Acceptable Losses

by Irwin Shaw

  “You.” Then, placatingly, “It all smells delicious.”

  “Iron rations,” Weinstein said. “You ought to taste my meals when I have really appreciative eaters at the table.”

  After dinner they went to a bar below Washington Square. It was dimly but cozily lit and while the other drinkers along the long mahogany bar almost disappeared in the distance, there was enough light so that you could see the faces near you. At the far end of the bar, high up on a shelf, there was a television set. It was lit, but the sound was mercifully off.

  The owner, Tony Senagliago, believed in serious drinking. While he was willing to indulge his patrons’ taste for the networks’ offerings to the extent of providing them with silent images which threw a constantly flickering rainbow of colors down the room, he understood that his best customers liked to drink in silence or in quiet conversation with their friends. It was not a bar in which people cruised for girls or men. Women, alone or in pairs or threes were, as courteously as possible, offered tables of their own. When they insisted upon standing or sitting at the bar, Tony would say, regretfully, “Well there’s no law against it,” and make sure that they were served with the utmost lethargy by his barmen. He had no fear of being called a male chauvinist pig and Damon liked and admired him for it. He was a thoughtful reader and in the good old times of the Village, a great many writers had run up tabs at his joint, as he called it. When a particularly good book came into the office Damon always gave Tony a copy and after the man had read it, listened with respect to his opinions.

  “Nice place,” said Weinstein, looking around as they settled themselves on high stools next to each other at the bar.

  “Many a pleasant afternoon and evening,” Damon said. “What’s your pleasure?” he asked, remembering the barman in the bar on Sixth Avenue where he had lost the answering machine and been knocked down while trying to stop a fight. This was a better bar, he thought, and a happier time.

  For once Weinstein ordered a beer. As Damon sipped his Scotch and soda and Weinstein the beer, Weinstein said, “I guess one beer won’t kill me. Although the doctors swear that a single teaspoon of the stuff’ll make an alcoholic start sliding down into the pit again.”

  “You?” Damon asked, surprised. “Were you ever a drinker?”

  “Let’s say, I was on the drink,” Weinstein said gravely. “I ran into a tree with my wife in the car and I swore off. That was eight years ago. Did you know that my mother had gin bottles stashed all over the house?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she did.”

  Damon shook his head wonderingly. That perfect motherly lady, with the blue apron trimmed with lace who had served them milk and cookies in the afternoon. The street he had lived on as a boy had not been as innocent as he remembered it.

  After the disagreement on Friday evening they had spoken no more about Julia Larch and her son. Damon had the feeling that Weinstein was convinced that he had won that argument and Damon had given up the idea of getting in touch with Julia’s husband. Weinstein was clearly a man who was not used to losing arguments.

  “Drinking,” Weinstein was saying, “is like bicycle riding—no matter how long you lay off, you never forget how to do it.” He had finished his first beer and was calling for another. “If I order a third,” he told Damon, “you have my permission to break my arm.”

  “It makes you more human,” Damon said. “Finally, a weakness.”

  “If weakness is human,” Weinstein said somberly, “I’m as fucking human as they come.” Then he switched the subject abruptly. “I don’t think we’re fooling your Oliver Gabrielsen.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “When you went out of the room to talk to Miss Walton for a minute, he asked me why I didn’t take off my jacket. It was warm in the office, he said, and I’d be more comfortable. And while he was talking to me, he kept looking at the bulge under my shoulder. And he asked me where I got my degree in literature.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I invented a place in Oklahoma. I got to remember the name, in case he asks me again. Butnam Christian University. That was the name of my boss on the force.”

  Damon laughed. “If I know Oliver, he’ll look it up. What if he tells you it doesn’t exist?”

  “I’ll tell him it went out of business during the war.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to tell him the truth right away? He’s wise to most of what’s happening, anyway. My wife briefed him.”

  Weinstein looked irritated. “What is this with you and the truth? Some sort of obsession? Ever hear the phrase—‘need to know’?”

  “Yes. They used it on the Manhattan Project when they were making the atomic bomb. Just tell people what’s necessary to do their job and no more.”

  “It’s a good rule,” Weinstein said. “Everywhere. In government, police work, marriage. Do you think your wife needs to know about you and that crazy woman out in Indiana?”

  “Not right now, no,” Damon said.

  “What do you mean, not right now? Not ever. You tell me you’ve got a good marriage. What the hell sense would there be in breaking it up?”

  “Let’s drop it for a while, eh?” Damon said. “But speaking of marriage, how is it you never got married again?”

