Harold Beck with real estate and plenty of it, but Harold was queer as a duck. He himself was probably the only person in the world who didn’t know it.
MacDowell—“So nice to see you, sir. How’s Milly?” Impossible—Scottish, tight, tied to his wife—an invalid, the kind who lives forever. He was a secret. No one knew what he was worth.
Dew-eyed Donald Randolph—wonderful on the next bar stool, a barroom gentleman whose manners penetrated deep into his drunkenness, but useless unless you wanted to keep house on a bar stool.
Harold Luce—it was said that he was related to the publisher of Time magazine but who said it, himself? A flinty man who had a reputation for wisdom based on his lack of the power of speech.
Ed Wantoner—a liar, a cheat, and a thief. Supposed to be loaded and his wife was dying, but Ed trusted no one. He didn’t even trust his dog not to run away. Kept it tied up and howling.
Paul Strait—a power in the Republican party. His wife was named Butterfly—not a nickname. Butterfly Strait, christened Butterfly, and that’s the truth. Paul did well if New York State had a Republican governor. He owned the city dump, where it cost a quarter to dump a load of garbage. It was told that when the rats got so bad and big as to be dangerous, Paul sold tickets for the privilege of shooting them, rented flashlights and rifles—stocked .22-caliber cartridges to shoot them with. He looked so like a president that many people called him Ike. But Danny Taylor while quietly drunk had referred to him as the Noblest Paul of them Aul, and that stuck. Noble Paul became his name when he wasn’t present.
Marullo—he’s sicker than he was. He’s gray sick. Marullo’s eyes were those of a man shot in the stomach with a .45. He had walked past the doorway of his own store without going in. Margie entered the store, bouncing her neat buttocks.
Ethan was talking to a stranger, a youngish dark-haired man, Ivy League pants and hat with a narrow brim. Fortyish, hard, tough, and devoted to whatever he was doing. He leaned over the counter and seemed about to inspect Ethan’s tonsils.
Margie said, “Hi! You’re busy. I’ll come back later.”
There are endless idle but legitimate things a strolling woman can do in a bank. Margie crossed the alley mouth and went into the marble and brushed-steel temple.
Joey Morphy lighted up the whole barred square of his teller’s window when he saw her. What a smile, what a character, what a good playmate, and what a lousy prospect as a husband. Margie properly appraised him as a born bachelor who would die fighting to remain one. No double grave for Joey.
She said, “Please, sir, do you have any fresh unsalted money?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, I’ll see. I’m almost positive I saw some somewhere. How much of it would you like to have?”
“About six ounces, m’sieur.” She took a folding book from her white kid bag and wrote a check for twenty dollars.
Joey laughed. He liked Margie. Once in a while, not too often, he took her out to dinner and laid her. But he also liked her company and her sense of play.
Joey said, “Mrs. Young-Hunt, that reminds me of a friend I had who was in Mexico with Pancho Villa.[53] Remember him?”
“Never knew him.”
“No jazz. It’s a story the guy told me. He said when Pancho was in the north, he worked the mint printing twenty-peso notes. Made so many his men stopped counting them. They weren’t so hot at counting anyway. Got to weighing them on a balance scale.”
Margie said, “Joey, you can’t resist autobiography.”
“Hell, no, Mrs. Young-Hunt. I’d have been about five years old. It’s a story. Seems a fine stacked dame, Injun but stacked, came in and said, ‘My general, you have executed my husband and left me a poor widow with five children, and is that any way to run a popular revolution?’ ”
“Pancho went over her assets the way I’m doing now.”
“You got no mortgage, Joey.”
“I know. It’s a story. Pancho said to an aide-de-camp, ‘Weigh out five kilos of money for her.’ ”
“Well, that’s quite a bundle. They tied it together with a piece of wire and the woman went out, dangling the bale of kale. Then a lieutenant stepped out and saluted and he said, ‘My general (they say it mi gral—like hral), we did not shoot her husband. He was drunk. We put him in the jail around the corner.’
“Pancho had never taken his eyes off the dame walking away with the bundle. He said, ‘Go out and shoot him. We cannot disappoint that poor widow.’ ”
“Joey, you’re impossible.”
“It’s a true story. I believe it.” He turned her check around. “Do you want this in twenties, fifties, or hundreds?”
“Give it to me in two-bitses.”
They enjoyed each other.
Mr. Baker looked out of his frosted-glass office.
Now there was a bet. Baker had made a grammatically correct but obscure pass at her once. Mr. Baker was Mr. Money. Sure he had a wife, but Margie knew the Bakers of this world. They could always raise a moral reason for doing what they wanted to do anyway. She was glad she had turned him down. It left him still in the book.
She gathered the four five-dollar bills Joey had given her and moved toward the gray banker, but at that moment the man she had seen talking to Ethan came in quietly, passed in front of her, presented a card, and was taken into Mr. Baker’s office and the door closed.
“Well, kiss my foot,” she said to Joey.
“Prettiest foot in Wessex County,” Joey said. “Want to go out tonight? Dance, eat, all that?”
“Can’t,” she said. “Who is that?”
“Never saw him before. Looks like a bank-examiner type. It’s times like this I’m glad I’m honest and even gladder I can add and subtract.”
“You know, Joey, you’re going to make some faithful woman a hell of a fine fugitive.”
“That is my prayerful hope, ma’am.”
“See you.”
She went out, crossed the alley, and entered Marullo’s grocery again.
“Hi, Eth.”
“Hello, Margie.”
“Who was the handsome stranger?”
“Don’t you carry your crystal ball?”
“Secret agent?”
“Worse than that. Margie, is everybody afraid of cops? Even if I haven’t done anything I’m scared of cops.”
“Was that curly-haired piece of the true cross a dick?”
“Not exactly. Said he was a federal man.”
“What you been up to, Ethan?”
“Up to? Me? Why ‘up to’?”
“What did he want?”
“I only know what he asked but I don’t know what he wanted.”
“What did he ask?”
“How long do I know my boss? Who else knows him? When did he come to New Baytown?”
“What did you tell him?”
“When I joined up to fight the foe, I didn’t know him. When I came back he was here. When I went broke, he took over the store and gave me a job.”
“What do you suppose it’s about?”
“God knows.”
Margie had been trying to look past his eyes. She thought, He’s pretending to be a simpleton. I wonder what the guy really wanted!
He said it so quietly it frightened her. “You don’t believe me. You know, Margie, no one ever believes the truth.”
“The whole truth? When you carve a chicken, Eth, it’s all chicken, but some is dark meat and some white.”
“I guess so. Frankly, I’m worried, Margie. I need this job. If anything happened to Alfio I’d be pounding the street.”
“Aren’t you forgetting you’re going to be rich?”
“Kind of hard to remember when I’m not.”
“Ethan, I wonder if you remember back. It was in the spring right near Easter. I came in and you called me Daughter of Jerusalem.”
53
Pancho Villa: (1878-1923) Mexican revolutionary leader and folk hero who advocated agrarian reform.