Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  The old gentleman was sitting in his chair at one of the large plate-glass windows on the street side of the reading room. His arms rested on the chair-arms, his hands hung over the edges of the arms and opened and closed as though he were beating time to silent music.

  “Good afternoon, Billy,” said Henry Laubach.

  “Ah, good afternoon. Who is that?”

  “Henry Laubach, and Mike Slattery.”

  “Billy,” said Slattery.

  “Hello there, Mike. Henry. Take a seat,” said the doctor. “Well, Joe’s gone. Another dear face passed on. Since I’ve had this trouble with my eyesight I always seem to think of people as faces. I haven’t been able to teach myself to recognize people by their voices. I’ll miss Joe.”

  “Yes,” said Laubach.

  “Since I’ve been living here at the club, Joe and I took lunch together once a week, every Friday, unless he was out of town or in court. Kept me up to date on what was going on, and usually he used to read a few articles out of the Time or the Newsweek, items of interest I couldn’t get on my little radio.” He clasped his hands together, gently rubbing the signet ring with the indistinguishable crest that he always had worn (except when he was operating). “Once a month I’d go over to Frederick Street for dinner. About once a month, Edith’d have me. Always remember their kindness to me when Julian died. And of course Mrs. English. This trouble I have with my eyesight—I would have liked to have seen young Joby and Ann. I brought them into the world, you know.”

  “That’s right, you did, didn’t you?” said Laubach.

  “Yes. Ann arrived a little sooner than we expected. She was what you might call an early bird. Three o’clock in the morning. Joby, I think Joby was sometime in the afternoon. But Ann, she cost me a night’s sleep. I’ve said that to her many times. They had the same Marian working for them that’s working for them now, and she telephoned me and said she’d keep an eye on Edith, and Harry, their man, he was at my front door with the car by the time I finished dressing. Big Pierce-Arrow with the headlights on the fenders. Do you remember them?”

  “Yes,” said Mike Slattery. “Yes, indeed.”

  “Mike, you had one of those,” said the doctor.

  “No, the first big car I ever owned was a Cadillac I bought from Julian.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. I remember.”

  “I had a Pierce-Arrow,” said Laubach. “My father’s.”

  “That was it, that was it,” said the doctor. “Now that’s interesting. I just knew, I was sure one of you fellows owned a Pierce-Arrow, and I gave it to the wrong one. I couldn’t afford one. They ate up too much gas. Well, gentlemen, I think I’ll go upstairs now for a minute. Henry, would you like to give me your arm to the elevator? I can find it all right, but as long as I have a friend here.”

  “Of course,” said Laubach.

  “Good-bye, Mike,” said the doctor.

  “Good-bye, Billy,” said Slattery.

  “Always like to listen to the news program,” said the doctor.

  Mike Slattery waited in the main hall while Henry Laubach escorted Dr. English to the elevator.

  “Mike,” said Arthur McHenry, coming toward him from the billiard room.

  “Hello, Arthur.”

  “Would you be interested in three rubbers?”

  Mike Slattery hesitated. “Not unless you need a fourth.”

  “We need a third and a fourth. I saw you and Henry, and Lloyd Williams and I thought we could get you two.”

  “See how Henry feels about it. I’ll do whatever he wants to,” said Slattery. “Henry, Arthur wants to play some bridge.”

  “Have you got a fourth?” said Laubach.

  “Lloyd Williams,” said McHenry.

  “I think I’d better say no, Arthur. Thanks, but I’d like to stop at the office a minute and catch up on my mail.”

  “I don’t know why it is, but whenever I try to arrange a bridge game for Lloyd Williams, my friends have to catch up on their mail. I wish somebody’d write to me sometime.” Arthur McHenry smiled.

  “Play him some pool,” said Mike.

  “I’m going to have to,” said Arthur McHenry.

  “Well, you got him in here. He’s your responsibility,” said Henry Laubach.

