Geoffrey Bartholomew - Manhattan Noir 2 - The Classics

Ernest shrugged. “Emotionalism. A large useless gesture. You’re all tainted by Charley’s philosophy. He’s a football player. He has a football player’s philosophy. Somebody knocks you down, you knock him down, everything is fine.”

“I want a glass of milk, too,” Charley said. “Please, Sally.”

“Whom’re you playing this week?” Ernest said.

“Georgetown.”

“Won’t that be enough violence for one week?” Ernest asked.

“Nope,” Charley said. “I’ll take care of Georgetown first, then Lueger.”

“Anything I can do,” Dr. Stryker said. “Remember, anything I can do. I am at your service.”

“The coach’ll be sore,” Ernest said, “if you get banged up, Charley.”

“The hell with the coach. Please shut up, Ernest. I have got my stomachful of Communist tactics. No more. Get this in your head, Ernest.” Charley stood up and banged the table. “I am disregarding the class struggle, I am disregarding the education of the proletariat, I am disregarding the fact that you are a good Communist. I am acting strictly in the capacity of your brother. If you’d had any brains you would have stayed away from that lousy boat. You’re a painter, an artist, you make water colors, what the hell is it your business if lunatics’re running Germany? But all right. You’ve got no brains. You go and get your eye beat out. O.K. Now I step in. Purely personal. None of your business. Shut your trap. I will fix everything to my own satisfaction. Please go and lie down in the bedroom. We have arrangements to make here.”

Ernest stood up, hiding his mouth, which was twitching, and walked into the bedroom and closed the door and lay down on the bed, in the dark, with his eye open.

The next day, an hour before sailing time, Charley and Dr. Stryker and Sally went down to the Bremen , and boarded the ship on different gangplanks. They stood separately on the A Deck, up forward, waiting for Preminger. Preminger came, very boyish and crisp in his blue uniform, looked coldly past them, touched a steward on the arm, a dark, good-looking young steward, said something to him, and went aft. Charley and Dr. Stryker examined the steward closely, so that two weeks later, on a dark street, there would be no mistake, and left, leaving Sally there, smiling at Lueger.

“Yes,” Sally said two weeks later, “it is very clear. I’ll have dinner with him, and I’ll go to a movie with him, and I’ll get him to take at least two drinks, and I’ll tell him I live on West Twelfth Street, near West Street. There is a whole block of apartment houses there, and I’ll get him down to West Twelfth Street between a quarter to one and one in the morning, and you’ll be waiting there, you and Stryker, under the Ninth Avenue L, and you’ll say, ‘Pardon me, can you direct me to Sheridan Square?’ and I’ll start running.”

“That’s right,” Charley said, “that’s fine.” He blew reflectively on his huge hands, knotted and cleat-marked from last Saturday’s game. “That is the whole story for Mr. Lueger. You’ll go through with it now?” he asked. “You’re sure you can manage it?”

“I’ll go through with it,” Sally said. “I had a long talk with him today when the boat came in. He is very... anxious. He likes small girls like me, he says, with black hair. I told him I lived alone, downtown. He looked at me very significantly. I know why he manages to sleep with two ladies a voyage, like Preminger says. I’ll manage it.”

“What is Ernest going to do tonight?” Dr. Stryker asked. In the two weeks of waiting his voice had become so dry he had to swallow desperately every five words. “Somebody ought to take care of Ernest tonight.”

“He’s going to Carnegie Hall tonight,” Sally said. “They’re playing Brahms and Debussy.”

“That’s a good way to spend an evening,” Charley said. He opened his collar absently, and pulled down his tie. “The only place I can go with Ernest these days is the movies. It’s dark, so I don’t have to look at him.”

“He’ll pull through,” Dr. Stryker said professionally. “I’m making him new teeth; he won’t be so self-conscious, he’ll adjust himself.”

“He hardly paints any more,” Sally said. “He just sits around the house and looks at his old pictures.”

“Mr. Lueger,” Charley said. “Our pal, Mr. Lueger.”

“He carries a picture of Hitler,” Sally said. “In his watch. He showed me. He says he’s lonely.”

“How big is he?” Stryker asked nervously.

“He’s a large, strong man,” Sally said.

“I think you ought to have an instrument of some kind, Charley,” Stryker said dryly. “Really, I do.”

Charley laughed. He extended his two hands, palms up, the broken fingers curled a little, broad and muscular. “I want to do this with my own hands,” he said. “I want to take care of Mr. Lueger with my bare fists. I want it to be a very personal affair.”

“There is no telling what...” Stryker said.

“Don’t worry, Stryker,” Charley said. “Don’t worry one bit.”

At twelve that night Sally and Lueger walked down Eighth Avenue from the Fourteenth Street subway station. Lueger held Sally’s arm as they walked, his fingers moving gently up and down, occasionally grasping tightly the loose cloth of her coat and the firm flesh of her arm just above the elbow.

“Oh,” Sally said. “Don’t. That hurts.”

Lueger laughed. “It does not hurt much,” he said. He pinched her playfully. “You don’t mind if it hurt, nevertheless,” he said. His English was very complicated, with a thick accent.

“I mind,” Sally said. “Honest, I mind.”

“I like you,” he said, walking very close to her. “You are a good girl. You are made excellent. I am happy to accompany you home. You are sure you live alone?”

“I’m sure,” Sally said. “Don’t worry. I would like a drink.”

“Aaah,” Lueger said. “Waste time.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Sally said. She had learned a lot about him in one evening. “My own money. Drinks for you and me.”

“If you say so,” Lueger said, steering her into a bar. “One drink, because we have something to do tonight.” He pinched her hard and laughed, looking obliquely into her eyes with a kind of technical suggestiveness he used on the two ladies a voyage on the Bremen .

Under the Ninth Avenue L on Twelfth Street, Charley and Dr. Stryker leaned against an elevated post, in deep shadow.

“I... I...” Stryker said. Then he had to swallow to wet his throat so that the words would come out. “I wonder if they’re coming,” he said finally in a flat, high whisper.

“They’ll come,” Charley said, keeping his eyes on the little triangular park up Twelfth Street where it joins Eighth Avenue. “That Sally has guts. That Sally loves my dumb brother like he was the President of the United States. As if he was a combination of Lenin and Michelangelo. And he had to go and get his eye batted out.”

“He’s a very fine man,” Stryker said. “Your brother Ernest. A man with true ideals. I am very sorry to see what has happened to his character since... Is that them?”

“No,” Charley said. “It’s two girls from the YWCA on the corner.”

“He used to be a very merry man,” Stryker said, swallowing rapidly. “Always laughing. Always sure of what he was saying. Before he was married we used to go out together all the time and all the time the girls, my girl and his girl, no matter who they were, would give all their attention to him. All the time. I didn’t mind. I love your brother Ernest as if he was my young brother. I could cry when I see him sitting now, covering his eye and his teeth, not saying anything, just listening to what other people have to say.”