If I had something to shove into that window lock, I could pry it open, like with a lever. I let go and started looking around the room. Then the knob on the door rattled, and the door began opening. I was near the closet. I pulled open the door, dived in, and pulled the door closed, but not all the way, so it wouldn’t click.
It was a wide, shallow closet with a bar running all across it, and a lot of dresses and nurse’s uniforms hanging there. There wasn’t any room for me to stand, so I got down on my knees and held one hand on the doorknob. If anybody tried to open the door, I could pull it shut and maybe scare them away.
For a couple of seconds it was quiet, and then all of a sudden a woman started screaming so loud I almost slammed the door shut. ‘Look at that! Look at that! It was a crook, and he’s killed him! Look at that!’ and a man yelled, ‘Quiet! Quiet! Do you hear? It’s all right!’
She yelled, ‘Blessed Jesus! It might have been you! I told you not to answer that bell. You could have been dead this minute. Ahhh,’ and then she started laughing and crying all mixed up, and it sounded like she went crazy.
I had to see what was happening. There was a little crack of light coming through the door, and I put my eye there and looked out. The one who was yelling was a big fat woman with a dirty old bathrobe on and her nightgown coming all the way down to her feet. She had her head back and it was rocking around, and her grey hair was loose and hung down to the middle of her back. She looked like she was ready to fall over, and there was a tall skinny guy trying to hold her. He had on winter underwear with a bathrobe over it too, and he was so mad it looked like he wanted to hit her.
There was another old woman too, a little dried-up one with her cheeks all pulled in so she couldn’t have had any teeth, and she had hold of the fat one’s hand and was rubbing away at it and slapping it. In back of them was another guy, I guess the dried-up one’s husband, with his pants on over his pyjamas, and he was pulling and hauling at the cover on the bed trying to get it off. Finally he got it loose, and he ran over and threw it over Al Judge so that all you could see was that little bit of cane sticking out. Then he helped them steer the fat woman to the bed, and she sat down there, and the big skinny guy shoved her head down and began slapping her back. All this time she was laughing and crying and rocking around so they could hardly hold her.
If there was only some way of getting the light out, I could have dived out through the door and taken my chances. But the light switch was next to the door where I could see it but I couldn’t reach it. All I could do was stay there on my knees and hope they would get out and leave me alone a minute. That was all I wanted, just one minute.
The fat woman was quieting down now, just saying, ‘Ahhh, ahhh,’ and the guy with the pants on stood watching and rubbing his hands as if they were freezing and he couldn’t warm them up. Then he said, ‘I’ll go out and fetch the police, Phelan,’ and Mr Phelan, the big skinny one, said, very sore, ‘All right. All right. Get along with it,’ and the other one ran out of the room.
The fat woman started feeling better. She sat up and kept pushing the others away and saying, ‘It’s all right. Let me be. Let me be.’
The little woman said, ‘It wasn’t your fault you were taken like that, Mrs Phelan. It was a terrible thing to see.’
Mrs Phelan kept rocking her body around. ‘It wasn’t the dead, Mrs Shane. I swear it wasn’t the dead at all. It was the way this one could have been laying up in that hall now with a bullet through his head. That’s all I was thinking of. I said to him, “Anybody rings the bell this hour of the night is up to no good. Stay out of that hall,” and because God was good, he’s alive to hear me say it again.’
Mr Phelan sat down on the bed and pulled a little piece of cigar out of his bathrobe pocket and started to chew on it. ‘Do you know what this means? A week’s, maybe two weeks’ rent before the police get it straightened out. And the room promised for tomorrow night.’
Mrs Phelan rocked worse than before. ‘There’s a curse on this room. It’s the devil’s room. First the girl and now her brother all in a week. If it wasn’t for these hard times, we’d never be able to rent it again sure.’
Mrs Shane said, ‘Her brother! I thought this was the new one who took the room,’ and Mrs Phelan said, ‘No, Mrs Shane, it’s the brother himself. And a big man in the newspaper business. You’ll see this all over the papers tomorrow.’
