Tough Guys Don't Dance

by Norman Mailer

“Yeah,” said Regency, “a plastic fucking eye. I had to wait while he installed it. Then, the moment I’m alone with Ronnie I drop the bull pup right on the bed. A tear comes into his real eye. Ronnie says—the poor bastard—he says, ‘Will I scare the pup?’

  “ ‘No,’ I tell him, ‘the pup loves you already.’ If peeing all over the blankets is love, the pup loves him already.

  “ ‘How do you think I look?’ asks Ronnie Reagan. ‘I want the truth.’ The poor bastard! His ear is also gone.

  “ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘it’s all right. You never was an orchid.’ ”

  They laughed. They would go on, story for story, until I came in. So I left the cellar to return outside, and encountered Madeleine at the front door. She had been registering her nerve to ring the bell.

  I made no effort to kiss her. It would have been a mistake.

  She clutched me instead, and laid her head on my shoulder until the quivering stilled. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “I turned back twice.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I brought the pictures,” she said.

  “Let’s go to my car. I have a flashlight there.”

  By its light, I had one more surprise. The photos were no more or less obscene than my Polaroids, but they were not of Patty Lareine. It was Jessica’s head that the scissors had cut from the body. I looked again. No, Madeleine could not tell the difference. Jessica’s body looked young, and her face was blurred. It was a natural error. But it offered further light on Alvin Luther Regency. It was one thing to take a beaver shot of one’s wife or steady girl, but quite another to convince a lady who had been in your bed for no more than a week. Prowess is prowess, I thought glumly, and debated whether to tell Madeleine who the model was. I did not wish, however, to disturb her further so I kept silent. I could not decide whether the introduction of another woman in her husband’s love life would halve her disruption or double it.

  She quivered again. I made the decision to take her inside.

  “We’ll have to be quiet,” I said. “He’s here.”

  “Then I can’t go in.”

  “He won’t know. I’ll put you in my room and you can lock the door.”

  “It’s her room too, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll take you to my study.”

  We managed to ascend the stairs silently. After we were on the third floor, I guided her to a chair by the window. “Do you want a light?” I asked.

  “I’d rather sit in the dark. The view is beautiful through the window.” I suppose it was the first time she had ever seen the sand flats of the bay when the moon was on them.

  “What are you going to do down there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to have it out with him.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Not with my father present. It’s our advantage, really.”

  “Tim, let’s just go away.”

  “Maybe we will. But I need the answers to a couple of questions first.”

  “For peace of mind?”

  “To keep from going crazy,” I nearly said aloud.

  “Hold my hands,” she said. “Let’s just sit here for a moment.”

  We did. I think her thoughts may have passed into me on the intertwining of our fingers, for I found myself remembering the early days when we met, I, a bartender much in demand (for in New York, good young bartenders build a reputation among restaurant proprietors not unanalogous to good young professional athletes) and she, a saucy hostess, in a Mafia midtown restaurant. Her uncle, a man much respected, got her the job, but she made it her own—how many sports and dudes passing through her purlieu tried to get a piece of her, but we had a perfect romance for a year. She was Italian and a one-man girl and I adored her. She loved silences. She loved sitting in a dim room for hours while the velvets of her loving heart passed over to me. I might have stayed with her forever, but I was young and got bored. She rarely read a book. She knew the name of every famous author who had ever lived but she rarely read a book. She was as smart and shiny as satin, but we never went anywhere except into each other, and that was enough for her, but not for me.

  Now I might be going back to Madeleine, and my heart lifted like a wave. A wave at night, be it said. Patty Lareine at her best used to give me emotions that were close to sunlight, but I was approaching forty, and the moon and the mist were nearer to my sentiments.

  I relinquished her hands and kissed Madeleine lightly on the lips. It brought back how nice was her mouth and how much like a rose. A faint sound, husky and sensual as the earth itself, stirred in her throat. It was marvelous, or would be so soon as I was not full of thinking of what awaited me below.

  “I’ll leave you a gun. Just in case,” I said, and took Wardley’s .22 from my pocket.

  “I have one,” she said. “I brought my own,” and from the flap of her coat she withdrew a little over-and-under Derringer. Two shots. Two .32 holes. Then I thought of Regency’s Magnum.

  “We’re an arsenal,” I said, and there was enough light in the room to see her smile. A good line, well delivered, was half, I sometimes thought, of what you needed to keep her happy.

  So I went downstairs with a piece, after all.

  I did not like the idea, however, of talking to Regency with the bulges of the handgun poking out of my pants or shirt—there was really no place to conceal it. I compromised by leaving it on a shelf above the telephone within easy reach of the kitchen door. Then I strolled in on both men.

  “Hey, we never heard you open the outside door,” said my father.

  Regency and I said hello with eyes averted, and I made myself a drink to coat the double barrels of my fatigue. I threw the first bourbon down neat and poured another before I put the ice in the glass.

