ma, Mama,” I said. “Mama, please don’t talk like—”

  “Go, Frankie,” she said. “Go. I don’t want to look at you. Not after what you done. I don’t want to look at you.”

  “Ma …”

  “Go.”

  I got up. “Okay,” I said. I went to the door. At the door, I turned and very nasty I said, “You want me to send up a bottle of cheap booze? Would that make you feel a little more cheerful, Mama dear?”

  “A killer,” she said.

  “Yeah, and a drunk,” I said, and I walked out.

  I felt pretty miserable. I can never figure out dames, I swear to God. No matter what you try to do for them, they always turn out to be bitches. But I still felt pretty miserable. You’d think a guy’s own mother would be a little happy when he started to get someplace. Instead, she came on with that killer crap. What the hell, I ain’t a killer! Jesus, don’t people know the difference?

  I walked around the streets feeling rotten. I didn’t want to go home to May because I knew she’d start the same crap my mother had given me. Where the hell was I supposed to go?

  Around five o’clock, just when it began getting dark, I ran into Angelo. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. He’s a guy, Angelo, who had one eye shot out when he was a kid. Some bastard just jumped him and gave it to him with a zip gun, that was Angelo. He’s been looking for that guy ever since, but he ain’t found him yet. When he does, that guy is going to be sorry he was born. He’s got a glass eye now, Angelo, and he walks with his head sort of cocked to one side. I guess because he can only see out of that one good eye. When I ran into him, he was very respectful. We used to kid around a lot, you know, but this time was different. I swear, I expected him to start calling me Mr. Taglio.

  “Well, it certainly is a wonderful thing that happened to you,” he said. He has a very high whiny voice, Angelo. I notice that a lot of guys with physical defects, their voices get kind of whiny even though they never complain much.

  “Yeah, it’s a great thing,” I said.

  “What are you doing down here in Harlem?”

  “I came to see my mother.”

  “She must be happy,” Angelo said.

  “Yeah, she’s tickled.”

  “Are you going home now?”

  “No. I don’t feel like going home.”

  Angelo was quiet for a long time as if, now that I was sort of a big shot in the organization, he was sort of ashamed to ask me. But then, he finally did.

  “Is there … ah … anything I can do for you, Frankie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A girl.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  We were both quiet for a couple of minutes.

  “Nothing cheap,” I said.

  “Nothing cheap,” he told me. “Something special. Private stock. You’re no punk, Frankie, I should give you something cheap.”

  “I mean … I want a girl with class.”

  He opened his wallet and took out a scrap of paper. He scribbled an address on it. “Go down here,” he said. “The—”

  “I don’t want no whorehouse.”

  “No, no, this is where the girl lives. It’s a very nice place, Frankie. On Sixty-eighth. Near Hunter College. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go there. I’ll call her. You’ll like this girl. She has class.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Anything you want,” Angelo said, “let me know. Carte blanche for you, Mr. Carfon said.”

  I drove down to Sixty-eighth and couldn’t find no parking spot. I finally parked on Third Avenue and Sixty-fifth and then I walked over to Sixty-eighth. The girl lived between Madison and Fifth. It was a nice brownstone, clean. I rang the bell and then walked up to the third floor. She answered the door. She was private stock, all righ
t. She was the long-legged honey blonde who was in the apartment that night with Mr. Carfon.

  “Mr. Taglio?” she said. “Angelo called. I’ve been expecting you.”

  We went into the apartment. Her name was Louise—what a crazy name for a girl who was built like her and who could do the things she did. I spent four days with her. I didn’t want to leave that apartment, believe me. In that apartment, I was Mister Taglio. With my mother, I was a bum and a killer. With May, I’d have to listen to that whole routine again. But with this girl, for four days, I was somebody. I’d gone out and slain the dragons, and now I was the knight coming back to the castle, that was it. There’s only one trouble. You got to go home sometime. So at the end of the four days, I went home.

  May said, “Where’ve you been?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I want to know.”

