by Don DeLillo
“Who is the call?” George said.
“A guy from New Orleans I used to know.”
“This is the money.”
“He told me he’d be in Dallas today. Okay. I’m waiting.”
“What about the other guy?” George said.
“Karlinsky? The man is purist-minded from the start. I expected no action and that’s what I got.”
“So you said, what, let me contact New Orleans.”
“I went right through Karlinsky. I went ten feet over his head.”
“This other guy leaves an opening?”
“We wait and see.”
“What, you asked him straight out you needed a loan?”
“He already knew my situation. He knew from last June when we bumped into each other in the street. I was in New Orleans looking at Randi Ryder for the club.”
“I never been,” George said.
“It’s a city where the money’s not so tight and clean.”
He put on his jacket and hat, got his moneybag and revolver, picked up Sheba from her chair and went down to the car. He dropped the dog on the front seat, opened the trunk and tossed the moneybag in. He drove to Commerce Street and bought a couple of newspapers at a corner stand. Back at the car he spotted his dirty laundry in the rear seat, where he’d left it six, seven, eight days ago, tied together with a pajama leg. He looked around for a glass of water. Nervous in the service. Then he drove half a block in reverse to the Carousel, checking the spelling of the girls’ names on the marquee. Some tourists from Topeka were looking at the glossies on the wall out front. Jack introduced himself, shook hands, gave them his card, got the dog from the front seat and went on up the narrow stairway.
Walking into the empty club made him feel how inspirational it was to grow up quitting school in Chicago, nickname Sparky, scalping tickets outside fight arenas, selling carnations in dance halls, and now he is a club owner, a known face, with ads in the paper, as only America can turn out.
He went to his office and called the local IRS and told them he had to postpone the meeting they’d scheduled because he was unable to get his records properly compiled. A phrase his attorney had suggested. They made a new appointment and he promised to bring thirteen hundred cash to ease the matter of delinquency. Another phrase.
He went to the bar, poured a glass of water and swallowed another Preludin. To speed the day along and help him think positive. The phone rang in his office. He hurried in and picked up. It was George at the apartment. The call had come. The man was in town. Tony Astorina. Carousel at noon.
The dogs in the back room were barking to be let out. Jack went down to the car and drove a block and a half to the Ritz Delicatessen. He bought half a dozen sandwiches and beverages and drove right back.
His brother Sam called. He had some new production ideas for those plastic spinners, those twirly things that spin on high wires in front of service stations and car lots for a festive appearance.
The Times Herald called.
A stripper named Double DeLite called.
KLIF called.
Detective Russell Shively called.
His brother Earl called. He tried to talk Jack out of the twistboard idea. Jack wanted to manufacture an exercise device consisting of two fiberboards with some kind of ball-bearing disks between them and you stand on the boards and twist and shimmy, for fun and body tone both.
Tony Astorina walked in, doing a friendly little boxer’s bob and weave. It looked like all the motion he was capable of. He had that expression of where’s the coffee. Jack had coffee right here. They talked a little preliminaries. Tony was about forty but dressed young. His eyes were getting slitty inside the looming flesh. He said there was a place he had to be in forty-five minutes. He made it sound important. Jack did not want to hear this kind of remark. He wanted to believe Tony was involved in this conversation, not just passing by, passing time.
The barking in the back room was feeble and hoarse, like dogs in some Chinese village.
Then Tony said, “Loanshark is not our thing, Jack. There are people I can refer you,. But I wouldn’t be truthful if I said it could happen. These clubs, I don’t know, they’re shaky propositions.”
“The boys know me in four cities, five cities.”
“Your reputation is Jack Ruby is one tough Jew. To put it plain. He goes back to the unions.”
“Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers.”
“He did a lot of things you can give him credit.”
“I brawl too much. It’s this temperament where I lash out. I follow the theory you take the play away. You barrel in hard and fast before they even know they’re in a dispute. Ten seconds later I’m a baby.”
“But I’m making the point. The point isn’t temperamental. It’s a question of where’s the money coming from to pay back.”
“From business. From the clubs. Plus some ventures I’m planning in other vicinities. I’m saying you are close to Carmine.”
“Carmine. I can’t go to Carmine with something like this. Carmine has enormous, don’t even get me started—things going on you can’t believe. You think he does business all day long? He has an organization to do the business. The man is in conference. He has meets all the time. He’s running a country, Jack.”
“I’m saying you put a word in his ear. You plant an idea.”
“There’s so much stuff they put in front of him. Things from out of nowhere, I never heard of. Like I just found out about Kennedy and that woman. It went on two years. Mo talked to Carmine all the time.”
“What woman?”
“You know Mo?”
“Giancana.”
“Sam.”
“Giancana. ”
“For two years Kennedy is ramming this woman that’s Sam’s mistress. I don’t know the first thing. They do it in New York. They do it in L.A. They find like twenty minutes in Chicago, bing bang, when he’s there for a fund-raising.”
Jack was trying to draw himself a picture.
“And Carmine gets reports. She saw him here, she saw him there. He said this, he said that. Two years, Jack. They did it in the White House.”
