Стивен Марлоу - Catch the Brass Ring

IT WAS A STICKY hot carnival day, the sun sweating down on Surf Avenue, Coney Island, through a murky sky and wringing people out like wet washrags. Even the fat blue-bellied flies swam through the heavy air in slow circles before homing in on the watermelon rinds and corn cobs in the gutter.

It was the kind of day you wanted to shut your ears to the clattering el trains, the carousel organs brassily gargling Lathi music and waltzes, the clanging gongs, the rat-tat-tat from shooting galleries, the staccato chants of the pitchmen, the steady throbbing hum of a million perspiring people dragging themselves from one fun house to the next.

Unless you were feeling great you wished you could pull down God’s window shade and then lift it and look out on a different, cleaner world. I was feeling great.

I found a bar and grill sandwiched between a freak show which offered a thousand-dollar reward if you failed to see Trina the Turtle Girl as advertised and a gift shop crammed with feathers and cheap jewelry glaring out at the street with pinwheel eyes. Inside, the bar had a cool beer smell and I started chasing gin and tonics with gin and tonics and I was feeling better all the time.

I stabbed a finger in the barman’s direction and asked him, “Where’s Tolliver’s Funland?”

He was tall, that barman, with the name Ben stitched in blue on his white shirt. He had the look of a cadaver, thin and leathery, with a nose so long and drooping he could probably stick out his tongue and touch the tip of it.

“You looking for someone special at Tolliver’s?” Ben demanded.

“Yes, an old friend of mine. Bert Archer.”

“Bert’s a nice guy.”

“The best.”

“He’s not in any trouble, mister?”

I shrugged. “Not from me.”

Ben wiped his hands on a dishtowel, rubbing the sweat-matted hair on the backs of his fingers until it dried and curled. “It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I’m on my way down to Tolliver’s, too. I’ll take you.” His head swiveled on a thin, veined neck and he showed me a side view of his bobbing Adam’s apple while he shouted, “Hey, Becky! It’s all yours.”

A fat woman waddled out from the rear of the place. She wore dark slacks and the heat had pasted them to her. She wore a white man’s shirt like Ben’s, with the name Becky stitched over the big left breast which undulated as she walked. “I’ll be back soon,” Ben told her. “Going to Tolliver’s.”

“Tell them what I said, Ben.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all you ever do, think about it.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“That’s the trouble. You don’t want any trouble. It’s so damned hot we should have air-conditioning. Can we afford air-conditioning?”

“I think I ought to keep my nose clean.”

“We should take a vacation up to Blue Mountain Lake or someplace. Can we afford it?” Becky was raising her voice.

“It’s too hot to argue, Becky. We got customers.”

Becky looked at me. “I’m sorry, mister.”

I winked at her, then glanced at the stitching over her breast as if I’d seen her name for the first time. “That’s all right, Becky,” I said. “This heat would make anyone want a vacation at Blue Mountain Lake or someplace.”

“Don’t get her started on Blue Mountain Lake,” Ben pleaded, leading the way outside. “Tolliver’s is three blocks up, by West 12th. Friend of Bert Archer, you say?”

Most of the pitchmen didn’t direct their spiels at us. They must have recognized Ben. “We fought together,” I said. “In Korea. Third Division.”

“If you’re really a good friend of Bert’s, you can give him some advice. I get to know things, but I don’t talk much, understand?”

An old woman, fatter than Ben’s wife, wanted to guess my weight, my age, my first name, occupation, state of birth, girl friend’s name, favorite food, hobby, anything. She sat, sweating and unabashed, in her big chair-scale. She tipped it at a sylphlike two hundred pounds, the needle quivering as she rocked back and forth.

“What kind of advice?” I asked Ben as we crossed the street and he waved to a young kid at the mike in a pokerino joint.

“Good advice, the very best. Tell Bert to get out of Tolliver’s, out of Coney Island, even. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I usually mind my own business, but Bert’s a nice guy.”

I didn’t know whether to believe Ben or not. It was too hot and I still felt too good to care much. I said, “Has he done something wrong?”

“He’ll know what if you tell him, mister.”

“Call me Gid. Gideon Frey’s the name. I can’t very well tell Bert to leave Tolliver’s, Ben. You see, I’m going to work for him there.”

“Oh, no. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I always put my foot in it.” Ben grinned sheepishly, but underneath he seemed alarmed.

On the corner of West 12th, a crowd had gathered. A white-smocked boy who couldn’t have been out of high school very long sat at a bridge table, staring indifferently at a rack of blood-filled phials in front of him, twisting a length of thin rubber tubing in his fingers. An overheated car was parked at the curb, its hood up, double microphones bolted to its roof blaring a man’s voice. He said I had four or five quarts of blood in my body, he said it was the most important thing I had, more important than time or money. He said all they wanted to test was five cc’s, a mere spit in the bucket. It was for my own good only, a public service. The guy in the smock told a twelve-year-old kid he was too young for that kind of thing and the kid said, how do you know, smartie.

The crowd outside Tolliver’s was bigger, but quieter. It was so still you heard more noise from two blocks away. The gin had come through my pores and plastered my shirt to my back. It must have lingered on my lips, too, for when I asked someone what was up he averted his face and jerked his thumb toward the two green and white police cars and the emergency ambulance at the curb.

A cop walked by and I tapped him on the shoulder, but his eyes stopped me with a mind-your-own-business look. I pushed after him through the crowd, Ben, following in my wake. The place had no doors, but a cop stood between two of the pillars supporting the first-story roof.

“You can’t go in there,” he said.

“No?”

“No. Those that are inside stay in. Those that are outside stay out. Orders.”

I peered inside. All the rides had shut down. Faces stared out at me, nervous and pale, female and male, all looking identical. The brilliant masses confronted with the unexpected. Gideon Frey, I thought, you are a no-good snob.

A dark-haired girl sat on the sidewalk just outside the place, her back propped against one of the green and white pillars, her knees drawn up and circled by her arms. She cried softly but steadily, eyes opened wide and fastened on her knee-clasped hands without seeing.

I hated to bother her, but she probably was from inside and knew what was going on. I was still bursting with enthusiasm and a little high and dying to see my old friend, Bert Archer.

“I’m looking for Mr. Archer,” I said. “Bert Archer?”

I think the girl heard me. She started crying louder. The cop said to me, “O. K., Mac. Let her alone.”

The girl glanced up at me and kept on crying. It caught on a sob and changed to hysterical laughter.

“You’re about an hour… late,” she told me. “Bert Archer is dead.”

I heard a sharp sucking in of breath behind me. I whirled and got stared down by a matronly woman who’d caught my swinging elbow in a compromising spot. Ben had vanished.