  “Go to hell,” I said. “I been out of town.”

  “Killing somebody else?”

  “Here we go again, folks,” I said.

  “Yes, here we go again. Listen to me, Frankie. I’m going to tell you something which I hope penetrates.”

  “Save your breath.”

  “I will. After this. But right now I want you to hear me. I’m asking you to quit Mr. Carfon. I’m ask—”

  “Do we have to go over all this again? I got a raise. Four hundred dollars a week. How does that sound to you?”

  “Money doesn’t matter, Frankie.”

  “No, huh? You people who say money doesn’t matter kill me. It matters, all right. It matters a whole hell of a lot.”

  “Not to me it doesn’t.”

  “Well, to me it does.”

  “I want you to quit Mr. Carfon. I want you to get an honest job, and I want you to start working at our marriage. That’s what I want, Frankie.”

  “You finished?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t our marriage mean anything to you? Isn’t there anything you think worth saving?”

  “This is all in your head. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing. You know it, and I know it.”

  “Oh, Frankie. Please. For God’s sake …”

  “For God’s sake, shut up,” I said. “Would you rather be married to some bum who runs an elevator? Sixty bucks a week and a big fifty-dollar Christmas bonus? Is that what you want?”

  “Yes. Better that. Better than to be married to a—”

  “Don’t say it, May. I’m warning you.”

  “And I’m warning you, Frankie. I’m not asking you. I’m warning you. Either quit, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “Don’t talk through your asshole,” I said.

  “I’m warning you, Frankie.”

  “Sure.”

  “All right,” she said. “You’ll be sorry. Believe me. You’ll be sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I came home, that’s for sure. If I hear another inch of this crap I’ll go out of my mind. Dames never know when to shut up, do they?”

  “No,” May said. “Dames only know how to talk.”

  “Well, you talk to the walls,” I said. “I’m getting out of here.”

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “Out.”

  And I went.

  I was thinking of buzzing Louise again, get lost with her for a month, a year, two years, just get lost with that honey blonde and her soft voice and that “Mister” look in her eyes. I drove downtown thinking I might run into Angelo. I wanted to check with him first. I’d feel like a horse’s ass just busting in on her in case there was some other guy there. I walked all around Harlem. There’d been a rumble. Some PR’s from Spanish Harlem had come down and said something funny to one of the neighborhood girls. All the guys in the neighborhood had piled on the PR’s and beat hell out of them. The place was swarming with cops. Everywhere you turned, there was another cop. I was carrying the .45, and I didn’t want none of the cops to stop me and start frisking. So I steered a real wide path around them, and then finally I ran into Max. He was so high, he was doing Pepsi-Cola commercials up in the sky.

  “Hello, Frankie,” he said. “Ohhhhhh boy, you’re a big man now, huh?”

  “When you gonna knock off that junk, Max?” I said.

  “Shhh, shhh, man,” he said. “There is all kinds of cops around here tonight. You see what the kids done to them PR’s?”

  “No. What?”

  “They got them with ball bats. Oh, man, I never saw so many busted heads in my life. It was like a massacre. They came down on them PR’s from all directions at once. Wham! Bam! Alacazam! Blood all over the sidewalk. You know something else?”

  “What?”

  “Them PR’s couldn’t even talk English. That dame who said they insulted her was full of crap. What happened was they got lost and was trying to find their way back to Spanish Harlem. They probably all three of them just come over here from Puerto Rico.”

  “They should stay where they belong,” I said. “I don’t like people who can’t speak English.”

  “Could your father speak English when he came here?” Max said.

  “Don’t get wise, Max, or I’ll use a ball bat on you.”

  “I was only asking.”

  “Never mind asking. I don’t have to take crap from a junkie,” I said.

  Every place I turned there was somebody with a lecture lately. It was getting to be something of a pain. How far up did you have to go before people got off your back? I decided right then and there that no matter how far it was, I was going the distance. Where I was was fine. But I wanted to be where punks like Max would take off their-hats when I came down the street. I wanted to be where May would know she couldn’t talk to me like that even if she was my wife.

