THE next few days wasted away like those when one is coming out of flu. On Ninth Avenue he spent a bartering morning in the shadow of a second-hand furniture store. He sunk his fist into mattresses, cutting the dealer’s price with the virtue of a man who knows he’s going to be gypped anyway. He almost had a good time as if there wasn’t a damn thing to worry about, buying what he needed, playing at settling down all afternoon. He arranged the furniture, put the linen and towels in the dresser, hung his ties on a rack, had the gas and electric companies turn on their service after a flying visit to their immaculate museum-like offices on Irving Place. He got settled.
And one morning when he gazed out on the iron gate and the truckers, his heart was sound again. The new life into which he had dropped like one from the sky was his life, and accepted as such. Only a guy like McMann would’ve been at home in ten minutes, but it had taken him three days.
Mrs. Gebhardt was a great help, cleaning the flat when he was out. “The boss says to make you comfortable.”
He got acquainted with the family. Mr. Gebhardt worked down in the produce market near Washington Street. He was a big raw man, crisp as lettuce, with hair like dry straw, and a red smiling face. The four children Bill divided into two groups. One group consisted of the three little ones, with indefinite sexes, hands usually free from dirt, similar in size and texture as cucumbers. Then there was big sister, big Cathy, sixteen and virginal. The domesticity of these Bavarians in the steel of the city was a peace about him, the names of the children a song of decency and the green earth. Frederick, baby Carl, Gertrude, and big girl Catherine. Freddie, Gertrude (no one abbreviated her name, somehow), Carlie, Cathy.
He wrote to his brother, itemizing the flat, the gas radiator, the outside toilet, the poor chances, advising Joe to stay where he was. How was he to make money? He’d called on a number of real-estate firms and agencies, wanting a job in the jobless city where the employed all looked like soldiers not knowing when they’d get theirs. It was 1931. In another year the nation would vote on Hoover’s policies. Next November there would be the dubious sort of hope all Democrats experience at the polls. What good did that do him? He spoke to the pale swarm of interviewers and bosses, who listened, smoked, and uniformly moaned about business. He produced letters of reference. There were no jobs. Men much longer in the real-estate field than himself couldn’t land a thing. Real estate was plain lousy. The banks and mortgage companies were foreclosing right and left. In 1930 some eighty millions of properties had been foreclosed. Thirty-one was twice as bad, and he wasn’t the type to find work. He wasn’t the stubborn-chinned, light-blue-eyed type who have the guts to make the round of agencies and offices day in and day out for weeks and months with a courage superior to that of dying. He was too soreheaded, too spineless, for the endless ordeal. And always the dream of easy money. How could a fellow take a job (he had just one offer) for ten bucks a week, to collect forty houses, when that job was worth thirty bucks at least? When, given a break, a fellow could pick it off the streets? Why sweat for pennies when the greenbacks were waiting to be plucked?
He ate in cheap cafeterias where everybody wore their hats and coats; speculating about Paddy, McMann, all the dead-eyed crowd of hangers-on, the bookies, pimps, good-time boys, who earned such a fine living with less brains and guts than lice. He had picked up too much easy sugar, had grifted ten bucks in ten minutes. How in hell could he work an eight-hour, six-day week for a lousy stinking tenbuck, where he’d be checked up with no chance to shake down anybody? That was no job. That was slavery. The thing to do was see Paddy. Paddy only gave him a few minutes to explain, and then laughed like a hyena. “You sonufabitch!”
“I need some dough. Why the hell don’t you give me a break?”
That day Paddy was wearing a blue shirt. He was nodding like a father, tickled to be handing out advice. “You might get a break with Duffy and Spat’s mob of kids. Try them. Speak to Duffy.”
“I’m not going to hang out with Duffy’s kids. They’re heels. I want to do business with you.”
“With me?”
“Sure. Like we done in the past.”
They thought of the murder. “Yeh?” said Paddy, hiding behind that “Yeh” like a kid round a corner.
“We got something between us. You could trust me.”
“You’ve got too many ideas. Come around tomorrow.” He winked. “The young un’s nuts about you. I’m nuts about you myself. You got nerve. If they don’t murder you, you lil sonufabitch, you’ll be a big shot. I’m getting old and gray. I need a smart feller like you.”
“You’re a lousy liar, Paddy. Don’t kid me.”
“You got my number, kid.”
“I wish I had.”
Paddy said: “Tomorrow, smart guy.”