The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  Two men who had been looking in the dress-shop window on the other side of Dorfman’s had come down the street. “Got a match, pal?” asked the one in the powder-blue suit, stopping at the Dorfman steps. “Sure,” he said, shoving his hand in his pocket. As his fingers touched the match folder, the other fellow, the one without a coat, who had taken a few steps past him, turned, came closer and swung. Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw the arm looping in the light, but his own hand was in his pocket; the blow caught him on the left temple and he half spun, trying to keep his balance, then the taller one who had spoken to him came in punching hard with both hands while he staggered, trying not to go down. He felt the pain on his eye and jaw and he yelled wildly, “Help, help, help.” As they both came at him he punched savagely with both hands at the nearest face, a cruel young vicious face in the Dorfman light, the mouth sagging open, and he felt his own fist crack against bone, and heard the moan, then the whimper, but the other one had dived at his legs, pinioning them, and he went down. One of them got an arm lock on him; his arm seemed to be breaking. His face was against the sidewalk. “Give it to him.” The blows came on his face and he tried to roll away.

  There was a flash of light; it was in his own mind; then the darkness closing down and new voices; a mob seemed to be beating him and he cursed with rage. Suddenly he was free, lying on the ground. The other voice had come from a car that had driven up and stopped, the motor running. His two assailants were getting into the car, one still whimpering.

  Raising himself to his knees, he shook his head to clear it, and blood from his nose and mouth fell on his hand. He stood up slowly and lurched toward the steps. His left arm hung heavy and numb at his side and he blinked but could hardly see it. He wanted to get his handkerchief but it was in the left trouser pocket. Climbing the steps he trembled all over but his head had cleared and when he took a deep shaky breath and then another deeper one, sucking in the air, his strength came back to him and he opened the door and went in.

  The patrons had crowded around the window, having heard the cries from the street, and Ted Ogilvie was the first one to turn and see him standing at the door. “Harry, it’s Harry,” he shouted and he came hurrying to him with Haggerty.

  “Sooner or later, this had to happen,” Haggerty said.

  “Give me a drink,” Harry said, breathing heavily as he leaned against the bar.

  “Take this, Harry. It’s brandy.”

  “To hell with brandy. Give me my Canadian Club.”

  “What’s happened? Who was it, Harry?”

  “They’re gone in a car.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Two hoods I’ve never seen in my life,” and he sat down by the bar and took the cloth the barman tossed to him and wiped his eye slowly, staring at the blood on the cloth, then he concentrated patiently on wiping his face.

  “Did they get your wallet, Harry?” the barman asked.

  “My wallet! Hell, they weren’t after my wallet,” he said, looking up blankly. “It was me, you understand. It was a job, a job,” and he closed his eyes and swallowed hard. His left arm was bothering him and he raised it slowly very delicately, and then he winced. “I thought the damn thing was broken,” he said, with a grotesque smile for his puffed-up left eye was closing.

  “Take it easy, Harry. I’ll get a doctor,” Alfred said.

  “Where did they come from?”

  “A thing like that on this street.”

  “They were waiting for me,” he said, impatiently. “Which means they knew I’d be coming here at this hour. Two hoods planted there to jump me. Who planted them there? Who do I know who’s crazy enough to have me beaten up?” and he looked around. Just back of the circle of patrons was Mike. Only a few feet away, at the bar, was Ray Conlin smoking his cigar, his black eyes bright and amused.

  “Everybody knows the one guy who’d like to have me beaten to a pulp,” Harry said bitterly. “So you still know where to go to get a job done, eh, Mr. Kon?”

  “Now I know you’re out of your mind,” Mike said.

  “So you finally called in your hoods,” Harry said, his swollen face twisting into a laugh. “Still hiding behind others.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mike said fiercely. “I won’t take this. I don’t need the help of any hoods. That twisted mind of yours!” Then he took on an air of scornful dignity. “Nobody believes you anyway. I don’t stoop to take you seriously. Nobody any longer takes anything you do seriously.”

  “Has Kon been coming around here this early, Alfred?” Harry asked.

  “Well, not this early, Harry.”

  “Then why does he show up tonight? Just to have a ringside seat, of course.”

  “I show up here because I like it here,” Mike said. “I sit here minding my business. Ask anybody.”

  “Yes, he’s in here,” Haggerty said, looking at Mike so thoughtfully that Mike felt insulted. “But you don’t expect him to admit anything, do you?”

  “Do you think he’d have the courage to act on his own? Him and Conlin, I say.”

  “Not me and Conlin,” Mike said furiously.

