I was afraid she might get worried about giving me all that money and ask for it back, so I said, ‘Sure. I’ll be back tomorrow night. I’ll pay you back right away.’
She still hung on to my arm. ‘Don’t you even want to kiss me good-bye?’
The way it felt with the gun digging into my leg, and knowing where Al Judge was, it didn’t bother me any more, even with that smeared-up mouth. I gave her a kiss and she hung on until I started to feel funny again. Then I pulled away and went to the door. She opened it up for me, and when I was out in the hall, she said, ‘I’ll be expecting you soon,’ and stood there watching me while I ran down the stairs.
Before I went out the front door into the street I took a quick look at the bill and I knew why she said that. It wasn’t a single. It was a five-dollar bill, and she was letting me know, only in a nice way, that I was supposed to pay it back right away.
She was all right. Even with that doughface, and that smeared mouth, and that funny way of looking at you, she was all right.
Chapter Fourteen
YOU know the best thing Kipling wrote? It was about the English Army that got scared in India and started running away from the enemy. But there were two kids, not even real soldiers because all they did was play a fife and drum, and what do they do but turn around and start walking toward the enemy. Just marching that way toward the enemy all alone, and playing away like crazy on a fife and drum. It was so brave that all the soldiers from both armies just stopped and looked.
That’s how I felt. Walking down that black street with the wind roaring away in my ears, I felt like everybody was watching me. My father, and everybody who saw what Al Judge did to him, and Marion, the way she was standing by the door and watching me go down the stairs, they were all standing around the big empty field and waiting for me to go out all alone and finish the job.
They would all know. Maybe not in so many words so I would get in trouble for it, but they would know anyhow. You look somebody in the eye and say, ‘Isn’t it funny what happenend to Al Judge,’ and they put two and two together right away. Then when you walk down the block or go into the candy store and they start whispering together, you know they aren’t talking about being yellow or laying down. They’re saying you’re big stuff all right, but they wouldn’t like to get in any trouble with you because you know how to even things up.
Every step I took, that music like waves went through me. I felt so wonderful and strong I wanted to yell as loud as I could into the wind. There was nothing around anywhere except a cat coming out of an alley onto the sidewalk in front of me.
Then I let out a real yell. It wasn’t a cat at all. It was a big rat, bigger than any rat I ever saw in the bar, and it was flat on its belly with its whiskers twitching while it looked at me. The way I yelled scared it, and it took off like a black streak across the gutter, and right behind it out of the alley three or four more came running almost over my shoe.
I wasn’t scared of them. I chased them all the way across the gutter yelling at them until they ran down into a basement on the other side, and I had to grab the lamp-post with the busted light in it because I almost fell over. I got mad at myself while I was hanging on to the lamp-post. If I used my head I could have pulled out the gun quick and shot a couple of them, but I forgot about the gun.
When I got down to the avenue, there was more light and a couple of people and some cars going by. I had enough money for a taxi, so I went out into the middle of the gutter and started waving my arms and yelling at the taxis when they went by. Only none of them was empty. There was always somebody riding in them, and the drivers would just yell back at me and swing around so as not to hit me.
I didn’t have time to hang around any more, the way that music was banging away now and everybody was waiting for me. There was a subway on the corner, and I went down the stairs very careful and over to the change booth. An old guy with white hair sat inside on a high stool reading a paper. When I pushed the five-dollar bill in, he took a look at it and made a sour face. Then he put his face to the opening in the window and said, ‘Can’t you read?’ and pointed up at a sign there.
It was the one about how he didn’t have to change anything bigger than a two-dollar bill, but way down in the tunnel I heard a noise like the train coming and I didn’t have time to monkey around. I shoved the money at him and yelled ‘Give me my change! Don’t you hear the train coming?’
The way Marion gave me the money because she was being nice and this crazy old guy didn’t want to take it made me so mad I started to bang the sign with my hand as hard as I could. The guy pushed my money back again. Then he pulled a little gate shut across the bottom of the window and yelled, ‘Get out of here, you stew bum! Go on, get out of here!’
Then the train came tearing in and I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed my money and ran over to the turnstile and jumped over it. The next thing I knew, the gun came tumbling out of my pocket all over the floor and I had to bend down and pick it up.
The old guy had plenty of heart all right. When I went over the turnstile he yelled through the window, ‘Hey, you! Hey, you!’ and then he pulled open the door of the booth and ran out. I grabbed the gun up and pointed it at him and he froze up against the wall next to the booth with his mouth open. Then I turned around and dived into the train just as the door was closing. I put the gun away and looked through the window at him. He was standing at the turnstile, shaking his fist at me and yelling something but I couldn’t hear what. Then we went into the tunnel.
The only people in the car were a coloured guy and his girl friend sleeping all over each other, but I stayed out on the platform anyhow. The door was open between cars, and you could hear the train crashing back and forth and the chains creaking and the air come rushing in at you and it was exciting. If you knew how, you could stand all right without holding, like on a ship, and I tried to do it but fell up against the door. Then the conductor came across between the cars and slammed the door shut, and it got quiet all of a sudden. He came over to me and said, ‘What was the trouble? What happened back there?’
