Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

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Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker Page 50

by David Remnick


  At first, Darcy couldn’t make head or tail of the whole business. He was so baffled he probably looked comical. There was a full-fledged party going on. He spotted Angus and Colie, but it wasn’t easy getting to them in the crowd. Everybody was laughing and drinking and making noise, everybody was terribly friendly, everybody obviously was trying to get you in a good humor, and there were girls there—party girls, no question about it, the kind you read about in the papers. They were all made up and very young. Darcy kept blinking his eyes in wonder, like a fool, but he made a few guarded inquiries and soon discovered that the host, a man too busy to be present even at his own party, was Adolph Eckworth, a well-known public figure. Instantly everything became revealed to Darcy. Adolph Eckworth was the 990 Corporation, a construction group interested in putting up a forty-story hotel. Down at the office, Darcy, Colie, and Angus were right in the middle of examining the 990 Corporation plans. This whole party, Darcy saw now, was nothing but a clever, unscrupulous attempt to bring improper influence to bear upon them.

  He went into action at once. Surreptitiously he caught Colie’s eye, signaled to Angus, and drew them over to the bathroom. Darcy wanted to warn them.

  “Do you know who’s running this party?” he said as soon as he had locked the bathroom door. “Do you realize whose place we’re in? Do you know why they invited us?”

  He stopped. He stared at them. They were both grinning from ear to ear. They grinned at him as though they had just pulled the most delicious surprise in the world. It dawned on Darcy. How naïve could you get? Angus and Colie, of course, knew all about the deal, whatever it was. They were already part of it. They wanted him to come in with them—that was why they had called him.

  “This is no candy-box proposition,” Angus began. “These fellers ain’t coming around Christmastime with no lousy three-dollar box of cigars, believe me . . . .”

  Darcy got his breath back. “I don’t want anything to do with it,” he said, and turned at once to unlock the bathroom door. The general public impression about what goes on in city government to the contrary, Darcy had never before in his Civil Service experience come face to face with a clear-cut, out-and-out graft situation. He was shocked. He was also scared. The only thing he could think of was to get out of that fancy place as fast as he could. Angus and Colie, no longer grinning, were pulling at his shoulder, trying to make him listen, but he was so determined or panicked that there was no holding him.

  “Include me out!” he said. He got the door unlocked and broke away.

  You heard about graft, you read about it—the costly gifts, expense accounts, trips on yachts to Florida, party girls—but when you came upon it in person, the effect was altogether different. There was an impact, hard and unnerving and ugly, like witnessing a bad automobile accident or being on the scene while a holdup was taking place. Darcy was still very much excited and upset when he got home, and as he crossed the threshold, he was suddenly filled with a deep sense of misgiving. He started to worry. In his bones, he knew he hadn’t heard the last of the matter from Arthur Colie and Charlie Angus. Darcy knew those boys weren’t finished with him, not by a long shot.

  Natalie was in the kitchen. “No courage whatsoever,” she said, still firmly convinced he had gone to his mother’s. “A grown-up man scared to death of his own mother. Nincompoop.”

  “What?” Darcy said, groggy and sinking, this disheartening, unfair insult coming now on top of everything. “What did you call me?”

  “Nincompoop,” Natalie said. “Nincompoop, with all the college degrees. Has the nervous disposition of a fly.” She walked out of the kitchen and went into the living room, to get ready for bed. The Darcys slept in the living room, on a couch that opened up. Gary had the bedroom.

  THE factor of safety that the city insisted on was extremely conservative, in some cases perhaps as much as three to one. Roughly, where any competent engineering authority would have been satisfied with, say, a steel support two inches deep, the city required five or six inches—a brutal expense, a brutal waste of precious rental space, all the room being taken up by the structural steel.

  “Morally,” Colie argued the next morning, when he and Angus went to work on Darcy, “morally we’re not even doing anything wrong.” After all, they weren’t robbing anybody, were they? Nobody was getting hurt. Two inches or six inches, the 990 building wasn’t going to fall down and kill a million people, no matter what.

