by Ed Gorman
“It sure is.”
George, a gray-haired man who worked in the teller’s station next to Les, leaned forward and whispered, “You look terrible, Les."
“Didn’t sleep?”
“Drinking?”
Despite his mood, Les smiled. George was forty-eight. His last son had just left home to go to business college in Chicago. George needed a younger one to look after. Les was a natural choice. “No,” Les said, “I wasn’t drinking. At least not much.”
“Pearly’s?”
Les sighed. “That I have to admit to. Pearly’s is where I drank.” George, who wore a green eyeshade and a black sleeve garter and whose fingers were permanently stained with ink, clucked. “You know the kind of trouble you can get into.”
Almost to himself, Les said, “Maybe that’s why I went there.” George Buss looked stricken. Then he peered closer at Les, as if he were a doctor and Les a new virus. “You-aren’t still sneaking around seeing his daughter Susan, are you?”
But before Les could answer, the second of three doors on the east side of the bank opened up. A tall, trim man in an expensive blue, Edwardian-cut suit stepped out, holding well-manicured hands to either lapel of his coat. With his golden hair and confident brown gaze and almost arrogantly angled mustache, he looked like the sort of man who was always captain of the rowing team at Yale.
He proceeded then to walk down the length of the six teller stations, a military man inspecting the troops. And that’s how the tellers -three men, three women-responded. Throwing their shoulders straight back. Tricking out their mouths with gleaming smiles. Nodding a by-God-and-by-gumption nod to the man.
Kind monarch that he was, the golden man nodded in return. It was best to give the troops a feeling of self-esteem. This made them willing to work longer hours and ask for fewer raises.
The golden man, who was named Byron Fuller, paused when he came to Les. “Feeling all right today, Mr Graves?”
Les nodded. “A touch of the flu.”
Fuller studied him. Then he smiled. “I hope it was nothing more serious than a few stolen hours at Pearly’s.”
Next to Les, George Buss broke out into a sweat.
“Pearly’s, Mr. Fuller?” Les said, once he’d found his voice. That was their contract. They called him “Mr.” and he called them “Mr.” or “Miss” or “Mrs.”
The faint smile remained on Fuller’s mouth. “Certainly you’ve heard of the place, Mr. Graves.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of it.”
“And certainly you’ve even visited it once or twice.”
Les cleared his throat. His shoulders were still thrown back. He was still trying to smile, the way Mr. Fuller wanted them to smile seven hours a day, five days a week. “Well, once maybe.”
Fuller looked at George Buss. “Now, if you were a wagering man, would you think that Mr. Graves had visited Pearly’s only once during his two years in Cedar Rapids?”
George gulped. “I-I wouldn’t know, sir.”
Fuller smiled back at Les. “Well, between us and the lamppost, Mr Graves, I sincerely hope you did ‘tie one on’ last night, and I hope it was at Pearly’s.”
“You do, Mr. Fuller?”
“I certainly do.”
“And why would that be, if you don’t mind my asking?”
This time Fuller-who was behaving strangely indeed-allowed himself an outright chuckle. “Because you’re going to get some news today, Mr Graves, that will make you glad you allowed yourself to celebrate last night.”
Les glanced anxiously at George, then back to Fuller. “Would that be good news or bad news, Mr. Fuller?”
And with that, Fuller reached inside the teller station and slapped Les on the back as if they were the oldest and best of friends. “Why, good news for you-and great news for the whole city of Cedar Rapids!”
Then, quickly as his good mood had come up, it vanished. He made an elaborate gesture of taking his pocket watch from his vest pocket and of scrutinizing it as if for some flaw.
“It is now eight fifty-nine and forty-two seconds.” He nodded formally to the bank guard, tubercular man who Fuller insisted wear enough weaponry to intimidate the entire James gang. "The door, Spencer, if you please.”
Just as the door was opening, and just as Fuller started to move snappily back to his office, he turned back to Les and said, “You appear to have won yourself another admirer, Mr Graves.”
