by Ted Lewis
“Drink up and beat it,” he says.
“You want any help, buddy?”
This is Murdock speaking. The bastard. I’ll kill him, the bastard.
“Uh, uh,” the bartender says, shaking his head. “Not with this customer. He ain’t got that kind of trouble in him. They never do.”
I pick up my glass and take a big drink. The bartender drifts down to where Murdock is. I finish my drink and get off my stool and walk toward the door. As I’m going out, Murdock says to the bartender, “Fags. This town’s getting full of them.”
“You let one in,” the bartender agrees, “and suddenly it’s like with niggers, they’re all moving in.”
I close the door behind me and walk down the block a way then cross the street, unlock the car and get in on the driver’s side and slide over and light a cigarette waiting for Murdock. I have to wait around ten minutes and then the door of the bar opens and Murdock comes out. As he crosses the street, I can see he’s grinning all over his face.
He gets in behind the wheel and says, “This town, these days you can’t go anywhere without fags whenever you turn around.”
I light another cigarette and I say to him, “You bastard. What the Christ is your fucking game? What about the arrangement we had?”
“Yeah, that was a pretty good arrangement,” Murdock says. “The only thing was, I couldn’t get in the car, could I? Some dumb bastard of a cop locked it up, all safe and sound.”
“Sure I locked the car. What was to stop you unlocking the car with your own key?”
“Because that’s what you used to lock up the car.” I feel in my coat pocket and, of course, Murdock is right; I’d taken the keys out of the ignition without thinking about it. My own keys make a small jingling sound in my pocket.
“Yeah,” Murdock says.
I roll down the window and throw my cigarette out.
“Okay,” I say. “All right. So I lock you out. But do you have to walk in and make a sandwich out of the guy? I mean, the percentages are if he hadn’t made me, he would have made you.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t unless he’s a better actor than you are,” Murdock says. Then he laughs. “You were good, you really were. I even began to wonder myself.”
“Sure you did,” I tell him, “but what did you do up in the apartment apart from jerking off over his old underwear. I mean, what else could have taken you so long?”
Now I know Murdock’s got something to tell me because he settles down in his seat, takes out his cigarettes and lights one. Then he takes his turn rolling down a window and, of course, I have to go along with the big build-up after the way I screwed up the car routine.
“Well,” Murdock says. “You still think I’m out on a limb about this business or have I read you wrong?”
I’m tempted to take hold of Murdock by his lapels and shake him until his teeth fly out of the window but I don’t; I just say, “What did you find?”
But I’m still not going to get it that easy. Murdock says, “I broke no sweat getting in. That part was a pushover. So I’m in. It’s a small apartment. The door opens straight into the lounge. Apart from that there’s two bedrooms, kitchen off the main living area.”
I feel like telling Murdock I can picture the whole scene he’s so beautifully painted because as Murdock knows it’s not exactly unlike my own layout, but I let that pass too and Murdock carries on with his monologue.
“A nice little apartment,” Murdock says. “That’s the first thing occurs to me. A nice little apartment. Or rather it would be if it was furnished right. Because the lounge is bare except for a T.V. set, a straight-back chair and a cot. A couple of clean shirts hanging behind the door. Some beer cans. The rest of the place, nothing. Nothing in the kitchen. No food. The ice box isn’t even plugged in. Nothing in the bedrooms. So with all this nothing there’s got to be something.” He’s waiting for me to ask him what the something is but I say to myself, fuck him. He waits a while for the reaction he’s not going to get and then he says, “And there it is. In the most obvious place, but do I find it right away? No. I look everywhere. Closets, everything. I even feel the walls, just in case. But the cot has a mattress.”
Murdock takes a left and pulls in at the curb outside of Clark’s and switches off the ignition. I just sit there and wait.
