Big Man, A Fast Man

by Appel, Benjamin

  CONFIDENTIAL MEMO 1/5

  To: G.D.

  From: P.

  Lloyd was remarkably open today/ so open I have my doubts as to whether he was entirely sincere. I refer to his answer to my “How far did you go in your thoughts?” Seems to me he’s building an artful portrait/ tempted to kill/ but a solid fine human being just the same/ still the coal miner’s son and hero of labor.

  Did he really miss that bear/ throw his rifle away? Nice to know. I’ll send one of our people to interview the guide.

  Even if true, what would it prove? Only that he wasn’t personally capable of killing an old friend on a hunting trip. Hamlet couldn’t kill his uncle when latter at prayers. Killing a hunting pal on a hunting trip/ like killing a man in church.

  Jim Tooker was killed at home while resisting robbers who were hired hoods. Art Kincell fearful of being unmasked/ a nervous wreck etc. committed suicide. Trial record shows that Billyboy’s lawyers and Billyboy himself very vocal on this point. What if the suicide was not a suicide? A double murder? I’m letting my imagination run wild. The USTW president and the leading contender put out of the way by the man who married the boss’s daughter? Next session I’ll have him talk on his rise to power. Might throw some light.

  Plead guilty to charge of being an amateur detective.

  THE TAPES: 4

  Bill, here we go again. I’ve been thinking of what you said about murder being a one-way street. It’s a sound observation. Put a man under certain stresses. Any man. When a man like you could come close to a hunting accident.

  What are you driving at?

  It was your whole life holding that rifle up there on Twin Island.

  What are you driving at?

  Your life, Bill. I want a full account of your climb up the union ladder of success. The public is always interested in a man’s success story. The way I see it. The publicity we need, the publicity that will prove once and for all you had nothing to do with Tooker’s murder, must show you as you are. A man with faults as we all have faults yet basically decent. To do that we have to answer a lot of questions.

  For instance?

  You married Mr. Kincell’s only daughter.

  You want to know how come?

  The public would want to know how come a coal miner’s son, a steel worker —

  Climbed that little ladder of yours. It’s the same story as anywhere else. You see a girl around and you get to know her. That’s how I married Edy Kincell. That’s all there is to it. Let the public think what they want.

  Why don’t you give us an account of your career with Art Kincell?

  I made a name for myself as a steel organizer. This was before the war. Art read about me in the papers and hired me on. Back then all the unions were looking for hot organizers. The USTW wasn’t big then. Labor and management weren’t hoisting a cocktail together but at each other’s throats. What I did for Art was what I’d been doing. Organizing the unorganized. Back then in the thirties the USTW didn’t have eight hundred thousand members. It was a fight to get into most towns. And a lot of these guys who worked in terminals and warehouses were in company unions. Art sent me to Cleveland to work for Harry Holmgren. He’s the president of the midwestern federation. He was then, too.

  Let’s have a more colorful approach, Bill. How about a portrait of Harry Holmgren? From my reading of the trial record, he was a loyal friend of yours.

  So you’re reading in your spare time? About Harry? He came up the hard way, same as me. He was born on a farm in Wisconsin and quit to be a sailor. A lake sailor on the Great Lakes. The depression gave him his chance. He was a born organizer, same as me. He was in the old AFL union of Art’s back then, working in a terminal. When the USTW boomed, Harry boomed with it. The first day I met him he put it on the line. He said, “Billy, there are two kinds of labor leaders. The organizers, guys with guts like me and you. And the bookkeepers. This is our day.” He said, “The bookkeepers’ll come into their own when labor gets its cut of the pie.” He meant it, too. This Harry Holmgren was tough like only some of these little fellows can be. Wore his hair cropped close like a pug. Looked like a pug, too. He had a flat nose and a tough eye in his head. A good man but give him a steak every day. He believed in good living. Okay on the colorful?

  Harry first gave me a couple of soft ones. That’s what he called strike setups that were easy. When I won them we went up to Duluth where there was a bitch on wheels.

  Before you go on to Duluth. How about some facts on the soft ones?