  “I am well aware of that,” said McHenry. He rejoined Judge W. Lloyd Williams, who was watching a pool game from a high chair. “No luck, Lloyd. Henry and Mike are off to their offices. It’s pretty hard to pick up a game at this time of day. Most of the fellows play in regular foursomes.”

  “Play it off the six-ball,” said the judge. “It’ll kiss in.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the pool-player whom the judge was advising.

  “Sure it will,” said the judge. “It’s practically dead.”

  “Dead?” said the pool-player.

  “Well, not dead, but it’s an easy shot. Use high right-hand English and you’ll break up that pile. Do you want me to show you? I’ll bet you five dollars I can make it.”

  “No bet,” said the player. He took a shooting stance and played the shot. As the judge had predicted, the object ball kissed off the six-ball and into the pocket, and the pile was broken.

  “See?” said the judge.

  “You were right,” said the player. “But now what do I play? I’m safe.”

  “Well, you didn’t hit it hard enough. You should have slammed into it,” said the judge. “What were you saying, Arthur?”

  “No luck on the bridge game.”

  “What about Laubach and Slattery?” said the judge.

  “They’re leaving.”

  “Yeah. Don’t feel like it. They wanted something out of the Governor, but they didn’t get it, whatever it was. I think I know what it was, too,” said the judge. “Play the twelve, play the twelve. Don’t play the cock-up now. Save it.”

  “Pardon me, Judge, but this is a tournament match,” said the player.

  “Is it?” said the judge.

  “I just want to call your attention to the sign,” said the player.

  “I didn’t notice it. What does it say? ‘Silence is Requested During Tournament Matches.’ Excuse me. Come on, Arthur. We’re too noisy.” The judge got up and went to the reading room, followed by McHenry.

  “How often do they have these tournaments?” said the judge.

  “Once a year,” said McHenry.

  “I guess it’s too late for me to enter this year, but next year, from what I’ve seen I could win it. Those fellows we were watching, I could spot them fifty to thirty easily. At the Collieryville Elks we had at least ten better shots than those fellows. Care for a cigar?”

  “No thanks,” said McHenry.

  “A drink? I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “No, I had two before lunch and I’ll probably have one before dinner. You have one, though.”

  “Aah, I don’t want to drink alone. I had three at the Chapins’. That’s an old mausoleum, that house. I was never inside the place before. If the widow wants to get rid of it she won’t have any trouble selling it for a funeral home.”

  “I don’t think she plans to sell,” said McHenry.

  “Oh, she’ll sell all right, if she gets her price. That’s a shrewd woman. I know she’s a friend of yours, and that’s nothing against her. I see enough helpless widows, so when I see one that can stand on her own two feet, my hat’s off to her. Edith. You know who she reminds me of? You remember the Basso case? That whore that got Basso to strangle his wife? I know the Chapin woman’s respectable, naturally, but—well, she’s a friend of yours. We won’t pursue it. How old would she be, Edith Chapin?”

  “Fifty-nine.”

  “She get Joe’s money?”

  “Most of it,” said McHenry.

  “Mm-hmm. Quite a little money for a woman as healthy as she is.
She won’t just sit around, not for long. Now you know what a woman like that ought to do? She won’t do it. She’s too respectable, and this is too small a town. But if we weren’t all such hypocrites what she ought to do is pick out some bright young fellow in his last year at law school. Some handsome young law-review guy. She sets him up, furnishes him with an office and books, secretary. Gets him off to a good start. If she wants to sleep with him, that’d be in the bargain. I’ve known a few young guys that went to bed with women twice their age for a lot less than what I’m talking about. And history—boy, history’s full of them. And I don’t see the harm in it. She gets her little thrill, and the young fellow doesn’t have to struggle along on nothing. I’m talking about a brilliant young guy, not just a stupid hack.”

  “But a brilliant young guy wouldn’t need that kind of help,” said McHenry.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The brilliant young guys need it more than the others. The brilliant young guys, what happens to them? They get offers from big firms and they’re swallowed up. I mean the kind of a guy that comes out of law school and ought to be trying cases before the Supreme Court, but instead of that he’s buried in some big firm.”

