Peter Rabe - A Shroud for Jesso

Jesso got back to Brooklyn in half the time it had taken before.

Joseph Snell was still there.

“Up, Joe, and make it fast.” Jesso grabbed the man by the arm.

Joseph Snell rolled off the cot and hit the floor flat. He did not move again.

Why he was dead Jesso didn’t know. There wasn’t a mark on the man. And he looked almost exactly as he had looked a few hours ago, except for a thing that Jesso couldn’t place right away. Then he stepped on it. A hairpiece was lying on the floor, a slick patch of dark hair that used to fit over the bald skull in the back, where the natural hair made a ring around it. The skin wasn’t whole there. Somebody had ripped the thing off, and fast.

Jesso picked up the hairpiece. There was a square little patch on the fabric inside, where there hadn’t been any glue.

It made sense now, why Kator hadn’t been interested enough to ask where Joe Snell was holed up. Jesso had led them right to him. They had kept out of the way, watching, and after he’d gone they had walked right in, taken the thing that Snell had hidden inside his toupe, and left. Snell could have died from fright and high fever. His eyes were open, but sightless now.

It made sense. It made even more sense when Jesso got back upstairs. He ran to the back room, where he found the old man in his wheel chair. His daughter was wiping a wet rag over a welt on Bonetti’s cheek, and neither of them bothered to look at him. They must have started to tussle in the store. There were glass beads and fancy buttons all over the floor, some of them broken, others just lying there and staring up from the floor, the way Snell was doing.

The thought didn’t stay long with Jesso because then a hard noise jolted the back of his head and all the bright buttons came rushing up to his face.

When Jesso came around it happened slowly. It was so gradual there was hardly any surprise when he realized how bad it was.

Two men in the front, one in the back right next to him. He didn’t know the kid that was driving. Every so often a light would flash by the car and Jesso could see nothing but the man’s silhouette. The other two had been around since Gluck had started in his job.

Gluck had made it. Jesso was out. He felt so miserable that the thought made hardly any impression; at first, that is.

“Is he still out?” said the front seat.

“Sure. When I clip ‘em-”

“Save it. We’re hitting traffic. Push him on the floor so he won’t sit up sudden-like and make a commotion.”

Jesso heard every word of it and knew what was coming. When the man next to him pushed at his shoulder, Jesso rolled off the seat to the floor like a limp corpse. The jar to his head almost made him scream and his face contorted with pain, but it was dark down there and nobody saw it. The longer they didn’t know he was awake, the better for him. The better the chance-and then he realized there was no chance. There was no chance because he’d never prepared for this, had never thought it would go this far. So at first Gluck had come along to get under his skin. Nothing important. Nothing that ever looked as if life and death were in the scales. What Jesso had forgotten was that life and death didn’t have much weight.

“He still out?”

“Yeah. We almost there?”

“Almost.”

“Close your window. I can’t stand the smell of that river.”

“I gotta get my pass ready. Here comes the gate.”

He’d forgotten that a man like Gluck didn’t have to ask whether anybody wanted to claim the body.

The car slowed to a stop and somebody said, “O.K. Keep left till you hit Pier Twenty-eight.” Then the car moved again.

Pier 28. That was part of Gluck’s section. It didn’t make sense; this wasn’t the way they did it. Had Kator mentioned Pier 28? The brakes squealed and then the car doors came open. Jesso could smell the stink from the river, hear it lap. They grabbed him by the arms and started to pull. His knees dragged over the concrete.

Make his move now? What move? Wait. Wait and figure this thing. He stayed limp, eyes closed, head lolling down, and listened for the lap of the river. There were other sounds: other feet walking, the chug of an engine, and a steady splashing of water that poured from someplace into the river. But all that Jesso could see, carefully, was the concrete close underneath and the legs moving on either side. When they stopped they didn’t drop him, but held onto his arms.

“Grab his legs. We’ll carry him up.”

One man let go and Jesso swung down sideways. He caught sight of the trousered legs farther ahead, the crease sharp as a knife. That was Gluck. Jesso got his eyes closed just in time.

“You needn’t bother,” said the voice. “Just drop him.”

When they dragged him up the ramp and Jesso saw the rivet buttons of the steel floor under him, he knew they were aboard a ship, Kator’s ship. After a painful time across the deck, down the companionway, and through the dark guts of the steamer, they tossed him to the floor where the bulkhead curved up with the ship’s contour. They slammed a door and then Jesso was alone.

He had stayed limp, but now he relaxed. It was safe now. He was alone, alive, and there was time to think. The pain in his head had settled down to a busy throb and his scraped shins felt like fire. But he was alive and there was going to be time. There had to be, because Gluck must have farmed out the job. Why else the delay? They could have finished him in Bonetti’s button shop, out in the country, or anywhere else along the way. Not Gluck, though; not when it came to handling someone like Jesso. Jack Jesso was going to fade for good, with no one but the sharks and lobsters wise to the deal. If Gluck said Jesso was dead, the reason would be that Jesso had fouled a deal. If Gluck said that Jesso had just disappeared, the reason would be even better. Jesso took off with Kator and left Gluck behind holding the bag. No one could lose, except Jesso.

The time on his hands had stopped being a blessing. He had done all the thinking there was to be done and now the time just meant a delay, a slow wait till the end.

Jesso got up and started to pace. He didn’t have far to go. It was a small hold, down low, with nothing in it but pipes along the walls and gallon cans of paint stacked in one corner. Where the ship’s side curved out, the cans were stacked with more rows on top than at the bottom.

Jesso paced, and after a while the irritation became like a physical grip. The small space began to squeeze him, the sight of the top-heavy stack of cans got on his nerves, and every time he turned he had to look at them. He started to sweat and itch, with the frustration making a stone-hard thing in his throat. Like a rat, he thought; like a blind rat he was caught. In a way it had all happened so fast and with such oiled and simple ease that he hadn’t really grasped the fact of his sudden fall until now. Just this morning he’d been up there where he belonged, and now-The pressure rose and Jesso felt as though the air were getting thicker. He saw the porthole then, the small, dim circle just big enough to hold a man’s head. At any rate, there was air. Cursing with a rage that made his hands tremble, he twisted on the wing nuts that clamped the porthole shut. There were four of them, four brass wing nuts that seemed to bite back at him when he strained his fingers against them. When he had them loose and had swung the port back, he felt as if he were strangling, and when he saw the concrete pier shutting off view and air and distance, he gripped the rim of the open hole with an irrational fright, reared up ready to scream-and then he held his breath. He held it so long that there was a crackling in his ears.

“A bargain’s a bargain,” said Gluck’s voice. “Besides, there’s always the police.”