  It was a beautifully worked-out proposition, Colie said, perfectly safe. Who was going to start digging into a mountain of blueprints? How could anyone ever find out? By shaving the safety factor in just the steel-frame requirements alone, the examiners could easily—and so unobtrusively—save the builders hundreds of thousands. And the 990 Corporation, a hard-hitting, realistic bunch of go-getters, were ready to pay off handsomely for any favorable consideration. Colie wanted to weep. Without Darcy, he and Angus couldn’t do a thing; their hands were tied.

  “Have a heart,” Colie said. “Show me a little consideration.” Colie had personal difficulties which were common knowledge around the office. He was bitterly infatuated with his wife, who was a big headache. She was supposed to be some kind of beauty, but she had expensive tastes and didn’t care how much money she spent, and so Colie was always in the clutches of the loan sharks. It was one of those unfortunate marital relationships—he had to pay through the nose for every single, solitary thing Mrs. Colie ever gave him or no sale. She had the upper hand. “Do you realize I owe in four figures?” Colie said. “Thousands, not hundreds. Thousands!”

  “Don’t be a goddam freak—take!” Angus said, breaking in impatiently. He was baffled, honestly unable to figure out a man like Darcy. “What the hell is it anyway?” Angus said. “You got a grudge against money?” He was an uncomplicated person, very direct and practical, without sensitivity. He was the one, with all his contacts, who had brought in the deal in the first place.

  “Why not, for Christ sake?” he said. “The dentist calls up, suddenly your kid needs braces, his teeth are crooked—is it a tragedy? Six, seven hundred bucks they charge nowadays for braces—does it ruin you? No! It’s a drop in the bucket, you don’t even feel the damn six hundred. See, you’ll become a wonderful father, a wonderful, generous husband. They’ll look up to you with respect—you’ll send your wife on cruises! Darcy, you got an idea the kind of dough this outfit is willing to hand out? There’s eight thousand dollars in this for you, eight G—is this a sum of money you habitually sneeze at?”

  Darcy shuddered, the size of the bribe only making him more frightened than ever. It turned out that Angus had bragged. He had told the Eckworth people he could deliver, that he had the deal all set and sealed, and it would put him in an acute embarrassing personal position if trouble developed now. He had given his word. “Make me out a monkey,” Angus said, “and so help me, Darcy, you’ll regret it!”

  Angus and Colie made threats. They argued and begged. They hammered away at Darcy all day long, catching him in the office, in the halls, in the men’s washroom, but nothing helped. Darcy wouldn’t budge. He didn’t give his reasons. He wouldn’t even discuss the subject. It just wasn’t in him to take a bribe or do anything off color, that was all. It was unthinkable.

  “Stubborn like an ox,” Angus said. “Who could ever foresee a cockeyed contingency like this? Goddam ethical kiyoodle!”

  Around four o’clock in the afternoon, a forceful woman, no longer young but with a remarkably well-preserved figure for her age, suddenly came barging into the office where Darcy, Colie, and Angus worked. She was Mrs. Colie, and she was very angry, all tight and swollen up. She marched straight up to her husband and threw a set of keys on the drafting table before him.

  “Eileen, what is this?” Colie said.

  “The keys,” she said. “The house keys. What do you think it is—a horse and carriage? I sent the laundry out. You’ll get your gray suit back from the cleaners on Thursday.” She was going to Lake Placid with friends and she
was leaving immediately. It seemed a mink stole had just been repossessed.

  “Dearest, don’t make a scene,” Colie begged. The door was wide open and everybody in the place could hear her. “Not in here, dearest. Not in front of the whole office—”

  Colie reached out to restrain her, but she promptly knocked his hands down, backing away from him. “Don’t you touch me! Keep your hands off!” she screamed. “You’re always pulling and grabbing. That’s why I have to go to Lake Placid. I need a rest. You’re oversexed!”

  “Eileen!” Colie said in horror, choking and shutting his eyes.

  “It’s love, love, love—morning, noon, and night,” Mrs. Colie said. “Promises! You promise the moon, you buy me mink stoles, but when it comes down to business—baloney. I don’t know when I’m coming back!”