  “I don’t think I agree with you, Lloyd.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. I don’t expect anybody to, but I’m telling you, it’s a fair bargain. All she does is support him till he gets established. Why is it so much worse for a young guy to sleep with an elderly woman than a young girl to go to bed with an elderly man? You look around this club. You know yourself, half the members of this club are giving money to young girls for some kind of satisfaction.”

  “Half? That’s pretty high.”

  “Arthur, your own friends are doing it, and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t know it,” said McHenry. “I suppose there are two or three . . .”

  “You think I have a dirty mind. Well, I don’t give a God damn what you think, or anybody else. Nothing personal. I just see what I see and I don’t shut my eyes to it. There were sixteen men pallbearers for Joe Chapin today. What would you risk on how many of them never had a young girl after the age of forty? If you want to know what my guess would be, my guess would be that Doc English and Mike Slattery were the only ones that never went to bed with a young girl after he got to the age of forty. I don’t think Slattery was ever in bed with any woman except his wife. And Doc English—well, the old story of doctors and nurses. With me they’re guilty till proven innocent.”

  “You can’t include me in that list,” said McHenry.

  “I should have stated, present company excepted. I’m protesting innocence myself, too.”

  “Jenkins, from the bank.”

  “Jenkins! He’s so holy that I suspect him automatically.”

  “I’m afraid you have a very low opinion of your fellow man.”

  “I was assistant district attorney three times, district attorney twice, Army in the first World War, and brought up in a patch, not to mention private practice and what I’ve seen since I was elected judge. My opinion of my fellow man is that the man that reaches fifty without ever doing time—has been lucky. I don’t care who he is, and myself included. That fellow I was telling how to play his pool shots—how far away was he from second-degree murder? I’ve come to the conclusion that the safest way to live is first, inherit money. Second, marry a woman that will co-operate in your sexual peculiarities. Third, have a legitimate job that keeps you busy. Fourth, be born without a taste for liquor. Fifth, join some big church. Sixth, don’t live too long.”

  “I know somebody that—”

  “Sure you do. Joe Chapin. Who else did you think I had in mind? Seventh, figuratively speaking, carry a rabbit’s foot. That includes Joe Chapin, too. Luck. There but for the grace of God go I. Sometimes I sit up there in my courtroom and a case’ll come along and the defendant reacted so much like the way I would in the same circumstances—why, it’s like a good detective story, I’m so anxious to see how it comes out. The people smell better in this club than they did where I learned to shoot pool, and they’ve learned some restraint. But there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between the guy that politely shut me up and some bohunk that would wrap a cue-stick around my neck. You know what’s going on all over the world, right this minute?

  “People are killing each other, and getting medals for it. First they’re trained to do it, taught to do it skillfully, given enough time to learn how to be a bricklayer or some minor trade. Then they’re ordered to kill. Kill, take away human life. Kill. I hate that word. And I’m not deluding myself. I kill when I send a man to the electric chair, and I knew I was going to do it when I ran for judge. Yes, I have a pretty low opinion of my fellow man. He’s just as evil as I am, and that’s saying plenty. But I’m a judge, thanks to the kindness of my fellow man and Mike Slattery. My fellow man and Mike Slattery very wisely decided that they would be safer if they put me on the bench, where I couldn’t do as much harm as I would running loose. I have to know what’s in certain books, and go by what it says. That way the people are pretty well protected from my evil inclinations. Before a man is elected judge he ought to be examined for criminal tendencies, and if he has enough of them he ought to be qualified. Now you, Arthur, you’d make a lousy judge.”

  McHenry smiled. “By your standards, I hope so, thank you.”

  “I shall now proceed to break a law by getting moderately intoxicated. Clear head in the morning, remembering everything in the books. But I shall take in enough alcohol to cause me to be unfit to drive a motor vehicle, then while under the influence of the alcohol I shall drive said motor vehicle to my domicile in Collieryville. No one will know that I am intoxicated, but I’ll know that my reflexes and my vision will not be unimpaired. If I were one of those show-off judges I would long since have signed an order taking away my driver’s license. There’s always a show-off judge in Los Angeles, California, or Toledo, Ohio, fining himself for violation of a parking ordinance. Arthur, have I given you any ideas to chew over?”

