At first I didn’t think it was a good idea, because I thought my mother wouldn’t want me to move out of our apartment, she’d get lonely or something. But she took to the idea right away, seemed almost too pleased by it, and that’s how I wound up running this bar in Canarsie.
It wasn’t much work to run. No one ever checked up on me to see did I open before four o’clock or did I dip into the cash register from time to time. Then, there were already a few longer-established bars in the immediate neighborhood that took most of the local clientele, so I never did have a crowd in there, not even on weekends. I had a few regulars, and now and then a transient or two, and that was it. The bar lost money and nobody cared. I ran it loose and sloppy and nobody cared. My Uncle Al was right; it was the job I was born for.
Of course, there was the other little part of it. Every once in a while some friend of Uncle Al’s from the organization would come around and give me a package or an envelope or some such thing, and I was supposed to put it in the safe under the bar until someone would come in and say such and such a code phrase, like in spy movies, and then I’d hand over the package or whatever it was. I got something like this to do once or twice a month, and always checked with Uncle Al on it to be sure there wasn’t any problem, and all in all it wasn’t exactly what you’d call hard work.
Then, too, sometimes I closed the bar on a Monday or a Tuesday night, and went to a movie or something like that. I still knew a couple girls I could ask out from time to time, girls I’d known since high school. Generally speaking it was a pretty comfortable life. All I had to do was just drift along.
Until those two guys came in and showed me the black spot. And all at once my drifting days were done.
Chapter 3
The way in and out of Canarsie, if you don’t have a car, is by subway, which is called the Canarsie Line, and which you get at the end of the line on Rockaway Parkway by Glenwood Road, about eight blocks from the Rock Grill. I ran that eight blocks till I got a stitch in my side, and then I kept running even with the stitch because I’d rather have a stitch in my side than a bullet in my head any day. I didn’t know how close those two guys were, or even if they were running after me; I was too busy to look.
I got to the station and it took forever to find change in my pockets and buy a token and run out on the platform. A lit sign said NEXT TRAIN and pointed an arrow at the only train there, on the right side of the platform. All the doors were open. I ran aboard, and then ran from car to car till I found one with four people already in it, and there I collapsed into a seat and panted and held my side where the stitch was now nine.
In one way I was lucky. Less than a minute after I ran aboard, the doors slid shut and the train started for Manhattan.
Making a getaway by subway is not good for the nerves. The train just barely gets rolling pretty good when it slows down again, and stops, and the doors slide open in a very ominous way with nobody near them. Two killers do not get aboard, and the doors close, and the train starts forward, only to go through the whole thing again two or three minutes later.
There are twenty-one stops between Rockaway Parkway and Union Square on the Canarsie Line, in case you want to know.
I couldn’t really believe, when I left the train at Union Square, that I’d escaped from them. Even though I hadn’t seen them yet, I was sure they were still on my tail. Scurrying, looking over my shoulder, I ran along the deserted passageways that led me to the Lexington Avenue Line, and stood on the platform there behind a soft-drink machine, waiting.
It was ten minutes before a local came in, and in the meantime every sound of footsteps on the concrete platform took another year or so off my life. But the local finally did show up, and I leaped from cover behind the soft-drink machine, ran low and zigzag across the platform the way they do in war movies, and barreled aboard the train like a one-man rush hour.
The Lexington Avenue local makes seven stops between Union Square and East 68th Street. I was seeing a lot of subway platforms.
I never know which way is which when I come up out of the subway in Manhattan. I was at 68th and Lex, and I wanted to be at 65th and Fifth, which meant south and west, but I had no idea which way was south. I finally took a chance on a direction that looked right, walked up to 69th Street, read the street sign there, and walked back again.
I told myself this was actually just as well; if anyone was tailing me, doubling back this way would confuse them and help me spot them. But of course I didn’t spot anyone tailing me, and didn’t really think I would.
The walk to Uncle Al’s apartment building was long and dark and scantily populated. A few solitary hunched walkers passed me, our separate fears mingling for just a second as we went by, but nothing happened, and I got to Uncle Al’s building at last, a tall and white and narrow building with a brightly lit little entranceway. I went in there, and pushed the button beside the name A. Gatling.
There was no answer. For a long while there was no answer, and then I pushed the button again, and then there was no answer some more.
I stood there shifting from foot to foot. Where was he, why didn’t he answer? Could it be he really was in Miami?
No. He suspected it was me at the door, that’s all. He didn’t want to answer because he figured it was probably me.
I pushed the button again, and just left my finger on it, and stood there that way. I leaned on the button, and glanced out at the street, and a long black car was pulling to a stop out front. They got out of it, those two guys. They looked up at me, and then they looked at each other, and they came walking toward me.
I stopped pushing Uncle Al’s button, and pushed all the other buttons instead. I stood there like the cashier at a supermarket cash register, pushing buttons. The two guys came across the sidewalk and up the steps. They were looking at me with no expression on their faces, and they were taking their time. I guess they figured they had me cornered. That’s the way I figured, too.
But I kept pushing buttons all the same. The round grille beside the row of buttons began shouting in a variety of sleepy angry voices, but I didn’t answer. I just kept pushing buttons.
One of the two guys looked at me through the glass, and reached for the knob of the outer door, and at last the buzzing sounded I’d been waiting for. I pushed open the inner door, slammed it behind me again, and for just a second I was safe.
But what I could do they could do. I ran across the little lobby and pulled open the elevator door and pushed yet another button; this one numbered 3, for the floor my Uncle Al’s apartment was on.
A very expensive building, this, seven stories high, with only two apartments on each floor. The elevator moved much faster than they do in buildings on the West Side. When it stopped, I pushed the 7 button and got out. The elevator went on up to the seventh floor, which would delay those two guys and might even fake them out.
Two white doors in the cream wall faced me across the white rug. The one on the right, with the brass B on it, belonged to my Uncle Al. I went over and knocked on it. Because I didn’t expect an answer right away, I just kept on knocking. I even kicked the door once or twice, making black marks on the white, which couldn’t be helped.
Behind me, with a whirring sound, the elevator went by on its way back to the first floor.
Why didn’t they take the stairs, why wait for the elevator? I tried to figure it out, while I kept knocking and kicking at Uncle Al’s door, and then I realized what had happened. The city fire laws, see, make apartment houses have staircases even when they have elevators, but most expensive East Side apartment houses are as embarrassed about staircases as if they had to have outhouses in addition to the indoor plumbing, so they put the staircases in and then put walls around them and blank doors leading to them and they hope nobody will ever notice them. Which nobody ever does.