  She turned, walked out, and slammed the door. Colie knew it was useless to follow her. Absent-mindedly he picked up the keys and put them in his pocket.

  “A man lives in a tiny overcrowded apartment,” he said, his voice thin and anguished. “A man lives way out in Jackson Heights. He hasn’t got a decent suit of clothes to his name. You offer him a gilt-edged proposition on a platter, and he don’t want it!”

  AFTER that, there was no holding Colie back. He became altogether intemperate and didn’t seem to care what kind of language he used with Darcy. There was a bar-and-grill in the heart of the City Hall district, and after working hours Colie and Angus got Darcy squeezed in one of the alcoves there and battered away at him like a pair of maniacs. They kept it up for two solid hours, until Darcy was sick, literally sick, at his stomach.

  He didn’t get home until long past seven o’clock. No one would talk to him. Gary, of course, was in the living room, his attention taken up with the television, and as for Natalie, she kept busy at the range and wouldn’t even look at her husband. He felt low. He could hardly swallow the food. It was as though the world was caving in on him. The atmosphere in the kitchen was oppressive. Natalie was in a terrible temper. He was befuddled by the whole Eckworth situation. And in the next room Gary was sitting at the bridge table like one of those potbellied Asiatic idols, fierce and implacable, with his compulsory television programs, with his mysterious allergies, with his everlasting, infernal basic sense of insecurity.

  As soon as Darcy had had his dinner, Natalie let go. It was odd—it was somehow touching, and it didn’t make much sense—but no matter how mad she might be at him, she waited until he finished eating before she started up. She wanted him to have a good meal inside of him, at least, before she began squabbling and getting him aggravated.

  “Under no conditions,” she said, straight out of the blue, “are we going to have dinner at your mother’s this or any other weekend.” Darcy looked up, groping helplessly for the cause of this outbreak, but it soon came out that it had no cause; Natalie was jumping to conclusions, as usual. Nobody had said anything about having dinner at his mother’s. Rita had called up again, but it wasn’t the phone call that had set Natalie off this time. It was the two hours he had spent at the Old Commercial. Natalie had put two and two together, and claimed she knew perfectly well where he had been and why. He had gone to his mother’s again. Natalie claimed she had it all worked out, she understood everything now. Gary had a birthday coming up early next month and the possessive old woman, Natalie said, was only scheming and putting on the pressure to have a party, a dinner. That was what the whole hullabaloo was about—the phone calls, the visits.

  “Oh, Natalie, for goodness’ sake,” Darcy said, squirming in torment. He started wearily, hopelessly, to tell her about Angus and Colie wanting him to accept a bribe, that he had been at the Old Commercial with them all the time.

  “Don’t tell me it was business,” Natalie broke in. “Don’t try to cover up. You’re only lying.”

  “I’m lying?” Darcy said.

  “Look at him, how self-righteous he is—butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,” Natalie said. “That’s the trouble with people like you, you rationalize. You justify every selfish, rotten thing you do. I always say you’re the worst kind of a person there is—a good person. You’re hypocrites. Get out of the kitchen, I have to clean up!”

  Darcy went into the living room. His head was spinning. Suddenly the good cowboys started galloping after the bad cowboys, and Gary, who kept a bicycle horn at his side for just such occasions, promptly began honking away in a crazy fit, rooting his heroes along. Darcy begged him to stop, but Gary had no pity and honked all through the chase.

  THE next morning Darcy sat down at the breakfast table dizzy with lack of sleep, no appetite in him.

  “Drink your orange juice,” Natalie said. She was in a rush. Gary was dawdling in the bedroom and she had to get him out for school.

  “I don’t want it,” Darcy said.

  “Drink it,” Natalie said. “I went to the trouble of squeezing it for you, don’t let it go to waste.”

  “Natalie,” Darcy began, “this morning I just don’t happen to feel like—”

  “Drink it up!” she said, blazing out at him. “Drink it or I’ll throw it in your face!”

  DARCY went to work. In the ten or eleven years of their marriage, he said to himself, he and Natalie had had their moments of distress, but they had never descended to such a sordid level. He had known for some time that his marriage was deteriorating, and for all he knew now, it was ruined for good, but he was so eaten away by the Eckworth business that he couldn’t even stop and take the time to worry about Natalie and his marriage. When he walked into his office, Angus and Colie were standing there waiting for him.

