Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  Luxuriously, they slept late the next morning and when they sailed out of the harbor in the sunlight, they even took time off to do a little sight-seeing. They went out to the Châteaud if and walked around the fortress and saw the dungeon where the Count of Monte Cristo was supposed to have been chained. Kate had read the book and Thomas had seen the movie. Kate translated the signs that told how many Protestants had been imprisoned in the place before being sent to the galleys.

  “There’s always somebody sitting on somebody else’s back,” Dwyer said. “If it’s not the Protestants sitting on the Catholics, it’s the Catholics sitting on the Protestants.”

  “Shut up, you Communist,” Thomas said.

  “Are you a Protestant?” he asked Kate.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to imprison you in my galley,” he said.

  By the time they got back onto the Clothilde and started East, the last whiff of perfume had vanished from the main cabin.

  They sailed without stopping, with Dwyer taking eight full hours at night at the wheel so that Thomas and Kate could sleep. They reached Antibes before noon. There were two letters waiting for Thomas, one from his brother, and one in a handwriting he didn’t recognize. He opened the letter from Rudolph first.

  “Dear Tom,”—he read,—“I finally got news of you after all this time and I must say it sounds as if you’re doing all right for yourself. A few days ago I received a call at my office from a Mr. Goodhart, who told me he had been on your boat, or ship, as I believe you fellows like to call it. It turns out that we have done some business with his firm, and I guess he was curious to see what your brother looked like. He invited Jean and myself over for a drink and he and his wife turned out to be charming old people, as you must know. They were most enthusiastic about you and about your ship and the life you lead. Maybe you’ve made the best investment of the century with the money you made on Dee Cee. If I weren’t so busy (it looks as though I’m going to allow myself to be talked into running for mayor of Whitby this fall!), I’d take a plane with Jean immediately and come over to sail the deep blue sea with you. Maybe next year. In the meantime, I’ve taken the liberty of suggesting renting the Clothilde (as you see the Goodharts were most explicit about everything) to a friend of mine who is getting married and would like to spend his honeymoon on the Mediterranean. Perhaps you remember him—Johnny Heath. If he bothers you, put him adrift in a raft.

  “But seriously, I am very happy for you and I’d like to hear from you and if there’s anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know what it is. Love, Rudolph.”

  Thomas scowled as he read the letter. He didn’t like to be reminded that it was because of Rudolph that he now owned the Clothilde. Still, the letter was so friendly, the weather was so fine, and the summer was going so well, it was silly to spoil things by remembering old grudges. He folded the letter carefully and put it in his pocket. The other letter was from Rudolph’s friend and asked if he could charter the Clothilde from September fifteenth to the thirtieth. It was the end of the season, and they had nothing on the books, and it would be found money. Heath said he only wanted to sail up and down the coast between Monte Carlo and St. Tropez, and with only two people on board and very little mileage to cover, it would be a lazy way to end the season.

  Thomas sat down and wrote a letter to Heath, telling him he’d meet him either at the Nice airport or the Antibes station on the fifteenth.

  He told Kate about the new charter and how it was his brother who had arranged it, and she made him write a letter of thanks to Rudolph. He had signed it and was just going to seal the envelope, when he remembered that Rudolph had written him that if there was anything he could do for him not to hesitate to let him know what it was. Well, why not, he thought. It couldn’t do any harm. In a P.S. he wrote, “There’s one thing you can do for me. For various reasons I haven’t been able to come back to New York so far but maybe those reasons don’t hold any more. I haven’t had any news of my kid for years and I don’t know where he is or whether I’m still married or not. I’d like to come over and see him and if possible take him back here with me for awhile. Maybe you remember the night you and Gretchen came back after my fight in Queens, there was my manager, a man I introduced you to called Schultzy. Actually his name is Herman Schultz. The last address I had for him is the Bristol Hotel on Eighth Avenue, but maybe he doesn’t live there any more. But if you ask somebody in the Garden office if they know where you can lay your hands on Schultzy they’re bound to know if he’s still alive and in town. He’s likely to have some news about Teresa and the kid. Just don’t tell him where I am for the time being. But ask him if the heat’s still on. He will understand. Let me know if you find him and what he says. This will be a real good turn and I will be really grateful.”