  None of them were really soft. Only compared to Duluth. St. Louis was my first stop for Harry. My first job for the USTW. We were having trouble with Thielen Ice Cream Cone. I called on this Thielen but he showed me to the door. I ordered the stinkbomb treatment for him. He sent for me then and yelled about violence. I shut him up. When he locked out guys who signed up with us, what was that but violence? But like I said, it was a soft one. Stinkbombs and ice cream cones don’t mix. Then I went on to Omaha on the Missouri River. That was a workingman’s town. Walk up and down in high-bib overalls but we’d been battling the Sunbright Flour Mill for six weeks. There was a company union in there. What I did was get the support of the other unions. I printed leaflets and ran ads in the Omaha World. Dennison used to run that town. Dennison, the gambling boss. He collected from everybody. Even the doctors who dosed the whores gave him a cut. You could have a good time in Omaha and I had me a good time. I was twenty-eight then. No, twenty-nine. A bachelor, and I was sure to be in the war. That Hitler was getting too big but just the same a lot of union men in Omaha, and St. Louis, too, couldn’t see a war. Hitler’d busted up all the unions. The prize fink of all time. But some of those union men’d fallen for his line of gab. Anyway, I broke up the company union at Sunbright Flour Mill. And Harry Holmgren took me up to Duluth. That’s on Lake Superior with its coal docks and grain elevators. One windy town. The strike there was no soft one. This Albrand Bakery had hired a bunch of jailbirds to guard their trucks. Got them from a strikebreaking agency.

  We met with the local president and he drove us over to Albrand for a look. I’d seen it all before. The big buildings. The pickets looking lonely. The cops with an eye open. The Albrand trucks were lined up in front of the loading platform. The drivers smoking and killing time, waiting for the jailbirds to show up who were the guards on those trucks. It looked peaceful. Everything covered with snow. The snow you get up north. White as sugar. At eight o’clock, a fleet of cars pulled up. The jailbirds piled out. Thirty or forty of them. Thick-shouldered mugs in their windbreakers. They had jaws like wrenches. Tough mean bastards. Harry he turned to me and grinned. “Nice bunch of finks, Billy. They’re all yours.” — “Great,” I said. He said, “This strike separates the men from the boys. You take it from here, kid.”

  I took it. I organized a strongarm squad and gave them picket signs to carry. Then when I was ready, I drove up with the local president who was crapping green apples. That was the tipoff. When my boys saw us they dropped their signs and went for the finks. The cops blew their whistles but there were only two of them. I watched from the parked ear. It was a ringside seat. The Albrand drivers, when they saw what was going on, jumped out of their trucks and ran. My boys climbed up and tossed out the stuff. The bread and rolls and pies. The pies came out of their containers, and oh, yeh, it was snowing that day. And that snow got colored with huckleberry and cherry when the pies got squashed. It was like some kind of crazy summer. The next day the cops limited the pickets to six men and they had two cop cars to do the counting. The local president said it was hopeless. Maybe it was to him but I’d had tougher situations in the steel towns. I organized what I called a boozehound squad to hang out in the bars where the finks hung out. “Get their names. Their real names,” I told my boys, “and all the dope you can get on the jails where they’d done time.” Nobody was stopping me. I wanted the dope for the La Follette Committee down in Washington. That Committee was investigating unfair employer practices. It was a
different time then with FDR in the White House. They got the names but the strikebreaking agency in Detroit shipped up fifty more of those finks. What I did was hit back at night. My strongarm boys went through that town smashing the windows of coffee pots and groceries. Anybody buying Albrand was buying trouble.

