Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  “I won’t use it on the premises.” Thomas opened the bottle of bourbon and offered it to Pappy. Pappy shook his head. “I don’t drink. I got a delicate stomach.”

  “Me, too,” Thomas said and took a long gulp from the bottle.

  “I bet,” Pappy said, as he went out.

  What did Pappy know? What did anyone know?

  The bourbon didn’t help, although he kept swigging at the bottle. He kept remembering the silent men standing along the rail watching him and Dwyer go down the gangplank, hating him. Maybe he didn’t blame them. Putting a loudmouth ex-con in his place was one thing. Putting the boots to him so hard that he killed himself was another. Somewhere, Thomas realized, a man who considered himself a human being should know where to stop, leave another man a place to live in. Sure, Falconetti was a pig and deserved a lesson, but the lesson should have ended somewhere else than in the middle of the Atlantic.

  He drank some more whiskey to try to help him forget the look on Falconetti’s face when Thomas said, “You can go now, slob,” and Falconetti had got up from the table and walked out of the mess room with everybody watching him.

  The whiskey didn’t help.

  He had been bitter when Rudolph had called him a wild animal when they were kids, but would he have the right now to be bitter if somebody said it to him today? He really believed that if people would leave him alone he would leave them alone. He yearned for peace. He had felt that the sea had finally relieved him of his burden of violence; the future he and Dwyer hoped for for themselves was harmless and unobjectionable, on a mild sea, among mild men. And here he was, with a death on his conscience, hiding away with a gun in a crumbling hotel room, exiled in his own country. Christ, he wished he could cry.

  Half the bottle was empty when Pappy knocked on the door again.

  “I talked to Schultzy,” Pappy said. “The heat’s still on. You better ship out again as soon as you can.”

  “Sure,” Thomas nodded, maudlin, bottle in hand. The heat was still on. The heat had been on all his life. There had to be people like that. If only for the sake of variety. “Did Schultzy say there was any chance of sneaking a look at my kid?”

  “He advised against it,” Pappy said. “This trip.”

  “He advised against it. Good old Schultzy. It’s not his kid. You hear anything else about me?”

  “There’s a Greek from the Elga Andersen just checked in,” Pappy said. “He’s talking in the lobby. About how you killed a certain individual called Falconetti.”

  “When they have it in for you,” Thomas said, “they don’t lose any time, do they?”

  “He knows you fought as a pro. You better stick close to this room until I get you a berth.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Thomas said. “Where’s that dame I asked for?”

  “She’ll be here in an hour,” Pappy said. “I told her your name was Bernard and she won’t ask any questions.”

  “Why Bernard?” Thomas asked irritably.

  “I had a friend once by that name.” Pappy left lightly, on his wary alligator feet.

  Bernard, Thomas thought, what a name!

  He hadn’t been out of the room all week. Pappy had brought him six bottles of whiskey. No more girls. He had lost his taste for whores. He had started to grow a moustache. The trouble was it came out red. With his blond hair it looked more like a disguise than a false moustache. He practiced loading and unloading the revolver. He tried not to think about the look on Falconetti’s face. He paced up and down all day like a prisoner. Dwyer had lent him one of his books on navigation and he managed a couple of hours a day on that. He felt he could plot a course from Boston to Johannesburg. But he didn’t dare go downstairs and buy himself a newspaper. He made his bed and cleaned his room himself, to keep out the chambermaid. He was paying Pappy ten bucks a day, everything included, except the booze, of course, and his money was running low. He yelled at Pappy because Pappy didn’t come up with a berth, but Pappy only shrugged and said it was a slack time and to have patience. Pappy came and went, a free man. It was easy for him to have patience.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when he heard Pappy’s knock. It was a strange hour for him to come up. Usually, he only came in three times a day, with the meals.

  Thomas unlocked the door. Pappy came in, light on his feet, expressionless behind his dark glasses.

  “You got something for me?” Thomas asked.

  “Your brother was at the desk a few minutes ago,” Pappy said.