  He air-mailed the two letters at the Antibes post office and then went back to the ship to get it ready for the English party.

  Chapter 4

  I

  Nobody had remembered Herman Schultz at the Bristol Hotel, but somebody in the publicity department at Madison Square Garden had finally come up with the address of a rooming house on West Fifty-third Street. Rudolph was getting to know Fifty-third Street very well. He had been there three times in the last four weeks, on every trip he had made to New York in the month of August. Yes, the man at the rooming house said, Mr. Schultz stayed there when he was in New York, but he was out of town. He didn’t know where out of town. Rudolph left his telephone number with him, but Schultz never called him. Rudolph had to suppress a quiver of distaste every time he rang the bell. It was a decaying building in a dying neighborhood, inhabited, you felt, only by doomed old men and derelict young men.

  A shuffling, bent old man with a twisted hair piece opened the peeling door, the color of dried blood. From the gloom of the hallway he peered nearsightedly at Rudolph standing on the stoop in the hot September sun. Even with the distance between them, Rudolph could smell him, mildew and urine.

  “Is Mr. Schultz at home?” Rudolph asked.

  “Fourth floor back,” the old man said. He stepped aside to allow Rudolph to enter.

  As he climbed the steps, Rudolph realized that it wasn’t only the old man who smelled like that, it was the entire house. A radio was playing Spanish music, a fat man, naked to the waist, was sitting at the head of the second flight of steps, his head in his hands. He didn’t look up as Rudolph squeezed past him.

  The door to the fourth floor back was open. It was stifling hot, under the roof. Rudolph recognized the man he had been introduced to as Schultzy in Queens. Schultzy was sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, grayish sheets, staring at the wall of the room, three feet across from him. Rudolph knocked on the framework of the doorway. Schultzy turned his head slowly, painfully.

  “What do you want?” Schultz said. His voice was reedy and hostile.

  Rudolph went in. “I’m Tom Jordache’s brother.” He extended his hand.

  Schultz put his right hand behind his back. He was wearing a sweat-stained skivvy shirt. He still had the basketball of a stomach. He moved his mouth uneasily, as though he was wearing plates that fit badly. He was pasty and totally bald. “I don’t shake hands,” Schultz said. “It’s the arthritis.” He didn’t ask Rudolph to sit down. There was no place to sit down except on the bed, anyway.

  “That sonofabitch,” Schultz said. “I don’t want to hear his name.”

  Rudolph took out his wallet and extracted two twenty-dollar bills. “He asked me to give you this.”

  “Put it on the bed.” Schultz’s expression, snakelike and livid, did not change. “He owes me one fifty.”

  “I’ll have him send the rest over tomorrow,” Rudolph said.

  “It’s about fucking well time,” Schultz said. “What does he want now? Did he put the boots to somebody else again?”

  “No,” Rudolph said, “he’s not in trouble.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Schultz said.

  “He ask
ed me to ask you if the heat’s still on.” The words sounded strange to him as they came off his tongue.

  Schultz’s face became sly, secretive, and he looked sideways at Rudolph. “You sure he’s going to give me the rest of the money tomorrow?”

  “Positive,” Rudolph said.

  “Nah,” Schultz said. “There’s no more heat. There’s no more anything. That bum Quayles never had a good night again after your shitty brother got through with him. The one chance I ever had to make a real buck. Not that they left me much of a share, the dagoes. And I was the one who discovered Quayles and brought him along. No, there’s no heat. Everybody’s dead or in jail. Nobody remembers your goddamn brother’s name. He can walk down Fifth Avenue at the head of the Columbus Day Parade and no-body’d raise a finger. Tell him that. Tell him that’s worth a lot more than one fifty.”