  The cops arrested the local officers. But I was an old hand at ducking cops. I hid out and hopped the train back to Harry in Cleveland. He looked at my fink list and he congratulated me. But he wasn’t interested in the La Follette Committee. “Investigations always drag,” he said. What he wanted was for me to go to Detroit, to the fink agency. With my dope. He said, “They don’t want Washington on their necks. With a little cash maybe we can do business.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing straight. This was the guy who’d sneered at bookkeepers, the sure thing boys. “Harry,” I said, “you’d pay good union money to a bunch of finks?” — “Why not?” he said. “If I can beat Albrand.” I was young then and I blew my top. I said I wouldn’t do a dirty thing like that. He got sore and called me every kind of a name. “The hell with you,” I said, “I’ll quit and get me a job as a fink and be respectable.” That calmed old Harry. He began saying how he liked me or I’d be out on my ear. Didn’t I want to sign up Albrand? And what about the fast ones I’d pulled in the big steel strike in Youngstown? I’d told him all about that. He said, “Act your age, kid. Anything’s fair in love or war.”

  He was right. It was war in those days. Albrand had the cops and they had the finks. I went to Detroit and met with the number one fink of this Industrywide Security Company. That was the name of that strikebreaking outfit. The fellow who run it was a Jew by name of Geller. I’m not against the Jews or any other race but a Jew in the fink racket was dead wrong. I felt the same way about the colored steelworkers who wouldn’t sign with the union. That’s my philosophy. This Geller could’ve been a teacher or a salesman. Anything but a fink. I showed him the stuff I had on his jailbirds and we began to dicker. I said, “You don’t want a stink in Washington and we want Albrand.” Then I opened my wallet and let him see the color of the cabbage. I had five thousand bucks in cold green. I offered him a thousand. But I had to go to three which saved the union two thousand good bucks.

  In Duluth, the Albrand trucks rolled out on schedule but when their drivers were delivering, Wow. The fink guards had no chance against the guys who popped up out of nowhere. The cops asked the finks if the raiders were union men but the finks for once were honest as the day is long. “Just lugs,” they said. Sometimes, those lugs drove off with the trucks. The tires’d be flattened when they were found. The sparks ripped out. The cops pulled me in. I told them off. “The union isn’t responsible,” I said. It was the truth. Maybe not God’s own truth but true enough. Hell, those lugs were special little lugs from Detroit.

  To tell you the truth I didn’t feel so hot about the whole damn thing. When Harry congratulated me I told him to patent the idea. “How to put a corkscrew up and I mean up.” That’s what I said. He only laughed and said never to look under the bed. Yes, sir, don’t look under the bed. It’s sure getting crowded under that damned bed. A month or so later, me and Harry went to Detroit. No business this time. A celebration party. I didn’t want to go but he said why shouldn’t we let the finks think we were interested in future business. And in the fall —

  Hold up, Billy. Let’s have some detail on that party. I don’t know how we’ll use it but the public is always interested in a little sex.

  This wasn’t sex. This was meatpots. You couldn’t print it. I see you’re smiling. You want me to go on. Okay. There were these two strippers and me and Harry and the Jew and this Chuck Tezantikis. Some name like that. The former heavyweight wrestler. He was the fink vice president. The party was in a roadhouse and the furniture was marked up with cigarettes. All those tired Detroit businessmen. All those tired auto dealers and salesmen. Sweating for a living and nothing to show for it but their bank accounts. We got drunk and Harry began dancing around the girls in his sock feet. Singing, just a happy boy. One of the strippers started to strip. They stripped to their skins, with Harry dancing around them. We sat there smoking cigars. The joint was full of smoke, gray smoke hanging everywhere like the fog in the Aleutians. And in that fog, I mean that smoke, those girls were like Turkish harem beauties. Only they were no beauties. Just a couple bellies, and who’s going to print that? Still want me to go on? Okay, they were shaking their bellies and wiggling their thighs like they were scissors about to circumcise the Jew fink. Circumcise all of us. What’s good for business is good enough for labor. Chuck the Greek he got hold of the strippers’ clothes, their dresses and brassieres. Holding them in his big fat paws for some reason, and Harry dancing. Skipping around like a drunk pig when he wasn’t trying to goose the girls. This Jew Geller hollered at Harry to let the girls dance. Harry hollered and dropped down to the floor. He peeked up at the strippers and said the view was the best he’d ever seen. It had Grand Canyon beat a mile. Aw, what’s there to say? These stag parties are all alike. The strippers, the men. The strippers shaking it up, shaking their hips, take-it-away on the right, take-it-away on the left. Then Geller called my name. Just that. Nothing else. Smiling like he was my brother. “Billy,” he said. Just that. But it made me sick. It was like he’d made a speech about new deals between us, the dirty money that’s neither pro-labor or anti-labor. Just happy to be working an honest twenty-four-hour day for any owner. I was sick. I felt the heart go out of me. That’s why I didn’t want to go into this thing. You made me. God damn you, I was just a kid. I’d felt lousy paying good union money to those finks, and now this party with this Geller calling me Billy like he was my brother. I went blind or something. I didn’t see him. I didn’t want to see him and his Greek partner dancing with the girls’ clothes in his paws, and Harry squinting up on the floor at those meatpots. Christ, what do I think of but the guys I’d worked with in steel. Hank Sievert and Tim Brannigan. Aw, what didn’t I think of. Worst of all I thought of Annabelle, never mind her. Yes, sir, never look under the bed. It’s too crowded. I was sick. Plain sick that two union organizers should be out with fink bastards and those meatpots. They weren’t women to me but meat in a butcher window. Not that I’ve got anything against whores. Everybody’s entitled to a living. But there are whores and whores.