“It’s beautiful,” Murdock says. “All it doesn’t have is eight- track stereo. All clean, untraceable, gift-wrapped all in nice polyethylene. Even my grandmother couldn’t miss it and she’s been dead twenty years. With Styles behind it, your brother’s career will be talked about as being very distinguished but also very short. And apart from using an atom bomb, it’s a certainty.” I sit there and think about what Murdock’s said. Then I say to him, “Okay. So Styles is it. The thing is big. If Styles is it, it’s bigger than him and bigger than Florian and Draper and everybody else put together. And that’s a hell of a thought to have to come to terms with.”
There is a long silence then Murdock replies, “Yeah. Styles makes the hit and then the whole machine is oiled so that he’s out of town before your brother’s brains hit the sidewalk. It just doesn’t matter he’s been staying at the Chandler like a visiting movie star. That’s Florian’s, so he’s never been in town. And the department isn’t exactly going to give the Chandler the treatment. And the reason he stays there, all wide open, is chances are we would have made him anyhow. So they drum up the wife and the kid and the note from the nut and let us find out about Styles and then give us the nice little explanation. And it’s so obvious to us that Styles could never be the hit man that we go along with all the crap and yawn due to all the trouble we’ve taken for nothing and go back to looking for some guy there never was.”
More silence. A couple of guys go into Clark’s, a couple of guys come out.
“Christ,” Murdock says. “They must have everything laid out, the spot, everything.”
“Yeah,” I agree, “but there’s something you’re forgetting. We know Styles is here and by your figuring we’re supposed to know. But we know. And if the hit’s successful, and according to you it can be nothing else, we still know. So what happens to us afterward? The same as what happens to my brother?”
Murdock doesn’t answer.
“And taking that little idea a stage further,” I say, “why don’t they take us out first before the main event?”
Murdock shakes his head. “Because if they did that there wouldn’t be a main event. If you’re taken out, your brother doesn’t come within a million miles of this place.”
“Then why choose this place?”
“Look, I tell you what I’ll do,” Murdock says. “I’ll go and ask Draper or Florian or Styles who’s exactly behind all this. Then I’ll ask for their phone number and I’ll call them up and I’ll ask all the answers to all the questions that my being a dumb cop I haven’t figured out yet.”
I light another cigarette.
“So, according to the way you’ve got it figured,” I say, “if we take Styles out, we’re taken out. If we don’t, he scores. And we’re still taken out.”
“I don’t know,” Murdock says. “All I know is this: the man is Styles and your brother’s his hit.”
There’s another silence.
“And your way of dealing with that small problem?” I say. “I mean, I know you must have got that figured, too.”
“I’ve got something figured,” Murdock says. “I mean, I know you’re interested in Styles for deeply personal reasons, nothing to do with family or anything as important as that, and that you’d like to fix him in a nice direct personal kind of way. But I want him another way, and I figure it’s the only way if we want to stay breathing, and that’s to take him just as he’s about to pull the trigger. That way we got a dead man who’s holding a rifle, and there isn’t a lot they can do about that right away beca
use there’s going to be a lot of national coverage and a lot of pictures across the country and Draper’s going to have to play along with it—maybe even pin a couple of medals on us.”
“And that makes me feel good because that’ll maybe give us six months or so before we’re never heard of again.”
“Nominee’s brother foils assassination bid? You got to be joking. The publicity’d be too big. You’d be a national hero just like your brother. Imagine. You’d finally have caught him up.”
I ignore the last part of Murdock’s remarks and shake my head.
“This year, next year, five years’ time,” I tell him. “They’ll do it. No way they won’t. And you got a family. They won’t overlook that little detail.”
“So, we type out a little statement of the story so far and we deposit it with some law firm and we let Draper know all about it. From there they’ll all know right down the line.”
I throw my cigarette out of the window.
“Well, I guess the only way to take Styles is your way,” I say to Murdock. “There’s other ways I’d prefer, but I guess you’re right.”
It’s Murdock’s turn to shake his head.
“Well, they always say there’s got to be a first time for everything,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“You agreed with me,” Murdock says. “For the first time in your fucking life you didn’t give me an argument.” I don’t say anything to that. Then when Murdock’s got over his shock he says to me, “The girl—you think she’ll tell Styles about you?”