‘Will I, now!’
Mrs Phelan said, ‘Still he went easier than she did. I could have told her. The day she took up with that cheap bartender, she put a curse on herself.’
They were talking about my father. I knew that, and the blood was banging away so hard in my ears I was afraid I would miss something. I stopped looking through the crack and put my ear there, so I could hear better.
Mrs Shane said, ‘Holy Mother Mary. And what was the story there?’ and Mrs Phelan said, ‘And what is the story any time? He got her into trouble sure enough, and then ran off and left her. It was no appendicitis attack she died from, Mrs Shane. It was an A.B. and may the butcher who did it burn in hell forever for his sins!’
Mrs Shane said, ‘Holy Mother Mary!’ and Mr Phelan said, ‘Agh. You’re talking too much altogether.’
‘Am I? And where’s the secret if the one it’s promised to is laying cold and dead in front of you?’
That was what Al Judge was trying to tell me. My father got Frances in trouble, and that’s why he was beaten up. And Frances died on account of it, so he had it coming to him. My father had it coming to him, and he never let me know. Now it was too late. The cops were coming and they would send me to the electric chair and it was all my father’s fault for not telling me.
I started to cry. I was so scared on my knees in the dark there I couldn’t help it. All I wanted was to get Al Judge back again so I could tell him everything was all right, but it was too late for that. Then I was afraid they would hear me crying, so I grabbed a dress and shoved it against my face. It had a little smell of perfume on it like Frances, and that made it worse.
Then I heard walking around and Mr Phelan saying, ‘It’s all right, Mrs Shane. I can get her up myself,’ and then low talking in the hall and everything was real quiet.
I looked out through the crack and nobody was in the room. It was worse waiting in that closet that anything, and I had to take a chance. I went across the room as careful as I could and opened the door enough to see into the hall. I could hear Mr and Mrs Phelan still talking at the top of the stairs, but the hall was empty. In one second I was out of the front door and in the street.
Eighth Avenue was only a couple of steps away but I didn’t go that way. There was too much light on it and I didn’t want to go back to the bar anyhow. My father would be there waiting, and I wouldn’t know what to tell him. Everything I did was wrong, and he might want to kill me for it, or turn me over to the cops right away. Down the street to Seventh Avenue it was darker, and I started running that way, with my legs shaking and my heart pounding so I couldn’t take in enough air.
The wind was all gone, and in front of me across town the sky was beginning to get grey. It wasn’t light yet, but I could tell it was getting near daytime and I was afraid of that too. In the nighttime, if you take care, you can get around without anybody seeing who you are, and it seems like people are more friendly and take it easier in the nighttime too.
By the time I ran to the corner, I had a stitch in my side so I had to stop and rest. My head was splitting too. It felt like a strap was pulling tighter and tighter around it, and my mouth was so dry I couldn’t get up any saliva to swallow. I had to have some place where I could stop and think things over and figure them out. And I needed somebody to talk to who could maybe straighten me out.
Everything looked so easy when I started out, but I could see now I should never have got mixed up in this kind of older people’s business. Because that’s how it is with them. It doesn’t look so bad on the outside, but when you start digging into it, it’s worse tro
uble than you ever figured.
I needed somebody old to talk to and the only one I could think of was Dr Cooper. He was always talking about taking chances and that’s what I did, so maybe he would understand. And Marion liked me plenty, so maybe she would understand too. If I went back there, I could sound them out and tell how they would take it, and if it looked all right I could open up.
And more than anything else right then, I needed a drink of water. I couldn’t even think straight I was so thirsty, but if I drank and drank until I was filled up maybe it would be easier.
I went down three steps of the subway, and I stopped. All I had was the five-dollar bill, and I couldn’t take any chances on making trouble with it. It was no good taking a taxi either. The driver would look at me and know around where I was going and that was the worst thing that could happen. I started walking down Seventh Avenue as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast.
