Billy Bathgate

by E. L. Doctorow

  I understood what Lulu Rosenkrantz must be feeling, the absence of life as we knew it, raucous and loud and mechanically driven, with horns and bell gongs, and grinding wheel flanges, and screeches of brakes, all that rude variousness of too many people in too small a space, where you could really be selfish and free. But he at least had Irving or Mickey, and years of loyalty to the gang to comfort him, whereas none of them had any particular fondness for me. At this moment nobody had told me what I was supposed to be doing in Onondaga. I thought I was past the point of going for coffee, but I wasn’t sure. I knew things that it was deadly to know if you were not trusted. I found myself not for the first time measuring my reasons for confidence against the depth of the danger I was in. It would always be this way, every time I felt good about the way things were going and that I was living my charmed life unerringly, all I had to remember was how small a mistake was sufficient to change my fortune, maybe even without my knowing it. I was an habitual accomplice to murder. I could be arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. But that was not enough to ensure me my place. I thought of Bo Weinberg and opened the door to the dimly lit wide carpeted hall and looked up and down for a sign of life. All the doors were closed. I went back to my room and closed my own door so as not to disturb the quiet and this so oppressed me that I decided to do something so I unpacked my new I. Cohen suit with the two pairs of pants and hung it in the big dusty closet and put my shirts and things and gun away in the bureau drawer and then put the empty suitcase in the closet and then sat on the side of the bed and felt worse than ever. Part of it may have been that when you Ye going somewhere it is always mysterious when you arrive. Or perhaps, as I told myself, I was not used to living alone, I had only been living alone for five or ten minutes and I was not yet used to it. In any case my optimism of the early part of the day had now totally deserted me. The only thing that cheered me up was the sight of a cockroach walking up the wall between the sprays of buttercups, because then I knew The Onondaga Hotel was not all it was cracked up to be.

  The first couple of days I was mostly by myself, Mr. Berman gave me fifty dollars in small bills and told me to spend it in as many different places as I could. This was not as easy as it sounded, Onondaga was not rich in the fruits of the earth like Bathgate Avenue. The stores were unnaturally quiet dark establishments with bare shelves and they were separated from one another by stores that were closed up and boarded. I went into the Ben Franklin five-and-ten and it was pathetic, I had stolen from some of the best five-and-ten-cent stores in New York and knew what they should be and this little place was so dismal and poor the owner kept only one light bulb on in the back and the country kids who came in barefoot got splinters from the rotted-out floor. There was hardly any stock. I bought a handful of metal toy cars and motorcycles with policemen molded to them and gave them away. I found a clothing store for women and bought a straw hat with a big brim for my mother and then I took the hatbox to the post office and had them send it the most expensive way. I found a jewelry store and bought a pocket watch for a dollar.

  Through the window of the drugstore I saw Lulu and Mickey the driver sitting at the fountain drinking malted milks through straws. They would take sips and then look at the glass to see how much more had to be swallowed before their ordeal was over. I was very pleased to see they had gotten the same assignment from Mr. Berman as I had. When they left the drugstore I shadowed them for practice. They stood irresolutely in front of a window where a tractor was on display. They found a news store and went in but I could have told them there were no New York papers. They came out and lit cigars that were so stale they flared up like torches. Lulu was disgusted, Mickey had to calm him down. They bought a fifty-pound sack of onions and left it in a trash can. They went into the army-navy store and through the window I saw them choose shirts and hats and then lace-up work boots that I knew I would never see on their feet.

  By the second day of this spending spree my imagination was taxed. Then it occurred to me something of the same purpose was served by making friends, so I bought ice-cream cones for some kids who were following me, and then in a little park across from the courthouse I did some juggling with three pink rubber balls. Kids were everywhere in Onondaga, they were the only human beings I saw in the afternoons, the only ones out in the sun with nothing to do in their overalls with no shirt underneath and bare feet and squinty faces of freckles, they made me think of my street and the homeful of orphans there, but there was less humor in them, they were not inclined to smile or jump around, they took their pleasures stolidly, giving my juggling feats the most serious attention, but hanging back when I offered to show them how to do it.