“I doubt it. She shoots plenty of shit but whatever she says, the thought of Styles heaving her out on her ass is enough to keep her quiet. Styles will throw her out anyway, sooner or later. She’s just Kleenex to him.”
Murdock thinks about that and then he says, “So what did you do while I was tracing the number?”
“I saw Jack Fleming. I thought that just in case there was the vague possibility you were right, I’d put him and Tony Copeland on to covering Styles and the girl so that we have time to improvise.”
Then I go on to tell Murdock what I’ve fixed in detail as far as Fleming and Copeland are concerned.
“Well,” Murdock says. “That seems fair as long as you can trust a lush like Fleming.”
I heave a long deep sigh. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” Murdock says, and then looks at the front door of Clark’s. “Are we going in there or are we not?”
We spend an hour or so at Clark’s and while we’re in there, we get the treatment from Agnes and Marcia and Moses. But naturally we just sit there and hold onto our drinks and the most significant thing about the evening, as far as I’m concerned, is that Pete Foley doesn’t appear. Then Murdock goes back to the Chandler and I go back to my apartment after agreeing that with Fleming and Copeland at work there’s nothing else we can do.
When I get home I get undressed, put on my robe and start running a bath. While the tub’s filling up, I put some coffee on the stove and when the bath has filled up, I take in a cup and the coffee pot and put them on the small table by the tub. Then I take off my robe, step in and sink into the hot water. I close my eyes and, for once in my life, I allow my consciousness to drift into a kind of oblivion where dead unexplored thoughts are caught up in the slow swirling steam of the bathroom. The heat of the water seeps into my body and I’m almost slipping into a half-conscious sleep when out in the living area the phone begins to ring. I screw up the skin around my eyes tight and swear to myself, but the phone carries on ringing and so in the end I level myself up out of the tub and wrap my robe around me. Still swearing, I shuffle through to the living area, pick up the phone and wait for whoever it is to tell me whoever it is.
“Roy?” the voice says at the other end of the phone. I close my eyes for a moment or two before I answer. All I need right now, I think, is my brother calling me up after what trouble his mere fucking existence has caused me over the last twenty- four hours.
“This is Mr. Boldt’s answering service,” I say. “Mr. Boldt is out of town for the next seven years so if you wish to leave a message, replace the receiver and go look for a map.”
My brother laughs his pro laugh the way I knew he would and then he says, “You must be the only cop in the whole U.S.A. who’s still got a sense of humor.”
“Or maybe it’s the other way around,” I tell him.
“Well,” he says, “how’s everything? How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I never felt better.”
“That’s good,” he says. “It really is.”
I wait again.
“Well, I guess you heard I’m coming to town on a little visit,” he says, putting the laugh in his voice, making like a regular guy with the gags.
“I had heard,” I tell him.
“Yes,” he says. “I know. But seriously, there’s a couple of things I just wanted to arrange before I arrived. You know how it is on a trip like this; the machine takes over and they don’t let you do little unimportant things like seeing the folks unless they can make some kind of capital out of it; you know the way it is—”
“Especially if your brother’s a cop who votes for the other guys.”
“Oh, come on, Roy,” he says, this time a little humorous rebuke in his voice, but I know him well enough to catch the hard impatience he’s trying to conceal. “You know what I’m talking about. No, the thing is, I thought—you know how I’m going to be pushed on this schedule—but I thought maybe we could get together, maybe if only for an hour, you know, spend a little private time together.”
“What for?” I ask him.
“Well, maybe we could take a walk down Oakleigh Street. Look at the old house. Just, you know, revisit the past.”
I’m beginning to get the picture. A typical P.R. double shuffle. Papers full of me, the right-wing cop, walking through times past with a brother who differs politically from me; yet here I am and here he is. Two opposing poles of the establishment yet both Americans. Kids grown up together on a street like a million other streets--- me the law enforcer, him the lawmaker. After the assassination attempt’s been foiled, just think of the play that could be made on the lines of My Brother’s Keeper, and how the people who didn’t share his political opinions would be drawn that little bit closer to him. Because of the obvious affection he’d be showing for me in the pictures, and if we could disagree and still get along, then maybe that just showed the best side of America and maybe even he’s not too radical after all.