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I said maybe I knew a place where I could get hold of you. He’s coming back in a half hour. You want to see him?”

  Thomas thought for a moment. “Why not?” he said.. “If it’ll make the sonofabitch happy.”

  Pappy nodded. “I’ll bring him up when he comes,” he said.

  Thomas locked the door behind him. He felt the stubble of his moustache, decided to shave. He looked at his face in the peeling mirror in the grimy little bathroom. The moustache was ridiculous. His eyes were bloodshot. He lathered up, shaved. He needed a haircut. He was balding on the top of his head, but his hair hung halfway down over his ears and over the collar of his shirt in back. Pappy was useful in many ways but he didn’t give haircuts.

  The half hour took a long time passing.

  The knock on the door was not Pappy’s. “Who’s there?” Thomas whispered. He was uncertain about the tone of his voice after not talking to anyone but Pappy for a week. And you didn’t hold long conversations with Pappy.

  “It’s me. Rudy.”

  Thomas unlocked the door. Rudolph came into the room and Thomas locked the door before they shook hands. Thomas didn’t ask him-to sit down. Rudolph didn’t need a haircut, he wasn’t going bald and he was wearing a pressed seersucker country-gentleman kind of suit because the weather had turned warm. He must have a laundry bill a yard long, Thomas thought.

  Rudolph smiled tentatively. “That man downstairs is pretty mysterious about you,” he said.

  “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “I was here about two weeks ago.”

  “I know,” Thomas said.

  “You didn’t call.”

  “No.”

  Rudolph looked curiously around the room. The expression on his face was peculiar, as though he didn’t quite believe what he saw. “I suppose you’re hiding from somebody,” he said.

  “No comment,” Thomas said. “Like they say in the newspapers.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “No.” What could he say to his brother? Go look for a man called Falconetti, longitude 26.24, latitude 38.31, depth ten thousand feet? Go tell some gangster in Las Vegas with a sawed-off shotgun in the trunk of his car he was sorry he’d beaten up Gary Quayles, he wouldn’t do it again?

  “I’m glad to see you, Tom,” Rudolph said, “although this isn’t exactly a social visit.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “Mom is dying,” Rudolph said. “She wants to see you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the hospital at Whitby. I’m on my way there now and if you …”

  “What do you mean dying? Dying today or dying next week or dying in a couple of years?”

  “Dying any minute,” Rudolph said. “She’s had two heart attacks.”

  “Oh, Christ.” It had never occurred to Thomas that his mother could die. He even had a scarf that he’d bought for her in Cannes, in his sea bag. The scarf had an old map of the Mediterranean on it, in three colors. People you were bringing presents to didn’t die.

  “I know you’ve seen her from time to time,” Rudolph said, “and that you’ve written her letters. She turned religious, you know, and she wants to make her peace with everybody before she goes. She asked for Gretchen, too.”

  “She doesn’t have to make her peace with me,” Thomas said. “I got nothing against the old lady. It wasn’t her fault. I gave her a rough time. And what with our god-damn father …”

>   “Well,” Rudolph said, “do you want to come with me? I have the car downstairs in front of the door.”

  Thomas nodded.

  “You’d better pack some things in a bag,” Rudolph said. “Nobody knows exactly how long …”

  “Give me ten minutes,” Thomas said. “And don’t wait in front of the door. Drive around for awhile. Then in ten minutes come up Fourth Avenue going north. I’ll be walking that way, near the curb. If you don’t see me, go back two blocks below here and drive up Fourth Avenue again. Make sure the door on the right side isn’t locked. Go slow. What kind of car you got?”

  “A Chevrolet, 1960. Green.”

  Thomas unlocked the door. “Don’t talk to anybody on the way out.”

  When he’d locked the door again, he threw some things into his shaving kit. He didn’t have a valise, so he stuffed two shirts and some underwear and socks and the scarf, wrapped in tissue paper, into the bag in which Pappy had brought the last bottle of bourbon. He took a gulp of bourbon to steady his nerves. He decided that he might need the whiskey on the trip, so he put the half-empty bottle in another bag.

