The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

  “One wheel in a dump like this should mean over fifty grand,” Joey said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, no.”

  “Stop crying, Gus, my friend. You always used to cry back in New York, but you should change your routine up here in the woods. Farmers don’t cry. Country people tell the truth. Ask my pal Tom here. Tell him, Tom.”

  “It’s a fact,” Coyle said, trying to play it as straight as Joey. The scene had shaped itself into a delightful drama for Coyle. Joey was trying to prove what he had said about Masterson last night, when they had discussed Masterson until the small hours, in the dogcart behind the municipal building at Camberton. In the beginning, when Joey mentioned the great racketeer’s name, Coyle doubted that any single character could control so much power in this day and age. It was almost like the old-fashioned stories of gangsters and gamblers, like the pulps he had read so avidly in his teens. If what Joey said was true, Masterson was a superman, a towering menace, a frightening image in the hearts and minds of his vast empire of petty slaves and dupes. And Valdido had been one of them, back in New York.

  Valdido had abandoned his Greenwich Village trap for the refinements of country life and the quiet catering to the snobs in the hills. But, could Valdido ever escape the itch of fear when the name of Masterson was mentioned? New York and Masterson were over three hundred and fifty miles away and the Phillips mansion a tiny outpost in the hills outside of Camberton. Yet, looking at Valdido, you would imagine that Masterson might come striding through the front door to sit right here at the table and work Valdido for his usual cut of the profits.

  A tic raced and throbbed under the fat on Valdido’s upper jaw. He was reacting to Joey in exactly the way Joey had expected he would. He was proving the fantastic stories that Joey had spun for Coyle the night before.

  “Masterson wouldn’t look at this place twice,” Valdido said.

  “Naturally, Gus. Maybe that’s why he told me to stop in up here.”

  “You’re kidding me, Joey.”

  “I don’t hear you laughing.”

  “Jesus,” Valdido sighed. “I don’t know how to take you, Joey. What would Masterson do up here with these hicks?”

  “Masterson likes hicks,” Joey said quietly. “Didn’t you hear about Florida?”

  “You mean he’s after Barney Diaz?”

  “Who,” asked Coyle, “is Barney Diaz?”

  Valdido laughed. “This friend of yours is a joker, Joey.”

  “Tell him who Barney Diaz is,” Joey said.

  “Barney Diaz only owns half the state of Florida, is all,” Valdido said with great tolerance. “A little guy who worked himself up from the gutter.” He turned to Joey, showing a face full of concern now. “Jesus, if Masterson wants what Barney’s got, it could be curtains for Barney. They couldn’t come to terms?”

  “Masterson doesn’t argue with crumbs like Diaz,” Joey said.

  “That’s the truth.”

  Joey smiled grimly, running his eyes over the place. “Masterson could be interested in a dump like this, Gus.”

  Valdido forced a dry and mirthless cackle. He leaned over the table and patted Joey’s arm. “Forget it, will you, Joey? What the hell. You’re going into the army tomorrow, right? So can’t you forget you ever bumped into me up here? I got myself a nice, quiet business. Listen, let me tell you about the girls. How about that?” He winked at Coyle. “How about you, Coyle? You want to hear about the girls?”

  Valdido ordered more drinks, doubles, and the best Scotch. Was it the liquor that made Coyle blink? Around him, the noises of the club swelled and buzzed, the conversational hum rising and falling, and behind it the sharper chirps of the orchestra tuning up somewhere in the curtained recesses at the end of the room. Coyle watched Valdido in the close-up, his whole face given over to the task of pleasing Joey Bader. The last two days swam and rolled in a pattern of fantasy, all of it, from the first moment he had gripped Joey’s hand in the dusty corridor of the Town Hall. Joey was back in Camberton, to be reviewed by the draft board. Joey Bader, the fabulous, the impossible, the kid who left home to make good in New York. Joey was fresh and Joey was different, Joey was brash and Joey was flip, a boy who had stepped into manhood in the big town, a man with connections, a man with money and prestige, a big shot, close enough to Masterson to make Valdido sweat and bounce. What had happened to Joey Bader in the last five years? Facing Valdido, Joey was the visiting inspector, the persnickety official. Valdido must satisfy him.

