by Ted Lewis
“Sure, sure,” I say, lighting a cigarette.
The guy moves away from the wall.
“Still,” he says, “the way you came into the room, I can appreciate how you wouldn’t figure something like this.”
“Maybe we ought to remind him we haven’t checked him out yet,” Murdock says.
I shake my head then I ask the guy, “What do you hope to achieve in a flea pit like this?”
The guy jerks his head at the ceiling.
“The roof,” he says. “It’s the highest in this section. On the day, I liaise with your helicopter. In the meantime, I work from here checking the street, and by the time the day comes, we’re legislated for everything but the wild card. And that we’ve got a good chance of reading.”
“Oh, sure,” I tell him. “No problem.”
“Well,” he says, “don’t forget we’ve got you scaring him away.”
Murdock makes a move but I slow him down by standing between them.
“Forget it. Forget about him. He’s here, but he’s not going to be any use. They never are. After it’s all over and he’s played it by the book, he says well, how can I be blamed? I did it right.”
“Yeah,” the guy says. “Like you came through the door.”
I put my arm out to stop Murdock going forward.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get back on the street. There’s no point hanging around here. We don’t want to spoil his game.”
The guy grins at us as we go out closing the door behind us. The desk clerk has vanished from the landing.
“He’s right,” Murdock says. “He could have had us cold if he’d been the wrong guy.”
“Well, he wasn’t and fifty percent of that performance in there was for his own benefit,because he’d been caught cold, too, without his gun.”
“You think so?”
“What would you have done caught flatfooted like that?”
“I guess maybe you’re right,” Murdock says.
I tread my cigarette out on the floor.
“Come on, let’s go downstairs.”
On the way out I notice that the clerk is nowhere to be seen but I decide to leave it at that.
We walk down the street to where we’ve left the car, get in and pull away. After Murdock has been driving for a minute or two, I say, “Oh, Christ, let’s face it, the guy was right.”
“Sure he was right.”
“Christ, I mean, the way we went in there.”
“Yeah, like gangbusters.”
I shake my head.
“Gangbusters would have kicked in the door so hard it would’ve flattened anybody stood behind it.”
We drive along some more without saying anything until Murdock asks, “Where we going now?”
“Follow the route. Turn into Weaver Street.”
“Then what?”
I am tired and pissed off and I don’t want Murdock asking me what I’m asking myself.
“Just cover the route, George. That’s all. I don’t figure on stopping off anymore right now.”
We drive along some more without saying anything. Everybody is trying to get to their bar or their home or their wife or their girlfriend just that minute earlier than anybody else. The traffic is heavy and slow, horns are honking and the noise is just what I need to set my feelings to music, so I try and switch myself off. When I do that though, my brother’s face keeps floating into my mind, not as it is now, but as it was when we were kids—when he was seven and I was twelve.
Then other images flood in like the time he gave Marty Powell cause to want to rough him up a little. In the end it was me that stepped in and got the bloody nose and the bawling out from our mother, and I remember the way my brother kept quiet through all of it even when my mother was holding him up as an example of how to behave. I’d got so mad that afterward, when we were on our own, I’d asked my brother why he’d let me take the blame. He’d just laughed and told me he thought the reasons were obvious considering I was the one who’d got the bloody nose and the bawling out from Mom. I took a few minutes of his self-satisfied amusement then I hauled him one off and paid him the interest on my bloody nose which, of course, only gave me short-term satisfaction until Mom came on the scene again. I was kept inside for two weeks while my brother made a big deal out of going out and playing with his friends.
I light a cigarette and swear at myself for allowing the memory of a small incident like that to affect me the way it did at the time; it even makes me mad that I can still remember it, but then every memory I have of my brother affects me that way because they’re all of the same kind--- a patchwork of niggling resentment. I flip the match out of the window.
“Why in Christ’s name didn’t the bastard carve out a career with General Motors?” I say out loud.
“What?”
“Sorry, George,” I say to him, “I was just thinking about my fuck of a brother. I was thinking why, at my time of life, am I still keeping his ass clean for him?”