  “Which leg are you filling?” asked Regency. He was drunk, and when I finally did reach his eyes I could see that he was not nearly so calm as he had appeared by his posture when seen through the kitchen window, or as I had supposed by the sound of his voice heard through the kitchen floor—no, he had the ability of many a big powerful man to stow whole packets of unrest in various parts of his body. He could sit unmoving like a big beast in a chair, but if he had had a tail, it would have been whipping the rungs. Only his eyes, glazed by the last hundred hours of lurid unmanageables and preternaturally bright, gave any clue to what he was sitting on.

  “Madden,” he said, “your father is a prince.”

  “Ho, ho,” said my father, “you’d think we were getting along.”

  “Dougy, you’re the best,” said Regency. “I’ll flatten anyone who disagrees. What do you say, Tim?”

  “Well,” I said, tipping my glass, “cheers.”

  “Cheers,” said Regency, tipping his.

  There was a pause. He said, “I told your father. I’m in need of a long vacation.”

  “Are we drinking to your retirement?”

  “I’m resigning,” he said. “This town brings out everything that’s worst in me.”

  “They should never have assigned you here.”

  “Right.”

  “Florida is where you belong,” I said. “Miami.”

  “Who,” said Regency, “put the hair up your ass?”

  “All the tongues in town,” I told him. “It’s common knowledge you’re a narc.”

  His eyelids fell heavily. I do not wish to exaggerate, but it is as if he had to turn a mattress over. “That obvious, huh?” he asked.

  “There’s a job profile to being a narc,” said my father equably. “You can’t conceal it.”

  “I told those chowderheads who appointed me, it was bad enough pretending to be a State Trooper, but this was the pits. Portuguese are stupid, stubborn people except for one thing. You can’t bullshit them. Acting Chief of Police!” If there had been a cuspidor, he would have spit into it. “Yeah, I’m going,” he said, “and, Madden, don’t say ‘Three cheers.’ ” He burped and said “Excuse me” to my father for the indelicacy, then looked morose. �
�I’ve got an ex-Marine over me,” he said. “Can you imagine a Green Beret in a chain of command under a Marine? It’s like putting the steak on the fire and the skillet on top of the steak.”

  My father thought that was funny. Maybe he laughed to ameliorate everyone’s mood, but it did tickle him.

  “I got one regret, Madden,” said Regency, “it’s that we never did get to talk a little about our philosophies. It would have been good to get shit-face.”

  “You’re practically there right now,” I said.

  “Never. Do you know how much I can drink? Tell him, Dougy.”

  “He says he’s halfway through his second fifth,” said my father.

  “And if you put a Mickey in my glass, I’d drink right through that too. I burn the stuff faster than it can touch me.”

  “You have a lot to burn,” I said.

  “Philosophy,” he said. “I’ll give you a sample. You think I’m a crude, unlettered son of a bitch. Well, I am, and proud of it. You know why? A cop is a human creature born stupid and raised in stupidity. But he desires to become bright. You know why? It is God’s wish. Every time a stupid guy gets a little intelligence, the devil’s in shock.”

  “I always thought,” I said, “that a man becomes a cop to be shielded from his own criminality.”

  The remark was too smart-ass for the occasion. I knew it as it left my lips.

  “Fuck you,” said Regency.

  “Hey …” I said.

  “Fuck you. I’m trying to talk philosophy and you make quips.”

  “That’s twice,” I said, holding up a finger. He was about to say it again and restrained himself. My father’s mouth, however, was tight. He was not pleased with me. I could see where it would be a disadvantage to have him there. Regency would not be divided so much as myself. Alone with Alvin, I would not have cared if he said “Fuck you” all night long.

  “What is the power of a dirty soul?” asked Regency.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Do you believe in karma?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Most of the time.”

  “So do I,” he said. He reached across and shook my hand. For a moment I think he debated whether to crunch my fingers, and then gave me the charity of releasing them. “So do I,” he repeated. “It’s an Asian idea, but what the hell, there’s cross-fertilization in war, right? There ought to be. All that slaughter. At least, let’s get a couple of new cards in the deck, right?”

  “What’s your logic?”

  “I got one,” he said. “It’s as big as a battering ram. If a lot of people die unnecessarily in a war, a lot of innocent American kids”—he held up a hand to forestall any argument—“and a lot of innocent Vietnamese, I’ll give you that, the question becomes: What’s their redress? What’s their redress in the scheme of things?”

  “Karma,” said my father, beating him to the punch. If my father didn’t know how to wear a drunk down, who did?

  “That’s right. Karma,” he said. “You see, I am not an ordinary cop.”

  “What are you,” I asked, “a social butterfly?”

  My father happened to like that one. We all laughed, Regency the least.

  “The average cop puts down cheap hoods,” he said. “I don’t. I respect them.”

  “For what?” asked my father.

  “For having the moxie to get born. Contemplate my argument: Think about it. The strength of a rotten, dirty soul is that no matter how foul it is, it has succeeded in being reborn. Answer that one.”

  “What about gay people being reborn?” I asked.