“Who would that be, Mr Fuller?”
“Last night my fiancee, Susan, said she drove down and watched you pitch at scrimmage. She said you struck out eleven men.”
With that he retired to his office.
***
Les spent the rest of the morning thinking of two things-Susan and the mysterious “news” promised by Byron Fuller.
Not that he had a great deal of time to consider either subject at length. The bank was busy. The Fourth of July was at hand.
Several times Les looked up to see Byron Fuller, hands behind his back, rocking a bit on his heels and smiling at him.
What was going on?
But just when he started to ponder the matter, another line formed in front of his station. The women were given to bonnets and flowered hats; the men to Stetsons and fedoras. At one point a few severely dressed Amish people were in his line.
Usually, while they waited, customers contented themselves with appraising the bank’s interior, most of which was done in real mahogany, with flocked wallpaper and genuine marble for counters. There were also a number of Civil War paintings, of the impossibly heroic school, with soldier eyes glowing and muzzle-smoke white as the clouds of heaven itself. Many of the customers had been in the war and knew better. Young boys lying bloody and dead-be damned the color of their uniforms-looked anything but heroic.
And so the morning went.
***
Around eleven George Buss, whose station was quiet for the morning, leaned over and said, “It sure must be big news. Look.”
And he pointed to the glass wall of Clinton Edmonds’ office.
Edmonds stood with his important thumbs hooked importantly in either of his vest pockets. He stood next to Byron Fuller. Edmonds, who with his chunky but muscular body and his white mutton-chop sideburns resembled President Chester Arthur himself, was obviously staring at Les.
And, like Byron Fuller, smiling.
“It surely must be big. Real big,” George Buss said. Then he adjusted his green eyeshade and black sleeve garter and got ready to greet another line of bubbly ladies and sulky men.
But however big-or small-the news might be, Edmonds and Fuller apparently planned to keep it to themselves for a time longer because as soon as Karl Halliman, the editor of the Enquirer, appeared, the three men repaired to the boardroom. Edmonds himself entered last (Les could see all this from the teller station) and thumbed a gummy yellow strip of paper to the doorknob, which every bank employee knew was the official symbol of do not disturb. Nobody was permitted to use the symbol but Edmonds himself, and nobody was permitted to disturb him if it was out.
Les looked up at the clock, not knowing what to do. His lunch hour started in five minutes. Should he wait and see if they called him in or-
But he needed food.
His bout at Pearly’s last night had left him weak. And there was a game tonight.
He needed food, good food, and in decent quantities. He thought of the Charter House restaurant, of the way they fixed roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy and bright green peas.
He was making himself weak… he was so hungry. He was just closing and locking his cash drawer and about to leave his station when-
The boardroom door opened. Byron Fuller came out, looked around, then summoned the guard over. The man listened to what Fuller had to say, then nodded.
He disappeared quickly.
Byron stood there, obviously waiting. Once his eyes met Les’. This time Byron’s smile was a positive grin.
The guard returned, carrying a silver pitcher of water cold enoug
h to raise silver sweat on the sides.
He handed the pitcher to Byron Fuller and then both men headed back to where they’d come from.
The yellow piece of paper was still on the boardroom doorknob.
Les and his appetite headed for the Charter House.
He was three steps down the block, already taking in the sweet smells of spring flowers in Greene Square, when he heard behind him someone shout, “Les! Les Graves! Come back here!”
When he turned, he saw Byron Fuller running down the bank steps toward him.
Fuller was out of breath when he reached Les. Graves had always thought of Fuller as an exceptionally stuffy man. Now he resembled an excited teenager.
“You’re having lunch with us.”
“Us?”
“Yes. Mr. Edmonds and Mr. Halliman and myself.” He slid his arm around Les and began escorting him up the street. “This is the greatest thing that’s happened to Cedar Rapids since we paved First Avenue.”
And with that, Les and Byron Fuller joined a smiling Mr. Edmonds and a beaming Mr. Halliman, and the four of them set off down the street paralleling a happy load of streetcar passengers.
