Gary Amdahl - The Daredevils

Later he was standing next to the jitney bus of her friend Izzy Minkowski. It was empty and driverless, and he was waiting for that man to emerge from the throng. A blocky, dusty-looking man in a light suit and white fedora walked past several times. Charles tried not to notice him, but saw him often and clearly enough to think he must have suffered some kind of curse and was slowly turning to marble; the man’s eyes, not quite fully closed, gave the impression of the blindness of statues. He walked stiffly but surely, moving out of people’s ways, looking up and down the street they were on, and the one intersecting it.

Suddenly Vera was at his side, touching his arm.

“Oh, what shall we do,” she mock-wailed.

“Go back to the Presidio and bury Durwood Keogh up to his neck. Ride by and let the horse shit on him, I don’t know.”

“Bury Durwood Keogh and yes, sorry.?”

The street was loud.

“Never mind. Cavalry drill.”

“Yes, of course I know what you’re talking about, I just didn’t catch the end. Snap off his head like one of those poor chickens?”

Vera came around, faced him, looked at him with pointed noncommittality. The glance lingered and became a searching stare. Charles stared back at her as if his life depended on it, but Vera severed the connection after only a moment or two. Smoothing her hair, she spotted Minkowski muscling his way across the street. He was short and dark, square-headed with a pronounced five o’clock shadow and brilliantly oiled hair. They embraced soundlessly, pecking on both cheeks. Charles meanwhile was fighting off, or rather pretending to fight off while succumbing and finding incredible pleasure in, a plan to offer Vera huge sums of money, everything he could lay his hands on, to literally cross oceans and climb mountains for her, to even — he could not stop himself in time from this darker desire, this outright evil — kidnap her, take her to Kathmandu. or Iceland, yes Iceland, and make her a baroness of volcanoes and glaciers, because he could do that, or nearly so, he could do whatever he wanted in this ridiculous illusion of a world and what he wanted, what he wanted more than anything else he could imagine, wanted so badly he felt he was going to explode, was to be with Vera. After perhaps a minute of this mania, he began to calm down, but could not take his eyes off her lips.

“Let me ask you a question,” said Minkowski. “Are you leaving town before or after some sonofabitch gets shot in the head.”

Charles stiffened and Vera exclaimed that she was not leaving. Minkowski narrowed his eyes and nodded.

“This,” she said, “is the American you’ve heard so much about. Charles Minot, Iz Minkowski.”

Charles reached his fine aristocratic hand out a great distance to shake Minkowski’s huge dirty paw.

“Related to the grafter?” asked Minkowski. He held and shook hard and did not smile.

“Graft prosecutor,” Charles said, retrieving his hand with some effort.

“Wha’d I say?” Minkowski demanded.

“You said grafter,” explained Vera, as if her friend were about to fly off the handle.

“I did?” He seemed contrite but still would not smile.

Vera nodded and Charles smiled.

“I guess there’s no love lost between your old man and Keogh either, huh?” asked Minkowski.

“Not a great deal, no,” Charles admitted gravely, dropping the smile, at which Minkowski finally smiled and Charles sneezed, suddenly and without the faintest tickle of warning. He made a big show of it, happy to have some stage business, staggering a little with the force of it, wiping his nose with a flourish and inserting the handkerchief with exaggerated care back into his breast pocket. They walked the few steps to the little bus and Charles shook his pockets for nickels.

“Vera always rides free with me,” said Minkowski. He put his heavy hand on Charles’s arm. And squeezed. “And that goes for Vera’s friends too, see?” He looked back and forth between them, as if to ascertain what kind of friends they were — if in fact friends at all, despite everything he had heard. “Speaking of friends, how is Julie?”

“High as a kite.”

“I would be too. I would indeed be too.”

“How are things with you?” Vera asked Minkowski.