  “How many girls have you got?” Joey was asking.

  “Eight, Joey. But pretty nice.”

  “Pretty nice what?”

  “Dancers.”

  “Dancing only?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You don’t use them upstairs?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Valdido lied.

  “Nuts,” said Joey. “You use them upstairs, Gus, my pal. A place like this must have a dozen bedrooms. And you use them, just like you used those fleatraps you called bedrooms upstairs over the Grotto. Why should you change? Because you turned into a farmer? I’ll bet these rich society stiffs pay through the nose for a fancy piece from the city.”

  “Not the girls on my line,” Valdido admitted. “I can get the call girls from Pittsburgh when I need them. You know—Borrigan’s girls.”

  “Everything,” laughed Joey, and turned to Tom and punched him playfully on the arm. “Now do you believe me, Tommy boy? You see what happens when the city moves out here to the hills? My chum Valdido really operates a joint here. The big money can come here for everything from rumba to mattress bouncing and Valdido will sell them the service. It’s just the way I told you, isn’t it, Tom?”

  “I’m sold,” Coyle said.

  “All the way? Including Masterson?”

  “Especially Masterson.”

  “When does the show start, Valdido?”

  “About an hour.”

  “And what about the tail on the line?”

  “They’re fixed, Joey. Don’t worry about them.”

  Valdido got up with something resembling a sigh of relief and waddled off to the bar and caught the headwaiter and sent him back to their table with a bottle this time. Joey poured again and after the next long drink all the emptiness of Coyle’s discomfort began to fade in the greater glow of the alcohol. It would take a lot to make Coyle really drunk, but he knew that the next stage of his career with the liquor would be the most enjoyable, the closeness to Joey and the friendliness and the warmth and goodness of their companionship. Around and about him, the people and things blurred and fuzzed and went out of focus, because reality did not exist for him beyond the white square of their table, beyond the immediate friendliness of Joey’s voice, talking and talking and …

  CHAPTER 2

  Joey made observations about everything and everybody around him. Yet, nobody seemed to mind because his remarks were basically friendly and clever, jokes and gags that had everybody at the surrounding tables laughing along. And when the laughter welled around him, Coyle knew that the room itself had swung into the gayer stages of mass abandon, the cloudy, intimate hour when nothing could really go wrong at Valdido’s. The once stiff and starched society girls now stared and smiled at Coyle openly and he returned their pleasantries and felt himself come alive under the impact of their recognition. They were liking him and it fed his soul to be wanted and liked and accepted in a place like this.

  By the time the show went on Joey was really high. It came through in his wide-open and boyish enjoyment as he scanned the floor and watched the dancing girls. In the instant of the entrance of the girls, something of the old Joey came through to Coyle. They were back again in their high-school days, on the turnpike tour of the juke box joints, two kids out for a good time on Saturday night. The mask of Joey’s hardness dropped away and he became a boy again, amused and amazed by the closenes
s of the line, his smile fresh and clean, his regard for the girls as open and worshipful as it used to be when they watched the floor show at Duke’s, out on the state highway. Coyle warmed to his old friend and joined him in the careful appraisal of the big blonde at the end of the line. Valdido had tipped the whole gang of them off and they were stepping closer to the table, almost as though they might be parading their charms for the approval of Joey Bader.

  “How do you like the big peroxide?” Joey asked.

  “The little one,” Coyle said. “I like the one dancing next to her.”

  “Better than the one at the other end?”

  “I like her better.”

  “Take another look, Tom.”

