FOR an hour the Armenian tailor who occupied the ground floor of the Young Hamilton Democrats Club, had looked up from his pressing-machine at the young Democrats trooping up to their headquarters. To his experience they were a little young for citizens, but maybe the Young covered that. They were eighteen, nineteen, and in their early twenties, exactly alike, slim, hard-faced, kidding around. They’d be damn particular about clothes, and the Armenian figured how much there’d be in it for him. Plenty bad bets in that crowd, sure to be some who’d cheat a poor man out of his just pay.
Upstairs the two floors of the club presented the spiffy exhilarating flash of newness. The light buff paint was fresh, the floors shellacked. Each of the floors had been prepared for Hamiltonian democracy. A few chairs, a lounge, kegs of beer. It was a very political sight. The kids who’d been awed in the beginning at their importance (although joking to beat the band as if they had a clubhouse on every block) began to shout: “Swell,” “This is what’s what,” and otherwise applaud the arrangements. The dirty mouths among them got busy.
It was swell. On the second floor it was extra swell. One of the flats had been fitted up as an office with a plain desk for Bill. A regular office, big-time in the bargain. The other flat had two beds, the younger kids wiggling their wrists in the sign language that meant: Plenty, hey, kid? the worldlier exclaiming: “Looka them hot bastards.” Downstairs rushed the mob, maybe thirty guys gathering around Bill and Spat, who appeared as if they were on soapboxes ready to spiel them. Hooray! Speech. Speech.
“Speech, Bill,” cried Schneck from the window, his wide body in a blue serge suit, his fat Germanic face seeming without a neck. Near him, Ray’s sharp eyes met Bill’s. He spotted the two of them, smiling at the young grinning, shouting crowd, thinking: There’s the trouble to come.
“This is the first meeting of our new club,” he said. “No business’ll be discussed tonight. But in a coupla days there’ll be work for those who wants it.” They roared. “This club’s backed by some big shots. You’ll be in soft if you follow orders. There’s beer and hard stuff. Go to it. Later we’ll have some dancers for those that like them.” They yelled, the eager groups of young men, their faces downy, crisp as spring leaves, their bodies straight up and down with hardly any hip. They began to circulate among the rooms, some meandering into the rear flats, others staying where they were. They slumped in the new chairs, filling the fresh-painted rooms with smoke. What kinda club was it without plenty smoke, huh? In the dense blueness they drank beer and spat at the brass spittoons on little rubber mats covered with sand. Some gink turned on the radio, and between bellows and wisecracks the radio played dance music.
The kid called Mike returned with a huge leg of roast beef. Another kid like an assistant chef lugged big loaves of sliced sandwich bread. Mike dropped the roast on the table, the wolves packing in, begging like kids for an apple core: “Don’ forget me, Mike.”
“I’m a pal, Mike.” Mike cut off hunks of beef. They grabbed the slices, gulping beer. Jesus, it was a swell party. Another kid brought in a dozen quarts of gin and rye. The shouts were jubilant; what a party, what style, classy as anything! Nobody cared where the gifts were from. In their brains there was a vague idea that the beef, the booze, emanated from some kind god, some overbeing known as the big guy. They accepted the gifts and were grateful.
A kid puked; a wild cannibal cry banging against the walls. They coulda mobilized him, cursing the puke for a son-of-a-bitch. Where the hell did he get that stuff, stinking up the new clubhouse? They concentrated on the sissy, made him clean up his filth.
This was only the start, the party was pepping up. They cracked dirty jokes, the one of the wise philosophical parrot whose throat was cut and then thrown into the toilet…. They ragged about the dames they’d had and the dames ready to be had. Kids circulated along the staircases from one flat to another with the boozy swelldom of plutocrats on a spree in sumptuous quarters. They cheered, tottering from one room to another, happy, laughing, fighting with other guys sprawling up like ghosts. They ganged to the second floor and squatted on the stairs, and after songs and explorations, returned to the first flat, where the grub and drinks were dispensed. On the second floor, in the flat with the beds, a bunch got steamed up and were going to lizzy up one of the younger kids who had a girl’s complexion. They’da fixed his wagon, only some bozo remembered that the office was on that floor, and Bill’n Spat might be around.
The first hour or so Spat and Bill wound in and out among the kids. They were slapped on the back and asked to drink, the kids genial as politicians and the sons of Irishmen. Spat and Bill grinned like wardheelers, easing out to the next gang with their cheery cry: Got enough to eat and drink?
