HERE I SHOULD mention the typewriters. Sometime before this, Langley had decided he needed a typewriter to begin to bring order to his master project, the single newspaper for all time. He first tried the one our father had used. It sat on the Doctor’s desk — an L. C. Smith Number 2. It wasn’t the engreased dust that bothered Langley, but that the ribbon was dried out and the keys required great pressure of the fingers. I think even if he had found the machine to be in perfect order Langley would have gone out, as he eventually did, to find some others because, as in all such matters, one would not do where an assortment might be had. Consequently after a while a battery of machines were in our possession — a Royal, a Remington, an Hermès, an Underwood, among the standard models, and, because he was delighted to locate it, a Smith-Corona that had been fitted with keys in Braille. That is the one I’m using now. So for a while, as Langley worked his way through the imperfections of each of the machines, there was a new music in my ears of key clacks and bell dings and slamming platens. I was surprised that he eventually found a model to satisfy him. The rest were accorded museum status, untended and forgotten, like everything else, with the exception of one beauty he found in a shop in the West Forties, a very old Blickensderfer Number 5, which felt to my touch like a metallic butterfly with its wiry wings in full flight. This was given an honored place on the washstand in his bedroom.As the third day came around with no sign of Vincent’s departure — he slept most of the time — my brother and I slowly went back to the daily routine of our lives with no interference from the gangsters, and this bizarre situation took on a semblance of normality. Langley typed away on his project and I resumed my daily practice sessions at the piano. It was as if two separate households were sharing the same space. They brought in their food and we took care of ourselves, though after a while we ran out of most everything we had in the pantry and they began to leave things for us. Their cuisine came in white cardboard boxes and was quite good — Italian specialties brought in at night — theirs was a one-meal regimen — and in return we made coffee in the mornings and sat with them on the steps to the second floor. When Vincent awoke, he proceeded to complain from his kitchen bed and demand and curse and threaten everyone in sight. He turned us all into a kind of oppressed fraternity, he’d become a universal burden, and so finally there was a sort of bonding — the two brothers and the three hoodlums.I should have thought his men preferred Vincent asleep to Vincent awake but they were increasingly nervous as they waited fitfully for their next orders. They wanted to know now what retaliation lay in store. They wanted to know what was to be done.
ON THE FOURTH MORNING I heard a terrible crash. It had come from the kitchen. The men ran in there. I followed. There was no sign of Vincent.They kicked open the pantry door and found him cowering in the corner. You hear that? Vincent said. You hear that?I heard it, we all heard it. The men were on alert now, their guns drawn, one of them prodding me in the ribs. Because there it was, the rat-a-tat of something relentlessly mechanical, like the deadly sputter of a tommy gun. Vincent had fallen or rolled off his makeshift kitchen bed having been startled awake by that sound, presumably familiar to him in his long life of crime. This was a delicate moment and I knew if I laughed it would be the end of me. I merely pointed at the ceiling and let them work it out for themselves that it was Langley at his typewriter, Langley being a very fast typist, his fingers racing to keep up with his thoughts, and his room located directly overhead. What typewriter he was using I didn’t know — the Remington, the Royal, or perhaps the Blickensderfer Number 5? He had set it up on a fold-out card table that was not quite steady and the clacking keys as transmitted through the spindly legs of the table, and through the floor, picked up a darker hammering tone that, I suppose, if you were a sleeping gangster who had recently been shot at, could have sounded like another attempt on your life.Vincent, recovering his poise, laughed as if he found it funny. And when he laughed so did the others. But he’d been shocked into a state of aggressive awareness. No more sleeping now, he was the crime boss once again.What is this dump! he said. Am I in a junkyard? This is what you guys find for me? Massimo, the best you can do? Look at this place. I have retribution to think of. I have serious matters. And you drop me in this rat’s nest. Me! And where is the intelligence I need, where is the information I count on? I see you look at each other. You wanna give me excuses? Oh there are debts to pay, and I will pay them. And when I’ve put out their lights I will turn to who in the family set me up. Or shall I believe it’s blind fate that I am now minus one ear. I’m talking to you! Is that what it was, blind fate, they just happened to find me in the restaurant where I was?His men knew better than to say anything. They may have even been comforted to find their boss up to form. I could hear him striding about, pushing things out of the way, throwing things aside.
AS LANGLEY TOLD ME later it was as Vincent prowled about holding a hand over his ear hole that he found one of the army surplus helmets and put it on. And then there was a need to see himself in a mirror and the men brought down the standing mirror from my mother’s bedroom, a lady’s bedroom mirror that could tilt in its frame.As Vincent saw his reflection he realized his suit was a mess. He stripped — off came the jacket, trousers, shirt — and in his skivvies and shoes and socks he found a set of our army fatigues that fit him and said, Nobody will believe this is me in this outfit. I could walk out the front door in broad daylight. Hey, Massimo, whaddya think? I look like anyone you know?No, Pop, the son said.A course I can’t be seen like this. What it would do to my rep. He laughed. On the other hand if I’da had on this helmet the other night I’d still have my ear.Our washing machine was in the alcove behind the kitchen, an old model with a wringer attached, and one of the men found it and took Vincent’s clothes and dropped them in the machine to get all the bloodstains out. We must have had by then a good number of electric irons and two or three antique hand irons that you put on the stove to get them hot. So some time went by as Massimo and one of the men attempted to get Vincent’s suit washed and wrung out and ironed so that it was a reasonable simulation of a dry-cleaned suit.While all this was going on Langley didn’t see why he should stand there and be bored so he went back upstairs to his typewriter and the clacking and platen banging resumed and Vincent said, Massimo, go up there and tell the old man he doesn’t shut up with the typewriter I’ll stick his hands in this clothes wringer. Massimo, showing an initiative in an effort to please his father, brought the typewriter down in his arms and Vincent took it and heaved it across the room and I heard it come apart with a silvery shatter, like a piece of china.
IT WAS ONLY WHEN Vincent was preparing to leave that I became frightened. I wanted him gone but what might he order his men to do to us by way of parting? For hours it seemed, the crime family consulted among themselves while Langley and I waited, as instructed, upstairs.When the last light had faded from the windows we were summoned and tied up in two kitchen chairs back-to-back with clothesline, of which we happened to have enough looped and coiled in the hardware cabinet in the basement to go twice around a city block, though our practice in hanging things to dry was to prefer those metal umbrella rigs, of which we had a few, that could be unfolded and folded again when we were through with them, because Langley had imagined that I would forget a clothesline was strung out somewhere in the house and accidentally garrote myself.You will never say a word, Vincent said. You will keep your mouths shut or we will come back and shut them for you.And then I heard the front door slam and they were gone.All was silent. We sat there tightly bound, back-to-back, in our kitchen chairs. I heard the ticking of the kitchen clock.