  In the meantime of all the people not to be seen Mr. Schultz and Miss Lola Miss Drew were the most prominent, day and night there was a running route of room service to his suite. I wondered what she did to make her own suite look occupied. Then I wondered if she bothered. I tried to keep from thinking about her but it was difficult, especially at night in my room as I lay on the bed and smoked my Wings and listened to the faintest dance band music from the crackling radio. I was sorry I had seen her nude, I knew too much to be imagining her in my mind at this particular time, in fact it made me queasy to think of her. Then I became angry. She had certainly taught me how little I knew about women, I had thought first she was this fine innocent blue-blood victim of a terrible cross fire of gang life, then up in her Savoy-Plaza apartment it was clear she had flung her ass around with the best of them, I had thought only women from the wrong side of the tracks were tramps, but there were rich tramps too and she was one of them, she had some kind of marriage that was so advanced in sophisticated license as to be degenerate, she was entirely wild, she liked a kind of primordial action, I mean sitting in a Packard in the early hours of the morning and being driven you don’t know the hell where while drinking champagne with the man who’s just murdered your boyfriend might be considered by some to be a sordid situation with a degree of risk attached to it, but that was not the thought I saw in her eyes in the privacy of her bedroom when as you know a woman preparing to go out is her true self in shrewd preparation of her commodity, without the need to sit with her knees pressed together or stand with one foot slightly forward of the other and pointing outward.

  They were in there together two whole full days without coming up for air. Late the third morning I happened to see them emerge from the hotel lobby. They were holding hands. I was worried that Mr. Schultz would notice me standing around juggling for a bunch of hick kids on the sidewalk. But he noticed nothing except her, he handed her past Mickey, who was holding open the door of the Packard, and ducked in himself. The expression on his face suggested that Mr. Schultz’s two days and nights in bed with Miss Drew had somewhat elevated her in his regard. After they drove off I thought, well, if she was going to survive her deadly knowledge of that boat ride, this was indeed the way to do it, which was a laugh because she was clearly so heedless as to make mere survival the last possible thing on her mind.

  But I was cheered at the end of the second day by an invitation to dinner at a big round table in the hotel dining room, and everyone was there, Mr. Schultz with Miss Lola Miss Drew on his right, and Abbadabba Berman on his left, and the rest of us, Lulu, Mickey the driver, Irving, and I fanned out facing him. Mr. Schultz was in excellent spirits and it seemed to me everyone in the gang was glad to be together, that maybe I wasn’t the only one a little homesick.

  There were elderly couples at two or three of the tables who kept glancing at us and then leaning toward each other to talk, the faces of passersby framed themselves in the dining-room windows and were replaced by other faces, and appearing in the doorway every other minute to smile and watch us and maybe make sure we were still there were the man from the front desk and the elderly colored bellboy. Mr. Schultz loved all this. “Sweetheart,” he called to the waitress, “tell me about your cellar,” which I thought was a bizarre request until she said all they carried was Taylor New York State
in screw-cap bottles, which made him laugh as if he had known it all along, she was a plump young girl with blotchy skin and wore a uniform like the waitresses I had seen in the Schrafft’s on Fordham Road, black with white trim, and a little starched cap on her head, but despite this she was so nervous she kept dropping things, pouring the water in our glasses to the brim, things like that, and I thought any minute she would rush out of the room crying. Mr. Schultz didn’t mind, he ordered two bottles of Taylor’s New York State red. I could tell Lulu and Mickey would have preferred beer if they couldn’t have the hard stuff but they didn’t say anything. They were not comfortable in neckties, either. “To justice,” Mr. Schultz said lifting his glass, and touched the glass of Miss Lola Miss Drew, who looked at him and laughed a lovely throaty laugh, as if he was kidding, then we all clicked glasses, even I with my milk.

