by David Mamet
He looked at the sedan, stopped on the road just out of the orbit of the funeral party.
Two men in overcoats got out of the sedan. They walked toward a monument some thirty yards off, but kept their eyes on the small party around the open grave.
Teitelbaum’s wife, weeping, was handed a trowel. She looked, vacantly, at the cemetery functionary who’d handed it to her. He nodded at the pile of earth. She took some on the trowel and threw it down into the grave. She stood holding the trowel. After a moment the man took the trowel away from her.
The mourners’ breath showed white, and they began, now one, now another, to shift their weight, looking for some warmth in the cold.
“. . . Falling like flies,” Poochy said.
Parlow nudged Mike, who was still looking, obliquely, at the two latecomers.
The rabbi had finished saying that death was not the end of all things. Mike reflected that this was not the case for Teitelbaum, whose troubles, in the happy phrase, were over, while those of the onlookers, colleagues, and family around the grave were all exacerbated by the demise of him and his partner.
These, Mike mused, usually seemed to fall into one of two categories: “How will I now get by?” and “Who will get what?”
The representatives of the cemetery and its businesses stood back from the grave, The Beautiful, in the person of Mr. Walsh, unmoving in respect. His daughter had been given leave to stay in the red delivery truck, the engine running, her body fighting the cold.
Mike had seen the same two goons before, at Weiss’s funeral. Seeing them again, it struck him that the cruel cold had the power to still lust, but none over curiosity.
“That’s one for the books,” he thought.
The cold had not stilled lust in the two-room flat facing the El. Cold as it was, and the apartment stinking from the gas stove, the stove door open and both burners on to provide a small remedy to the landlord’s parsimony with coal.
But the minuscule bedroom alcove gave off the kitchen, and the stove threw enough heat to make them believe in the improvement. And he had two quilts on his bed, and the heavy army blanket, and she wanted him, and God knew he wanted her.
Even today at the cemetery, she looked impossibly fetching, in the thick coat, making her perfect body shapeless, and her father’s cap pulled down around her ears, her breath freezing inside the truck’s cab.
But today he knew what lay underneath the wrappings, and would know it again, as it was now a possession which, though it filled him with wonder, at the moment no longer inspired curiosity, as did the two thugs from out of town.
“I do not like them coats,” Parlow said.
The small funeral party started to break up. Parlow and Mike drew back in respect for the five mourners making their way to the cars, their hieratic cadence warring with their desperate need for warmth.
“I don’t like the coats.”
Mike turned to the photographer. “Can you get ’em?” Mike said.
Poochy had raised his camera, and swung it slowly to cover the progress of the mourners’ group. He mimed satisfaction at the shot he had not, in fact, taken, then, still looking at the mourning group, he let the camera swing back, at his side, and pointed it toward the two men.
They had half-turned from the grave, and were starting back toward their car when he took the shot.
One of the men turned at the sound of the shutter. But he saw only Poochy’s back, and the camera down at his side.
They stood in Poochy’s cubby in the paper’s darkroom, which, by right of adverse possession, had long been acknowledged as the photographers’. Parlow and Mike stared down in the red light as Poochy put the white photographic paper in the developer bath. He nudged it lovingly back and forth with a pair of wooden tongs. “I’ll tell you what,” Parlow said, “even in that Eskimo gear—that little button nose . . . ?”
The image started to emerge, and Poochy picked up the print with the wooden tongs and hung it on the clothesline that ran across the cubby.
He leaned back and threw the wall switch, and the red light in the room was replaced with white. The print showed the two men at the grave, far in the background, out of focus, just two shapes, but the one man, through his posture, recognizably angered by the sound of the shutter.
“Yeah, no. Guy’s a hunter,” Mike said. “Heard the camera, click, click, all through the service. Now? Service is over, hears the shutter? ‘Not right,’ he turns back? Tell me about the coats.”
“I don’t like them,” Parlow said.
He used the end of the tongs as his pointer.