  Darcy held fast. As the day wore on, however, scrambling around and trying to fight back, he was less and less able to think clearly, and somehow his mind seemed to get hung up on the mechanics of bribe-taking. To be perfectly honest, perhaps by this time he would have been willing to go in on the deal, except that he was overwhelmed by the maze of complications that would follow. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about it,” he said, protesting. What did they do, pay you by check or in cash? Even if it was in cash, you had to deposit the money eventually, and wouldn’t the bankbooks, the bank entries, give you away? And what about the income tax? How did a person declare a bribe?

  Angus slapped the drafting board hard. “O.K.,” he said. “It’s over. You agreed.”

  “I agreed?” Darcy said. “When? All I said, I said did they pay you by check or in cash—”

  “Cash, cash,” Angus said. “What that screwball finds to worry about! Income taxes! Didn’t you ever hear of safe-deposit vaults? You buy a box for four dollars and you got no troubles. Now what’s there left to kick about? So that’s what I said—it’s over. Thank God! What a time he give me! Boy!” Angus now acted as though everything was settled. He turned away from Darcy, went to the drafting tables, and started getting together the blueprints of the 990 Corporation building.

  Colie was bewildered. He couldn’t understand what was going on, he said.

  “The subject’s closed,” Angus said, cold and businesslike. As far as Colie could see, nothing had been arrived at, just words.

  “Go away, don’t bother me,” Angus said. “He agreed—he can’t back out.”

  “Ridiculous!” Darcy said when Colie turned to him. “Silliest thing I ever heard of. He misconstrued what I said. I was just asking academically.”

  “Angus, what’s the good?” Colie pleaded. “He’s a fanatic. You know him—a will of iron. He’ll only go to the Commissioner or the D.A.—wherever they go to give information. He’ll talk!”

  “No, he won’t,” Angus said. “What do you think—those parties are going to stand by idle? They won’t sit in jail. If he squeals, they will come and get him. They will kill him!” Tight-lipped and unyielding, he picked up the bundle of blueprints and walked out of the office, taking the rest of the day off. A few seconds after he left, Rita, Darcy’s sister, walked in. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “I have to get docked an hour just to see my b
rother—I can’t reach you on the phone.” What she had come to see him about was Gary’s birthday. There was some justification for Natalie’s suspicions, after all. On account of the occasion, Darcy’s mother wanted to see the child this evening. This was, of course, strictly against Natalie’s objections—the old excessive affection argument—but Rita went on shrilly, “Momma has a right, too. She’s his grandmother. She’s got a present to give him, a sweater she knitted all by herself.”

  “Rita, please!” Darcy said, but his sister refused to let him say a word.

  “Natalie doesn’t have to know. You can meet Momma outside in the park. Bring Gary downstairs to the park after dinner, after Captain Video—it’s still light. For God’s sake, Arnold, she worked on the sweater three whole weeks!”

  Darcy was dazed. His head was reeling and there was something wrong with his eyes—he couldn’t seem to focus very well. He nodded and said he’d meet his mother in the park—anything to get rid of Rita—and finally she left.

  “What did I do?” Colie said, moaning to himself. He had been through a terrible time the last day or two and couldn’t stand the thought now of having anybody’s life on his conscience. “Oh, what did I go and get myself all involved for? All for a mink stole and a few lousy pieces of jewelry—I should have my head examined!”

  ALL through the little visit with his mother in the neighborhood park, Darcy’s mind raced in circles. He saw how diabolically effective Angus’s tactics were. He, Darcy, would be presented with what amounted to a fait accompli. He faced the very real threat of murder or of serious bodily injury at the least if he tried to do anything about it. And in the meantime he had to intervene constantly and stop his mother. She was knocking Natalie.

  “Momma, please!” Darcy said. “Gary’s listening. It’s not right.”

  “What am I saying? I’m only remarking,” the old woman said, and innocently went on chattering to the boy.

 

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