  “A great many,” said McHenry.

  “Just bear in mind, I’m a patch lad exposed to book learning. That can make for a great deal of discontent, because now I’m a patch lad to the educated, and an educated man to the patch lads.”

  “Lincoln was a kind of patch lad, educated patch lad. That ought to be some kind of consolation.”

  “Take it from me, it isn’t,” said Williams. “Every self-made son of a bitch in the United States of America compares himself with Lincoln. It’s an overworked comparison. But I have given you some ideas to chew on. That’s good. If I can’t be popular, at least I can make an impression. Court is adjourned.”

  “You’re leaving, Judge?”

  “Yes, and one thing more, Arthur. You got me in this place and I appreciate it. I always wanted to belong to this club. But don’t think you have to take the rap for me. Now that I’m a member, you know, I can stand on my own two feet. If they want to kick me out, you let them. I release you from all responsibilities implied or real. Nothing like me has happened to this club since young English wrecked the joint, fifteen-twenty years ago.”

  “Perhaps they need a little shaking. What about that drink you were talking about?”

  “The hotel bar. I’m told the place is full of twenty-dollar whores these days.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said McHenry. He helped the judge with his coat.

  Williams put his hand on McHenry’s shoulder. “Arthur, you may not be the greatest lawyer since Fallon, but you always have one or two surprises up your sleeve. And you’re a good fellow.”

  “Thank you, Lloyd,” said McHenry.

  The judge’s car was parked free of charge in the lot across Lantenengo Street from the hotel. It was a small graft that the judge accepted as part of the honor of being judge, and in using the lot as his downtown parking place he considered that he had bestowed an honor on the pl
ace. He did not accept free gasoline, oil, car washing, tires, flashlights or other goods and services. The fact that the judge used that lot was an endorsement and an advertisement, and a mutually satisfactory arrangement. The same space was always reserved for the judge, and he did not have to tip the boys. A pleasant greeting was all that was expected. (It was not likely that the owners would ever ask the judge for a major favor, but if they did he would take his custom elsewhere, and if he were to do that the owners would lose prestige. And, of course, it was possible that a telephone call from the judge might remind the police department that the parking-lot owners illegally obstructed sidewalk and street traffic throughout the day and part of the night. A judge is the only official who is universally feared by police officers; the only official who can give them orders and even make fools of them with impunity, and at the same time remain vaguely on their side.)

  Lloyd Williams was not on his way to look at the twenty-dollar whores in the hotel bar, but he was not unwilling to allow Arthur McHenry to think along those lines. Lloyd Williams was a calculating man. His dress, in an era of double-breasted suits and real or imitation hand-painted neckties, was conspicuously inconspicuous. He habitually wore a three-button single-breasted suit of dark gray worsted, including, except on the hottest days of summer, the vest. He wore plain white shirts with soft collar attached and neckties of black or blue, and black calfskin shoes of simple design. He wore no jewelry, of any kind, and his wristwatch was a gold one, cushion-shaped, that had a strap that needed a stitch or two. He never put his hat on quite straight, and the crown was changed in shape from wearing to wearing, and oftener than not a wisp or a lock of hair stuck out from under the hat at the forehead or the temple. His overcoat was a three-button model, dark blue, and half the time the collar was turned up on one side and wrinkled under on the other. All of his clothing was of good material and workmanship, all bought off the hanger at a Gibbsville men’s store, none of it cheap or second-rate, and he achieved what he set out to do: through extreme care he gave the impression of a man who cared nothing about clothes; or for ceremony, or for side. It was hard to avoid dressing like a motor magnate, when the stores were offering cheaper versions of the motor magnates’ suits and neckwear, but Williams managed it. And nothing he wore diverted attention from the man who was doing the wearing.