Willie the Actor

by David Barry

  His thoughts strayed back to that juicy bank in Jamaica, Long Island. And as his plans began to take shape, he felt a quiver of excitement passing through his body like an electrical charge. It was a challenge, and he was certain he could pull it off. He grinned at his reflection in the mirror. It was a cheeky, audacious grin, and there was a certain boyish innocence in his expression, as if he was plotting a little harmless mischief instead of scheming to rob a bank. For now he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to rise to the challenge of bank robbery.

  Chapter Three

  March, 1930

  Bill sat at the table drinking coffee and watched Adeline as she checked the contents of her handbag. She took the top off a lipstick, held a compact in front of her and gave her lips another shiny coat. She turned her back on him, as if she found it difficult to concentrate under his questioning gaze. But over her shoulder she caught his eye in the small mirror. Her eyes darted away again and she stared steadfastly at her own reflection. They both heard the minute hand of the electric wall clock in the kitchenette click as it reached the hour and it accentuated the awkward silence between them. Bill had to know what was going on. He decided it was time to put it to the test. He rose from the table, came around behind her, slid his arms round her waist and pressed his groin in between the cheeks of her backside. She reacted like she was being violated.

  ‘Not now, honey. You’ll crease this dress. ‘

  Her voice was harsh and strident, and he was struck by the ugliness of the sound. How come he’d never noticed it before? When he saw her Broadway show, she was playing one of those broads who deliberately made a show of appearing loud and dumb, so he accepted her stage voice as part of her character, and convinced himself it was all part of an act. But recently came the realisation that he found her voice unattractive and it grated on him.

  She moved quickly sideways from his embrace, picked up a pack of Camels and lit up. She blew out a cloud of blue smoke and waved an arm about to disperse it.

  Bill sighed loudly then slumped back into his chair. Adeline feigned not to notice his petulance. She knew the embrace had been a test and was annoyed by his smugness, as if armed by this knowledge he could now wallow in his self-satisfaction, having blamed her for everything.

  Out the corner of her eye she saw him reach across the living room table for her copy of Variety . He wasn’t remotely interested in show-business news, so she knew he was now trying to avoid a confrontation. He turned the pages noisily, which grated on her nerves. Then he raised his coffee cup to his lips and slurped.

  ‘Do you have to?’ she said, unable to suppress her irritation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Make such a noise when you eat and drink. ‘

  ‘I wasn’t aware that I did. ‘

  ‘Well, you do. ‘

  Angered, she grabbed her coat from the coat rack by the door and pulled it on roughly. Bill watched her. It wasn’t the first time she’d given him the brush-off, but lately it had been happening with increasing regularity, so that their love-life was now non-existent. True, they rarely quarreled, and still behaved with a certain amount of affection towards each other, but the fire had gone out of the relationship. They were more like brother and sister.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘The theatre,’ she replied without looking at him, and struggled to smooth the fur collar of her coat down at the back.

  Bill could see that there was something burning inside her and he suddenly felt anxious. Times had been good between them, but seeing her like this scared the pants off him. Certain women, he realized, were capable of anything when it came to relationships. His old mentor, Doc, had always warned him about mixing a life of crime with a certain type of woman. Not that he’d committed any crime since his parole. But that was just a question of time.

  Adeline smoothed her coat and stood waiting at the door. There was a challenge in her expression. Defiance. She was waiting for him to protest the obvious.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early to go to the theatre,’ he said.

  ‘I’m meeting Patricia for tea, then we’ll go together,’

  The way she avoided looking at him, and the studied casualness of her voice, told him she was lying. The slight hesitation, the gathering of the wits, the smoothing out of the voice, and the avoidance of eye contact, was a pattern he recognised in himself.

  Awkwardly, she turned and opened the door. Then, as if she had just remembered something, she turned back and stared at him. Her eyes were fiery, and he felt she was blaming him for something.

  ‘You never ever confide in me,’ she said, accusingly. ‘You never talk to me about your business. You’ve never once told me where you really were in those five years or the reason for your disappearance. It’s as if you don’t trust me. ‘

  ‘And you resent that?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He shrugged, gave her a regretful smile and a palms-up gesture of apology. The response it elicited was bigger than he expected. He had never before seen such venom in her expression. It was as if she hated him suddenly.

  ‘If I’m not good enough to trust. . . ‘ she snapped, then turned and exited dramatically like a character in a Broadway play.

  As the door slammed shut, a shadow image of his cell at Sing Sing surfaced in his mind. The silence in the apartment was heavy and brooding, and his thoughts darkened. He felt claustrophobic. The tension was a ball in his stomach, and he felt angry with Adeline and imagined his fist smashing into her face. He dug his nails into his palms and tried to calm down. He was shaking angrily. Gradually the violent moment subsided as he banished any brutal thoughts from his mind. Be rational, he thought. Keep calm. Work it out. He thought about Adeline’s parting words, which at first seemed enigmatic, until he realized just how revealing they were. She’d been transferring her own guilt onto him. He thought about the last couple of months. The clues had been there all along. More and more regularly she’d been having lunches with girlfriends (or so she said) and not coming home before going to the evening performance at the theatre. Or there was a last minute understudy rehearsal she had to attend. And then the late arrival home, reeking of alcohol, and armed with the excuse that the party would do her career good.