  I had him there. His prejudices had to bow to his logic. “Them, too,” he said, but it wearied him of the argument.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at his tumbler, “I’ve decided to resign. In fact, I have. I left them a note. I’m taking a long leave of absence for personal reasons. They’ll read it and send it to the Marine in Washington. The grunt who’s over me. They took this grunt and ran him through a computer. Now he thinks only in BASIC! What do you think he’ll say?”

  “He’ll say your personal reasons translate into psychological reasons,” I said.

  “Fucking aye. Up his Mrs. Grundy, I say.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tonight, tomorrow, next week.”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “I have to turn in the cruiser. It’s town-owned.”

  “You can’t turn it in tonight?”

  “I can do anything I want. I think I want a rest. I’ve been working for eight years without a real vacation.”

  “Are you feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “Me?” I had made the mistake of jolting him. He looked at my father and myself as if measuring us for the first time. “Fellow, get it straight,” he said. “I have nothing to complain about. I have the kind of life God wants you to have.”

  “What kind is that?” asked my father. I think he was genuinely curious.

  “Action,” said Regency. “I’ve had all the action I wanted. Life gives a man two balls. I’ve used them. Let me tell you. It’s a rare day when I don’t bang two women. I don’t sleep well at night if I haven’t gotten my second bang in. Do you read me? There’s two sides to one’s nature. They both got to express themselves before I can sleep.”

  “What are those two sides?” asked my father.

  “Dougy, I’ll tell you. They are my enforcer and my maniac. Those are my two names for myself.”

  “Which one is talking now?” I asked.

  “The enforcer.” He laughed to himself. “You had to be wondering if I’d say the maniac. But you haven’t seen him yet. I’m merely enforcing this conversation with two so-called good men.”

  He had gone too far. I could take his insults, but there was no reason for my father to suffer them.

  “When you turn in your police cruiser,” I said, “be careful to wash out the mats in your trunk. The bloodstains from the machete are all over it.”

  It came to him like a bullet from a thousand yards away. By the time the idea reached, its force was gone, and the shot fell at his feet.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “the machete.”

  Then he struck himself across the face with more force than I had ever seen a man give to a blow against his own person. If someone else had done it, the act would have been comic, but in his case, the sound shattered the air in the kitchen.

  “Would you believe it?” he said. “This sobers me up.” He seized the edge of the kitchen table in his hands and gave it a squeeze. “I’m trying,” he said, “to be a gentleman about all this and leave town quietly, Madden, without impinging on you and without you encroaching on me.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To leave quietly?”

  “I want to see the lay of the land.”

  “No,” I said, “you want the answers to some questions.”

  “Maybe you haven’t got it wrong for once. I thought it might be more courteous to pay a visit than pull you in for an interrogation.”

  “That’s all you need,” I said. “If you bring me in, you have to enter me on the books. Then I don’t answer a single question. I just get a lawyer. When I finish telling him what I know, he’ll ask the State to investigate you. Regency, do me a favor. Treat me with the same courtesy you’d give a Portugee. Don’t try these bullshit threats.”

  “Hear, hear,” said my father, “he’s laying it out for you, Alvin.”

  “What do you know,” said Regency. “Your son is not incompetent with a problem.”

  I glared at him. When our eyes locked, I felt like a small craft cutting too near the bow of a ship.

  “Let’s talk,” he said. “We got more in common than we’re opposed. Isn’t that true?” he asked my father.

  “Talk,” said my father.

  Regency’s expression was bent by the last remark as much, I thought, as if we were brothers at odds looking for good marks from our father. The insight meant much. For I recognized then how jealous I was of Regen
cy now that he was around Dougy. It was as if he, not I, were the good, strong and unmanageable son that Big Mac wanted to straighten out. God, I was as bad about my father as most girls are about their mothers.

  Now all three of us stayed silent. There are chess games where half of the time allotted a player is spent on one move. He is studying how to go on. So I was silent.

  Finally I decided that his confusion had to be deeper than mine.

  Therefore I said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you want answers to these questions. One, where is Stoodie? Two, where is Spider?”

  “Check,” he said.

  “Where is Wardley?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Where is Jessica?”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “And where is Patty?”

  “You got it all,” he said. “Those are my questions.”

  If he had had a tail, he would have thumped it hard at the mention of Jessica’s name and twice as hard at Patty’s.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s have the answers.”

  I wondered if he was wired. Then I realized it didn’t matter. He was not there to act as a police officer. The .357 Magnum in the holster on the chair was what I wanted to keep my eyes on, rather than the remote possibility that he was recording what I said. After all, he was here with me to look for his own sanity.

  “What are the answers?” he repeated.

  “Both women are dead,” I told him, as if he might not know.

  “Dead?” His surprise lacked all conviction.

  “I found their heads in the same place my marijuana is kept.” I waited. He really didn’t have the conviction that to pretend astonishment would serve any purpose.

  “What happened to those heads?” he asked.

  “You put them there, didn’t you?”

  “I never put both heads there,” he said. To my astonishment, he began without warning to groan. Like a wounded animal. “I’ve been in hell,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been in hell.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” whispered my father.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Regency said.

  “Why did you sever Jessica’s head?” my father asked.

  He hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”

  “I believe you want to,” said my father.