“Oh, fine, fine. Some dick tried to sign up for music lessons with Minnie Moody, you know, and another lunkhead has been trying to get a date with his sister. Moody’s sister, I mean,” laughed Minkowski. “You never know about these shitsuckers. Brother, they are comical. Can you see it? This thug trying to come off like a handsome rake, when it’s clear as the busted veins in his great fucking honker of a nose and the stinking derby on his tiny head that he’s a drunken bully, ignorant and mean like they all are.” Minkowski now sneezed but appeared not to notice. “And how about his pal the gorilla at the keyboard. Can’t you see it? ‘Chopsticks’? ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”

Charles laughed, but neither Vera nor Minkowski joined him. He said that Minnie Moody had actually purchased a ticket to come and see him sing Pergolesi the night after the earthquake.

“Goddamn them all to hell anyway,” said Minkowski vaguely, meaning not Minnie Moody, or Charles, but some others.

“Anybody been round to see you?” asked Vera.

“I guess they have!” Minkowski shouted with sudden fury. “Him and his pals in various combinations.”

Vera turned to Charles, but kept Minkowski in view, giving him significant looks as she spoke. “He refers to a man we believe to be more or less running San Francisco’s secret police.”

“ Secret police ,” Charles murmured appreciatively.

Minkowski stared with unblinking neutrality at him, then glanced at Vera, who went on. “His name is Rudy Swanson and he used to work, we believe, for the Pinkerton Agency, but now heads something called the Public Utilities Protection Bureau, an organization formed by Pacific Gas and Electric, the Sierra and San Francisco Power Company, and who else.?”

“PTT,” holding up three fingers. “And, ummm—”

“Right, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph,” said Vera, holding up four fingers, “and Western States Gas and Electric.” Up came her thumb. “The Northern Electric Railroad. I think that’s it, isn’t it?” Minkowski nodded, then shrugged. “If we have the right fellow, he was the one sitting next to the public prosecutor at Tom Moody’s three Martinez trials.”

“You know Tom Moody, do you?” Minkowski asked Charles.

“We met, yes, coupla times, upstairs, downstairs.” Charles gestured over his shoulder. “We spoke very briefly.”

“They’ve been trying to frame dear Tom for several years now,” said Vera wistfully. “And this person Swanson, who has absolutely no business being in a courtroom, was there helping pick the goddamn jury, whispering advice — but failing, here’s my main point about Swanson, failing three times to get a conviction.”

“He has been all over Farnsworth,” said Minkowski, “for three weeks now.”

An awkward silence ensued. Finally Vera looked expectantly at Charles, who said nothing, waiting.

“He offered Warren some money,” said Minkowski.

“Don’t tell me how much,” pleaded Vera.

“Five grand.”

“Oh my God.”

“Five thousand dollars.”

“That’s too much for Warren to bear!”

“Then he waltzed over here and offered me the same.”

“He did not!” shouted Vera incredulously.

“I told him he should keep his money as he was going to need it when the subornation market heated up. Then I told him to get the hell off my bus. And he says, with a grin that looks like he should be pie-eyed but he’s not, those pale baby blues burning away in their sockets, he says he guessed he could have my jitney license just like that, and he snaps his fingers, if he wanted it, and rip it to shreds right under my big fucking Jew nose. Which he then pretends to do, like a mime, you know, very detailed and precise, ripping it eight times and then brushing his hands off. You’re doomed, he tells me, why don’t you wise up, URR’s gonna have you off the heavy traffic streets within a matter of weeks, and then out of business altogether, so wise up, wise up, wise up, it’s like a little refrain he singing to me now, wise up and I said I guessed I could make a living some other way than a nickel at a time driving a goddamn bus and he sings some more at me, wise up wise up wise up, only this time he’s friendly as can be, almost sweet, you know. ‘Won’t take much,’ he says, ‘to convict the sonofabitch, just a little circumstantial what-have-you, and, by the way, what do you have, a detail or two or some general notion we can cook up for show-and-tell later on?’”