Jack could not conceive of a situation whereby the President of the United States would be fucking the girlfriend of Momo Giancana. There had to be a mistake somewhere. This is a guy from the Patch in Chicago, from Dago Town, four or five blocks from where Jack grew up. Jack used to be personal friends with two of Mo’s enforcers. He’d been hearing Giancana’s name for decades. Since the days he was called Mooney. A wheelman for the 42 Gang. Fifty or sixty arrests. Time in Joliet. Time in Leavenworth. A powerful figure today. Chicago, Las Vegas, etc. But sharing a woman with the President? Jack knew it was going to be hard to swing the conversation back to a loan for a failing business.
Tony was still in his chair but only technically. There was an air of departure, a small restlessness that Jack could trace to his hands, like a smoker who quits.
“Jack, I come by here for old time.”
“We used to swim on the Capri roof.”
“I’m saying. I didn’t come by for the coffee.”
“Tony. I appreciate.”
“I come by because we go back together.”
“We got laid in adjoining rooms.”
“Havana, madonn’.”
“Tony, I have plans I’m painting the club. A whole new scheme. I want to feature a silky type red, like an old-timey red. The convention business picks up soon. If Carmine could see his way clear to just think about this for a couple of minutes, riding in the car someday. ”
“I wish I could leave you some ray of light.”
“I appreciate.”
“I only drive the man around. In fact I’ll tell you the most important thing I do for Carmine. Every morning I put him in his vest. I tie him in nice.”
“What vest?”
“His vest. His body armor. He’s running a fucking country.”
They shook hands at the top of the stairs. Then Tony embraced Jac
k, who felt the emotion of the moment.
“There’s something I want to do. I want to send you a twistboard. I have this twistboard I want you to try. Test model. Tony. We used to swim.”
Jack called George Senator at the apartment.
He called his sister Eva.
He called Rabbi Hillel Silverman.
He called Lynette Batistone, Randi Ryder, to tell her she couldn’t have the night off after all. Double DeLite was sick to her stomach in Grand Prairie.
Jack opened the door to the back room and the dogs shot out madcap and scrambling. There is a thing about the trust of a dog that makes up for a lot of heartache we take in this life. He plucked Sheba from the tumble of fur and went down to the car. He drove one block to the bank. He drove to the Sheraton and went into the coffee shop to tell the girl at the register a joke he knew would knock her to the floor. He drove to some stores looking for a certain food supplement for dieters. He heard police sirens and thought about following, just for a little adrenaline, but felt uninterested all of a sudden, down in the dumps.
This kind of gloom made him feel anonymous. Who was he? Why should anyone care about him?
He drove around a while, then stopped at a bakery and bought a cheesecake: He took it to the Police and Courts Building and rode the elevator to three. He stuck his head in a few offices and took the cake to the press room. Four or five clerks and detectives came in. Jack took a Preludin with a mouthful of cold coffee that was sitting in a paper cup. Somebody noticed the stub where Jack’s index finger used to be. A little accident in the nature of an old-time dispute. He told two jokes that went over well. Then he went down the hall to Homicide and looked in on Russell Shively, who was at his desk reading Field and Stream, a lanky type with a sunburnt face who always made Jack feel here is my corny idea of a Texas lawman.
“Russell, how long we known each other?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
“Have I ever mentioned suicide to you?”
“I don’t believe so, Jack.”
“Russell, if I ever mention suicide or the phrase kill myself or do away with myself, I am telling you right now it is not an empty threat to get attention. If you ever pick up the phone and hear a voice that says I’m killing myself and you think it’s my voice, Jack Ruby, then I’m telling you right now I’m not bluffing.”
These remarks came out of nowhere, of course, so Russell Shively just looked carefully into Jack’s eyes and nodded, with no idea what to say.
Jack put his snap-brim fedora back on his head and walked out of the room. He went down to the car and drove off toward the Carousel. He thought of some calls he had to make. Bottles and jars rolled across the floor of the car. He thought of the fight that led to the stub finger. A dozen years ago he had a fight of a total animal nature with a guitar player at the Silver Spur, which Jack was running at the time. The guitarist bit off part of his left index finger. It was a single, sustained and determined head-wagging bite in the course of a stretch of wrestling and it left the top part of the finger hanging, beyond repair. This was harmful to Jack’s public image because he wanted to join the Masons, the Freemasons, whatever they’re called, for the business contacts and the fellowship. But the Masons would not accept a man who was missing part of his anatomy. This was an ancient bylaw that they kept in the books.
He called his attorney.
He called the Morning News about an ad for the club.
He called a stripper named Janet Alvord.
“Do I look swishy to you, Janet? What about my voice? People tell me there’s a lisp. Is this the way a queer sounds to a neutral person? Do you think I’m latent or what? Could I go either way? Don’t pee on my legs, Janet. I want the total truth.”
The bartender was here. Jack complained that the bar glasses were not clean enough to suit him. He spotted the new waitress, who walked in wearing a low-cut ruffled blouse. He took. her into a comer and told her a joke. She had a rumbling laugh. He told another quick one and walked off fast, looking back at her laughing in the corner.