“This is certainly a fine day.” Mr. Edmonds laughed.
In two years of working for the man, Les had never heard Mr. Edmonds laugh before.
CHAPTER FOUR
Neely woke up on the hotel room floor and immediately grabbed the Navy Colt he always kept next to him.
The scream still reverberated in his head.
Then he realized that it had only been T.Z. and one of his nightmares.
He cursed and laid his head back down against the rolled-up clothes that served him as a pillow.
The room was decent enough-double bed, recently varnished bureau, closet, polished kerosene lamp, two plump chairs for sitting -but he slept on the floor because with T.Z.’s nightmares you never got any sleep. T.Z. either woke up yelling he was suffocating or shouting, “Don't close your eyes!” T.Z.’s father had died in his arms when T.Z. was only thirteen and T.Z. had dreams about how there, right at the last, he had sobbed, “Don’t close your eyes!” knowing that when he did he would be gone for eternity.
Neely propped himself up on one elbow and rolled himself a cigarette. His hangover was bad enough that he was pasty and dehydrated. He needed a bath and a shave. He despised being dirty.
From below, the sounds of noontime Cedar Rapids floated up. The chink of rig chains as wagons plied the streets; the clang of trolley car bells; a squeeze box playing a polka in the square down the street. Warm sunshine streamed in through the window, tumbling with dust molts, covering Neely in gold and making him feel lazy as a cat, something the beefy six-foot-two man was unaccustomed to. He had grown up in Kansas plowing up ground and beating out prairie fires with wet sacks and wishing to hell he could escape from it all.
He relaxed, inhaled his cigarette, tried not to think about the old days. That was T.Z.’s problem. In a very real sense, the man’s life ended with his father there in his arms that cold March night.
Whereas Neely’s life, or so Neely hoped, was all ahead of him, everything up to now mere prelude to a much finer and more fascinating span of years.
And Cedar Rapids, Neely thought, was going to help bring it about. If all went as planned, this would be the easiest and perhaps the most money either of them had ever made.
T.Z. started screaming again and this time Neely, with his hangover, with his whole weariness of T.Z., got up and grabbed the slender man and slapped him hard enough across the face to draw blood.
T.Z. came awake instantly, terrified.
“My father-,” he started to say.
“To hell with your father,” Neely said. “To hell with him.”
Then he got dressed and went outside into the lovely warm day and looked for the sight of a striped barber pole. He got himself a shave and a haircut for fifteen cents, then he went back to the hotel and got himself a bath for fifty cents.
When he returned to the room, he found T.Z. lying on his back asleep. He had a rosary of brown beads tangled up in his hands.
Neely sighed and went over to wake him up. He had been taking care of T.Z. for many years now. But soon that would be over. T.Z. had become a burden. He was going to kill T.Z. He had only to figure out how and when.
***
“They make a sandwich out of beef tenderloin that is not to be believed," Byron Fuller said to Les Graves once they were seated in the men’s club where the elite males of the city generally lunched.
Les had seen pictures of New York City and San Francisco hotels and it was difficult to imagine they could be much fancier than this. Flocked red wallpaper and long, narrow mirrors gave the eatery the aspect of a fancy lobby. A long bar, padded in leather with matching leather chairs, ran along the west wall, while to the east more than twenty large, round tables sprawled. Six hand-tooled leather chairs went with each table. The atmosphere was positively festive. Men, Les recognized as lawyers, doctors, merchants and members of what the town’s eleven different newspapers referred to as “the carriage trade,” sat around the tables laughing and smoking cigars and ordering drinks from young women, some of them pretty, with hair back in buns and long white aprons over gingham dresses. On the walls were large photographs of various heroes-Abraham Lincoln, President Anhur, “Cap” Constantine and (as something of a joke) a woman named Rose Coghlan who was presendy going around the country and beating men (if you could believe it!) at pigeon shooting.
“So why don’t you try it?”
Les turned back to Byron, realizing he hadn’t heard what the man said to him.