“Well,” Murdock says, “it don’t matter he’s your brother, does it? I mean, we’d be in the same position whoever it was.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s because he’s a politician this has happened and I’m involved with him. Christ, he never had to become a politician. He doesn’t give a shit about the niggers or Medicare or Channel 13. All he gives a shit about is himself; that’s all he ever gave a shit about. It didn’t matter what he did—all he wanted was to get himself to the top of the heap. Politics is just like any corporation to him. He doesn’t have any beliefs. They’re just paper clips to him.”
“Then why those particular beliefs?” Murdock wonders. “What’d he do, flip a coin?”
I shake my head.
“He likes them,” I reply. “He doesn’t feel them, but he likes people thinking he’s got courage, character. A hero. He’s always wanted to be a hero.”
“Like you, you mean,” Murdock says.
I laugh. “That’s right, a big successful hero like me.”
We crawl to the end of Weaver Street and stop at the light.
“What now?” Murdock says. “Still follow the route?”
“It’s getting late. Why don’t we turn it in for an hour or so?”
“Fine by me.”
“Look, drop me off at Gardenias’s will you? And you take the car and pick up your stuff from your sister’s and I’ll phone you at the Chandler in an hour or so.”
“Fine,” Murdock says, and a few minutes later he pulls the car into the curb outside Gardenias’s and lets me out and drives off.
The sidewalk is still warm in the evening sun and I can taste the dust in the air, so I cross the sidewalk and walk into Gardenias’s where the coffee is good enough to wash away even the taste of this city.
Gardenias’s is a long narrow diner that looks like any other diner except that Gardenias’s is spotless, not a speck of dirt anywhere—not a mark on the tablecloth, not a rim inside of a cup, not a splash on the counter. But it’s not only the hygiene that attracts Gardenias’s out-of-the-ordinary clientele; it’s the food which is no different from the kind of food served in any other diner in the country except that it’s the best. There is no coffee better than the coffee served in Gardenias’s, the doughnuts are like you never tasted, the soup is homemade and makes you think of something you may or may not have had years ago, the sandwiches are works of art. These are some of the reasons why Gardenias’s has the kind of clientele it’s got because many of this city’s beautiful people and trendsetters or whatever they like to call themselves have discovered the place—they like telling the uninitiated how clever they’ve been to find the joint and what a character Gardenias is.
As I go through the door, it occurs to me that however much of a character Gardenias might be, he could never compare wi
th the three characters who are taking up the space at the far end of the counter those characters being Leo Florian and the two guys who always walk behind him, Charlie Bancroft and Earl Connors. Florian himself is an extremely good-looking guy in his late fifties, beautifully barbered hair, silvery and curly; the suit he’s wearing was, of course, tailored by angels, the shoes made by somebody who is probably now a millionaire. Florian is sitting at the counter, a coffee pot in front of him, a napkin stuck in his shirt collar, and he’s drinking his coffee very carefully holding the saucer high. He’s looking very serious,as if all his concentration is going into appreciating his coffee and nothing else must interfere with that concentration. The other two, Bancroft and Connors, are not sitting down; they’re standing behind and slightly to the right of Florian, holding cups and saucers. No bookmaker would take bets as to who out of Bancroft and Connors was the ugliest or the meanest.
Bancroft is the younger of the two, going slightly thin on top, but compensating for that with the length it is at the back. One of his eyes is made of glass and the other may as well be for all the loving light that shines out of it. Like the cuffs of his pants, his nostrils are flared wide, and the distance between his nostrils and his top lip gives his face the look of an orangutan.
Connors is ugly in a different kind of way. His ugliness is in his creepiness, in the physical manifestation of his character; you feel that if you touched him, you’d come away with a grey oily film on the tips of your fingers. He’s tall and carries himself well and he always has a faint grin on his mouth. If he was ever to allow it to break into a smile, you’d expect to see a couple of fangs at either side of his mouth. Unlike Florian, Bancroft and Connors have their eyes on me the minute I walk through the door; they keep them there while I walk across to the counter and sit down. I wait for Gardenias to appear and Bancroft and Connors keep on looking at me and Florian keeps on drinking his coffee. When Gardenias comes out from the back and sees it’s me, he shoots a glance at Florian and Co., then back at me.
