First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  “I look at George, he looks at me. Makes sense. Meanwhile, Red’s over by the desk where I left the girl’s purse while me and George cleaned up. Red’s hand’s on his chin; he gives the purse a hard squint. ‘Something…’ He pulls white gloves outa his pocket, puts ’em on, picks up the purse, opens it. Keys, pencils, girl stuff, then out comes a little wallet. Red flips the catch, looks inside. ‘Harmony Belmont, 286 Roosevelt…son of a bitch! That sugar-cookie Oscar laid out? She’s Samuel Firestone’s son’s girlfriend.’

  “I think, shit, this’s getting more terrible every minute. ‘Leo?’

  “‘Yeah, Leo the Dockie. I ran into the two a them a few days ago, she was carryin’ this purse. Thought I recognized it.’

  “Now I know what the girl was doing there. ‘Pop told Leo he had some kinda goods on Samuel, kept ’em here in the office,’ I say to Red. ‘Leo musta told the girl.’

  “Red puts the purse back on the desk, takes off the gloves. ‘Then we really gotta move.’ He gives Pop a little kick on the ass, gives me a shove. ‘Let’s go.’

  “Me and George pick up Pop, schlep him outa the office, all the way out back. Red takes the strongbox and pictures. We pull a bunch a stuff off the pile, dig a hole good and deep, make sure nothing’ll show. Then we shove in Pop. ‘Uh-oh,’ Red says. ‘Probably got some I.D. in his wallet, maybe even dough.’ He gives George a nudge. George goes down in the hole, bends over, and all of a sudden, Red’s holdin’ a rod, silencer on the end. Little noise like a pin stuck in a balloon, then George falls over on top a Pop.”

  The last seven words were so soft I could barely hear them. Murray turned a desolate face on me. “Next thing, Red’s down in the hole, gun in one hand, and quick with his other, he pulls George’s key ring off his belt, slips it into his own pocket. Then he grabs Pop’s wallet and George’s, climbs up on George’s back, jumps outa the hole, puts the wallets in his pocket, slips the gun back inside his jacket. Then he gives me the eye. ‘What the hell you waitin’ for?’ he says. ‘C’mon, we gotta fill up the hole.’ I tell him, ‘Go ahead, shoot me too, get it done.’ He laughs. ‘Stop being stupid, and shovel, hey? Get the hole filled, garbage over it. Then we’ll talk.’ He throws the strongbox and pictures on the pile, just another little bit a trash.

  “Back in the office, Red grabs the phone, tells somebody he needs a truck over at Fleischmann Scrap an hour ago. Then he takes a rag, mops up a coupla bloodsmears from where Pop was lying. ‘Sorry, Murray,’ he tells me. ‘The nigger hadda go. If the girl got a look at him and she ever wakes up…but even if she don’t wake up. Let the cops go askin’ him questions—’

  “George wouldn’a said Word One.”

  “Red shakes his head, taps out a Lucky, lights up. ‘Murray, Murray—hey, listen, pal, I know how you feel. He was a damn good nigger. But you can’t count on a nigger to act like a white man when cops start in on him.’”

  Flash of fire in the old junkman’s eyes. “I take a step, gonna put out his lights, but I’m all of a sudden looking at the wrong end of that Quiet Betsy. Red waves it sideways. ‘Murray, stop bein’ a schmuck. Sit down…yeah, that’s right. Good.’ He puts the rod back away, sits himself down in the other chair. ‘Listen, Murray—be pretty dumb-ass business for me to kill a goose, lays gold eggs like you do. And with no more partners you’re gonna be one rich goose, startin’ with a great big load of aluminum, all yours now. We just gotta make sure nobody comes ’round looking for Oscar or the nigger. Nigger’s easy. Come morning, his wife and kids’ll be missin’ too. Anyone asks you, he said he was gonna go take his family back down south. Happens alla time.’

  “I hear a motor outside. Red runs, opens the gate, closes it behind the truck. Great big moving van, coulda held Fort Knox and the U.S. Capitol at the same time. Couple gorillas jump out, grab off the tarps, start tossin’ aluminum like it was foam rubber. Not twenty minutes, all the aluminum’s on the truck and the truck’s on its way.

