Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

Frankie was firm. ‘No percentage. I don’t want no janitor takin’ potshots at me. Where’s the payoff?’

‘Then let’s put on our ties ’n go down to the Rye-awlto.’

Frankie tapped his glass. He couldn’t get it filled at the Rye-awlto.

‘You want to go plain-stealin’ then, Frankie?’

‘Why you always so hungry to latch onto somebody else’s gold? Stealin’ what?’

‘’Lectric eye-rons by Nieboldt’s, it’s where they’re makin’ profits to galore these days, they’ll never miss a couple eye-rons more ’r less.’ N there’s nobody around on the third floor, it’s what they call the honor system so they don’t have to hire no help. That’s the beauty part, you just help yourself, it’s better’n boozin’ ’r wolfin’ in hallways even.’

‘I’d do better to go to the Y.’ n take my belly off,’ Frankie murmured, with no intention of working off his beer paunch at all. ‘What you get for them eye-rons?’

‘A fin apiece anywheres. It’ll kill the old monotony. After all, God hates a coward.’

‘Well,’ Frankie conceded, ‘God hates a coward awright – but empty your pockets all the same. The only way I go boostin’ is empty-handed.’ And thought, ‘If God hates a coward that much he must be workin’ up one terrible grudge against me – I’m gettin’ so I’m afraid to be alone with a bottle.’ He finished the beer before him, wavered one moment on the Nieboldt plan – then the booze left in the bottle felt riskier to him than electric irons. ‘Let’s go, punk.’

He was mildly surprised to see that, out of nowhere, the punk was suddenly carrying a shopping bag; it hadn’t been in view the whole afternoon.

‘What makes you so roundabout when you want help?’ Frankie scolded him.

‘I always carry a shoppin’ bag,’ Sparrow assured him brazenly, ‘in case I run into some guy who wants to go ’lectric-eye-ron-stealin’ by Nieboldt’s.’

The after-Christmas remnants had been piled in disarray upon every counter. The tidy little beribboned gift packages were all gone and in their places were hastily stamped placards: Marked Down for January Clearance. And in the aisles half the women of the Near Northwest Side jostled one another just to see how much they would have saved if they hadn’t done their Christmas shopping till now.

Slips, bras and pajamas were heaped as if ready to be swept into the alley if not sold before closing time.

Frankie and Sparrow took the faintly murmuring escalator up to the third floor, where the punk became diverted by some marked-down toy automobiles. Frankie hauled him forward. ‘Let’s pick up them eye-rons.’

The punk led the way a few yards, pausing only to inspect a vegetable bin at the base of an electric refrigerator. Frankie lugged him on past hardware and kitchenware, crockery and paints; till they came to an oasis of fluorescent light wherein, it appeared, the store had forbidden all its help to enter. Not a salesgirl in sight.

‘It’s “Everybody’s on His Honor System,” Frankie,’ the punk felt obliged to explain the miracle, ‘even me ’n you.’

Frankie covered, holding the handle of the bag, while Sparrow lowered half a dozen irons into it. When Frankie felt their weight pull on the handle he turned away, leaving the punk standing with an iron in each hand – he got rid of them as suddenly as though they were heated. ‘We’ll take the elevator down,’ Sparrow urged him, ‘it looks so innocent-like.’

‘Escalator is the best,’ Frankie decided, and Frankie always decided right. You couldn’t get out of an elevator fast.

He looked around and saw Sparrow back at the refrigerator, examining the vegetable bin; the punk caught up with him at the head of the stairs. ‘My roof always leaks a little faster in January,’ he apologized, before Frankie could start scolding, ‘that’s the time of year I first started gettin’ dizzy when I was a sprout.’

At the top of the second flight the bottom dropped out of the bag.

Frankie watched them tumbling down the narrow escalator stairs as if they were on rollers and wanted to laugh when one barely missed a salesgirl’s ankle – the bag slipped from his hand, he shouldered the girl to one side, saw her mouth widen with indignation and then knew it was no use running, no use at all: two floorwalkers, a house dick and a dozen bosomy saleswomen clamored around, pecking at him like over-fed hens.

‘They had an ace hidin’ in the drapes,’ Frankie realized wryly, ‘the punk caught somebody’s eye foolin’ wit’ that vegetable bin.’ And told the house dick quietly, ‘Let’s go where we’re goin’.’

They came down that littered aisle in a sort of carnival with the house dick holding his belt from behind and a floorwalker on either side holding his arms and the bosomy biddies following behind, cackling as they came. Under their feigned horror Frankie heard their easy laughter. He caught a glimpse of a butcher holding a broken-necked rooster, both butcher and rooster sliding one limp dark eye sidewise at him as he passed.

He felt the patrol car wheel out from the curb and saw the wan early January sun lying in a checkered pattern across the car’s scarred floor. It was evening, the snow was drifting a bit toward the curbs and when the car stopped for the lights he heard the wind getting up all down the trolley tracks trying to hurry the patrol along a bit: it would be long melted before he saw any trolley run again.

‘The punk saw that ace ’n ducked without givin’ me the word,’ Frankie decided bitterly. ‘If I ever find out for sure it was him rolled Louie-’ He touched his left hand to his shoulder: in the excitement one of the biddies had torn the sleeve again.

The young men had engraved their bitterest disappointments upon the walls beside their fondest hopes. They had exposed their betrayers there, mocked their lawyers and doubted their wives. One had assured his sainted mother he was going straight the moment he could make bail and with the same stub end planned straight mayhem, the moment bail was made, upon one Crash Kolkowski. No reason was offered; yet the emergency stood plain:

If it wasn’t for Crash Kolkowski I wouldn’t be in here and where he should be is in hell with his back broke. Every time he comes around shooting off that big flannel mouth us good guys should get together and break his back five or six times. Nobody should even buy him a shot.

The prospect of Kolkowski sweating out an eternity with his spine in a cast while all the good guys in purgatory stood around refusing him just one small snort was sufficiently dismal. Yet even sadder, it seemed to Frankie Machine, was another second guesser’s plea:

Don’t go by Dago Mary she give bad drink

Had Dago Mary prepared the sodium amytal the night before? Or was it only that the coils hadn’t been cleaned? A deed premeditated by midnight and executed with deadpan deliberation in the dangerous noon? Or some casual midweek evening’s error achieved in innocent merriment? Upon the gray confessional of the walls Frankie Machine found no answer at all.

With tedious attention to detail someone had illustrated precisely how a certain aging judge would look, gavel in hand, wearing nothing but high-button shoes and a flowered cravat, while sentencing a sensibly clothed civilian to the electric chair for indecent exposure: a single button had been found loose upon the offender’s fly.

To leave nothing to the imagination the chair, sizzling invitingly, had been sketched in beside his honor. To show how no time was lost, locally, in appeals for pardon, parole or probation, the judge had his hand in reaching distance of the switch and was sweating with impatience to fry this miserable joker personally. There would be no commutation of sentence here.