  Was there a choice? Coyle tried to focus, to find the reasons for his almost automatic preference of the little dark one. There was a dream involved, but he was almost too drunk to remember it, too far gone to realize that he was comparing all of them with Ellen Gardiner, the fairy princess, the one and only, the first great affection in his life. The little dark one wasn’t prettier than the rest, but her face seemed softer and gentler. She had a good pair of legs and a slender waist and she would certainly be good up on top. But, above all else, her eyes appealed to Coyle. These were Ellen’s eyes and he stared into them as she paused over him and smiled over him. He was aware that Joey was observing the brief exchange and he wanted Joey to consider him manly and experienced. He grabbed the girl’s hand and she stayed with him for a few beats of the music.

  “What’s your name?” Coyle asked.

  “Marge. Like it?”

  “You’re for me, Marge.”

  She danced away and Joey nodded at her bouncing figure sagely.

  “You were right, Tommy boy,” said Joey. “You’ve got good eyes. I wouldn’t have picked her, but maybe that’s because I didn’t see her clearly. She’s got what it takes.”

  “You want to switch?” Coyle asked.

  “I don’t get you,” Joey said. “You picked her out and you’re willing to let her go?”

  “Friendship,” Coyle laughed.

  But was it friendship? Coyle stared at the girls and found Marge and tasted the fullness of her figure with his eyes and found himself uneasy. Too much like Ellen? Where was the disturbance? What was the irritation? The memory of Ellen Gardiner swept back into sharp focus now, and her image burned brightly in his mind. Too brightly for fun with Marge?

  Joey was watching him again, with the same worried intensity. He put a firm hand on Coyle’s shoulder. “You’d give her up for me, Tom?”

  “Why not? She’s not that important.”

  “Listen, you feeling all right?”

  “I feel fine.”

  He felt weak and sick, of course, but there was no way to talk about it Not to Joey, and not now, here in the noise and confusion and merriment. The mantle of gloom had fallen suddenly, but Coyle would not let it stay with him. He fought hard to erase whatever symptoms Joey might see. He laughed and gulped another drink to prove his change of pace. But his nervousness and unease came through to Joey.

  “In the pig’s valise,” Joey said. “If you feel fine now, I’d hate to see you when you’re off your feed, Tom. You look as happy as a kick in the behind.”

  “How about another shot? I’ll call the waiter.”

  “Maybe you had enough, Tom. You don’t want to get too much of a load on.”

  “Impossible,” Coyle said. He held out his hand and put a glass on his wrist and hardened his muscles so that his arm froze and he was able to support the glass without a tremor. Joey watched his friend and gave him laughter and encouragement. But behind the façade of his brittle personality, Joey Bader wondered about Coyle’s queerness, the strange silences that swept over him, almost as if somebody had just told him some bad news, his eyes dimmed and haunted, the way they had looked last night in the diner when Coyle was sounding off with his ideas about suicide.

  What were the facts? Tom’s old lady had died and he was left all alone in the world. Was it that simple? Or did it have something to do with Ellen Gardiner, the cute doll Tom was in love with through his high-school days? Joey was too drunk for intricate thought, but his mind could not abandon the challenge of his friend’s behavior. He would not admit that he doubted Tom Coyle’s sanity, yet the recent memory of the discussion about life and death rose up to puzzle and confound Joey Bader. Who but a whack would talk to death with such intense scheming? Who but a nut would dream the fantasy that Tom Coyle dreamed?

  “I’ve been thinking about last night,” Joey said. “The talk we had.”

  “You still think I’m crazy?”

  “I think the way you remember things may be crazy. Listen, Tom, the story you told me was out of whack. The way I see it you came home cockeyed that night and went into the kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee. Natural as hell. So you put the coffee on the stove and turned on the gas. But, you’ve got to remember you were drunk. And that was why you forgot to light the gas. Then you fell asleep. That was all. The dog started to bark and Harry Macom passed by and looked through the kitchen window and saw you out cold. Jesus, does that mean you tried to kill yourself? How do you add it up as a suicide try?”

