Such was my last view of Becker and my first view of the great Dr. Sweet, who I got to know pretty good and pretty often. Them damned Duster slugs was makin’ my stomach ache something fierce and after enduring a lot of jokes about my bellyachin’, I got an appointment with the sawbones. First thing I did was mention Dr. Mendoza, which turned him kindly on the spot. He put me up on the table and started feeling around.
“Is it worth it?” he asked while he was pokin’ me. Dr. Sweet spoke in a low monotone, as if everything was more or less the same to him, which it more or less was.
“Is what worth it?”
“This,” he said, and pressed down hard. I thought my head was going to fly off and hit the ceiling, the pain was so intense. “And this.” More torture.
After a while he let me up. “Yours isn’t the worst case I’ve seen, not even this month,” he said.
“Case a what?”
“Lead poisoning.”
“Gee, I feel better already.”
Dr. Sweet stepped back to get a good look at me. I wasn’t much of a sight. I’d lost at least ten pounds, more like a full stone, what with all my adventures recently, and my strength was shot. I wasn’t cuttin’ much of a figure, gangsterwise.
“Had a prisoner in here the other day, a lifer,” said the doc. “Thought he was a hunchback. Had been treated all his life as if he were a hunchback. I got his shirt off and had a look. He wasn’t a hunchback. He had a huge cyst that had never been treated, never even properly examined, and it had grown and grown until it was bigger than your head. I removed it and you know where that man is today?”
I said no.
“Playing center field for Sing Sing baseball team.”
I whistled.
He was writing as he was talking now. “Missing ears, missing noses—last year I reconstructed practically an entire face for one poor unfortunate.”
“What was his name? Maybe I knew ’im.” But the doc wasn’t listening.
“It’s not the bullets they left in you which are causing your distress,” he said, handing me the slip of paper, which he had folded over on itself. “It’s the ones they took out. How many did you say? Six?”
“So I’m told.”
Dr. Sweet shook his head in deprecation. “Surgery has come a long way in just a few short years, and we’re continuing to make advances at a rapid pace. Your wounds are ulcerating.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Suppurating. Becoming necrotic.”
“Say again?”
“They’ll kill you if we don’t fix them—soon.” He pointed at the piece of paper in my hand. “Take that to the Warden. It’s a request for a pass, for medical emergency.” He handed me back my prison stripes. “I want you in surgery tomorrow morning, seven A.M. sharp.”
Well, Dr. Sweet was every bit the artist with a scalpel as I’d heard, and after he got finished with me I was better if not perfect, and from that moment on I knew I’d never go to another doc but him as long as I could.
One of my regular visitors after I got out of recovery was Georgie Ranft, and was I ever glad to see him. Each week or so, Georgie would fill me in on the gossip, who was deceased, who just shot up, who was banging who, that kind of stuff. He got handsomer every day, Georgie did, and he still hadn’t given up the idea of being a gangster, but now his main notion was to become one of them Hollywood actors in the picture shows. His buddy Valentino had done it and Georgie figured so could he. Why the hell not? Didn’t seem to take any brains.
“Only one problem,” he said one day.
“What’s that?”
“What if they find out about, you know, us?”
“How they gonna do that? Your name never came up at the trial.”
“Yeah, well…” Georgie seemed fretful that his Hollywood career was over before it even had started.
“Tell ’em it’s just rumor. Innuendo. Insinuation—and that kinda stuff don’t have no place in the United States of America.”
Georgie didn’t seem too sure. “What if they keep asking?”
“Tell ’em it was research.”
Well, if that wasn’t the old open sesame. From then on, Sing Sing was one big stage to Georgie, and as we wandered around, he’d be after asking me what’s this and what’s that till I wanted to slug him. I took him all over the prison, to the laundry room, the library, the exercise yard, the hospital—he pretty much saw the whole shooting match, took it all in too.
Another mug I was pleased to see was my own brother. Marty had been after makin’ it in a variety of occupations, including dancer, hod carrier, ditch digger, stableboy, handyman and a bunch of others, but had come a cropper at each and every one of ’em, thanks to his love of horseflesh, dogflesh and girlflesh, each one of which is expensive.