  He put on a tie and the blue suit which he had bought in Marseilles. If your mother was dying you had to be dressed for the occasion. He took the Smith and Wesson out of the dresser drawer, checked the safety, stuck it in his belt, under his jacket, and unlocked the door. He peeked out. There was nobody in the hallway. He went out, locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket.

  Pappy was behind the desk but didn’t say anything when he saw Thomas going through the lobby carrying the shaving kit under his left arm and the paper bags in his left hand. Thomas blinked as the sun hit him outside the hotel. He walked quickly, but not as though he was trying to get away from anything, toward Fourth Avenue.

  He had only walked a block and a half up the Avenue when the Chevy drew up alongside. He took one last look around and jumped inside.

  Once they got out of the city he began to enjoy the trip. The breeze was cool, the countryside light green. Your mother was dying and you were sorry about that, but your body didn’t know anything about mothers dying, it just knew it liked to be cool and moving and out of prison and breathing country air. He took the bottle out of the bag and offered it to Rudolph, but Rudolph shook his head. They hadn’t talked much. Rudolph had told him that Gretchen had remarried and that her husband had been killed not long ago. He also told Thomas that he had just gotten married. The Jordaches never learn, Thomas thought.

  Rudølph drove fast and he concentrated on the road. Thomas took a swig from the bottle from time to time, not enough to start getting drunk, just enough to keep him feeling good.

  They were going seventy when they heard the siren behind them. “Damn it,” Rudolph said, as he pulled over to the side.

  The State trooper came up to them and said, “Good afternoon, sir.” Rudolph was the sort of man cops said, “Good afternoon, sir,” to. “Your license, please,” the trooper said, but he didn’t examine the license until he’d taken a good look at the bottle on the front seat between Rudolph and Thomas. “You were going seventy in a fifty-mile zone,” he said, staring coldly at Thomas, with his wind-beaten face, busted nose, and his Marseilles blue suit.

  “I’m afraid I was, officer,” Rudolph said.

  “You fellas’ve been drinking,” the trooper said. It was not a question.

  “I haven’t touched a drop,” Rudolph said, “and I’m driving.”

  “Who’s he?” The trooper pointed with the hand holding Rudolph’s license at Thomas.

  “He’s my brother,” Rudolph said.

  “You got any identification?” The trooper’s voice was hard and suspicious as he spoke to Thomas.

  Thomas dug into his pocket and produced his passport. The trooper opened it as though it were loaded. “What’re you doing carrying your passport around?”

  “I’m a seaman.”

  The trooper gave Rudolph his license, but put Thomas’s passport in his pocket. “I’ll hold onto this. And I’ll take that.” He gestured toward the bottle and Rudolph gave it to him. “Now turn around and follow me.”

  “Officer,” Rudolph said, “why don’t you just give me the ticket for speeding and let us go on our way. It’s absolutely imperative for us to …”

  “I said turn around and follow me,” the trooper said. He strode back to his car, where another trooper was sitting at the wheel.

  They had to drive back more than ten miles the way they had come, to the State Troopers’ barracks. Thomas managed to get the pistol out from under his belt and slide it under the seat without Rudolph’s noticing it. If the cops searched the car, it would be six months to a year, at least. Concealed weapon. No permit. The trooper who arrested them explained to a sergeant that they had been speeding and that they had committed a further violation by having an opened bottle of liquor in a moving vehicle and that he wanted a sobriety test run on them. The Sergeant was impressed by Rudolph and was apologetic, but he smelled both their breaths and made them take a breathing test and he made Thomas piss in a bottle.

  It was dark by the time they got out of the building, without the whiskey, but with a ticket for speeding. The Sergeant had decided neither of them was drunk, but Thomas saw that the trooper who had arrested them took a long hard look at his passport before he gave it back to him. Thomas was unhappy about it, because there were plenty of cops who traded with the gangs, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  “You should’ve known better than to offer me a ride,” Thomas said when they were back on the road. “I get arrested for breathing.”