Spat and Bill shut the door behind them in the office. Bill swung his feet on the desk. A few minutes later Ray, Schneck, McQuade, the Chisel, marched in uneasy as applicants for a job. None of them were very drunk. It was the meeting of a war staff that might be torn by dissension. Bill said that they were the natural leaders, that’s what they were and they knew it; when they said anything, the other kids opened their ears. He glanced from thin malicious Ray, whose face was memorable of McMann, to Schneck smoking like a burgher. The Chisel was a little runt with a big crop of hair immediately differentiating him from the other, close-cropped kids, he wasn’t saying a thing, smiling as if to assure the others he was listening. McQuade nodded, a toughened-up chorus boy in looks. It was a silence of secret thoughts. Was Spat with him? Who gave a damn? Caught by his own story, he was believing in the story of the higher-ups of whom he was the appointed instrument.
“Wonder McMann ain’t here at his own party,” said Ray.
Bill slapped him hard and viciously. Ray jumped up and sat down. “McMann ain’t coming to parties, Ray.”
“Maybe I had it comin’?”
“You damn well did.” They banded against Ray, even his buddy Schneck, wolves against Ray because he was wounded and nobody had any use for the wounded.
“Once and for all,” said Bill, “as if Ray didn’t know it, the bastard wise-guy, McMann’s wiped. We were the leaders. And Duffy’s gone and a coupla others you guys don’t know about. Wiped because they tried to bust loose from guys bigger than them. Spat and me’s here because we take orders. The big guys who rented this house, who’re supplying the eats and drinks, are tough to fool around with. McMann and Duffy were wise-guys.”
“I had it comin’,” said Ray.
They were leery in the office because the symbol of force, the flame of sudden death, was in Bill. He was boss and they listened respectfully because boss meant power. It was Bill now and Spat with him. It’d been Duffy and McMann yesterday. And tomorrow they’d be on their knees before somebody else.
“That’s all,” said Bill. “I don’t need none of you, but I figured I’d start with you four, give you guys the first break. In a week we work. Dough for workers, and something else for the lice. Now scram, there’s a party here tonight.”
They scattered among the flats, glad the meeting was over. Hell with tomorrow. The Chisel began drinking with Mike McQuade; Ray and Schneck formed another coalition. They herded together. Only Spat and Bill were powerful enough to venture their own ways, joking, acting as if they were a mob in themselves.
Bill pulled down the shade in one of the rear flats. The bare yard with its lonely tree calmed him. “You boys, keep it down. The neighbors might get sore.” A kid pushed a bottle at him and he drank. “The women’ll be here soon, so you guys keep it down.” They cheered, the swaying drunken hands walling him in. He walked out, the bunch staring after him as if he were the colors of a parade. He stepped along the corridor, his hand sliding on the banister. He made the round of his kingdoms, getting groggy himself. There’s McMann here tonight, but they call him Ray. McMann’s ghost is Ray. Ray is Ray. We’re McMann’s children, and this bastard Ray is a son. I know he’s a son, that’s all to it…. His drunken positiveness struck him as an instinctive wisdom. Ray and McMann, with the same stone courage. Schneck was a big tough egg and could be made to toe the line. Not Ray. The Chisel was a slimy little skunk whispering in everybody’s ears. McQuade? Spat? Hell with my buddies. I don’t need be feared. Ask Spat for a job for Joe? Joe the policy book…. He took another drink, mournfully walking out on a bunch jabbering at his heels like apparitions he had created and could never be rid of. Joe must marry Cathy. Yes u’no. Oh, my God, give me a rest. “Say, you kids,” he bellowed, “I told ya to keep the noise down.”
He was getting tangled with all the millions of rooms he’d been in, the millions of corridors connecting them, reasoning out his troubles. Tell you what, Bill, he said to himself, numbers are accuracy and how many troubles you got … Things to a brother’s life had been done, spoiled a brother he had, maybe Cathy’d make him decent if he married her…. Hanrahan, you fat bull … blond, strong like the mamma and marriage? … Hanrahan, McMann; oh, you wait a minute, Hanrahan’ll be number eight-one…. McMann’s dead and here with his pal, me is his pal, hello, McMann old boy. How the hell’re you? (He searched in the blue smoke which was the graveyard of a thousand rising ghosts. Schneck was telling a dirty story to a fellow, himself, he was laughing.) Hello, McMann, how are you? I don’t feel sorry I bopped you. Have you anything against me? You have not, you must be proud of me, that’s why you sent your little boy Ray to watch me….
“I wish the women’d come,” said Schneck. Hahaha. Laughs. A glass of rye tilting.
