Our first flight took off.
“Better tell me quick what you want,” I said.
“I promised Marullo I’d come out here. He wants to give you the store.”
“You’re nuts. I beg your pardon, ma’am. I was speaking to my friend.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. Well, there are five of us—three children. How many frankfurters will I need?”
“Five apiece for the children, three for your husband, two for you. That’s twenty.”
“You think they’ll eat five?”
“They think they will. Is it a picnic?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then get five extra for dropping in the fire.”
“Where do you keep the Plug-O for sinks?”
“Back there with the cleansers and ammonia.”
It was broken up like that and was bound to be. Edited of customers, it was like this:
“I guess I’m in a state of shock. I just do my job and it’s with mugs for the most part. If you get conditioned by crooks and liars and cheats, why, an honest man can shock the hell out of you.”
“What do you mean, honest? My boss never gave away anything. He’s a tough monkey.”
“I know he is. We made him that way. He told me and I believe him. Before he came over he knew the words on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty. He’d memorized the Declaration of Independence in dialect. The Bill of Rights was words of fire. And then he couldn’t get in. So he came anyway. A nice man helped him—took everything he had and dropped him in the surf to wade ashore. It was quite a while before he understood the American way, but he learned—he learned. ‘A guy got to make a buck! Look out for number one!’ But he learned. He’s not dumb. He took care of number one.”
This was interspersed with customers so it didn’t build to a dramatic climax—just a series of short statements.
“That’s why he wasn’t hurt when somebody turned him in.”
“Turned him in?”
“Sure. All it takes is a telephone call.”
“Who did that?”
“Who knows? The department’s a machine. You set the dials and it follows through all the steps like an automatic washer.”
“Why didn’t he run for it?”
“He’s tired, right to his bones he’s tired. And he’s disgusted. He’s got some money. He wants to go back to Sicily.”
“I still don’t get it about the store.”
“He’s like me. I can take care of chiselers. That’s my job. An honest man gums up my works, throws me sky high. That’s what happened to him. One guy didn’t try to cheat him, didn’t steal, didn’t whine, didn’t chisel. He tried to teach the sucker to take care of himself in the land of the free but the boob couldn’t learn. For a long time you scared him. He tried to figure out your racket, and he discovered your racket was honesty.”
“Suppose he was wrong?”
“He doesn’t think he was. He wants to make you a kind of monument to something he believed in once. I’ve got the conveyance out in the car. All you have to do is file it.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“I don’t know whether I do or not. You know how he talks—like corn popping. I’m trying to translate what he tried to explain. It’s like a man is made a certain way with a certain direction. If he changes that, something blows, he strips a gear, he gets sick. It’s like a—well, like a do-it-yourself police court. You have to pay for a violation. You’re his down payment, kind of, so the light won’t go out.”
“Why did you drive out here?”
“Don’t know exactly. Had to—maybe—so the light won’t go out.”
“Oh, God!”
The store clouded up with clamoring kids and damp women. There wouldn’t be any more uncluttered moments until noon at least.
Walder went out to his car, and came back and parted a wave of frantic summer wives to get to the counter. He laid down one of those hard board bellows envelopes tied with a tape.
“Got to go. Four hours’ drive with this traffic. My wife’s mad. She said it could wait. But it couldn’t wait.”
“Mister, I been waiting ten minutes to get waited on.”
“Be right with you, ma’am.”
“I asked him if he had any message and he said, ‘Tell him good-by.’ You got any message?”
“Tell him good-by.”
The wave of ill-disguised stomachs closed in again and it was just as well for me. I dropped the envelope in the drawer below the cash register and with it—desolation.
Chapter sixteen
The day went quickly and yet was endless. Closing time had no relation to opening time, so long ago it was that I could hardly remember it. Joey came in as I was about to close the front doors and without asking him I punched a beer can and handed it to him, and then I opened one for myself and I have never done that before. I tried to tell him about Marullo and the store, and found I could not, not even the story I had accepted in exchange for the truth.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I guess I am. Look at those shelves—stripped. They bought things they didn’t want and didn’t need.” I unloaded the cash register into the gray canvas bag, added the money Mr. Baker had brought, and on top I put the bellows envelope and tied up the bag with a piece of string.
“You oughtn’t to leave that around.”
“Maybe not. I hide it. Want another beer?”
“Sure.”
“Me too.”
“You’re too good an audience,” he said. “I get to believing my own stories.”
“Like what?”
“Like my triple-deck instincts. I had one this morning. Woke up with it. Guess I dreamed it, but it was real strong, hair on the back of my neck and everything. I didn’t think the bank was going to get stuck up today. I knew it. I knew it, lying in bed. We keep little wedges under the foot alarms so we won’t tramp them by mistake. First thing this morning I took them out. I was that sure of it, braced for it. Now how do you explain that?”
“Maybe somebody planned it and you read his mind and he gave it up.”
“You make it easy for a guy to guess wrong with honor.”
“How do you figure it?”
“God knows. I think I’ve been Mr. Know-It-All to you so much I got to believe it. But it sure shook me up.”
“You know, Morph, I’m too tired even to sweep out.”
“Don’t leave that dough here tonight. Take it home.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“I still got the feeling something’s screwy.”
I opened the leather box and put the money sack in with my plumed hat and strapped it closed. Joey, watching me, said, “I’m going in to New York and get a room at a hotel and I’m going to watch the waterfall across Times Square for two solid days with my shoes off.”
“With your date?”
“I called that off. I’ll order up a bottle of whisky and a dame. Don’t have to talk to either of them.”
“I told you—maybe we’re going on a little trip.”
“Hope so. You need it. Ready to go?”
“Couple of things to do. You go on, Joey. Get your shoes off.”
First thing to do was to call Mary and tell her I had to be a little late.
“Yes, but hurry, hurry, hurry. News, news, news.”
“Can’t you tell me now, sweetheart?”
“No. I want to see your face.”
I hung the Mickey Mouse mask on the cash register by its rubber band so that it covered the little window where the numbers show. Then I put on my coat and hat and turned out the lights and sat on the counter with my legs dangling. A naked black banana stalk nudged me on one side and the cash register fitted against my left shoulder like a bookend. The shades were up so that the summer late light strained through the crossed-wire grating, and it was very quiet, a quiet like a rushing sound, and that’s what I needed. I felt in my left side pocket for the lump the cash register pushed against me. The talisman—I held it in my two hands and stared down at it. I had thought I needed it yesterday. Had I forgot to put it back or was my keeping it with me no accident? I don’t know.