Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Jesus, Flanagan, why would I want to run out? Answer me that, what’s there in it for me if I run out? I ask you that simple question.”

“You give me a pain in the belly,” Flanagan said. “A terrible pain. Alexander.” He took out a cigarette and lit it, without offering one to Alex, and looked moodily out at the policeman who was taking their toll money at the Holland Tunnel entrance.

They rode in silence through the tunnel until Sam said, “This is some tunnel. It’s an achievement of engineering. Look, they got a cop every hundred yards.”

“You give me a pain in the belly, too,” Flanagan said to Sam. So they rode in silence until they came to the skyway. The open starlit sky seemed to loosen Flanagan up a little. He took off his derby and ran his fingers through his sandy hair with a nervous unhappy motion.

“I had to get mixed up with you,” he said to Alex. “A simple little thing like burning down a house and you gum it up like flypaper. Twenty-five thousand dollars hanging by a thread. Christ!” he said bitterly. “Maybe I ought to shoot you.”

“I don’t understand it,” Alex said miserably. “That fuse shoulda reached the naphtha in two hours. It shoulda burned like a gas stove.”

“You Greek general.”

“Lissen, Flanagan,” Alex said, tough and businesslike. “I don’t like the way you talk. You talk like I threw the job away on purpose. Lissen, do you think I’d throw five thousand bucks out the window like that?”

“I don’t know what you’d do,” Flanagan said, lighting another cigarette. “I don’t think you got enough brains to come in outa the rain. That’s my honest opinion.”

“Five thousand bucks is five thousand bucks,” Alex insisted. “With money like that I could open a poolroom and be a gentleman for the rest of my life.” He looked up at the ceiling of the car and spoke softly. “I always wanted to operate a poolroom.” Then, harshly, to Flanagan, “You think I’d give up a chance like that? What do you think—I’m crazy?”

“I don’t think nothing,” Flanagan said stubbornly. “All I know is the house didn’t burn. That’s all I know.”

He looked stonily out his window and there was quiet in the car as it raced across the Jersey meadows through the stockyard, fertilizer, glue-factory smells, and turned off on the fork to Orangeburg. Two miles out of the town they stopped at an intersection and McCracken came out from behind a tree and got into the car. Sam started the car again even before McCracken was seated. McCracken was not in uniform and there was a harried frown on his face. “This is the nuts,” McCracken said even before he got the car door closed. “This is wonderful. This is a beautiful kettle of fish.”

“If you just come to cry,” Flanagan said bluntly, “you can get right out now.”

“I have been sitting around in the police station,” McCracken wailed, “and I have been going crazy.”

“All right. All right!” Flanagan said.

“Everything worked just like we planned,” McCracken went right on, pounding his hand on his knee. “Ten minutes before eleven o’clock an alarm was turned in from the other end of town and the whole damned fire department went charging out to put out a brush fire in a vacant lot. I waited and waited and for two hours there was no sign of a fire from the Littleworth house. Twenty-five thousand bucks!” He rocked back and forth in misery. “Then I called you. What’re you doing, playing a game?”

Flanagan gestured toward Alex with his thumb. “Look at him. There’s the boy. Our efficiency expert. I would like to kick him in the belly.”

“Lissen,” Alex said coolly and reasonably. “Something went wrong. A mistake. All right.”

“What’s all right about it?” McCracken shouted. “You tell me! Lissen, Alex, I get four thousand bucks a year for bein’ Chief of Police of this town, I can’t afford to get mixed up in mistakes.”

“I will do the job over,” Alex said soothingly. “I will do it good this time.”

“You better,” Flanagan said grimly. “You’ll be served up as pie if you make another mistake.”

“That’s no way to talk,” Alex said, hurt.

“That’s the way I talk,” Flanagan said. “Sam, go to the Littleworth house.”

The car barely stopped for Alex to jump out in front of the Littleworth house. “We’ll be back in ten minutes,” Flanagan said as he closed the door. “Find out what went wrong. Alex! ” he said with loathing.

Alex shrugged and looked up at the huge pile of the Littleworth house, black against the sky. By all rights it should’ve been just a heap of ashes by now with insurance experts probing in the remains to estimate how much damage was done. Why couldn’t it’ve burned? Alex wept inwardly, why couldn’t it? Five thousand dollars, he thought as he went swiftly and quietly across the dark lawn. A nice comfortable poolroom, with the balls clicking like music and the boys buying Coca-Cola at ten cents a bottle between shots and the cash register ringing again and again. A gentleman’s life. No wondering every time you saw a cop was he looking for you. Why couldn’t it’ve burned?

He slipped silently through the window that he had left open and padded along the thick carpet to the library, his flashlight winking on and off cautiously in the dark hall. He went directly to the pile of rags in the corner, over which still hung the faint odor of naphtha. He played the flashlight on the fuse that he had carefully lighted before slipping out the window. Only ashes remained. The fuse had burned all right. Uncertainly he touched the rags. They were dry as sand. “Nuts,” he said softly in the silent library. “Nuts. Smart guy!” He hit his head with both his hands in irritation. “What a smart guy!” He kicked the pile of rags bitterly and went back along the hall and jumped out the window and walked out across the lawn and waited for Flanagan and Sam behind a tree, smoking a cigarette.

Alex breathed deeply, looking around him. This was the way to live, he thought, peering at the big houses set behind trees and lawns off in the darkness, fresh air and birds and quiet, going off to Palm Beach when you wanted your house burned down and you didn’t want to know anything about it. He sighed, blotting out his cigarette against the tree. A well-run poolroom ought to be good for six, seven thousand dollars a year. You could live very respectable in Flatbush on six, seven thousand dollars a year, there were trees there, all over the place, and squirrels, live squirrels, in the gardens. Like a park, like a real park, that’s how people ought to live …

The car drew up to him and Flanagan opened the door and leaned out.

“Well, general?” Flanagan asked without humor.

“Look, Flanagan,” Alex said seriously, talking in whispers, “something went wrong.”

“No!” Flanagan said with bitter irony. “No! Don’t tell me!”

“Do you want to make jokes?” Alex asked. “Or do you want to hear what happened?”

“For God’s sake,” McCracken whispered, his voice tense and high, “don’t be a comedian, Flanagan. Say what you got to say and let’s get outa here!” He looked anxiously up and down the street. “For all I know a cop’s liable to come walkin’ up this street any minute!”

“Our Chief of Police. Old Iron Nerves,” Flanagan said.

“I’m sorry I ever got into this,” McCracken said hoarsely. “Well, Alex, what the hell happened?”

“It’s very simple,” Alex said. “I set a two-hour fuse and the naphtha evaporated.”

“Evaporated?” Sam said slowly. “What’s that, evaporated?”

“He’s a student, our boy, Alex,” Flanagan said. “He knows big words. Evaporated. You dumb Greek! You efficiency expert! You stupid sonofabitch! Trust you to burn down a house! Evaporated! You ought to be washing dishes! Alexander! ” Deliberately Flanagan spit at Alex.