  “I will, Mr. Schultz,” Rudolph said, trying to sound as though he knew what the old man was talking about. “And then there’s another question …”

  “He wants a lot of answers for his money, don’t he?”

  “He wants to know about his wife.”

  Schultz cackled. “That whore,” he said, pronouncing the word in two syllables. “She got her picture in the papers. In the Daily News. Twice. She got picked up twice for soliciting in bars. She said her name was Theresa Laval in the papers. French. But I recognized the bitch. Some French. They’re all whores, every last one of them. I could tell you stories, mister …”

  “Do you know where she lives?” Rudolph didn’t relish the thought of spending the afternoon in the sweltering, evil-smelling room listening to Schultz’s opinions of the female sex. “And where the boy is?”

  Schultz shook his head. “Who keeps track? I don’t even know where I live. Theresa Laval. French.” He cackled again. “Some French.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Schultz,” Rudolph said. “I won’t trouble you any more.”

  “Ain’t no trouble. Glad for a little conversation. You for sure going to send over that money tomorrow?”

  “I guarantee.”

  “You’re wearing a good suit,” Schultz said. “But that ain’t no guarantee.”

  Rudolph left him sitting on the bed, his head nodding in the heat. He went down the steps quickly. Even West Fifty-third Street looked good to him when he put the rooming house behind him.

  II

  He had Rudolph’s cable in his pocket when he got off the plane at Kennedy and went with hundreds of other passengers through the Health and Immigration formalities. The last time he had been at the airport it had been called Idlewild. Taking a bullet through your head was an expensive way of getting an airport named after you.

  The big Irishman with the Immigration badge looked at him as though he didn’t like the idea of letting him back into the country. And he thumbed through a big, black book, full of names, hunting for Jordache, and seemed disappointed that he couldn’t find it.

  He went into the Customs hall to wait for his bag. The whole population of America seemed to be coming back from a holiday in Europe. Where did all the money come from?

  He looked up at the glass-enclosed balcony where people were lined up two and three deep waving at relatives down below that they had come to meet. He had cabled Rudolph his flight number and time of arrival, but he couldn’t pick him out in the crowd behind the glass window. He had a moment of irritation. He didn’t want to go wandering around New York hunting for his brother.

  The cable had been waiting for him for a week when he came back to Antibes after the charter with Heath and his wife. “Dear Tom,” the cable read, “Everything OK for you here Stop Believe will have sons address soonest Love Rudolph.”

  He finally saw his bag in the bin and grabbed it and went and stood in line to go through the Customs counter. Some idiot from Syracuse was sweating and telling a long story to the inspector about where he had gotten two embroidered dirndls and whom they were for. When it was his turn, the inspector made him open his bag and went through everything. He had no gifts for anyone in America, and the inspector passed him through.

  He said no to a porter who wanted to carry his bag and carried it through the exit doors himself. Standing bareheaded among the crowd, looking cooler than anybody else in a pair of slacks and a lightweight jacket, Rudolph waved at him. They shook hands and Rudolph tried to take the bag from him, but Thomas wouldn’t let him.

  “Have a good trip?” Rudolph asked him as they walked out of the building.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve got my car parked near here,” Rudolph said. “Wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”

  As he went for the car, Thomas noted that Rudolph still walked in that peculiar gliding way, not moving his shoulders.

  He opened his collar and pulled his tie down. Although it was the beginning of October, it was stinking hot, wet smoggy heat, smelling of burned kerosene. He had forgotten the climate of New York. How did anyone live here?

  Five minutes later Rudolph drove up in a blue Buick coupe. Thomas threw his bag in the back and got in. The car was air-conditioned, which was a relief. Rudolph drove at just the legal speed and Thomas remembered being picked up by the state troopers with the bottle of bourbon and the Smith and Wesson in the car on the way to his mother’s deathbed. Times had changed. For the better.

  “Well?” Thomas said.

  “I found Schultz.” Rudolph said. “That’s when I sent you the wire. He said the heat’s off. Everybody’s dead or in jail, he said. I didn’t inquire what that meant.”