He must have thought maybe I stuck up the old guy, the way it looked, and it was so funny I started laughing. I said, ‘He got mad because I gave him a five-dollar bill to change,’ and the conductor said, ‘For Christ sake, the old crank,’ then it was Fourteenth Street and he had to open the doors.
But he was all right, that conductor. After the train started he came back again and said, ‘I hope you told him plenty. Too many of these guys get away with murder,’ and I thought that was so funny, I started laughing all over again only I couldn’t tell him why.
Then he said, ‘Where do you want to get off?’ and I told him, ‘Twenty-eighth Street,’ and he said, ‘All right, I’ll give you a call.’
When he went away, he shut the door behind him but I opened it up again so I could hear the noise better. There were a couple more people in the car now and they looked at me sore because they didn’t like it but I didn’t care. The train was crashing just like that music and it sounded good to me. And I was getting close to Al Judge, so everything could be finished up and paid off.
Then the conductor yelled down the car, ‘Twenty-eight,’ and I got off the train. The noise and the shaking up made me a little dizzy so that the floor was waving under my feet, and it was hard going up the stairs. And my mouth and throat were so dry and swollen it was hard to swallow. It tired me climbing those stairs too, and when I got to the top I had to stop and rest. It shows how I wasn’t used to staying out late.
I knew my way around all right. I had to cross the street and go down one block, and the house I wanted would be near the corner of Eighth Avenue. It was as empty and dead here as it was on Marion’s block. It wasn’t real at all. The way the houses were all dark and quiet and the street was stretching straight out ahead of me with a light shining at the other end, it was like walking down a long black tunnel and the light was where I would come out. It was like a dream I had once. Just
like a dream I had so it felt like I was doing something I did before and the whole thing wasn’t real.
I walked slow. I wasn’t scared, but that seemed like the right way to do it. Now and then I could make out the number of a house. Two-twenty-seven. Two-fifty-three. And when I saw two-ninety-nine, I put my hand into my pocket and took hold of the gun as tight as I could.
I knew number two-ninety-nine all right. I was in that house plenty times before, and I knew what it looked like and who lived there.
That was the house where Frances lived. There were four apartments in that house altogether, and nobody named Judge lived there. But Al Judge beat up my father and then he came to the house where Frances lived and that’s where I would find him. Right with Frances.
It wasn’t my fault I didn’t have that figured out before, because I never knew the number of the house. It’s the same if you asked me where Marion lived. I didn’t know the number, but I would know how to get there all right. So it wasn’t my fault at all if I didn’t know Frances figured in until I was in front of the house.
But it didn’t make any difference. Al Judge had it coming to him, and if Frances was there she would get it too. No matter how I looked at it she had it coming to her too, and anyhow she was the kind who would go right to the cops when she saw me kill Al Judge.
I went into the hall and took the gun out of my pocket. There were four doorbells, and Sedziaski was the last name, but I was too smart to push that one. I pushed one of the other buttons for the second floor and waited.
It took a long time. Then the buzzer started going on the door and I pushed it open. The inside hall was all dark and I had to stand still before I could see again. Upstairs, somebody leaned over the banister and called. ‘Who is it? Who it that?’ but it didn’t bother me any. Frances lived on the bottom floor, the first door to the right, and I ducked over to the door.
It wasn’t closed tight. It was open a crack and there was a light shining through and hitting the wall behind me like a thin yellow line. I didn’t stall. I pushed open the door quick, stepped inside, and slammed it shut. It was a good thing I had the gun all ready and aimed. Sitting and looking at me from behind the little table in the middle of the room was Al Judge.
There was a pile of letters and papers and stuff all around him. He must have been reading them when I walked in. His overcoat was thrown over a chair, but his scarf was still hanging loose around his neck.
His cane was there too. It was laying across the table with the handle a foot away from his hand. I wanted to tell him to throw it on the floor but I didn’t want him to get hold of it, and I didn’t want to get near and do it myself. I just stood there and kept the gun pointed at him. My finger was so tight on the trigger all he had to do was wink his eyes and the bullet would tear him wide open.
Frances wasn’t around. The whole apartment was only one room with a kitchenette on one wall and the closet and bathroom on the other side. The bathroom door was open, and it was easy to see nobody was there.
I just stood there and felt good the way Al Judge was looking at me. Sitting there, he didn’t look big any more. Just fat. Like a frog sitting there. And he had a big lower lip that stuck out too, like a frog. First he didn’t move a muscle, but started licking his lips as if they had gone all dry on him. Then he moved his hand an inch towards the cane, and I said, ‘No,’ and he froze up again.
I knew how he felt when he was looking at my father across the bar. I could have stayed that way an hour, just watching him and waiting to see what he would do. But he didn’t hold out long. He wet his lips again and said, ‘Listen. If you were worried about me talking, forget it. They won’t need me.’
He was all balled up about it, but he was going to figure it out for himself. And he was going to sweat plenty before I gave it to him. It hit me how the sweat would feel rolling down those stripes on my father’s back, and my finger moved so that without my thinking it was nearly all over before he knew what the score was. That was what I had to be careful of.