  “Red and me go back in the office. ‘Meet you here about nine,’ he says. ‘We gotta close the door on Oscar. Make the cops and everybody else think he beat up that girl, then took a powder. So nobody ever gets it into their head to dig around under the garbage. And Murray, mum to Lily for right now, huh? ’Cause if you ain’t worried about your own health, you oughta be about hers…oh, hey, wait a minute.’ He takes out Pop’s and George’s wallets, looks in Pop’s, shakes his head. ‘Mother Hubbard’s.’ Then he peeks in George’s, whistles, pulls out a handful of bills, does a quick count. ‘Well, looky here, Murray. Nothin’ in Oscar’s wallet, but five hundred in the nigger’s. Where’s a nigger get five hundred bucks, huh? Guess we know what he was doing while you were schleppin’ the girl over to the trestle.’ Red tries to put the scratch in my hand, but I pull away like it’s on fire. ‘I don’t want it,’ I tell him.

  “He gives me a funny look. ‘Murray, whaddaya think? You walk away from the dough, the nigger’s gonna wake up? Or you’re fixed so good you don’t need a fast and easy five? Come on, pal, you don’t want me thinkin’ you’re a bad businessman, now, do you?’ He slaps the dough in my hand, then smacks me on the arm. ‘See you back here, nine o’clock.’ Then he puts on his white gloves and picks up the purse.

  Murray shifted his weight to the other buttock, hawked, wiped at his eyes. “That’s when I knew, Dockie. Up to then, I figured I could play in the dirt and just go wash off my hands afterwards. Trust a guy like Red Dexter ’cause I thought we were pals? Talk about being a schmuck. I wanted to go straight to the cops, but I knew damn well a lot a them had their hands in Red’s pocket. I was scared for what could happen to Lily. Red’s boys would’ve done worse than just killin’ her.

  “So quarter to nine, I’m back there, and nine sharp, here comes Red, looking like he had a good ten hours in the sack. He’s wearing his gloves, carrying that leather purse. ‘Girl’s still out,’ he says. ‘Prob’ly ain’t never gonna wake up.’ He waves the purse under my nose. ‘Good thing you didn’t get rid a this before I got here.’ Then he tells me his idea. We’re gonna set up Leo, get him down to the yard and make him think he spotted Pop hauling ass to New York. I ask him ain’t there some way we could do it without Lily, but he shakes his head. ‘She’ll go along. If she don’t understand, tell her how the gun that killed your nigger friend a few hours ago just might turn up registered to Murray Fleischmann, and a couple bodies might just be dug up in Murray’s junkyard.’ He holds up the purse. ‘And this might turn up in the wrong place, with Murray’s fingerprints all over it. And a bum might walk into the cop shop downtown, tell ’em he was under the Fourth Av trestle last night and saw a guy dump a girl… Hey, nothing personal, Murray. Just business, is all.’”

  Murray spat a gob into the underbrush. “I couldn’t believe it, Dockie. You try and do what’s right for everybody but one thing always leads to another, and sometimes that ain’t the thing you wanted. I didn’t ever mean for nobody to get hurt.”

  “I believe you.”

  He worked me over with his junkman’s eyes. “Red and me lock up the yard, then I go stop by Pop’s house, get some a his clothes, smelliest ones I could find. From there I head on home, talk to Lily. She ain’t the least bit hot on Red’s idea, don’t want to take a chance on getting Samuel in trouble, but I ask her what are we supposed to do, and besides, why should Samuel get in any trouble except maybe with his son, which he oughta be able to handle. She still ain’t happy, but finally goes and gets her album with the pictures of all the girls ever stayed with us, and their babies.” Murray’s face twisted into a grim mask of torment. “That attic was her whole life—mothers, babies, they were alla them her kids. Samuel wasn’t crazy about her taking pictures, but she said please, she’d keep the album where absolutely nobody’d ever find it. And Samuel—”

  “Figured if someone ever did find the pictures, he could talk his way around anything. Even a handful of money and Red Dexter’s hand on his shoulder. But Samuel wasn’t in on the junkyard operation, was he?”r />
  “Course not. With your grandpa it was only people. Why do you think he died broke? See, Dexter and his wife wanted kids, but she once had this bad infection, blocked up her tubes, which of course is something Samuel knows. So he makes a deal with Red. Him and the Missus’ll get the first baby off the line—”

  “If Red gives Samuel and Lily enough money to get the operation rolling.”