  Did you ever know one with a heart of gold?

  You’re a cynical bastard. You Madison Avenue punks.

  I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. But you hired this agency to do a job for you. We can’t forget the public. I want to know about the women in your life. The woman you married, Edith Kincell. And this woman Annabelle.

  The first whore I was with. She had a heart of gold. The public ought to know about her. She made me what I am today.

  If you want to be humorous.

  What’s wrong with a little humor? This was back in McKeesport. We went into her room and she said, “Three bucks.” She didn’t give a damn if I was a snotnose kid or an old rip, sober or drunk. I was just part of the Saturday night parade. She took my money and put it in a dresser drawer. Then she got out of her clothes. I’d never seen a naked woman before. Her breasts big and round. Her belly. She said, “Ain’t you ever been with a woman?” And where I’d been all my life. Where? That was a good one. When I wasn’t working I was home. I was like a horse pulling a milk wagon. I had my route. That whore saw it all on my face. She put on her robe and sat down on the bed and patted the place alongside. “Sit down,” she said. She took my hand and told me about her old man who’d worked in the mills until he was knocked down by a switch engine. Maybe she was kidding me. Trying to make me feel easy. Anyway, when she kissed me I wasn’t afraid any more. Her body wasn’t all white any more like meat in a butcher window. It felt dark and warm. Her lips dark and warm. And me, I was falling, falling like in a dream, only her fingers moving. I guess she’d taken my dumb hands in hers. That whore, tired like she was. Saturday night and all. That’s a long long night in a steel town. Anyw
ay she had the time for me.

  Hell, what did I know? I was the best son a mother ever had. I can say that but I paid for it. You pay for everything. The times I’d walk up and down my room like a crazy animal, wondering if I should go out with the fellows. I didn’t go. Not for a long time. I’d walk up and down and look out of the windows. The Bessemers on the river turning the sky all red. Like red golden fields or something, making me dream of some girl who’d love me like in the books. I was seventeen. I was a great book reader. But I couldn’t read those spring nights. I’d hear the voices of the fellows, telling about the women they’d been with and what they’d done. The night I went with the fellows my mother guessed it. She said, “Billyboy, where are you going?” — “For a walk,” I said. She said, “What’s that perfume I smell on you?” I said, “That’s tonic for dandruff.” She come back with, “No self-respecting dandruff could live in the grit that gets in your hair.” She was getting old but she still had a tongue in her head. It was a relief to get away from the house. I walked over to the terrace. Down below you could see the lights of the town. The mills on the river like a regular fireworks. I rushed down the stairs a mile a minute over to Fifth Avenue. That’s the big street in McKeesport and Saturday night it was crowded. The girls were there, and I went crazy looking at them. They wore their skirts high. All flattened out in the flapper style of those years. I met the fellows. There was Rearden and Antonoff the Bulgarian and Savela. These fellows didn’t have a wife in the lot. Buckos of the boarding houses.