All the time I was walking it kept getting lighter and lighter. There were trucks out now and more people on the street. If I walked too fast they turned around and looked at me, and any one of them might be a plain-clothes cop who knew about Peckinpaugh or even Al Judge and would grab me. So it was just as well I had to walk slow. Anyhow, when I tried to speed it up, the stitch in my side almost killed me.
Near Fourteenth Street there was a clock in a cigar-store window said almost six o’clock. There were a lot of people coming along now, mostly guys in old clothes with lunch boxes in their hands. I was surprised to see how many people went to work so early. There were cops too, walking along and shaking door handles on every store, and when I saw them coming I would stop and make believe to look in a store window until they went by.
When you see a place in the daytime, it’s hard to find again at night, and it must work the other way too, because that’s what threw me off. I found Barrow Street all right, but it was all daytime by then, and just when I got near there the street lights started to go out down the avenue. I turned down the block, but I couldn’t figure exactly what house it was. There was the busted street light across the street, but the houses looked all the same.
I got good and scared. I started right near the alley where I saw the rats come out, and I went up into each house and looked at mailboxes. It took four houses before I found the one I wanted. Just a little hunk of paper and on it was Rostina-Gordon. I put my thumb on the bell underneath it and kept pushing as hard as I could.
The door started to go click-click-click, and I had to rattle it to catch it at the right time. Inside, when I looked up at all those stairs, I felt all in. I had to sit down and rest no matter what happened, and while I was doing it, I could hear Marion saying, ‘Right up here. Right up here,’ all the way on top.
It was no good resting. It didn’t make me feel any better. I started going up the stairs, hanging on to the banister, and all that time she kept saying, ‘Right up here,’ so that I wanted to tell her it was all right, it was only me, but I didn’t have the strength.
When I got to the top she was waiting there, and she looked the same as when I left her. Smeared lips and everything. Only when she saw the way I was coming up, she got all worried and grabbed my arm and almost pulled me into the house.
I just stood there looking at her, and she started shaking my sore arm good and hard so it hurt all over again. She kept shaking it and saying, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ and when I told her, it came out all different from the way I wanted it to.
It must have been so much on my mind I couldn’t help it. That’s what it must have been, because when she stopped shaking me, all I could say was, ‘I killed Al Judge, and I want a drink of water.’
Chapter Sixteen
IT’S funny how people take things so differently. You go in and tell Mrs Ehrlich there’s nothing wrong, only little Gertrude is crying in the carriage outside, and the way she carries on and comes running out, you’d think something real bad had happened. Marion was upset, I could see that all right, but she didn’t carry on any. First she pushed me down into the armchair, then she went into the kitchen and came running back with a glass of water and watched me while I drank it all down.
She stood in front of me with her eyes very shiny. Then she started looking all around the room, and flopping her hands up and down as if she had just washed them and was shaking the water off. ‘I should tell Lloyd, shouldn’t I? But it’s so early. He hates to be bothered so early.’
I said, ‘You have to tell him. Tell him it’s important. You have to!’
She was flopping her hands around and breathing so hard I could hear it. ‘He’ll be so angry, George. Can’t you wait a little while? You don’t know what a temper he has.’
The way she said that made everything seem crazy. Here I told her I killed somebody, and all she worried about was waking up Dr Cooper. And I had to talk to him now. Talking to her only made things more tangled up. My hand hurt bad, and my head was splitting so everything was a little blurred, and I didn’t know what to do.
I yelled, ‘Wake him up, will you! I have to talk to him! Why don’t you wake him up?’ and then the bedroom door came swinging open with a bang, and Dr Cooper walked out into the room. His face was pasty white, as bad as Marion’s, and his eyes were almost gummed together. All he had on was a pair of pyjama pants, and he had white skin like a girl only with curly red hair all over his chest. He said, ‘Jesus! Why don’t you two hire yourselves a hall?’
Tanya came out too, in a bathrobe and with her hair up in two little pigtails. She said, ‘Oh, all right, Lloyd. It’s almost seven anyhow.’