Marty had been doin’ some other stuff too, namely time. In the past four years he’d been nicked for burglary on a couple of occasions, breaking and entering, and violating the Sullivan Law, which malfeasances won him a stretch in stir.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I yelled at him. “You know somebody’s gotta take care of Ma and May.”
He looked sheepish and stupid. “Sorry, Owney. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t.” If there weren’t screws around, I woulda smacked him. But he’d brought me some cigarettes—the real kind, not the prison kind—and a pie that Ma’d baked, so I was feeling kindly.
“You gotta help me, Owney,” he said, and he said it so pathetic that I couldn’t say no to him. A man’s got to take care of his family, as everybody knows, and since my family was now in Yonkers and might as well have been on the moon, I had to revert to my original group of relatives, which was okay by me. “I mean, look at you—”
“Yeah—look at me,” says I. “Doin’ a stretch for manslaughter, like a cheap hood.”
“But you ain’t no hood—nor a cheap one neither. This thing here, this is just a howdyacallit, a passing fancy. You’ll be righter than rain when you get back on the outside, you can count on that.”
“You’re the one who’s counting on it, I’ll bet, ya bum.”
Marty looked real sad, and I realized I didn’t have to insult him anymore, that he was going to be a friend in addition to being a brother.
“Sure I’m counting on it. And why not? We’s brothers, ain’t we?”
“Always have been, always will be,” I said. “When I’m out, I’ll need ya. Just like, right now, I need to count on ya. Think ya can manage that?”
I swear to our dear departed Da there were tears in his eyes. “Lay a bet on it,” he said.
“I will—but you won’t. I want ya to lay off the ponies and the mutts and the twists, hear me? Sure, go ahead and have a good time, but don’t blow nothin’. George—Frenchy—will give ya what he calls a stipend.”
“What’s that?”
“Bread. Moolah. Dough. Hang on to it. All I ask in return is—”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing. You’re my brother.” I reached across the table and we shook on it. One of the guards thought we might be passing something between us and started over to take a look.
“Whaddya lookin’ at, ape?” I snarled. I pointed to my trusty stripes. “You see these? The Warden himself gave ’em to me, and let me tell you, brother, I earned ’em. So back off, you smackoff.”
I had one last question for Marty. “How’s the girls?” He lowered his eyes. “Ma’s doin’ fine. Still workin’—” That got me mad. “She knows she don’t have to do that. Ain’t Frenchy takin’ care of her and May?” “Yeah, but—”
“But what? Either they’re gettin’ the dough or they ain’t.”
“Oh they’re getting it all right. It’s just that—”
“Just that what?” My impatience was about ready to bust loose, and the guard was getting ants in his pants again.
“Just that May, well…she ain’t always around.”
I jumped up. “Whaddya talkin’ about, she ain’t always around? What’s she doin’?”
That was enough for the guard. “Okay, Madden, trusty or no trusty, that’s it for the day.”
But I wasn’t finished yet. “Where is she?”
Marty jumped back. The other collegians, their mouthpieces, their frails, their mothers, their brothers, the screws—everybody stopped yapping for a minute to see what was the matter.
Marty took a couple of quick steps back, stumbled over his chair and sat down hard. I guess the guards must’ve thought I’d clocked him or something, because they started in to runnin’. I put up my fists, ready to give as good as I got, almost.
My brother managed to get to his feet before the first club fell across my shoulders. “An accident!” he cried, and that slowed them down some. All but one screw, who must have been deaf or something.
His club was high over his head as I caught him right in the old solar plexus and most of his lunch went flyin’ as a direct result. I ducked as it decorated the tabletop, spattering Marty with green peas and some chicken. I caught his chin with my knee as he hit the deck.
Then the rest of the press-gang was on me. I held up my hands to show I’d acted in self-defense and the clobberin’ I got was relatively minor as a result.
My heels were dragging as I shouted to my brother. “Find out where she is,” were my last words to him, “if it kills her.”