Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

“I’ll pay,” Carlin said.

“There’s a guy I know up in Spanish Harlem,” Burkman said. “Got no license because he did a jolt for some abortions, but he’s good. He could patch up a hole made by a cannon. But he’ll want at least a C-note for himself, too.”

“He’ll get it,” Carlin said. His rising voice had anguish in it. “Goddamn it, shyster, get the lead out. Get moving!”

Burkman reached a skinny hand inside the dirty undershirt and deliberately scratched his chest. “I’ll want my dough first, Carlin,” he said amiably. “Like all good hustlers, I get my money first. My hundred bucks now, before I take you to the doctor.”

Carlin took a quick sliding step towards the lawyer and glared up at him, his face shining with sweat. “You get paid at the doctor’s, see? You both get paid off when I get fixed up.”

“How do I know you got any money?” Burkman asked. “You’ve been living hand-to-mouth, waiting for the payoff on that job you pulled. How do I know you got two hundred?”

Carlin withdrew his right hand from inside of his coat. A spasm of pain rippled across his face, like a flash of lightning in an empty sky, and the scar was a line of flame across his set jaw. He wiped his bloody hand carefully on a trouser leg, reached into his hip pocket, pinched out one of the thousand-dollar bills and held it close to Burkman’s face.

The lawyer stared, his big mouth gaping. “Jesus!” he said. “A grand! You know if it’s good, kid? You sure it isn’t queer?”

“Paul Velco gave it to me. His idea of a joke because he figured I’d have trouble getting it busted. Velco don’t shove queer money.”

“Velco, huh?” Burkman said softly. “So I guess you couldn’t pass it, could you, boy — not in the shape you’re in? But I could pass it, couldn’t I? There’s lots of places will cash a G-note, no questions asked, if you give them a hundred for their trouble.”

“We’ll give ’em the hundred,” Carlin said. He pointed with his chin at a raincoat that hung on a peg on the back of the door. “I’ll need your raincoat, Burkman. Tie the end of the left sleeve together, see, and the sleeve will stop the blood from drippin’ out. No hackie’ll haul me if I’m bleeding all over his cab like a stuck pig.”

“I hope you got cab fare,” Burkman said, “because I’m absolutely Tap-City myself. I haven’t got a crying dime.”

“I got just four lousy bucks in the world,” Carlin said, “outside of this one G-note.”

Burkman shrugged and walked to a cluttered table pushed back against one wall. He lifted a nearly empty whiskey bottle and pressed the neck against his lips. Carlin crossed the room in three long strides and snatched the bottle from Burkman’s hand. “The shot that’s left in here goes to me,” he said. “You can tie the bag on tighter after we bust the grand. But I’m the guy that’s belting this one, because this is one I really need.”

The woman who opened the door of the apartment had skin the color of cinnamon and a slim, upthrust figure like a young girl’s. She stood with the door open a few inches, fumbling with a shoulder strap of her soiled satin slip, her black sloe eyes squinting into the shadows of the hall.

“You remember me, Rosa,” Burkman said. “Get the hell out of the way and let us in.”

The woman giggled, and stood back, and Carlin followed Burkman down a dimly lighted hall. The lawyer opened a door and led the way into a dark and malodorous kitchen in which a fat little man sat at a littered table, hunched over a Racing Form.

“Greetings, Gradek,” Burkman said. “And how’s the good gray doctor?”

The fat little man had a bald, domed head that was too big for his dwarfed body. His face was round and childlike. He looked at Burkman with bleak dark eyes, and spat on the kitchen floor. “Mr. Burkman,” he said bitterly. “The legal lush. The saturated shyster.”

“Now that we’ve admired each other,” Burkman said, “meet my friend, Joe. He’s had a piece of bad luck. He was looking at an old gun he’s got in the house, a family heirloom, see, and it went off and punctured him a little. A mere trifle, a flesh wound, Gradek, but bothersome.”

“Any wound I look at is serious,” Gradek said. “Any wound I look at could be dangerous — for me. I hope your boy friend remembered to bring his bankroll with him when he came.”

“Look,” Burkman said, and the levity was gone from his voice. “We’ve done business, you and I, and you know I can’t afford to cheat you. The boy’s got a G-note, see, a thousand-dollar bill. A good one. It’s all he’s got.”

“I never saw a thousand-dollar bill,” Gradek said. “I imagine they’re beautiful to look at.” His thin, precise voice sank to a sardonic growl. “So how do I get paid out of a thousand-dollar bill? Who cashes one at eleven o’clock at night?”

“I know a loan shark who’ll break it,” Burkman answered. “He’d cash it at five o’clock in the morning in a graveyard. Patch this boy up. Give him a shot of something that’ll keep him on his feet. When you’ve done that, we’ll go out, the three of us, and we’ll break the bill. You know I’m not going to stiff you, Gradek. Hell, there’s no telling when I might even need you myself.”

The fat little man stood up quickly. “I can tell right from here that the wound is quite serious,” he said. “I could always make a good fast diagnosis even from quite a way off. So my price, of course, is a little more now. Say a hundred and fifty instead of one hundred dollars.”

Carlin followed Gradek into a bathroom that adjoined the kitchen. The pain was like a knife in him now, a dull knife that twisted and slashed and turned into red-hot pincers whenever he moved.

“If you’ll step into the bathtub, please,” Gradek said, “it’ll be so much easier to clean up the mess.”

Carlin looked down and saw the tub, cracked and stained with rings of human grime, a shallow pit yawning beneath his wavering eyes. He kicked off his shoes and climbed into the tub, lifting his legs high, feeling the cold, slippery enamel beneath him. He stood very still, sweat running down his face, as Gradek stripped off the raincoat and blood-soaked jacket and shirt beneath.

“It’s not so bad,” Gradek said, looking at the crimson horror of Carlin’s chest and arm. “But it’s bad enough so that you won’t feel like hugging your girl friend for a while. You’ll need plasma, and morphine, and other things, of course. So, naturally, my price comes up a little. One hundred and seventy-five now instead of the hundred and fifty I quoted.”

Carlin did not answer. He stood looking over Gradek’s shoulder, watching a fat cockroach crawl between two waterpipes that rose like black fingers against the discolored wall. Arty Keller, the old con who had shared his cell at Auburn, had told him that it helped to stare at something, very hard, when you were in great pain. You looked at something hard, and you thought of things, and if you were lucky you wouldn’t scream, because concentration turned the edge of pain.

Carlin stood still, his eyes fixed on the fat roach, thinking of Paul Velco’s florid face, his soft smiling mouth, of the boss mobster’s big belly shaking with silent laughter as he put the two thousand-dollar bills down upon the desk. He felt the sting of the needle as it bit into his flesh.

Alongside him, Burkman asked Gradek if there was a drink in the house. When the medic said no, he asked: “The alcohol in this bottle, Doc... Is it drinking or rubbing stuff? And what would it do if I took a shot of it? God, I’ve got the grandfather of all hangovers.”

“The Bowery stiffs drink it,” Gradek said. “A lot of guys guzzle it, and some of them live.”