  “Bingo, Dockie. Our upstairs in the attic, that was the Red Dexter Dormitory for Girls Had Noplace Else to Go. Plus, enough scratch to buy medical equipment, supplies, medicines, everything Samuel needed. Lily took a picture of Red and Samuel and me yukkin’ it up, then one of Red giving Samuel the dough. ‘Get both a them shots,’ Red tells me. ‘We want to make good and goddamn sure that kid is so lathered he don’t stop an’ think, just comes runnin’ down here all set to put out Oscar’s lights.’ So I take them and a couple others. Meanwhile, Lily gets a wig, dyes it gray and cuts it so it’s like Pop’s hair. Then I go back to the yard, open up, business as usual ’til three o’clock. Longest day I ever spent in my life. Three o’clock, I lock up, go on back home, and Lily turns me into Pop. Makeup, wig—was she good or what? ‘Course it don’t hurt I’m built just like him. With his stinkin’ clothes, I’m a goddamn ringer.”

  Murray’s words quavered with disgust. “I sneak out the back way, run down to the yard, go in, lock the gate behind me, sit in the office. Few minutes later, here comes White-Gloves Red, opens up with George’s key, walks in like he owns the place. I give him the pictures, he puts them in an envelope, puts the envelope in the girl’s purse. ‘I got that bum Aldo out in the car,’ he says. ‘Girl’s still in Dreamland, kid’s glued to her bedside. Samuel’s got an emergency gall bladder operation scheduled for four—’

  “‘How the hell you know all this?’ I say to him. He grins, taps out a Lucky, lights up, blows smoke at me. ‘Murray, how many times I got to tell you, it’s business? We’re everyplace. I know a nurse…hey, it’s almost five. Gotta get Aldo over to the Steinberg. That kid’s gonna be down here before half an hour, keep a good eye out.’

  “Red goes, leaves the gate open. I wait in the office, door locked, watch out the corner of the window. Anyone except your old man comes, I’ll lay low like nobody’s home right now. Just about half an hour, Samuel’s car flies in through the gate, pulls up in front. Out jumps Leo, runs around to the other side. I hear a noise but don’t see nothing. Next thing, Leo’s tear-assin’ straight for the office, ready to blow Pop away. I unlock the door, let him come in, grab him from behind so he can’t get a good look at me. I’m gonna give him a couple cuts, knock him around enough to put cotton in his head and rubber in his legs, then run out the gate, duck down by the river, head on home the back way and get changed back to Murray. But I didn’t count on Samuel…”

  The old man choked on the name, put his hand to his mouth. His eyes filled but he fought it off. “Here comes Samuel through the door, shit! What the hell happened? He gets any kinda look at me, the whole plan’s dead as a mackerel and me along with it, never mind Lily. Quick slash on the kid’s wrist, blood all over the place, I pitch him across the room and take off. Out the gate, down Fifth, over to Pop’s, in, out, just so maybe someone’ll see me. Then I sneak back home through the alley. I figure Samuel’ll take care a your old man, he can take care of anything. But then I hear what happened and I’m sick, Dockie, sick at my heart, sick to death. Whole next day I can’t even get outa my bed. And Lily…”

  Murray paused, as if to let a painful cramp in his belly pass. “She tells me I deserve to die, then won’t talk to me, won’t set a foot in our bedroom. She goes and lives up in the attic with the girls. Last one there was the little blonde, Susie. A couple from Maryland was gonna take her baby but Lily calls ’em, tells ’em Samuel died and the deal’s off. Then she goes and talks to Doc Charlie Harrison and Phil Jurgens, our lawyer. When Susie goes into her labor, Charlie comes, does the delivery, and Lily’s finally got her own baby, names her Clara. Lily quits work at the beauty shop, stays home with Clara, cooks our food, cleans house, but won’t come anywhere near me. Won’t let me hug her, won’t let me touch her. She buys twin beds, moves ’em into our room, puts Clara right next door. Ten, eleven years later, Lily’s heart starts to go. ‘Promise me, Murray,’ she says. ‘When my heart gives out, you’ll take good care of Clara.’ ‘Well, sure,’ I tell her. ‘What else would I do? I love Clara, she’s my kid too.’ Look Lily gives me woulda froze a chili pepper. I figure maybe moving to Verona might help, big house, real nice neighborhood , but nah, no dice. We go on just like before, only I got a longer ride to work. When Lily’s laying in her bed dying, every time she looks at me I can see it in her eyes. For what happened to Samuel I won’t ever forgive you.”