  “You see, Alfred,” Harry said. “Him and Conlin,” and he laughed again. “A pair. Kon and Conlin. Konlin. Little Kon,” and then he turned on Ray. “You threatened to get me, didn’t you, little Kon. You and Mike fixed it, didn’t you?” and he came closer and Ray made a move to defend himself, scowling ferociously.

  “Maybe you’re right, Harry, only you can’t prove anything,” Haggerty said, and he grabbed at his arm, for Mike had hunched up his shoulders trying to control himself.

  “I’m not going to hit him,” Harry said. “That’s been done before. He’s just Kon’s hatchet man anyway.”

  “I’m nobody’s hatchet man. I’m Bruno’s trainer. Don’t you forget it,” Ray shouted. “Bruno’s a national name.”

  “Trainer! You’re just that gangster Rosso’s water boy.”

  “Tell it to Rosso when he comes up here for the fight.”

  “You tell him this, Conlin. Tell him you worked on the side for Mr. Kon and he ran out on you. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to have you deported for having a hand in planting those hoods out there.”

  “A big man. He runs the government now,” Ray jeered.

  “Come on, Harry, and wash yourself up,” Haggerty said soothingly, with his good-natured patronizing half-contemptuous tolerance of him.

  Motionless and rooted there, Mike glared at Ray, but couldn’t catch his eye; Ray seemed to be off by himself, scaring himself, feeling the touch of a mysterious new fear in Harry’s threat.

  Alfred took an angry step toward Ray. “Listen Conlin,” he said. “Beat it. If you come around here again I’ll have you thrown on your face in the middle of the road.” Turning his back on Conlin he looked around and Mike met his eyes; he held his angry eyes, feeling himself being pushed out of the place and down the street and back to the cheap neighborhood where he had grown up; then Alfred beckoned to him and went over to the door, out of earshot of the others.

  “What’s on your mind, Alfred?” Mike said.

  “I’ve never had any trouble in here, Mike,” Alfred said, his face reddening. “It’s not that kind of a place. I won’t have this happen to Harry in my place. I don’t care what you and the rest of the world have against him. I’m asking a favor of you. You’re all right too, I guess, but as far as I’m concerned you’ve taken a mean advantage of him in my place. I’d be awfully obliged to you if you’d keep away.”

  “That’s a real insult, Alfred,” Mike said, the blood draining from his face, and then he added proudly, “It’s not a thing I’d choose to argue about.” As he walked out stiffly he said to Ray, “You rat. But they’ll deport you right back to 14th Street.” The light caught the gray at Mike’s temples and the heavy lines on his forehead and he looked tired and old, and a little wild.

  ✧ XXI ✧

  The night after Harry had told Ray he was going to have him deported, Ray was in
his small room in the second-class hotel near the Windsor Station with a view overlooking an alley shaft. The carpet was worn threadbare. All night long he heard the shunting of engines and if he turned out the light a neon sign on a nearby roof kept flashing its pinkish light across the foot of the bed. But in the three months he had been there the room had become truly his home.

  He had never had a home until now where he could feel that he was by himself with some life that belonged to him alone. When he had been a boy in New York on Tenth Avenue he had been scared of the police, and his mother in her turn had always been scared she couldn’t keep her family together. When Ray had made his connection with Rosso he had been sure he had found someone who could give him protection, although he had never been able to figure out why he needed this protection. Policemen had only a few small cases against him, honest men ignored him, and yet he had a secret hidden knowledge that someday he might be grabbed by nameless people and accused of some crime he wouldn’t understand if he didn’t have a big fellow there to fix it for him.

  Yet in this room, far away from Rosso where he could pretend he was Bruno’s manager, for the first time in his life he had that appearance of some authority of his own. Boys who worshiped young Bruno were proud to be invited to this room, and so were two-bit gamblers. Waitresses he brought there were awed when he showed them with a little flourish the picture-magazine story on Rosso with his own picture on the next page. On these occasions, when he rang for room service he felt compelled to toss a dollar tip to the waiter. He used to lie on the bed with his shoes off, smoking cigars and wondering why he felt so warm, lazy, loving and opulent.

  Sighing, he sat down to take off his shoes. He had weak arches, and if his heels got worn a little his feet ached. Holding up one of the shoes he squinted at the heel, then suddenly he hurled it across the room, jumped up, and began to pad up and down, telling himself that Harry Lane couldn’t have him deported; nothing had been proved against him. But he knew that people in authority would like to do something for a famous broken-down war hero, if it cost them nothing. Lane had been a big man, and he knew all the big men. So right now the police were probably hunting for the two who had beaten up on Lane. When they were found they would squeal, and he would be convicted. If they deport me I’ll be finished with Rosso, he thought, and he began to sweat. His little black eyes were bright and staring. Someone else would have to come from Rosso to handle Bruno.

