“It’s not so bad,” Gradek said, looking at the crimson horror of Carlin’s chest and arm. “But it’s bad enough so that you won’t feel like hugging your girl friend for a while. You’ll need plasma, and morphine, and other things, of course. So, naturally, my price comes up a little. One hundred and seventy-five now instead of the hundred and fifty I quoted.”
Carlin did not answer. He stood looking over Gradek’s shoulder, watching a fat cockroach crawl between two waterpipes that rose like black fingers against the discolored wall. Arty Keller, the old con who had shared his cell at Auburn, had told him that it helped to stare at something, very hard, when you were in great pain. You looked at something hard, and you thought of things, and if you were lucky you wouldn’t scream, because concentration turned the edge of pain.
Carlin stood still, his eyes fixed on the fat roach, thinking of Paul Velco’s florid face, his soft smiling mouth, of the boss mobster’s big belly shaking with silent laughter as he put the two thousand-dollar bills down upon the desk. He felt the sting of the needle as it bit into his flesh.
Alongside him, Burkman asked Gradek if there was a drink in the house. When the medic said no, he asked: “The alcohol in this bottle, Doc... Is it drinking or rubbing stuff? And what would it do if I took a shot of it? God, I’ve got the grandfather of all hangovers.”
“The Bowery stiffs drink it,” Gradek said. “A lot of guys guzzle it, and some of them live.”
Carlin watched Burkman slosh three fingers of raw alcohol into a dirty glass, dilute it with warm tap water, and swallow the mixture when the alcohol had turned to the color of thick smoke. And then, suddenly, his vision began to blur and the pain grew in him and several times he almost blacked out but managed to hold on. He didn’t dare black out.
IV
It was long past midnight and they were on their way to find the man who Burkman had said would break the thousand-dollar bill. Carlin moved like a sleepwalker, guided by Gradek’s hand upon his arm: dazed but his mind still on the G-note, now in Burkman’s pocket. The doctor’s needle had stopped Carlin’s pain temporarily, but the effects of the drug lay heavily upon him, and he was glad when Gradek came to a sudden halt. They were on an empty street that ran between warehouses and tenements and there was no glimmer of light in the buildings that rose black as cliff walls toward the dark sky. It had stopped raining, but a cold wind blew strong from the east, and along the gutters, dirty, sodden scraps of paper raced like tumbleweeds before the force of a gale.
“How much farther?” Gradek asked. “Jeez, Burkman, you think I’ve got legs like a kid? Why didn’t we stay in the cab, instead of getting out way back up the street?”
“You spend too much time with Rosa,” Burkman said. He stopped suddenly, and there was a long silence. Then he said, “But I guess we’ve come far enough, at that. So now you can get lost, pill roller. Beat it, before I kick your teeth in.”
“Wait a minute,” Gradek said, his face contorted. “You can’t get away with this. You stiff me, shyster, and I’ll get even if it’s the last thing I ever do. You still have to live in this town. I got friends here, don’t forget.”
“Nobody has any friends,” Burkman said in a calm and weary voice, and clubbed a short jolting blow into Gradek’s belly. The little man bent almost double, and the lawyer jerked up a knee and drove it into Gradek’s face.
The fat little man went to his hands and knees and was very sick. Burkman looked down at him with an almost impersonal stare. “You squeal on me, Gradek,” he said, “and then I squeal on you. So we both go to jail, and there’s no percentage in that for either of us. The way it is, you got no money, but you’re still free to use your tools. You’ve got your knives, your needles, and you still got Rosa.”
Burkman turned and, without another look at Gradek, walked off into the darkness.
Carlin leaned against the walk peering down at the man who knelt at the curb. Gradek raised a face that was chalk white. He twisted his bloodied mouth into a grimace that looked like the grin of an idiot. “Go after him, you fool!” he said. “You half-witted slob! Don’t you know he’s going to gyp you, too?”
Carlin found Burkman standing under a street lamp, looking up and down the street for a cab. “I didn’t think I’d have to tell you, Joe,” he said. “But I just cut you out of this deal, too. You got off the gravy train, back there, where Gradek fell on his face.”
“I’ll kill you,” Carlin said, his voice thick from the drug. “You cheat me, I’ll kill you someday, no matter how long I have to wait.”
“Count yourself out, Joey,” Burkman said. “You haven’t got your shiv, you haven’t got a gun, and you’re so weak you couldn’t knock a sick fly off a saucer of milk. So count yourself out.”
Carlin said, hoarsely, “You filthy louse!”
Burkman laughed. “Before I passed out last night,” he said, “I saw the early edition of the News, with your mug splashed all over half the second page. You haven’t got a prayer, kid.”
“Bust the grand,” Carlin said. “Give me a break, Burkman. One little break. Bust the grand and keep it all, except enough to get me across Jersey, to a place just over the Pennsy line. Give me a break?”
“What’s for you in Pennsy?” Burkman asked. “They got cops there, too, Joey. They’ll scrag you wherever you go, boy.”
“Give me a break, Burkman,” Carlin said. “I got a cousin with a farm in Pennsylvania, a place I can hole up in until I’m well.”
“Sorry, kid,” the tall man said, and his voice faded as he walked away fast. “But I’m checking out of this town for a while and I figure I’ll need every cent I’ve got. Going to try my luck somewhere else. California maybe.”
Carlin’s quivering legs would not carry him after Burkman. He stood still, cursing him. It was then that the two winos came out of the doorway near the corner.
He smelled the men even before he saw them, the rank sweat and alcoholic reek of unwashed flesh, the sour odor of clothes that stank from months of wearing. He turned as they came at him from the black cave that was the doorway.
One of the men was a burly giant with an empty bottle gripped in his hand. A new fear stirred in Carlin as the wino towered over him.
“Hey, Mac,” the man said, his teeth chattering with cold. “How about slipping us half a buck?”
The other wino came at Carlin from his injured side and his voice was a harsh command. “A crummy four bits, mister? Or maybe we should take it out of your hide?”
“There’s the guy with the dough,” Carlin said. He pointed at Burkman’s retreating back. “I ain’t holding anything, boys. Not a lousy dime. But that guy there is crawling with dough. That guy there is packing a thousand bucks.”
The two winos looked at him a moment, and then at one another, and then they turned and ran off toward Burkman. A moment before they reached him, Burkman turned and raised his fists, and the bottle which the big wino was carrying struck Burkman on the forehead with a splintering crash.
The lawyer screamed and fell on his back, and the smaller of the two winos brought one of his feet crashing down on Burkman’s face. The lawyer raised himself on one hip and flung his arms over his head. The big wino still held the neck of the bottle in his hand and the cruel and jagged fragment of the bottle remained like a broken-rimmed goblet in his fist. He drove the broken glass into Burkman’s face and then stepped back, whooping with drunken, maniacal laughter, and the smaller drunk staggered at the fallen man and kicked him again and again. Carlin stood watching from the shadows as Burkman’s sagging features lost all shape and identity, like red clay on a potter’s wheel.