  Our table was in the middle of the room, right under a chandelier of clear glass light bulbs that made things dim and glary at the same time so that it was hard to tell how anyone looked, I wanted to see what people looked like who had spent forty-eight hours screwing each other silly, I wanted some evidence, something tangible that I could use for my imaginative life of abstract jealousies, but it was not to be had, at least in this light, it was particularly difficult to see Miss Lola Miss Drew’s face, she was so blindingly beautiful under that cut gold hair, her eyes were so green and her skin was so white, it was like trying to look into the sun, you couldn’t see her through the brilliance and it hurt to try for more than an instant. She was totally attentive to Mr. Schultz and stared at him every time he opened his mouth, as if she was deaf and had to read lips.

  Dinner was meat loaf with string beans and mashed potatoes and a basket of packaged white bread and a hunk of butter and a bottle of ketchup in the middle of the table. It was good hot food and I was hungry. I ate fast, we all did, we went at it with a vengeance, Mr. Schultz asked the girl to bring another platter of the meat loaf, and it wasn’t till the first edge of my hunger was rounded off that I noticed Miss Lola Miss Drew hadn’t touched her dinner but was leaning with her elbows on the table and intently regarding the wolfish crew of us holding our forks in our fists, chewing with our mouths open, and reaching out to spear slices of bread. She seemed quite fascinated. When I looked again she had lifted her own fork and folded her hand over it till she had made a fist around the shank. She held it one way and then another to see how it felt, and then forked the slab of meat loaf on her plate and hoisted it slowly into the air to her eye level. At this point everyone grew quite still, she had the attention of the entire table, although she no longer seemed to be aware of us. She lowered the fork and left it standing upright in the portion of meat and as if she was quite alone and thinking about something far away took her napkin from the place setting, unfolded it, and laid it across her lap. Then she looked at Mr. Schultz with a sweet distracted smile and then down at her glass, which he hurriedly refilled. Then she proceeded to dine, taking the fork in her left hand and her knife in her right, and cutting and accepting in her mouth from the fork tines, after she had laid the knife down and switched the fork to her right hand, small bites of the meat loaf and tiny dabs of mashed potato. It was an operation of pronounced gentility performed at ritual speed, just as teachers in school write words across the blackboard while enunciating them syllable by syllable. As we all watched, she took her wineglass and put it to her lips and drank without making any sound, though I listened hard, not a sip or slurp or gulp or gurgle, so that when she replaced her glass on the table I wondered if any wine had gotten into her at all. I had to conclude this was one of the most depressing displays of daintiness I had ever seen, as beautiful as she was, she momentarily forfeited her allure as far as I was concerned. Lulu Rosenkrantz frowned the frown that could terrify a hit man, and then exchanged glances with Mickey the driver, and Abbadabba stared at the tablecloth with a sad expression on his face, and even the impassive Irving lowered his eyes, but Mr. Schultz was nodding his head with his lips pouted as if a necessary point was being made. He leaned forward and, looking around the table, said in his idea of a modulated voice, “Thank you, Miss Drew, for your thoughtful comments, which I believe are offered in the best interests of watching our asses for our own good.”

  I knew immediately something momentous had occurred but I didn’t trust myself to think what it was until later, when I was alone in my room again in bed with the lights out and the crickets in the fields of Onondaga beating away like the night’s loud pulse, as if night were an enormous body, like the sea, with things living in it, making love in it, and lying dead in it. Miss Lola Miss Drew disdained memories. Technically she was a captive, her life was at risk. But she had no intention of being a captive. She had something to contribute. Of course what Mr. Schultz had said was correct in that we did have to watch our asses up here, like travelers in some dictator’s foreign country. But what stunned everyone at the table was that he had sided with her, she had done this crazy pantomime, presuming to act in that way of privilege of instructing those less fortunate than she, and instead of whacking her across the face, which is probably what everyone else there would have done, he had accepted it and found value in it. It was as if they felt an announcement was being made, that she was being cut in in some way and that was how it was going to be.