“The hem is too long. The shoulders are too square, the points on the collar are too round, what is it? ‘Radiused.’ Rather than square. And, in general, they’re what is known as ‘foreign.’ Coats are foreign. Guys’ expressions are foreign. Should’ve snapped the shoes, ’cause the shoes are the dead giveaway. But, in toto, what we have here are two burly and self-confident gentlemen of foreign extraction. Of but not in the funeral.”
“Alright. They aren’t Guineas . . . ,” Mike said.
“No,” Parlow said, “they ain’t got the coloring.”
“Then who are these visitors to our shores? Come for the funerals? What do they want?”
“Look where they’re looking.”
“Yeah, okay, what do they want?”
“Mike,” Poochy said. “Maybe they want you.”
He had asked Annie about the men. Gingerly, careful not to spook her, for he knew she’d take note of his question. As there was no way to ask it casually, he prepared a lie.
“It was cold out there,” he said.
She smiled.
“You were in the delivery truck,” he said. “Window got so fogged up, you looked like a squirrel or something, in that cold out there, all huddled up in your coat.”
He asked her if she’d watched the proceedings, and she said she had now and then, that there was little to watch. And he said he’d seen two men, at the back of the mourners, had she seen them, and did she know who they might be?
She looked carefully at him, and asked if the two men concerned him. “No,” he said, “it was said a couple of goons from Detroit were there, to pay the respects of the Purple Gang.”
“And if she can tell that’s a lie,” Mike thought, “then she must love me very much.” And he saw that she knew it was a lie, and accepted it, as she supposed he was telling it to protect her.
“And perhaps I am,” Mike thought, and hated himself, for he knew she was in no danger, and that he was probing for information with which to protect himself.
He went to the Ace of Spades.
“Why you come in here asking me?” Peekaboo said. “’Cause black folks know everything?”
“You bet,” Mike said.
“Well, that’s true,” Peekaboo said. “And you know why.”
“’Cause you’ve got to be watching,” Mike said.
“And one thing that I been watching,” she said, “is that you? You got to know the limits of your special dispensation. You write, about this or that, South Side, the North Side, City Hall; you’ve always? Got one eye on that fine line.”
“That’s so,” Mike said.
“‘That fine line,’ does not disappear, just ’cause you go let your dick lead you around. Line’s still there, you just too crazed to notice.
“These white people? That girl? These Irish? They ain’t got a fine line. Their women? Are goin’ to the marriage bed a virgin. That’s their rule, and they will cut your heart out. And here’s what: your thinking, ‘How serious can it be?’ will likely be done after they’re done, and you know the sad answer.”
The whorehouse kitchen was, as usual, hot. The alley window was cracked. Peekaboo and Mike sat by the window. They were drinking the good scotch she obtained not from her regular bootlegger, but as a gift from a customer. Mike came to her, as he did always, as to the disinterested oracle without whose help there is little direction in this world for anyone. He had com
e to her for her understanding of two men in foreign overcoats.
“Well, Liz,” he said, “they were to kill me, that would break the girl’s heart. Why’d they want to break the girl’s heart?”
“That’s assuming that they’re with her father,” Peekaboo said.
“Well, who else would they be?” Mike said.
“Uh-huh,” Peekaboo said. “That to one side. Let me ask you. You want to marry the girl?”
“They won’t let me,” Mike said.
“No, well, or maybe no,” she said. “Let’s back up. Father. What’s he want?”
“He wants his daughter to be happy,” Mike said.
“Oh, good, good,” she said. “Now, you see, we’re getting down, the root of the misconception. From which all the difficulties flow. The father? Couldn’t care less. Irish? Far and away, odds are? He beat her. Why’d he beat her?”
“‘To instill into her a sense of right and—’”
“Right and wrong. No. We’ll get to that in . . . not only’d he beat her; their culture? I don’t know. It’s not impossible he had her. He din’t have her, he wanted to. That’s the tale I hear repeated. Granted, my samples are limited, but . . .”
“He doesn’t want her to be happy?” Mike said.
“Baby, I see the other side of the carpet here.”