Byron, obviously seeing that Les had been taking in the place and was duly impressed, said, “Quite a place here, isn’t it, Les?”
“It sure is.” For just that moment, Les sounded very young and impressionable. He saw the amused glance exchanged by Mr. Edmonds and the newspaperman Mr. Halliman.
Their serving woman came and Byron Fuller said, “Rosie, we’ll have the beef tenderloin sandwich.” He indicated himself and Les. He nodded to the two other men and smiled. “These two gentlemen will have to speak for themselves.”
Les sat up as straight as he could, tugging his coat down, hoping his collar was clean enough (he usually wore collars three days), hoping his looking around didn’t mark him as too much a rube, despite the way Mr. Edmonds and Mr. Halliman had glanced at each other.
The other two men ordered.
Then, when Rosie was gone, Mr. Edmonds took out a very fat stogie, snipped off its end, and then put it with a certain ceremonial flair between his teeth.
Mr. Halliman said, “You’ll have to forgive Clinton here, Les. He likes to keep you in suspense as long as possible.”
Byron Fuller chuckled. “He certainly does. The night I asked him for Susan’s hand in marriage, he told me to go for a walk for an hour -alone-and then come back.” He patted his stomach. “That’s not good for a fellow’s digestion.”
Les formed an image of Susan in his mind-in the shadows of her carriage last night-sounding so unhappy.
Clinton Edmonds exhaled a mighty cloud of smoke. “What they’re trying to say, Les, is that I’ve been working on a little project for the past four months-and that it’s finally come to fruition.”
Les didn’t know what to say. He just sort of gulped and sort of wondered again if his collar was clean enough to be sitting in a place such as this.
Clinton Edmonds said, “What’s the one baseball team you’d most like to play?”
Les said, “I guess there isn’t any doubt about it, sir. Sterling. But they’d never play us. They say we aren’t on their level.”
Here Clinton Edmonds broke into a grin that lost him twenty years. “Well, guess who the Cedar Rapids baseball team is going to be playing right here this coming Fourth of July!”
Suddenly Les was caught up in the same exhilaration as the others. “You’re not joshing?”
“Of course I’m not joshing,” Clinton Edmonds s
aid.
“The Sterling municipal team?”
“Yes, indeed, and in our home stadium.”
Les forgot for the moment to whom he was speaking and blurted, “But how did you work it?”
Clinton Edmonds put down his cigar and frowned. “Well, I wish I could say that I manipulated it the way I helped manipulate the last Republican caucus.” This brought a faint smile from Mr. Halliman. “But I’m afraid what happened was this: Sterling has this exhibition game all set up with a group of men who used to play in the National League, the White Stockings and teams like that. That was going to be their Fourth of July attraction, only the National Leaguers got a much better offer to do the same thing in Fort Wayne.”
Edmonds’ words came as no surprise to anybody at the table. Last year the Fort Wayne, Indiana, baseball club, which had always been considered very progressive, made history by playing a seven-inning night game-one illuminated by seventeen electric lights.
“So,” Edmonds went on, “Sterling found itself, last week, in a very embarrassing position. They had nobody to play.”
“But why would they agree to come here?”
Edmonds laughed. “I guess because they don’t have anything better to do.” For the first time he looked at Les with the eye of a jeweler appraising a stone. “So, Les, do you think you can beat Sterling?”
“I-”
But before he could finish, Byron clapped him on the back and said, “Of course he can beat Sterling. Les could play in the National League if he put his mind to it.”
Halliman laughed. “In the East they’ve got an animal called a press agent. Sounds like that’s the role you’re playing for young Graves lino, Byron.”
He averted his eyes from Byron. Given his relationship with Susan, it would be perhaps even needed-to dislike his rich young rival.
But he couldn’t. Stuffy though he might be, Byron Fuller was a fair and decent young man.
“What’s your answer, Les?” Clinton Edmonds said. The humor had gone from his voice. Byron Fuller and Karl Halliman were appropriately sober.