  Murray’s eyes clouded. “V-J Day, I figure I’m out, but no. Enlist with a guy like Red Dexter, you’re in for the duration—his duration. Red comes by one morning, says now there’s gonna be a big building boom, all the soldiers coming home, and The Business needs a right guy to run a wholesale-retail hardware store. So I go to a certain lawyer, he writes up a power of attorney, says I got full authority to manage Pop’s affairs, dates the thing from some time in 1942, and turns around his chair so he’s looking out the window while I sign Pop’s name. Notary seal and bingo, Murray Fleischmann can do whatever he wants with Fleischmann Scrap. I sell it to Wyslinki, dumb fucking Polack, and inside of just a couple years he runs the place into the ground.”

  “Into the ground is right,” I said. “That’s where they put up those municipal housing projects in the sixties. Oscar’s under fifteen stories of brick and concrete.”

  Murray nodded grimly. “I’d laugh except George’s there with him. Anyway, I open up my…their hardware store, out Route Four in Grassville. I buy from who they tell me, sell to who they tell me, look in the other direction while money gets to be cleaner than when it came in through the door. When Lily dies, couple days after the funeral, I buy me a rod, sit in my living room with it a whole night long. Only thing stops me pullin’ the trigger is I remember what I promised to Lily. Clara’s seventeen now. Lose her mother, then have her old man blow away the top of his head? Nah. In the morning I go off to work, pitch the rod in the river on my way. Clara keeps telling me I should find a nice woman, get married again, but truth is…aw hell, Dockie. Truth is, I tried a few times with a woman but couldn’t never, you know. So I just go on at the hardware store, that’s my whole life. Every morning I wake up and think, shit, I’m still alive, another day. Finally I hit sixty-five and they let me retire.”

  “Honorable discharge,” I said.

  A laugh burst from the old man’s mouth. “You’re something else, you know that? When I saw you back there in the pool room I damn near had a heart attack, thought I was seeing ghosts. Goddamn crime your grandpa never got to lay his lamps on you.”

  “Dexter end up under concrete too?”

  Another laugh, this one muted in thick sarcasm. “Red? Not on your life. Big car, jewelry for the wife and girlfriends, mansion in Atlantic Highlands, bodyguards, died in his bed maybe five years ago, eighty-nine years old. But you know something? I think maybe he was as much of a prisoner as me.” Wistfulness drifted across Murray’s face like cloud cover rolling in late on a summer afternoon. “Sixty years now, I been saying, Why? Why wasn’t it me drew George’s straw, or even better, Pop’s? That poor girl…George, his wife, kids…Samuel…” Murray swallowed hard, couldn’t hold back a sob. “All of ’em wiped out because of what a schmuck I was. Murray Fleischmann and one goddamn little straw fucked up how many lives?”

  The old junkman put me in mind of a bear at the zoo, tormented by cruel children, desperately trying to paw his way through the bars of his cage. “I figured I owe Leo, owe him big. Whole summer long, I go down to see him at the Steinberg, he’s practically camping out next to that girl’s bed. Hospital visiting hours those days’re two to four in the afternoon, that’s it, period, but him only sixteen and he gets the
m to look the other way. I tell him, let me help a little, huh? And he says, ‘I’m okay, Murray,’ or ‘Thanks, Murray, I’ll let you know if I need anything.’ Lily says to me, he don’t want help, how many times he gotta tell you? But…” Murray pounded his big right fist into the palm of his left hand. “I’m gonna give! I put money in envelopes, no return address, however much I can manage. Mail ’em from different post offices, so he thinks it’s from all different people. Then, when he cracks up, I go see a lawyer in New York… Hey, Dockie, I’m tellin’ you news?”

  I nodded. “Dad cracked up? I never knew—”

  “Yeah. Happened right before school started. One day he doesn’t come outa his room, and them people he’s stayin’ with, doctor and his wife, they go inside, but no Leo. Finally, one of them checks under the bed, and bingo, two eyes. He’s curled up in a little ball, back against the wall, won’t talk, won’t move. They get Doc Harrison, he calls a shrink, they take the kid to this high-class bughouse in Clifton, Crestview Rest Home. Almost two years, he’s there.”