I said, ‘I’m not worried about you talking. I like to hear you talk.’
‘You don’t get it, fellow. Peckinpaugh turned in a description of you a mile long when he came to. I don’t have a thing to do with it. Not a thing.’
That surprised me, because I wasn’t thinking about Peckinpaugh, and it must have showed on my face. Al Judge said very quick. ‘Weren’t you laying for Peckinpaugh?’
‘No.’
‘Listen, I’m on the level. A blind man could have seen the way you were laying for him in that toilet. It wasn’t my fault I was there.’
‘I wasn’t laying for him.’
‘You weren’t?’
‘No.’
‘Then what …’ He leaned forward with his eyes squinting so you could hardly see them. ‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is this? A gag?’
‘No. What do you know about Frances Sedziaski? What are you doing here?’
He grabbed the sides of the table and pulled himself up a little. ‘What the hell is it your business?’
I shoved the gun out at him. ‘Sit still! I’ll kill you if you don’t sit still!’
He froze like that, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Don’t go waving that damn gun around, son. You’re not in any shape to fool around like that. Just keep your head, and let’s talk sensibly.’
I liked that. If I wanted, I could make him get down on his hands and knees while he talked to me. He was a real big shot, but if I said the word he would crawl over, bad leg and all, and lick my shoes. He knew how my father felt all right.
I said, ‘How did you know Frances?’
‘Christ! She was my sister.’
‘Your sister!’
‘I’m just going through her stuff. I’m supposed to have it out of here tomorrow.’
Now I was all balled up. ‘Out of here? What for? Where is she?’
‘Son, you’re too jumpy to handle that gun right. Put it away, will you, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’
‘Where is she? What happened to her?’
‘Now don’t be surprised. I’ll tell you, but for Christ sake, don’t be surprised. She’s been dead a week.’
I could hardly keep the gun where it was. I tried to talk but the words didn’t come out clear. Al Judge said, ‘What?’
‘Does my father know that?’
‘Your father? Who’s your father?’
‘You know him. Andy LaMain.’
He was on his feet so fast I didn’t have a chance to tell him not to. ‘LaMain? He sent you here?’
‘Sit down!’
He didn’t. He stood there acting crazy. Smiling at me like he wanted to be friends. ‘Look. Whatever he wants, just help yourself. It’s all right with me. What is it? Some letters? I’ll help you find them.’
He started shuffling through the stuff on the desk with his hands right near the cane and I yelled, ‘Stop it!’
He stood that way.
I said, ‘He didn’t send me. He doesn’t even know I’m here.’
The smile went away, and he started shaking his head again very slow. ‘I don’t get it, son. I’m supposed to be smart, but I don’t get it at all.’
‘You’re not smart. If I told you to take off your shirt and show me some skin, would you get it?’
He was sweating all over his forehead so you could see the drops shining under the light. He whispered, ‘You don’t understand at all, son. I can see you don’t understand. Just let me explain it, so you can get the picture.’
He knew the score and he was sweating, and there was no sense waiting any more. There was sweat running down my face too because I could feel it burning my lips. He was looking at me, and he must have known from the way I was inching the gun up what I was going to do. He must have known because for all his fat and that bad leg, he moved faster than anybody I ever saw.
The cane was up in the air so that it looked like a telephone pole was going to fall on me
. And under it his mouth was wide open, and his eyes popping, and his face all shining with sweat. It’s funny the way he looked like a statue there, and the gun barrel pointing into the middle of his face was like a cannon in front of me.
Nothing happened, everything froze like that, and then all of a sudden there was a little trickle of smoke coming out of the gun, and it was pointing up at the ceiling. Then the whole room smelled bad from smoke and my arm pained me right up to the elbow.
And Al Judge was lying on his side with the cane under him so all that showed was the handle, and blood dripping down across his face and on to the white scarf.
Chapter Fifteen
I THINK I was the only one in that whole house who didn’t hear the shot. Somebody came galloping down the stairs yelling, ‘What is it? What’s the matter down there?’ and then the door to the back apartment went flying open so hard it shook the house, and somebody there started yelling to the one on the stairs, ‘Did you hear that? What was that?’ All that time I felt I was in a dream and trying to fight my way out of it.
It’s no good when you kill somebody, even if he has it coming to him. Everybody wants to grab you, and the cops are out for you and it’s like a dog running down the street with the kids throwing rocks at him. That’s why it was like a dream, only in a dream you can wake up, but this was real.
The thing that started me going again was the way my hand and arm felt. I knew about guns kicking, but I never knew it was like that. The palm of my hand was already swelling up, and my arm felt like somebody had slammed my funny bone. I could hardly bend it to get the gun in my pocket.
There was no use trying to get out the front way with everybody piling out into the hall. I ran across the room, grabbed the window, and tried to push it up. But it was a ground-floor window, so it had one of those extra locks on it, the kind you have to turn like a screw to loosen up. It was stuck so tight I couldn’t budge it. I had it with both hands trying to loosen it up when somebody started banging on the door and yelling, ‘Hey, in there! What’s the trouble in there?’
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