He liked a woman with a freckled cleavage.
He went down to the car and drove home for an early dinner. Because what is it like to be a Jew in a place, in a state like Texas? You feel to yourself don’t ever speak out, don’t ever stand out. But he loved this city. It made him a living in his own way. He didn’t have to hide what he was. He didn’t have to listen to Jewish jokes from the MC at the club. The MC knew one Jewish joke could land him in Emergency. No complaints. It’s just the little feeling you get sometimes there’s some secret thing they’re shielding. He grew up in the neighborhoods, the crosstown wars. What was Dallas next to that? He used to come home with blood on his clothes for sticking up for the Jewish race. He met his sisters at the streetcar stop in Dago Town to make sure nobody catcalled Jew-girl at them, or walked close behind smacking their lips, or put a hand on them. No complaints. It’s just the impression of you’re off to the side. But he had friends on the force. He liked to give a loan to a young cop with a new baby. Plainclothes officers came to the club. How many cities could he name where a Jew can walk into police headquarters and he hears, Hello, how are you, it’s jack. I owe my life to this town.
George said they were having spaghetti tonight.
“I thought tonight was a broiled haddock.”
“Where?”
“Didn’t I come home with haddock—when was it?”
“I don’t know,” George said.
Jack took a Preludin with some leftover juice.
“Ask me I’m unhappy.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning with reference to what he said.”
“No loan.”
“They’re getting ready to padlock my clubs.”
“You take too many of those things, Jack.”
“They’re medically an obesity drug.”
“Nobody’s that fat.”
“I need the stimuli,” Jack said.
He took the newspapers he’d bought that morning and went into the toilet. All Jack’s reading took place in the toilet. It was the best part of his day. He read the nightlife, the ads for the clubs, the local tidbits, the entertainment column. There were the shows around town. He checked the competition. His mind settled down when he was crapping. There was a restfulness and calm.
Later he stood in the kitchen talking to George.
He didn’t want to reach the point again where he had to sleep at the club. There was a time not long ago when he didn’t have a place to live. He was between apartments with not a lot of ready cash to maneuver. He slept at the club. He lived there, ate there, slept in a foldout bed in a back room next to the room with the dogs. His whole life conducted under one roof. A stink of beer and cigarettes and dog and what-have-you. That was the second-worst period after the Cotton Bowl Hotel, where he sat in the dark for eight weeks. He refused to go down to that level again. Of no place to live. Of totally outside the norm.
George said you can tell when the spaghetti’s cooked by picking a strand out of the boiling water and flinging it against the wall. If it sticks, it’s done.
Jack ate quickly and set out for the club in his bouncing Olds mobile.
Guy Banister sat in his office after dark, the old lion head sunk in thought. Some bum was urinating in the street, drilling the wall of the building. The desk lamp was on. Guy picked up his file on the Red Chinese. It was the file he saved for quiet times of day, the final nightmare file, to be brooded over slowly.
Red Chinese troops are being dropped into the Baja by the fucking tens of thousands. Mobilizing, massing, growing. Little red stars on their caps.
In fact there was nothing new in the file. The same old rumors and suspicions. They are down there in the pale sands in their padded jackets, gathered in one great silent sweep, waiting for the word. It didn’t need elaboration or update. There was something classic in the massing of the Chinese.
He wanted to believe it was true. He did believe it was true. B
ut he also knew it wasn’t. Ferrie told him it didn’t matter, true or not. The thing that mattered was the rapture of the fear of believing. It confirmed everything. It justified everything. Every violence and lie, every time he’d cheated on his wife. It allowed him to collapse inside, to melt toward awe and dread. That’s what Ferrie said. It explained his dreams. The Chinese caused his dreams. Every terror and queerness of sleep, every unspeakability—it is painted in China-white.
Men floating down in white silk. He liked to think of an unmechanized mass, silent men gathering their chutes, concealed in the pale sands. This was not the.missiles or the satellites, all that cocksure technology. The Chinese file contained the human swarm, in padded jackets, massing near the border. A fear to savor slowly.
The door opened and Ferrie walked in, breaking the reverie. He leaned against a wall eating french fries from a carton.
“I came to give a report. Not that you want to hear it.”
“Where’s Oswald?”
“Houston by now. I had Frank and Raymo take him. He’ll get on a bus for Mexico City.”
“Mackey says he can fix it so the Cubans won’t take him. He’s got Agency connections in Mexico City. Agency’s bound to have someone inside the Cuban embassy. We’re counting on Leon going back to Texas. We know that station wagon parked outside his house had Texas plates. His wife and kid left in that car.”
“I’m pretty sure his rifle went with them.”
“Is he leaning our way?” Banister said.
“This is the part you don’t want to hear.”
“He says no.”
“That’s right. But there’s time.”
“Does he know who we want?”
“He knows.”
“Not interested.”
“It needs time. He’s been carrying on a struggle inside.”
“He’s your project, Dave.”
“We had a talk this morning. To the extent that he talks. He hasn’t made the leap.”
“You keep saying you’ll get inside his mind.”
“I’m in his mind. I’m there. Like a fucking car wash.”