  “I’d like to say I’m a one-woman man,” Weinstein said. “But I’d be lying. Marriage …” He shrugged, then took a long draught of his second beer. “Who’d marry me? A fat old cop with a face like the beach at Iwo Jima, on a pension that just keeps me in meat and potatoes. What do you think I’d get? A maiden school teacher who’s been turned down by every man she’s ever met, a widow with dyed hair and tits down to her waist who’s been advertising in the personal columns for a gentleman companion with similar tastes, a divorced lady with five kids who’s used to cops because her husband was a traffic policeman? Naa …” He finished his beer with another mighty gulp. “I got a lot of respect for two things. Myself and sex. I’d lose them both just by saying two fucking words—‘I do.’” He stared darkly at the empty glass on the bar in front of him. “In the Jewish religion it says that when a wife dies the husband should marry the wife’s sister. I was passing fond of my wife and I wouldn’t mind doing that.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “My wife didn’t have a sister.” He laughed hoarsely, like a stand-up comedian enjoying his own joke.

  When the last rattle of laughter subsided, Damon asked, “Are you a practicing Jew?” He had never seen any particular signs of piety around the Weinstein house.

  “Well,” Weinstein said, immediately serious, “I eat pork and the only time I’ve ever been in a synagogue is when I’ve gone in to make an arrest, but there’s no doubt about my being a Jew, whether I like it or not. I’ve read the Bible, but …” He shook his head. “Practicing no, I don’t think anybody could call me that. Religion …” He frowned, as though it was difficult to put his feelings into words. “It’s like a huge round cloud with a mystery hidden inside it.” He held his hands apart, as though he were grasping a great invisible globe. “As big as the planet, maybe as the solar system, maybe it’s so big across it can only be measured in light-years. And every religion is creeping along on the outside of the cloud, one religion getting one quick look at part of what’s inside, another one getting a look at another part in the flick of an eyelash and so on and so on, nobody getting to see what’s at the heart of it. Or, like my fucking brother-in-law, the atheist, used to say, maybe the whole thing’s just an invention to console the human race because everybody knows we’re going to die and religion feeds you the Big Lie. What’s the Big Lie? you ask. Immortality.” He made a grimace as though the beer he had drunk had just turned sour in his stomach. “He was so damned sure of himself you wanted to kick him in the ass. One thing I can’t stand is people being sure of something they can’t prove with numbers or arithmetic or at least expert witnesses. Let’s say that as far as I’m concerned the jury’s still out.” He
played absently with the empty glass on the bar. “Consolation. It’s not a bad word. But what I know for sure about myself is that I’ve turned into a sorry old man. Nothing consoles me. I’m not consoled about the fact that I’m going to die. Or that you’re going to die. One thing I know I’ll never be consoled about is my wife’s dying. And if it really turns out that I’ve got an immortal soul, that’ll be the worst punishment of all. I sure as hell don’t want to have to stand up when the trumpet blows for the Last Judgment. As for forgiveness—like I was saying the other day—we can all use some of that—but I still haven’t even forgiven myself for trying to make that damn fool throw from deep short, and that was almost fifty years ago. Ah …” He made an impatient gesture. “Beery nighttime talk.” He called to the bartender for another drink. “Roger,” he said, “I postpone permission to break my arm until after the next one.” He tried to smile. “Maybe you ought to ask Schulter when you see him what consoles him. I’m sorry,” he said, “talking so much. About things I know fuck-all about. I’ve been living alone so long that when I go out in company I run off at the mouth.”

  “I’m married and I don’t live alone,” Damon said, “but I run off at the mouth pretty often myself. You ought to hear me when I get on the subject of Ronald Reagan or the Broadway theatre.” He had spoken lightly, in an attempt to lighten Weinstein’s gloom, but he could see he had failed.

  “The world …” Weinstein said morosely. He shook his head and didn’t continue, as though for this evening at least, the enormity of the world’s evil was beyond his powers of description. He turned away for a moment to stare at the action on the television screen. It was a commercial for a beer company. There were brilliantly photographed shots of husky men, some white, some black, working on an oil rig, sweating healthily in bright sunlight as they carried pipe, fitted joints, wrestled with giant valves. Then as the sun was setting in a golden glow, the men stopped work, dropped their tools, slung their denim jackets and windbreakers over their shoulders and strode off happily toward a bar where amid silent laughter and back-slapping, they were served foaming glasses of beer, which they were never seen drinking because of network rules.

  “What horseshit,” Weinstein said, growling. “The merry, interracial American working man. Who do they think they’re kidding?” He finished his beer with one last powerful gulp. “Let’s get out of here.”

  It was almost midnight by the time they got back to the apartment and Weinstein was yawning. Before he went into the little room where he slept, he said, “I’m sorry about my blowing off back there. I’ll be better company in the morning. Sleep well, kid.” By the time Damon got into his own bed and put out the light, Weinstein’s snores were rumbling through the apartment.

  The ringing of the telephone awoke him. He had been deep in sleep and he seemed to be swimming up through dark waters to reach the surface. He rolled over and picked up the telephone. He was conscious that the snoring from the other room had stopped. The illuminated dial of the bedside clock pointed to twenty past three.

  “Damon?” He recognized the voice. “Zalovsky. I’ve got to see you. You got ten minutes. I’m right-near you …”

  “Wait a minute,” Damon said. “I’m still asleep.”