“What women?” said Bill. “Hell, they’ll be right up.” He moved with dignity, engrossed in his game of numbers. In the toilet he noticed some dope’d already decorated the fresh-painted buff wall with a dirty mural, sketching in a fat woman, the important parts shaded, and with witty slogans above and below. Number one, two, three … Hanrahan, lousy mick snooper. Wise to me, want to get me on the holdups on Ninth, come after me about McMann, why the hell aren’t you interested in me and the McMann murder, don’t you think I know a little about it? What’d you do, McMann? I wish I had your brain wrapped up in a hanky to advise me…. Joe and Cathy, I got to fix that and be careful of Hanrahan, and run the club and get jobs and kidnap Rockefeller’s daughter and get plenty dimes and then I quit…. He staggered out of the lavatory.
The kids had gathered outside the flats like boarders piling out at word of Fire, and down below coming up were five women, Madge leading a quartet. “Back, alla you,” growled Bill. “Keep the racket down, you damn mugs.” The five women smiled, ding-donging their hellos like bells. “Hello, Bill,” said Madge. “Hell,” he said. The kids whispered that was Bill’s dame, snickering, yeh, that dame there, and what he sees in her, the bunch of bones, but nice eyes and legs, and she ain’t skinny, she’s slender, guy, she’s slender, guy. They admired him more than ever with a dame like her nuts about him. “Thirty guys here about,” said Bill. “You four babes gotta make love to seven eight guys a head. God damn it, no racket. You get twenty bucks apiece from me. If the kids wants extras they’ll pay it.” He glanced at the four dames, plump, thirty, wide built, ideal for lineups. Madge’d done a good job, got the right kind. While they watched, he yanked out his wallet and paid out the money. “None of you guys swiping this or I’ll kill you. You, Ray, Schneck, Mike, Chisel, you four fellers take charge, count out your sides.” He laughed in the turmoil, the scent of women, the smoke, all the boozy beery atmosphere like a hell about him. “You four take care of the dames, see everyone gets a fair break.” He winked at Spat, and Spat smiled back. Bill thought: If I show him dough he’ll be my man. He went to the office with Madge, shouting for Spat to keep the racket down. He switched on the light and shut the door. In the rear there was a brown couch.
“Holy cow, ever seen anything like it, those four palooks like monitors, so serious?”
“I wonder how much cut Paddy’ll take?”
“Forget it.” He took her hands. “How easy to bop a man off, but they’re scared of me so far. Work. I’ve got to find work to keep ‘em quiet. If I get by, you’ll be in the dough.”
“You’re kinda wild, honey.”
“Naw, only drunk.”
She seemed older smoking her cigarette. “Them dames oughta be glad with them nice kids, no greasers and no tellin’ what else they make. What a riot! You been feedin’ ‘em booze in trucks, it sounds.”
He thought of Joe. He had built his house well. Joe would marry Cathy and work for Spat. Cathy would help save Joe. The kids loved each other. He snickered. Madge stared at him. Madge didn’t know what a master builder he was. He knew. In a hundred years they’d all be dead. The hell with it. So Joe wouldn’t be a respectable clerk, wouldn’t lead a sissy life. That was his doing. God, always the weak must follow the strong. He put thought of Joe away from him. Hell with it. He had work to get for the kids. He needed his brain to think of that and of Hanrahan. How would he end up? Who cared? He felt careless of everything. He had one regret. He said to her: “Only McMann isn’t here.”
“Forget him.”
“I’ll give a reward for his killer.” He thought: My brother Joe.
“Cut it, Bill, you got me leery, you’re so pale, you look bad.”
“Just a lil drunk. Me and Spat got to run that pack of tigers, and the bull’s wise.” His eyes shone, the whites glaring an abandoned power, his thoughts leaping out of the office into which he’d sneaked like an animal to a den. He was alone with his body and her body, but his thoughts were in the world. His thoughts were with Joe and Hanrahan and the jobs to be pulled and the five grand or five trillion to be made. Hell, but he was also alone with their two bodies, and when she walked to him, her lips swaying, he rubbed his eyes to be sure. She put her arms about his neck. His body seized her body, but only his body. His thoughts were out in the world, and it was only a game of bodies, his thoughts with the time not yet come, fixed on the hour-hands not yet passed across the face of his life. Oh, blessed God, I cannot forget my brother or Hanrahan or the things I must do. It was only a body for Madge to love and that’s why she loved him, hoping to get all of him, and hoping, therefore loving…. The grand sweeping world, oh, the world, his life not yet begun, the tomorrows for seedings and harvestings, and what seedings and harvestings he now knew.
He looked at the bandage on her arm, and even in this secret hide-away where his body rested, McMann had come to put the bandage there.