“You see the girls,” Mike said.
“I see the Daddies,” Peekaboo said. “That’s what I see. Daddy. Comes in here? What does he want to play?”
“‘Little Bo Peep,’” Mike said.
“Now you got it,” Peekaboo said. “Daddy wants to fuck the milkmaid. Comes in here? What’s he want? Girl got up like a schoolgirl, hair in braids. That don’t rise unannounced like a summer storm. That’s living in there. Every moment he’s Back Home in Indiana. Watching his little girl grow up. Her little playmates? Swimming hole . . . ? She doesn’t know that? Course she does.
“He doesn’t want his daughter to be happy. Married? ‘Happy’ means she’s getting fucked five times a day by her husband, and she loves it. There she is, to his mind, giving up all that cooze his wife’s gone dead on. Now? Both of them cheated him.”
“. . . He doesn’t want her to be happy?” Mike said. “What does he want?”
“He wants her? To be two things: gone, and stay gone. Which means, she needs a protector; she ain’t washing up back at his house, ten months, covered in bruises and a pair of twins. P.S., her deadbeat husband coming by, sad story, ‘they’d be happy if he just had the rent.’ Father, this is the last thing he wants. What this means: she’s got to marry someone in the community. Community laws dictate: how much the husband can beat her; how often he’s allowed, hit up his father-in-law for a loan; amount of time, she gets out, that they have to take her back. He knows these things. She does, too. And the husband. But. She flies off, marries some white boy, out of town, some American, this gives her this license: ‘Take me home, Daddy. I didn’t know what he was . . .’ Now, the father? Cannot go over, the boy’s parents, haul ’em up before the Church. He don’t know where they are. Where the boy is. ‘What are you going to do?’ He’s fucked. And all the bullshit about ‘the girl’s responsibility to her people and her faith’? Just comes down to that.”
She took a sip of scotch.
“She marries in the group, you see, the fifty-dollar bill now, he doesn’t have to loan his son-in-law, who can’t pay the rent, he can bring it to me, to get some fifteen-year-old black girl, dress up in knee socks and moan, ‘Daddy, please fuck me.’ That’s about it.”
She filled up his glass.
“So you can: go learn Irish, go to church, whatever they do, but that’s why ‘they won’t let you.’”
“I want the girl,” Mike said.
“How bad?”
“I can’t make a fist.”
“You fucking her?”
“Yes.”
“That going to last?”
“Yes.”
“You sure? ’Cause ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?,’ that’s all there is.”
“No, I’m sure,” Mike said.
“Well then, this girl,” Peekaboo said, “she knows that. Good. So. Now what you offer her? Most important, is security.”
“Not love?”
“Honey, that’s what ‘love’ is,” Peekaboo said. “Why do you think girls fall in love? I am sure, pick one or some, ‘He can: bring me off; buy me shit; protect me and my children; leave me a lot of money.’ That’s the list.”
Mike gave a low, dismissive chuckle.
“I’m lying?” Peekaboo said. “Why do you think these girls come in here? Stay here, doing fat white men, ’til their tits fall?”
“Why?” Mike said.
“Why? Because it’s their home,” Peekaboo said. “And that, baby, is why her father slaps her. Not to turn her feet to the path of righteousness, but to get her to leave. ’Cause she can’t stay in that house no more. You say these guys are after you?”
“I think they’re after me,” Mike said.
“Just the two times?” Peekaboo said. “Funerals. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you know they’re from her father?”
“They aren’t American and they ain’t Eyetie, what’s that leave?” Mike said.
“Well, you got to do something about it,” Peekaboo said. “Maybe I’d talk to her old man. See you can make your case. Weak as it is. Find out. And go see Callaghan.”
Chapter 11
The jazz band was taking their break. The Chinese restaurant was half-full.
Callaghan was an ex–safe and vault man. He was current with both the gossip of the allied trades, and the side world of the opium market, which indulgence had, as all knew it would, necessitated his setting aside his beloved nitroglycerine before, as one cohort had put it, “it did the same for him.” He swept his hand around, taking in the restaurant.