  Of course, I didn’t know if I was right, if that was what everyone thought, but I knew from my own career with him that Mr. Schultz liked to be pursued, he was vulnerable to people who were attracted to him, followers, admirers, acolytes, and the otherwise dependent, whether show-off kids, or women whose men he killed. She was a spoil of war, after all, she had been given her delicious value by Bo Weinberg’s love for her. I had to wonder if when he took her to bed Mr. Schultz enjoyed the hard-on of triumph, making love to the lady but giving it to the dead Bo.

  The next morning bright and early, Mr. Berman knocked on my door and told me to get dressed in my new suit and to wear my glasses and meet Mr. Schultz down in the lobby in fifteen minutes. I did it in ten, which was enough time to run around the corner for a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I got back as everyone was coming outside. Mickey was there with the Packard, Lulu Rosenkrantz was getting in beside him, and Mr. Schultz and Miss Drew were seated in the back. I jumped in.

  It was a short trip, in fact only around the corner to the Onondaga National Bank, which was a narrow limestone building with two long skinny barred windows and columns holding up the stone triangle roof over the front doors. Mickey pulled up across the street and we all sat there looking at it with the motor running.

  “I once’t chanced to meet that Alvin Pincus who ran with Pretty Boy Floyd,” Lulu said. “A very excellent safecracker.”

  “Yeah, and where is he now,” Mr. Schultz said.

  “Well they did good for a while.”

  “Think about it, Lulu,” Mr. Schultz said. “Going for the dough the one place it’s under lock and key. You gotta be stupid. That outlaw shit ain’t in the economic mainstream,” he said patting the briefcase on his lap. “Okay, ladies and gents,” he said, and he got out of the car and held the door for Miss Drew and me.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. When I got out of the car Miss Drew said, “Wait a minute,” and straightened my clip-on tie. I instinctively drew back.

  “Just be a nice boy,” Mr. Schultz said. “I know it’s hard.”

  I could tell my black wing-tips were already raising a blister on my heel, and the wire hooks of my plain glass steel-rim glasses were pinching me behind the ears. I had of course forgotten to buy a book as Mr. Berman had told me and so as a last resort carried the Bible from my room in my left hand. My right hand was held by Miss Drew, which she squeezed as we crossed the street behind Mr. Schultz. “You look handsome,” she said. I resented it that even when I wore my Elevator Shoes she was the taller of us. “That’s a compliment,” she said, “it doesn’t call for a scowl.” She was very gay.

  We were shown right past the tellers’ barred
cages to the back office, where the president came from behind his desk and shook Mr. Schultz’s hand heartily, though his eyes flicked over us all with cool appraisal. He was a portly man with a fleshy tubular underchin that looked like a hydraulic pump under his jaw when his mouth moved. Behind him was this open door and steel gate, and an inner room that was really a big safe with its thick door open and lots of drawers inside the room like mailboxes in a post office. “Well, well,” he said after the introductions were made, Mr. Schultz having described me as his prodigy; and Miss Drew as my governess, “please sit down, everyone, we don’t often have famous people in our little town. I hope you’re finding it to your liking.”

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Schultz said, beginning to undo the straps on his briefcase. “This is a summer in the country for us.”

  “Well, country is what we can offer. Swimming holes, trout streams, virgin forest,” at this his eyes darted for a moment to Miss Drew’s crossed legs. “Some pretty fair vistas from up the top of the hills, if you like hiking. Good fresh air, all you can breathe,” he said, laughing as if he’d said something funny, and he went on with this mindless booster small talk his eyes coming back again and again to the briefcase which Mr. Schultz now leaned forward to place on his desk, the top flap folded back, so that when it was given a quick shove and then pulled back, packs of greenbacks slid out on the big green blotter. And with that, words abruptly ceased to come from the banker’s mouth although the hydraulic pump didn’t lift it shut for another moment or two.