  He saw the door to the bedroom open and there was Weinstein, in pyjamas, outlined against the light streaming in from the hallway.

  “Listen good,” Zalovsky said. “I’ll be waiting for you in ten minutes, like I said. In the Washington Mews. You know where that is, I hope.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “It’s a nice dark quiet place for a little serious conversation. If you know what’s good for you you won’t try any funny stuff. Consider yourself warned.”

  “I’m warned.”

  Zalovsky hung up.

  “It’s him,” Damon said, as he put the phone back in its cradle.

  “I gathered,” Weinstein said.

  “He’s in Washington Mews. We passed it tonight on the way home from the bar. The entrance is off Fifth Avenue just before you get to the Square. There’re pedestrian gates on the other end.”

  “I’ll trail you,” Weinstein said. “Maybe seventy, eighty yards behind you.”

  “Give me a little time to talk to him, find out what it is that he really wants,” Damon said as he began to dress.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be there when you need me. How do you feel, kid? Nervy?”

  “Not particularly. Curious, mostly.”

  “Good boy.” Weinstein went back to his room to dress.

  They didn’t leave the house together. Weinstein waited in the downstairs hall for almost a minute after Damon went out, then slipped out and started to follow Damon just as Damon turned the corner onto Fifth Avenue.

  There was very little traffic on the avenue. Occasionally a car sped by and Damon overtook the only people in sight, two drunks with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing hoarsely as they wove their way unsteadily downtown. They were singing “As the Caissons Go Rolling Along,” and Damon guessed that they had been together in the army.

  Damon walked swiftly, feeling clear-headed and remarkably calm. He didn’t look back to see if Weinstein was following him. When he got to the entrance to Washington Mews he stopped. The little street which was really more of an alley than a street was dark, except for a pale glow coming from a single lit window near the entrance to the Mews. There was no movement that he could see anywhere on the street, which was only about a hundred yards long. He walked down the center of it toward the gates at the other end.

  The sound of the two drunks singing came closer as they neared the entrance to the Mews, and Damon was fearful that by some mischievous chance one or both of them lived in one of the pretty houses that lined the cobbled street. He was about twenty yards from the last house when a shadow that was only a slightly deeper shadow in the darkness detached itself from a shallow doorway. “All right,” the remembered voice said, “you can stop there.”

  Damon could not see the man’s face and could only guess at his size and shape.

  “Now, finally,” Damon said coolly, “what the hell is all this about?”

  “I told you no funny business, didn’t I?” The shadow moved closer to him.

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Alone.” Damon suppressed the almost irresistible urge to turn for a moment to see if Weinstein was visible.

  “Those your friends?”

  “Those who?”

  “Those two guys singing.”

  “I don’t know who they are. Two drunks. I passed them on the way here.”

  “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Drunks. Where’d you learn that trick?”

  The noise of the singing was louder now, echoing between the buildings. Damon turned. The two men had stopped at the entrance to the Mews, two dark shapes outlined against the faint lights of the street lamps of Fifth Avenue. The drunks seemed to be serenading the inhabitants of the Mews. Then a shadow moved from the wall of one of the buildings near the entrance and was caught in the glow from the one lit window on the street. It was Weinstein.

  “Fuck it,” Zalovsky said. He pushed Damon violently and Damon half-fell against a doorway. There was an enormous noise as Zalovsky fired and Damon saw Weinstein go down. Damon threw himself at Zalovsky and spun him to one side. Another shot boomed. There was a cry of pain and Damon saw one of the singers crumple to the pavement. At the same moment light blazed in the front windows of the house across from where he and Zalovsky were struggling. Zalovsky was terribly strong and tore his arm away from Damon’s grasp. The light was behind him and Damon couldn’t see what the man looked like. Zalovsky was panting heavily. “You fucker,” he said, “you’re not getting away with this.”

  Damon started to run toward the entrance to the Mews. He had only gone about five feet when there was another shot. But this time it was in front of him. Weinstein, kneeling on the cobblestones, had fired. He heard a grunt from Zalovsky, then the noise of metal hitting the cobb
lestones. He stopped and turned. Zalovsky was running away from him toward the gates at the rear of the Mews. He ran holding his right arm, clumsy but swift. In two seconds he was through the gate and had disappeared.

  Damon ran toward where Weinstein, no longer kneeling, lay stretched out on his back, with his blood dark on the cobblestones.

  From far off there was the wail of the first police siren.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  “YOU CAN GO IN NOW,” the doctor said. “Mr. Weinstein is conscious and he’s asking for you. But only just a couple of minutes, please.”

  Damon was sitting with Lieutenant Schulter in the little waiting room on the same floor as the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital to which Weinstein and the drunken singer who had been hit by Zalovsky’s second bullet had been brought. The singer wasn’t asking to see anyone. He had been pronounced dead on arrival.