“Hop Li, I want a tell you what,” said Callaghan, “is one super-canny Chink. Somebody told me? His grandfather laid track on the Canadian Pacific, I happen to know, a fact, he has a degree from McGill University, Montreal.”
“In what?” Mike said.
“Horticulture, some damn thing,” Callaghan said. “I dunno. They have plants up there? They must. Although it’s got to be one short growing season.”
“They have ‘wheat,’” Mike said.
“Wheat, of course,” Callaghan said. “‘The Breadbasket of the World.’ Or maybe that’s the Great Plains. I got to get out more.”
“He’s got a degree in horticulture,” Mike said, “fuck’s he doin’ here?”
“I’ll tell you,” Callaghan said, “and the answer is ‘look around.’ Forty-five cents for a plate of what essentially is a half cent worth of rice, and not too much of that, a slice of carrot, and maybe this gristle is dog meat. Who the fuck knows what the fuck is in these dishes?”
“Health inspector,” Mike said.
“Make me laugh,” said Callaghan. “’Nother story is? His grandfather? Coolie on the CP, washt up on Dawson, for the Gold Rush.”
“Uh-huh,” Mike said, “lookit . . .”
“’Nother story. Fucken guy, gets rich running a whorehouse. Coolie rail gangs, round-eyed pussy. One white woman. Hundred thousand Chinks.”
“How’d he get the white woman?” Mike said.
“. . . I know? He won her in a fan-tan game. The fuck I know.”
“All these stories,” Mike said, “militate toward the possession of some perverted nature.”
“Not at all, and tell you that one too,” Callaghan said. “Because I’ve thought about it. How the Chinks got rich? Came in with nothing, all a sudden, everybody’s eating the swill they rejected on the railroad. Track boss brought them this shit? They? They would of torn up twenty miles of track.” He looked down at his plate and shook his head.
“That’s not their way,” Mike said. “Also, they would have shot ’em.”
“Who?” Callaghan said.
&n
bsp; “Pinkertons,” Mike said. “Also, the Chinese . . . ? Are too smart. Their thing? Keep your head down. Micks, now?” He nodded toward Callaghan. “Your thing is the fire department, the cops, park district, and so on. Politics? What you’ve got, the Titanic iceberg. Most of it is underground; a bit of it, however’s, on the surface. ’Nough to let you know the vast amount that’s hidden. Your problem? You can’t hide it all.
“Irish? Every cop on the beat? Red potato nose and a brogue? You can’t hide it. The Chinese? Who knows what they do?”
“We know a few things,” Callaghan said. He motioned for another drink. The band came back onto the bandstand. The level of conversation in the restaurant rose. The two men in the booth sighed and looked at the band.
“‘Bye Bye fucken Blackbird,’ for a sawbuck,” Callaghan said.
“No bet,” Mike said.
“Three to five?”
“Forget it,” Mike said. “It’s traditional. And P.S., I like it.”
“Everybody likes it,” Callaghan said, “that’s why it’s traditional.” The band struck up “Remember.”
“See, you just lost fifteen bucks,” Callaghan said. “Fucken songs. In France? They sing it the other way?”
“‘You took me to find a lonely spot, and after I’d cared to come a lot.’”
“That’s right,” Callaghan said. “As men deprived of feminine companionship, they turned to buggery, obscenity, or sloth.”
“That what the Chinks did?” Mike said.
“On the railroad? Yeah, okay, Irish? On the other hand, and one point of contention I do not have with the Catholic Church, we go with ‘Marry early, marry young, go screw her every night and keep her breeding.’ One: it keeps us from insanity or sodomy, two: it makes more Irish. Handy, come election time.
“Now, what the Heathen Chinee, they put their energy in? Building the Transcontinental Railroad; gambling; save their money; and one Australian whore somebody dragged out to the end-o-steel.”
“And opium,” Mike said.
The young Chinese waitress brought the drink. Callaghan knocked it back and gestured for another.
“And opium,” Mike said.
