Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

Thomas sat down and wrote a letter to Heath, telling him he’d meet him either at the Nice uirport or the Antibes station on the fifteenth.

He told Kate about the new charter and how it was his brother who had arranged it, and she made him write a letter of thanks to Rudolph. He had signed it. and was just going to seal the envelope, when he remembered that Rudolph had written him that if there was anything he could do for him not to hesitate to let him know what it was. Well, why not, he thought. It couldn’t do any harm. In a PS. he wrote, “There’s one thing you can do for me. For various reasons I haven’t been able to come back to New York so far but maybe those reasons don’t hold any more. I haven’t had any news of my kid for years and I don’t know where he is or whether I’m still married or not. I’d like to come over and see him and if possible take him back here with me for a while. Maybe you remember the night you and Gretchen came back after my fight in Queens, there was my manager, a man I introduced you to called Schultzy. Actually his name is Herman Schultz. The last address I had for him is the Bristol Hotel Eighth Avenue, but maybe he doesn’t live there any more. But if you ask somebody in the Garden office if they know where you can lay your hands on Schultzy they’re bound to know if he’s still alive and in town. He’s likely to have some news about Teresa and the kid. Just don’t tell him where I am for the time being. But ask him if the heat’s still on. He will understand. Let me know if you find him and what he says. This will be a real good turn and I will be really grateful.’

He airmailed the two letters at the Antibes post office and then went back to the ship to get ready for the English party.

Nobody had remembered Herman Schultz at the Bristol Hotel, but somebody in the publicity department at Madison Square Garden had finally come up with the address of a rooming

house on West Fifty-third Street. Rudolph was getting to know Fifty-third Street very well. He had been there three times in the last four weeks, on every trip he had made to New York in the month of August. Yes, the man at the rooming house said, Mr Schultz stayed there when he was in New York, but he was out of town. He didn’t know where out of town. Rudolph left his telephone number with him, but Schultz never called him. Rudolph had to suppress a quiver of distaste every time he rang the bell. It was a decaying building in a dying neighbourhood inhabited, you felt, by doomed old men and derelict young men.

A shuffling, bent old man with a twisted hair piece opened the peeling door, the colour of dried blood. From the gloom of the hallway he peered nearsightedly at Rudolph standing on the stoop in the hot September sun. Even with the distance between them, Rudolph could smell him, mildew and urine.

‘Is Mr Schultz at home?’ Rudolph asked.

‘Fourth floor, back,’ the old man said. He stepped aside to allow Rudolph to enter.

As he climbed the steps, Rudolph realised that it wasn’t only the old man who smelled like that, it was the entire house. A radio was playing Spanish music, a fat man, naked to the waist, was sitting at the head of the second flight of steps, his head in bis hands. He didn’t look up as Rudolph squeezed past him.

The door to the fourth floor back was open. It was stifling hot, under the roof. Rudolph recognised the man he had been introduced to as Schultzy in Queens. Schultzy was sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, greyish sheets, staring at the wall of the room, three feet across from him.

Rudolph knocked on the framework of the doorway. Schultzy turned his head slowly, painfully.

‘What do you want?’ Schultz said. His voice was reedy and hostile.

Rudolph went in. ‘I’m Tom Jordache’s brother.’ He extended his hand. ,

Schultz put his right hand behind his back. He was wearing a sweat-stained skivvy shirt. He still had the basketball of a stomach. He moved his mouth uneasily, as though he was wearing plates that fit badly. He was pasty and totally bald. ‘I don’t shake hands,’ Schultz said. ‘It’s the arthritis.’ He didn’t ask Rudolph to sit down. There was no place to sit down except on the bed, anyway.

That sonofabitch,’ Schultz said. ‘I don’t want to hear his name.’

Rudolph took out his wallet and extracted two twenty dollar bills. ‘He asked me to give you this.’

‘Put it on the bed.’ Schultz’s expression, snakelike and livid, did not change. ‘He owes me one fifty.’

‘I’ll have him send the rest over tomorrow,’ Rudolph said.

‘It’s about fucking well time,’ Schultz said. ‘What does he want now? Did he put the boots to somebody else again?’

‘No,’ Rudolph said, ‘he’s not in trouble.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Schultz said.

‘He asked me to ask you if the heat’s still on.’ The words sounded strange to him as they came off his tongue.

Schultz’s face became sly, secretive, and he looked sideways at Rudolph. ‘You sure he’s going to give me the rest of the money tomorrow?’

‘Positive,’ Rudolph said.

‘Nah,’ Schultz said. ‘There’s no more heat. There’s no more anything. That bum Quayles never had a good night again after your shitty brother got through with him. The one chance I ever had to make a real buck. Not that they left me much of a share, the dagoes. And I was the one who discovered Quayles and brought him along. No, there’s no heat. Everybody’s dead or in jail. Nobody remembers your goddamn brother’s name. He can walk down Fifth Avenue at the head of the Columbus Day Parade and nobody’d raise a finger. Tell him that. Tell him that’s worth a lot more than one fifty.’

T will, Mr Schultz,’ Rudolph said, trying to sound as though he knew what the old man was talking about. ‘And then there’s another question…’

‘He wants a lot of answers for his money, don’t he?’

‘He wants to know about his wife.’

Schultz cackled. That whore,’ he said, pronouncing the word in two syllables. ‘She got her picture in the papers. In the Daily News. Twice. She got picked up twice for soliciting in bars. She said her name was Theresa Laval in the papers. French. But I recognised the bitch. Some French. They’re all whores, every last one of them. I could tell you stories,

mister … ‘

‘Do you know where she lives?’ Rudolph didn’t relish the thought of spending the afternoon in the sweltering, evil-smelling room listening to Schultz’s opinions of the female sex. ‘And where, the boy is?’

Schultz shook his head. ‘Who keeps tracks? I don’t even know where I live. Theresa Laval. French.’ He cackled again. ‘Some French.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Schultz,’ Rudolph said. T won’t trouble you any more.’

‘Ain’t no trouble. Glad for a little conversation. You for sure going to send over that money tomorrow?’

‘I guarantee.’

‘You’re wearing a good suit,’ Schultz said. ‘But that ain’t no guarantee.’

Rudolph left him sitting on the bed, his head nodding in the heat. He went down the steps quickly. Even West Fifty-third Street looked good to him when he put the rooming house behind him.

He had Rudolph’s cable in his pocket when he got off the plane at Kennedy and went with hundreds of other passengers through the Health and Immigration formalities. The last time he had been at the airport it had been called Idlewild. Taking a bullet through your head was an expensive way of getting an airport named after you.

The big Irishman with the Immigration badge looked at him as though he didn’t like the idea of letting him back into the country. And he thumbed through a big, black book, full of names, hunting for Jordache, and seemed disappointed that he couldn’t find it.