  Did it add up? Coyle couldn’t be sure. He never would be sure because of the way he felt that night, because of the heaviness in his head, the hopelessness. Had he wanted death in that brief moment when he forgot to light the open gas jet? Death had sat with him often, over the years, back through his adolescence in school and later, when his mind explored the library shelves for books to tell him more about himself and his inner struggle. Death was with him at all times, here, there and everywhere; in the cool groves outside Camberton under a moonlit sky; in the warmth and comfort of his bedroom during boyhood; in college and on vacation; in church and out on the highway; in moments of leisure and even times of gladness.

  Death sang to him once through a juke box on a rainy night when he fled the dormitory and walked for hours until he reached the dogcart at the edge of the college town. Death was a sighing fear in him, a part of his being, a breath, a thought, a living thing alongside him. How could he reckon with death? How could he talk with any perception about the night when he forgot to light the gas jet? Was he asleep at that moment? Or did death speak to him forcefully then, to hold his hand away from the jet and let the gas flood the kitchen? How could he estimate the strength of his dismal mood that night? Certainly, in one small part of one small moment, out at that bar and drinking heavily, he had hoped for death that night. But how long had the flickering wish survived the liquor? Would he ever know?

  “I don’t know, Joey. I told you I honestly don’t know.”

  “Why? That’s the question, Tom. Don’t you want to remember?”

  Involved. It was getting all mixed up in Coyle’s mind. He had the feeling that Joey wanted to talk it out now. The drinking had mellowed Joey, softened him. It was strange, but it was good, the way they sat in a small pocket of intimacy, completely surrounded by the greater noises of the night club, yet hearing none of this. Joey was eager to carry on the discussion and Coyle realized that this was what would please him most right now, much more than any planned wrestling with the two girls on the line.

  “I tried to remember,” Coyle said. “But it seemed as if my mind went blank. Didn’t it ever happen to you?”

  “Plenty of times.” Joey smiled. “But I never saw it happen to you. You never get that stinking. You never used to. Especially if you were drinking Scotch.”

  “It happened,” Coyle said.

  “The hell with it then. What about that other idea you had? What about the big fancy routine?”

  “It was only an idea,” Coyle said, trying to laugh it up a bit. Could Joey see he was lying?

  “You sounded serious when you spilled it to me.”

  “Suppose I was?”

  “For the bir
ds, Tommy boy. You think about ideas like that and you’ll wind up in the nut house. Jesus, don’t you realize what you were saying?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

  “Maybe that’s the trouble,” Joey argued. “Sometimes a fruity idea sort of becomes believable when you give it too much thought. When did you first think you wanted to knock yourself off?”

  “For a long time,” Coyle said.

  “When we were in school?”

  “Once in a while, even then. I can’t really remember when it started, Joey. But it was there, away back, always in the corner of my mind.”

  “Tell me some more about it, Tommy.”

  Coyle waited until the waiter brought them fresh drinks. More than anything else in the world, he wanted Joey to remain warm and sympathetic. He wanted Joey to understand, but something had happened in the last few minutes, the last few lines of dialogue, something that clouded Joey’s eyes.

  “You think I’m nuts, Joey?”

  “I think you need a syringe,” Joey said quietly. “Any character who gets the idea he’d be willing to sell off his life for dough, why he needs a high colonic, that’s all. You’ve got plenty to live for. You’ve got a good brain and good looks and you can do plenty, Tom. I don’t like to hear you spout crap about trading your life away. Let’s assume that you find a customer for your deal. You convince him you’re ready to sell yourself for a small load of money and enough time to enjoy spending it. He buys the idea, all the way, and insures your life and makes it possible for the swindle on the insurance company. So this guy pays you off and you beat it for the time of your life.” Joey paused, liking the symbolism in the cliché. “The time of your life is right. So you live it up for a couple of months in fine style. But then the reaction sets in. Pretty soon you have to think of the day you die. And that’s where it all doesn’t add up. No man likes to know the date of his funeral, Tommy boy. You can’t play games with a thing like death. You can’t fix your mind to take it.”