  “Forget it,” Rudolph said shortly and stepped on the gas.

  Thomas felt under the seat. The gun was still there. The car hadn’t been searched. Maybe his luck was changing.

  They got to the hospital a little after nine but the nurse at the entrance stopped Rudolph and whispered to him for awhile. Rudolph said, “Thank you,” in a funny voice, then came over to Thomas and said, “Mom died an hour ago.”

  II

  “The last thing she said,” Gretchen was saying, “was, ‘You tell your father, wherever he is, that I forgave him.’ Then she went into a coma and never came out of it.”

  “She was nutty on the subject,” Thomas said. “She asked me to be on the lookout for him in Europe.”

  It was late that night and the three of them were sitting in the living room of the house that Rudolph had shared, with his mother for the last few years. Billy was asleep upstairs and Martha was weeping in the kitchen for the woman who had been her daily opponent and tormentor. Billy had begged to be allowed to come East to see his grandmother for one last time and Gretchen had decided that death was a part of a child’s education, too, and brought him along. Her mother had forgiven Gretchen, too, before they had put her in the oxygen tent for the last time.

  Rudolph had already made the arrangements for the funeral. He had spoken to Father McDonnell and consented to the whole rigamarole, as he had told Jean when he had called her in New York. Eulogy, Mass, the whole thing. But he stopped at having the windows of the house closed and the blinds drawn. He was only going to coddle his mother up to a certain point. Jean had said morosely she’d come up if he wanted but he had said there was no sense in that.

  The cable in Rome had had an unsettling effect on her. “Families,” she said. “Always goddamn families.” She had drunk a great deal that night and all the way back on the plane. If he hadn’t held her he was sure she would have fallen going down the steps from the plane. When he left her in New York she was in bed, looking frail and worn out. Now, facing his brother and sister in the hushed house he had shared with the dead woman, Rudolph was thankful his wife was not with him.

  “After all this time,” Thomas said, “when your mother dies you’re pissing in a bottle for a cop.” Thomas was the only one drinking, but he was sober.

  Gretchen had kissed him at the hospital, and held him close and in her grief she wasn’t the snooty, superio
r woman, looking down her nose at him, that he had remembered, but warm, loving, familiar. Thomas felt there was a chance they would forget the past and be reconciled finally. He had enough enemies in the world as it was, without keeping up a running battle with his family.

  “I dread the funeral,” Rudolph said. “All those old ladies she used to play bridge with. And what the hell will that idiot McDonnell have to say?”

  “She was broken in spirit by poverty and lack of love and she was devoted to God,” Gretchen said.

  “If I can keep him to that,” Rudolph said.

  “Excuse me,” Thomas said. He went out of the room and to the guest bedroom he was sharing with Billy. Gretchen was in the second extra room. Nobody had gone into their mother’s room yet.

  “He seems different, doesn’t he?” Gretchen said, when she and Rudolph were alone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Subdued. Beaten, somehow.”

  “Whatever it’ is,” Rudolph said, “it’s an improvement.”

  They heard Thomas’s footsteps coming down the stairs and they broke off the conversation. Thomas came into the room, carrying something soft wrapped in tissue paper. “Here,” he said, handing it to Gretchen, “here’s something for you.”

  Gretchen unwrapped the gift, spread out the scarf with the old map of the Mediterranean on it in three colors. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s lovely.” She got up and kissed him. For some reason the kiss unnerved him. He felt he might do something crazy, like breaking down and crying or smashing furniture or going up and getting the Smith and Wesson and shooting out the window at the moon. “I bought it in Cannes,” Thomas said, “for Mom.”

  “Cannes?” Rudolph said. “When were you in Cannes?”

  Thomas told him and they figured out that they must have been there at the same time, at least one day. “That’s terrible,” Rudolph said. “Brothers just passing each other by like that. From now on, Tom, we’ve got to keep in touch with each other.”