  “What about Teresa and the kid?”

  Rudolph fiddled with the air-conditioning levers, frowning. “Well, it’s a little hard to begin.”

  “Come on. I’m a big, strong fella.”

  “Schultz didn’t know where either of them was. But he said he saw your wife’s picture in the newspapers. Twice.”

  “What the hell for?” For a moment, Thomas was rattled. Maybe the crazy dame had finally made it on the stage or in a nightclub.

  “She was arrested for soliciting in a bar. Twice,” Rudolph said. “I hate to be the one who has to tell you this, Tom.”

  “Forget it,” Thomas said roughly. “It figured.”

  “Schultz said she was using another name, but he recognized her,” Rudolph said. “I checked. It was her. The police gave me her address.”

  “If I can afford her prices,” Thomas said, “maybe I’ll go around and give her a screw. Maybe she’s learned how to do it by now.” He saw the pained expression on Rudolph’s face, but he hadn’t crossed the ocean to be polite. “How about the kid?”

  “He’s up at a military school near Poughkeepsie,” Rudolph said. “I just found out two days ago.”

  “Military school,” Thomas said. “Christ. Do the officers get to bang his mother on maneuvers?”

  Rudolph drove without speaking, allowing Thomas to get his bitterness out.

  “That’s just what I want my kid to be,” Thomas said. “A soldier. How did you get all this good news?”

  “A private detective.”

  “Did he talk to the bitch?”

  “No.”

  “So nobody knows I’m here?”

  “Nobody,” Rudolph said. “Except me. I did one other thing. I hope you won’t mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I talked to a lawyer friend of mine. Without mentioning any names. You can get a divorce and custody without any trouble. Because of the two convictions.”

  “I hope they put her in jail and throw away the key.”

  “Just overnight each time. And a fine.”

  “They got some great lawyers in this city, don’t they?” He remembered his days in the jail in Elysium. Two out of three in the family.

  “Look,” Rudolph said, “I have to get back to Whitby tonight. You can come with me if you want. Or you can stay in the apartment. It’s empty. There’s a maid comes in every morning to clean up.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take you up on the apartment. I wan
t to see that lawyer you talked to first thing in the morning. Can you fix it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got her address and the name of the school and all that?”

  Rudolph nodded.

  “That’s all I need,” Thomas said.

  “How long do you plan to stay in New York?”

  “Just long enough to make sure of the divorce and go up and get the kid and take him back to Antibes with me.”

  Rudolph didn’t say anything for awhile and Thomas looked out the window to his right at the boats moored in Flushing Bay. He was glad the Clothilde was in Antibes harbor and not in Flushing Bay.

  “Johnny Heath wrote me that he had a wonderful trip with you,” Rudolph said. “He said his bride loved it.”

  “I don’t know when she had the time to love anything,” Thomas said. “She was going up and down the ladder changing her clothes every five minutes. She must have had thirty bags with her. It was lucky there were only two of them. We filled two empty cabins with her luggage.”

  Rudolph smiled. “She comes from a very rich family.”

  “It sticks out all over her. He’s okay, though. Your friend. Didn’t mind rough weather and asked so many questions by the end of the two weeks he could have sailed the Clothilde by himself right to Tunis. He said he was going to ask you and your wife to come with him on a cruise next summer.”

  “If I have the time,” Rudolph said quickly.

  “What’s this about your running for mayor of that little one-horse town?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s far from a one-horse town,” Rudolph said. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

  “I wouldn’t wipe my feet on the best politician in the country,” Thomas said.

  “Maybe I’ll make you change your mind,” Rudolph said.

  “They had one good man,” Thomas said, “so naturally they shot him.”

  “They can’t shoot all of them.”

  “They can try,” Thomas said. He leaned over and turned on the radio. The roar of a crowd filled the car and then an excited announcer’s voice, saying, “… a clean line drive into center field, the runner is rounding second, it’s going to be close, close, he goes into his slide. Safe! Safe!” Thomas turned the radio off.