  I wanted to be on top.

  And only Milt Hordzig stood in my way.

  Or so I thought that night.

  13

  It was March already. That’s my worse month. In March, I got no use for anything. Nobody in New York got any use for March. It’s an in-between month. It ain’t winter and it ain’t spring. You don’t know what to wear, and you don’t know how to act. It’s miserable. One thing I learned about New Yorkers is that they like things black or white. None of this gray jive. And, man, March is the grayest.

  It was also very cold that March, and I never liked cold weather either. This comes from when I was a kid, I guess, and I never had clothes which were heavy enough to keep me warm. It made me laugh, this movie they showed about the GI’s freezing in Korea. That’s the way it was with me all the time I was a kid, and the movie guys tried to make it a hardship for the soldiers. Well, maybe it was a hardship for some big-mouth Texan who always had a sheep-lined jacket around him. But for me it would have been duck soup because, to put it plain, I was always freezing my ass off.

  This March I had a camel-hair overcoat. It cost me two hundred dollars in Leighton’s on Broadway which is where all the movie stars shop. I also had a blue cashmere sports jacket and three suits, and more ties than I could count, and two dozen tailor-made shirts, and socks made of 100% wool. I had four pairs of shoes. A pair of black loafers, a pair of brown loafers, a dressy pair of black shoes, and a pair of high-top suede shoes which is like the British officers wear in India. I got a thing for cuff links and tie clasps, so I bought up thirty pairs of them. I spent a whole day doing it. I went from store to store picking out the sets. I didn’t buy nothing for May because we weren’t talking.

  I went down to see Louise once. It was good.

  The next day, I got a call from Mr. Carfon. I thought maybe it was about Louise. I thought maybe he was going to tell me this was private stock, and I should lay off. But it wasn’t.

  There were three accountants with Mr. Carfon and Milt when I got there. The way this worked, you see, Mr. Carfon was no dope. He wasn’t going to fool around with no possible income-tax-evasion rap for which they can lock you up and forget they ever had a key. In the United States of America, it is an accepted thing that you cheat on the income-tax allowances. Otherwise, ma
n, you can’t stay in business. What it is, if you spent forty dollars to entertain an out-of-town client, you mark it down as four hundred dollars. When they inspect the form, they will maybe disallow two hundred of that. You’re still a hundred and sixty dollars ahead of the game. Nobody goes to jail for padding the allowances. The way you can go to jail is by not declaring income you received. Naturally, if you don’t declare the income that means you ain’t paying any tax whatsoever on it. This is how you can go to jail.

  Mr. Carfon didn’t want to go to jail. Who does? But at the same time, he couldn’t declare he made like a hundred thousand dollars importing heroin, and like fifty thousand dollars hustling dames, and twenty-five thousand from burglaries and holdups and such. So he had to have a front. And instead of one front, he had a lot of them, and everybody in the organization was a salaried man working for one of the fronts. For example, he had an import-export company, and he also had a couple of magazines, and an investment firm, and a trucking company. For the magazines, he hired a couple of legitimate jerks who just got out of Harvard or one of the other dumps, and they were the editors of the magazines and they didn’t know there were about forty or fifty guys listed in the promotion department and the advertising department and the sales department, all drawing salaries from the handful of magazines the two jerks legitimately put out every month. The magazines maybe sold four copies each whenever they were put on the stands. The two Harvard jerks didn’t realize this. They thought they were editing some of the fastest-selling, hottest little publications in America. Which is where the accountants came in, and which is where my understanding of income tax gets fuzzy. But apparently it’s all right to lose money on some enterprises, in fact sometimes it’s wonderful for tax purposes to lose money. The whole thing in America, you see, is figuring out how you can get to keep twelve dollars out of the three-and-a-half million you earned last year. It is very unfair to the rich, but I say the hell with them.