  He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He watched the smoke curling lazily upwards, and examined his feelings towards her. If, as he suspected, she was having an affair, could he really blame her? He’d been too caught up in his own scheming and planning to notice there was anything wrong. Their relationship had sunk into a sort of oblivion, both taking each other for granted. And the strange thing was, the more he thought about it, the more he became aware that he wasn’t in the least bit jealous. In fact, he was almost relieved and pleased that maybe Adeline had found the man of her dreams.

  Head tilted back, Bill smiled passively, and thought about Doc’s advice about women and whisky. He thought of the robberies he and Doc had pulled off, all of them successful. They were halcyon days and he missed his old partner. It was strange how he’d never heard from him. Maybe the safecracker had retired and was now basking in the sunshine down in Florida. A life of ease down at Palm Beach, sipping cocktails by the pool.

  Bill indulged himself, lazily watching the drifting smoke from his cigarette as the fond memories came floating back. He knew Doc would not have approved of his plans to do a bank job, and he almost carried on a conversation in his head with his old partner, in which he justified his actions by telling his mentor that he was going to use his advice and plan everything down to the last detail, so that nothing could possibly go wrong.

  But he needed an accomplice, someone trustworthy. He couldn’t pull off a bank job on his own, that was for sure. He’d already put out a couple of feelers, but so far the only two men who’d been suggested to him were Italian. Not that he had anything against Italians, as s
uch. He’d never held a racist thought in his head. It was just that the Italian involvement in organized crime tended to make the police heavy handed when it came to questioning them. And there was only so much of a beating a man could take before he talked.

  Although it was still chilly, a weak sun cast a little warmth over the city, and Bill decided to drive over to Central Park before going to Harlem to begin collecting for the Dutchman. Since he’d been cooped up in the penitentiary, there was nothing he liked better than the freedom of a long walk.

  As he walked, occasionally nodding and smiling at passing mothers with their children, he began humming a dance tune he’d heard on the radio recently. He was feeling much better about Adeline now. At first he’d sat in the apartment brooding about it. But now he made up his mind that he would find a place of his own to live, and first thing in the morning he would tell Adeline that he was leaving. He suspected that she’d be relieved, and if that was the case, there was no earthly reason why they couldn’t part friends.

  He felt so much brighter now. Perhaps it was because winter was fading and the optimism of spring was taking over. He strolled along East Drive towards Pilgrim Hill, then stopped as his attention was caught by a familiar figure some fifty yards ahead, walking in the same direction. It looked like Jack Bassett, an ex-convict from Sing Sing. It was difficult to tell from the back of the man. He had the same athletic build as Jack Bassett, and the same cautious gait, like a prowling cat, and that sleek, dark hair, but he was too far off to be certain. He was carrying a rolled-up newspaper and he slumped down onto the next free bench. Even from this distance, Bill could see the man’s body was loaded and heavy with depression. But he couldn’t tell if it was Jack or not, for the man had opened the paper and had his face buried in it. Bill continued walking until he reached the bench.

  ‘Jack?’ he enquired tentatively.

  Peering over the newspaper was a pallid, sun-starved face, startled at first. Then his face lit up as he recognized Bill.

  ‘Bill! Where did you spring from?’

  ‘I might ask you the same thing. ‘

  ‘You know I was paroled last August -’

  Bill sat down next to him. ‘Sure. A couple of months before me. I meant to keep in touch, but somehow -’

  ‘Same here. Best laid plans and all that. ‘

  They fell into an awkward silence. Bill took a pack of Camels out of his pocket. He caught Jack staring at them and offered him the pack. As Jack lit up, Bill watched him inhaling deeply, savoring it with a kind of desperation.

  ‘So how’ve you been?’ Bill said, after lighting up himself.

  Jack shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like. There’s not enough jobs to go round, and if you’re an ex-con -’

  Jack let the sentence hang in the air, and stared into the distance with a melancholic, fixed look.

  ‘So how are you making out?’ Bill asked

  Lost in his own thoughts, Jack took a while to answer. Eventually, he cleared his throat and turned to look at Bill. His expression was open and honest and right away Bill knew he had found his accomplice. Although he’d never worked with Jack Bassett before, he was certain he was trustworthy and reliable. They had met in prison and become close friends. Jack was an intelligent man, an ex-college graduate who wanted to be a writer. Back in 1920, he stole an automobile, hoping to sell it to pay his bills. But he was caught and sentenced to two and a half years at Sing Sing. Then, with only six months left to serve, he escaped. He was caught after five days of freedom and received another ten year sentence. Bill often wondered why someone of Jack’s intelligence had escaped while he had so little of his original sentence left to serve. But after that, Jack kept his head down and become a model prisoner, was a champion player in the Sing Sing inmates’ baseball team, and earned himself a review with the parole board and an early release

  ‘When I was paroled things went okay for a month or so. I worked for Waxey Gordon for a while, rum running. But it got too dangerous. If I was caught, with my record I’d be looking at a twenty year stretch. I had a couple of narrow escapes. And it didn’t take me long to realize it’s always the little guys who get caught. Never the Waxey Gordons of this world. And Kitty begged me to go straight. ‘

  Bill raised his eyebrows. ‘Kitty?’ he questioned.