He said, ‘What do you mean, all right? Can’t I ever get any sleep around here? I’ll be dead all day if I don’t get any sleep.’ Then he said to Marion, ‘Why don’t you fix your face. You look terrible,’ and she started to rub her hand around her mouth, scared like.
Tanya said, ‘All right, cut it out. What are you doing, George? Going now?’ and Marion stopped rubbing her face and said, ‘He just came back. He killed somebody.’
Dr Cooper looked at her. ‘Sure he did. On his own milk-white charger. I know because I heard it galloping around the room all night.’
He went over to the little table, very sore, and got a cigarette. Then he started looking around for a match but Tanya said, ‘Very funny, Lloyd. Now if you’re so worried about your sleep, why don’t you go back to bed?’ and he threw the cigarette down and started walking back to the bedroom.
I didn’t want that. I could see it wouldn’t be easy to talk to him the way he felt, but I had to. I ran after him and got hold of his arm. ‘It’s not a lie. It’s true! I killed Al Judge, only I’m sorry now, and I don’t know what to do! Don’t you understand? I don’t know what to do, and you’ve got to help me!’
He pulled away from me. Then he turned around and I could see he looked scared. ‘What do you mean, killed him? What did you do? Beat him up so bad you think he’s dead?’
‘I shot him!’
‘Shot him? For Christ sake, you’re drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk!’ I pulled the gun from my pocket and held it out to show him. ‘I shot him with this.’
Marion let out a squawk and went back so fast she hit the bed and sat down, but Tanya and Dr Cooper just stood there looking at me, then the gun, and then me again.
Dr Cooper said, ‘What are you making this up for? What’s it all about?’
‘I’m not making it up! Al Judge beat up my father with his cane and I killed him. I thought it was all right but then I found out something, and it isn’t.’
‘Then what was all that about him firing you and you just wanted to get even?’
‘I didn’t say that. You said it, and I let you think it was so.’
It looked like if he could have grabbed the gun he would have killed me right there. ‘I said it? Don’t you go putting words into my mouth! What are you trying to do anyhow? Make me your alibi?’
‘You don’t understand! I don’t want to get you in trouble. I don’t know what
to do. I want you to tell me what to do.’
He shoved me back so hard I almost fell down. ‘First put that gun away! What do you want to do? Kill somebody else?’
I put the gun away in my pocket, and he started to rub his hand over his hair like a wild man. ‘You mean all that stuff about working for Judge was crap?’
‘I don’t work. I go to school. I’m too young to work!’
‘Too young!’
‘I never worked for Al Judge! I’m sixteen! I was only sixteen yesterday!’
I was looking at Dr Cooper so hard I never even thought about Marion. It made my heart almost stop the way she jumped up and yelled, ‘You’re not! You’re not! Don’t say a thing like that!’
Dr Cooper didn’t even look at her. He was looking at me with his mouth open, and I yelled, ‘That’s how I had the tickets last night. It was my birthday present because I was sixteen!’
I think Marion must have gone crazy. She ran at Tanya and tried to rake her fingernails down Tanya’s face, and all the time she was screaming, ‘You thought it was funny, didn’t you? That’s why you did it! You thought it was funny, didn’t you?’ until Tanya got hold of her and yelled back, ‘Stop that, Marion! I didn’t know! I tell you I didn’t know!’
Then all of a sudden Marion pulled herself loose and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Tanya started to go to the door, but Dr Cooper said, ‘Let her alone! She’s better off in there.’
She said, ‘I have to get you a robe anyhow. It’s cold in here,’ and he said, ‘No. I want to get this straightened out first,’ so she just stood looking at me. She had a big scratch all down her cheek too, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
Dr Cooper said, ‘Why did Judge beat up your father?’
‘Because my father got his sister in trouble. But I didn’t know he did.’
‘You mean Judge’s kid sister, Frances?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t know. I didn’t even know she was his sister! How could I know if they don’t have the same name even!’
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