“Hello, Mr. Boldt,” he says, edging over to where I am. “What can I get for you?”
“Coffee,” I tell him. “And liverwurst on rye.”
“Fine,” he says, pouring me some coffee from a pot and fetching cream and sugar before he goes to work on his bleached wood board and starts assembling the sandwich.
While he’s working he says to me, “I seen your partner in here, maybe Tuesday. Eats here a lot these days.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s right. His brother-in-law doesn’t understand him.”
“Oh?” Gardenias says. “Well, he never speaks about it.”
Bancroft gives a low laugh. “That’s cops for you,” he says. “They suffer and yet they never grouse.”
“You’re right,” Connors agrees. “That’s why only a certain kind of man makes it on the force.”
I don’t say anything to Bancroft or Connors but instead I sugar my coffee and stir it up. At the same time Florian puts his coffee cup down, wipes his mouth with his napkin and gets off his stool. He moves over to where I’m sitting motioning his boys to stay where they are.
“I heard about your problem,” Florian says, sitting down alongside me. “You got any news on that yet?”
Florian’s voice is rough and ugly, a direct contrast to his cultivated appearance.
“You’re interested in that?” I ask him.
“I’m interested in everything,” he says, “and besides, I don’t like wild cards. I don’t like a mess. I get upset.”
“Even when it doesn’t concern you?”
“Yeah,” Florian says. “Even then. I get uneasy. Things get out of control, I get frustrated, maybe I make some bad decisions. I don’t know.”
“Well,” I tell him, “even if it happens, it’s only going to be messy for a few seconds because after it happens, that’s the easy part, picking up the guy.”
Florian thinks about this for a minute or two then says, “The guy receiving, he’s your brother.”
“That’s right.”
Florian shakes his head. “I hate to see this kind of thing,” he says. “A guy can’t give a shit about his brother getting whacked or not.”
“That’s good,” I tell him, “because in that case maybe you hate it so much you’ll go out and find the guy and bring him to me and save me a lot of trouble.”
Florian shakes his head again.
“Charlie,” he says, “Earl, come over.”
Bancroft and Connors snap to it and when they get to us Florian says, “Meet a prince, a man of real family feeling. You know, I’m beginning to think maybe you sent the note to the Police Department yourself.”
“No,” Bancroft says. “You got to be able to write before you can send notes.”
Connors gives a low laugh and Florian looks at me to see what I’m going to do and at the same time Gardenias puts the sandwich on the counter beside me.
“You like liverwurst on rye, Charlie?” I say to Bancroft.
Charlie hardens himself up. “Yeah,” he says, “I really do.”
“Oh Christ,” Gardenias says, turning away from the counter.
“Out,” Florian says.
For a second I wonder whether he’s talking to me or Bancroft, but then Bancroft looks at Florian, Florian jerks his head and Bancroft moves toward the door.
“You, too,” Florian says to Connors. Connors does as he’s told and the door closes behind them both. Florian and me look at one another.
“What would be the use?” he says. “You all work for me anyway.”
After a while I agree, “Yeah, what would be the use?”
I turn to the counter and take a bite of my sandwich.
“About that,” Florian says. “You could work for me for real, you know that. Half the hours, ten times the dough. Your way, it don’t mean much if some kid knocking over a drive-in whacks you before he pisses himself.”
“As opposed to being whacked by a pro while I’m fetching and carrying for you.”
“You heard about that?”
“I was the first in the department.”
“And yet it was Lambert who called me. You don’t like me enough to call me, Boldt?”
“He likes you better than I do, yes,” I tell him. “But you heard about our little problem and I’ve got no time for anything else.”
“That’s what I meant,” Florian says. “That’s what I’m talking about. A thing like this throws everything. Everything gets screwed up. Already I’m affected.”
“I may cry,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” Florian says. “Anyway, I told Lambert anything breaks on this, I want to know.”
“Then you’ll get to know, won’t you, if Lambert guarantees it,” I reply, getting off my stool and beginning to walk over to the door.