  Jack chuckled. ‘You think I look this tired because I’m unemployed. It’s what married life does to you. ‘

  Bill returned Jack’s smile. ‘So you decided to settle down and become an honest man. ‘

  ‘Only that’s easier said than done. ‘

  ‘The settling down? Or the honesty part?’

  ‘Both,’ Jack said, with an ironic laugh. ‘So how about you, Bill?’

  Bill told him about his work for Dutch Schultz, and Jack shook his head disapprovingly. ‘I’ve heard a lot things about that man. All of them bad. ‘

  ‘It’s a temporary position. ‘

  ‘Until something better comes along?’

  Bill smiled openly and patted Jack’s shoulder. ‘It already has. And I’ve planned this one down to every last detail. ‘

  Jack felt a nervous tick in his cheek and he frowned. ‘Something tells me this is dangerous. More dangerous than bootlegging. ‘

  ‘On the contrary,’ Bill said. ‘I think this is marginally less dangerous, as it only involves you and I. ‘

  ‘You mean we don’t have to tangle with the likes of this Schultz fellow?’

  Bill smiled confidently. ‘Exactly. We don’t have to deal with any hoodlums. ‘

  In spite of the fear that was starting to swell inside him, and the memories of being cooped up like a caged beast for nearly ten years, Jack also started to feel the same kind of nervous excitement you get at the start of a really good ball game. His mouth felt dry and he wet his lips before speaking.

  ‘So tell me, what have you in mind?’

  A woman pushing a pram stopped to lean over and adjust something around her baby and Bill waited for her to move on before he spoke. Then he told Jack about the bank at Jamaica and how he planned to rob it. Jack listened without moving, his face expressionless. After Bill finished speaking, he took a final puff on his cigarette, and threw it on the ground. He stared at it for some time before he spoke. When he did eventually speak, his voice was almost inaudible, as if he was speaking purely for his own benefit.

  ‘I guess we have no choice,’ he said.

  Late that night Bill sat on the sofa in the living room reading Nicholas Nickleby. He had read it during his second year at Sing Sing and it had become one of his favorites.

  But now, as he attempted to concentrate on the demise of poor Smike, his attention wandered. He kept listening for the sounds of footsteps in the hall outside. From far away he heard the familiar rattle of the El. He sighed and looked at his watch. It was nearly 2. 00AM. He wondered if Adeline intended returning, or if she was planning to stay out all night. He lit another cigarette, abandoned the book and picked up a copy of the Herald Tribune. On the second page a headline caught his eye.

  YOUTH BURNED ON PYRE OF ALCOHOL TINS

  Drawing deeply on his cigarette, he read the story with unease.

  Yesterday, in Steeger, Illinois, the body of a youth was found by the

  police on a pile of flaming alcohol tins in a car. Evidence led them

  to believe that the lad was killed for encroaching on the preserve of a gang of bootleggers.

  Bill flicked through the paper. Every page seemed to be filled with reports of horrific murders and organized crime. There was even a story about two New York detectives being gunned down at point blank range. Bill pushed the paper aside and thought about Dutch Schultz. He knew the Dutchman was a ruthless killer. He’d heard rumors from reliable sources that his employer had had some of the city’s waiters’ and cooks’ union bosses eliminated before forc
ibly taking over the union himself and extracting millions of dollars from the membership.

  While aware that he was only a small cog in the Dutchman’s empire, Bill still loathed the man. On the few occasions they had met, Bill knew the gangster wasn’t so much sizing him up as trying to strike terror into his soul. He had a sneering, tough expression, and there was something mad and fearful in his dark eyes, that reminded Bill of an evil gargoyle. He trusted no one, and so Bill was made to feel that if he put a step out of line or was disloyal in any way, then dark forces would be unleashed and his employment would be terminated with fatal consequences.

  But working for the Dutchman suited his purposes for the moment. Although he still had a sizable amount of his $10,000 left, he was a lavish spender and generous to a fault. And, like most well-planned jobs, the bank robbery would take some financing. He had already given Jack $500 to make life easier for himself, and also to rent an apartment in the theatre district of Broadway, so that the address could be used to give credibility to his well-researched plan. He also needed to buy another automobile. Stealing one to do the job was too risky.

  Keys jangled in the lock and Bill’s nerves grated. Adeline swept in, slamming the door behind her. He could tell she’d been drinking and there was a defensive look in her eyes.

  ‘You’re still up,’ she said.

  He nodded and ground out his cigarette in the overfull ashtray.

  Trying not to catch his eye, she went purposefully towards the bedroom door. ‘I’m going to bed. ‘.

  ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘We need to talk. ‘