“With or without the cameramen?” I ask.
“Roy, you bastard,” he says, still working on the humorous tone, “you always have to see things the way you want them. Can’t you accept I’d just like to spend one small hour with you, for old times’ sake? And besides, Louise’d like it. She really likes you, you know that, in spite of what I tell her about you.”
“Well,” I tell him, “I don’t care either way but we can take a walk down memory lane if you like, if your taste is Early American freeways, that is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last year,” I tell him. “They tore the place down. The whole street. And most of the other streets around as well.”
There’s a short pause, almost nonexistent, before he says, “I’d no idea. None at all.”
No, I think to myself, I bet you hadn’t, and I also know that some functionary in my brother’s machine is going to have a lot of explaining to do.
“Anyway,” my brother says, “we can arrange something else. I’ll get back to you on that tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I tell him.
There’s another short silence and I wait to see how he’s going to pick the words.
“The other business, this threat thing—have you come to the same conclusions
I’ve reached yet? I mean, frankly, I personally think it’s just a scare; these things happen all the time.”
That’s why you’ve got guys staked out in flea traps, I think, but I say to him, “You’re probably right, but I don’t have to tell you that the Department is treating this city like there’s a smallpox epidemic and we’re trying to find the carrier.”
“Of course,” he says. “Of course, I realize that and naturally I appreciate it. I’m aware of the pressures bearing down on your resources.”
“In that case, why come? Why not give us all a rest?” I ask him.
“Well,” he says, “it wouldn’t exactly take a great deal of imagination on your part to guess that there’s been a lot of pressure put on me not to come, but I felt this way: if I don’t come, what kind of guy am I? Who’d be interested in me; the first scare letter I get I pull out of my arrangement? I’ve got a duty to the people whether they support me or whether they don’t support me, to show them that politicians in this country don’t run scared, that decisions aren’t made by looking down a gun’s sight.”
Great stuff, I think. And if he was really bright, he should have written the threat note himself. When I don’t say anything he asks, “Don’t you agree with what I’ve just said?”
“Sure,” I tell him. “I’ll be awake all night just thinking about it.”
“There’s no way, is there?” he says. “I mean, you’re determined to be this way for the rest of our natural lives.”
“Well in your case it might not be all that long,” I tell him, and at that point the next thing I hear is the receiver being replaced at the other end of the line. I put my own receiver down and look at it for a moment or two then I walk back into the bathroom. The water has cooled down by now and so has the coffee So I turn on the hot tap,, drain the cup of lukewarm coffee and I sit on the toilet seat and watch the steam rise as the water begins to get hot again.
The phone takes me out of my dream. In the dream, I’m just about to make love to my wife, and it’s one of those dreams that is so real it seems to have more reality than when you’re awake. Her face is beneath me, her head back-tilted slightly on the pillow, a serene expression on her face, not expectant, wondering. Just a wakeful remembering of what is about to happen to her, a still gratefulness for the satisfaction that is to come. I can smell the sweet smell of her body, and the creases in the pillow and in the sheet below her are knife sharp in my mind’s eye. There is a small sound from her mouth as it opens slightly, and then I’m awake, listening to the ringing phone. I’m staring up at the ceiling, not at my wife’s face and for a long moment I can’t believe that I’ve been dreaming and now I’m awake. When reality settles around me, I lie there for a few minutes, letting the phone ring, trying to recapture the dream’s sharper reality. The phone stops ringing and the images of the dream begin to blur and the more I concentrate on retaining them the more they soften. So in the end I throw back the sheets, jack-knife out of bed and pull on my robe, and go through into the kitchen to put the coffee pot on the stove. Then the phone begins again, so I go through into the living area and pick up the receiver.