“Boldt,” Florian says.
I pause and turn back to look at Florian.
“I don’t like a thing I can’t understand,” he says. “And I never will understand you.”
“Well, I understand you, Mr. Florian,” I tell him, “and isn’t it funny that understanding you doesn’t help me to like you either.”
I close the door behind me and stand on the sidewalk waiting for a cab to cruise by. Florian’s car is parked about thirty feet along the curb with Connors and Bancroft sitting in front. When they see me come out of Gardenias’s, the car slides along the curbside and stops opposite the diner; the doors open and Connors and Bancroft get out.
“You better hurry,” I tell them. “Gardenias is holding a shotgun on him for his stickpin.”
They pause for a moment on their way across the sidewalk and Bancroft says, “It’s a funny thing ---we protect Florian and Florian protects you. Is that a fringe benefit that’s part of the package he hands you?”
“That’s right
,” I tell him. “Because see, I need Mr. Florian’s protection because I’m so scared of people like you. I wouldn’t be able to handle any of your kind of trouble which, of course, you already know.”
Connors puts a hand on Bancroft’s shoulder.
“Charlie,” Connors says, “Mr. Florian doesn’t want anything like this, don’t forget that. He’s in there now and he wouldn’t be happy.”
Bancroft looks at me. “Another time,” he says.
I nod. “There’ll be plenty of other times,” I tell him.
Then there’s nothing left for Bancroft to do but turn away and follow Connors into Gardenias’s. I turn away, too, and face the evening traffic and suddenly I feel very tired; tired of the whole day and of people like Moses and the hustler and Florian and Florian’s boys and most of all tired of myself, a forty- three-year-old cop with an undistinguished career and a dis-tinguished shit of a brother who’s still bringing trouble into my life.
While I’m thinking all this, a cab cruises into my line of vision and I almost forget to hail it, I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts. The cab makes a U-turn and pulls up. I tell the driver my address and get in the back, lean back in the seat and close my eyes, the stale atmosphere of sweat and old cigarette ends drifting into my nostrils a perfect counterpoint to the way I’m feeling. After a moment or two, though, the sleep begins to creep into my eyelids and as I begin to drift away the cab driver says, “You know this city never was an actual pleasure to drive in, but Christ, this year it’s worse than ever. I used to live in Des Moines and that was always terrible, but that’s bigger than this town and I really believe this town’s getting as bad as Des Moines. Christ, maybe it’s even getting worse.”
I open my eyes and automatically fish in my top pocket for a cigarette.
“Yeah,” I say, blinking the sleep away.
“But a job’s a job, and what can you do?” the cab driver continues. “We all got to work. But listen, did you ever hear of, say, a postman on his day off, go out and deliver a couple of hundred letters just for fun to please his old lady? Or maybe a welder go home and get out the spare kit he keeps in the garage then go around looking for things to weld? No, you never did, did you? And you never will. But with me it’s different. Last Saturday is when my day off falls. It varies. Sometimes I get days in the week, sometimes I get days on the weekend. It varies. But last Saturday, last week, I get my day off. So what happens? What happens is my wife says, ‘Look it’s a beautiful day; why don’t we go visit with my sister?’ Her sister happens to live only a hundred and thirty, hundred fifty miles away, you know? She says, ‘We can take the kids and picnic on the way, and as Mrs. Sloman next door is crocked up, we can take her kids as well which will be nice for her and nice for our kids as well. What do you say?’ she says. So I tell her. ‘This is what I say,’ I say. ‘All I want is to have a beer or two, get on the swing seat in the garden and read the paper through three or four times and when I’ve done that maybe I’ll do it again. And,’ I say to her, ‘what is more, that is what I’ll be doing. So what do you think of that?’ I ask her. So she tells me and then she gets on the phone to her sister with whom she’s already arranged this little joy ride and tells her all the forty-seven kinds of bastard I am which in itself is nothing particularly new. So in the end I finish up going down to this bar I sometimes go to and I spend the day down there, and when I get back you can imagine what the evening’s like. A great evening. So great I wish I’m out working.”