  Undressing, he got into bed and lay there while the pink light flickered across the bed and tried to understand how he had got involved in the beginning. The trains shunted, the canal boats whistled and later the monastery bells chimed; the day came, and there was the hum of the station opening its doors to the city business. Still he couldn’t sleep. He dozed a little. At ten o’clock the maid opened the door with her master key; she wanted to clean the room. He scowled at her, then quickly apologized; now he needed all his friends. He got dressed, walked up to St. Catherine, got some coffee, then came back and slept on the made bed, and at three he went to the gym for Bruno’s workout, his mind made up that he would forget all about Harry Lane.

  While he was rubbing the boy down, his fingers working surely and patiently, he started worrying again. “Everything’s clowning and horsing around in this town,” he complained, his fingers slackening their pressure as he stared, unseeing, at Bruno’s gleaming limbs.

  “What’s the matter, Ray?”

  “You know this Mollie Morris?” Ray asked.

  “The column in the Sun? Sure, Ray.”

  “Right. She has a big following, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They give her a big play in this town.”

  “High-class stuff? High-class readership?”

  “My old man reads her,” Bruno said with dignity, raising his head and smiling, “Is she doing a story on me? I would like that very much.”

  “I’m going to see what I can do, Johnny.” He got the telephone book and looked up Miss Morris’ address. She lived on Bishop, three blocks away from the Ritz.

  He tried to kid with Bruno so he wouldn’t notice that he was worried. When they were both getting dressed, Bruno asked him if he could drop him off anywhere. He had a nice Ford convertible, and Ray, with a light air to impress Bruno, told him he could drop him off at the Ritz.

  When he got out of the car to wait until it pulled away, the big-nosed Ritz doorman looked at him very stuffily and Ray tried to make it plain he had a low opinion of him too, then walked west, with the sun in his eyes, turned halfway down Bishop to an old stone house, climbed the stairs and stood listening at the door before he pressed the bell.

  When she opened the door the words he had prepared wouldn’t come easily because she was wearing a black sweater and white slacks, her black hair was hanging on her shoulders, and her eyes were unfriendly. “Oh, Mr. Conlin,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Could I speak to you a minute, Miss Morris?”

  “No, I’m busy, Conlin,” she said, and he knew she did not want him in her house.

  “This is so damned important to me, Miss Morris,” he pleaded. “It’s about Harry Lane.”

  “Well, come in,” she said reluctantly.

  The spotless whiteness of the walls and the black mantel and the gold rug upset him, and she left him standing there uneasily while she fumbled in the white pants for her cigarettes.

  “Look, Miss Morris,” he blurted out. “Harry thinks I’m responsible for that beating he got.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s going to have me deported. I’ve already been thrown out of Dorfman’s. Harry’s still got some big government friends who’ll do things for him for the sake of the old days. I’ve had a lot of publicity. I mean that magazine story, and it’ll be used against me to hound me out of here.”

  “So you’ll be deported. What do I care?” she said, walking away from him to drop the ashes from her cigarette on the tray at the end of the ivory-colored sofa. “You disgust me,” she said.

  “You don’t know how I feel,” he blurted out desperately. “I’m entitled to a little justice. Do I get no justice because I get mixed up with people like Harry and you? You’re a judge’s daughter,” he said angrily. “Why do you want to work on a newspaper and go everywhere alone with that smile? You sit around with the guys in Dorfman’s and you go to the fights, and it’s all just slumming. I’ve read your column. All those little guys you write about don’t touch you. All for laughs. It don’t put any spots on those nice white pants. You don’t know what goes on inside people. What counts with a woman like you? There don’t have to be no justice for a woman like you.”

  Then she turned on him wrathfully. “The nerve of you coming here like this and insulting me about Harry Lane.”

  “I don’t want to insult you,” he insisted desperately. “I don’t want to insult nobody. That’s my point. I make a practical joke about the coat. I goofed. I’m not quick. I’m good-humored, not quick, see, and I get a punch on the jaw for my joke. Is that justice? Miss Morris, who do you respect who takes a punch, and does nothing? I was happy around here, my nose clean, too. So I’m to be deported. Nobody speaks to me. Justice, justice.” He was following her around the room and then over to the window, growing more desperately baffled by her grim silent anger, the stiffness of her body, her folded arms and her eyes that didn’t see him — anger all turned in on herself, tormenting her, since he had told her the kind of woman she was. He couldn’t cope with this silent inward-going anger and the slow reddening of her neck. “You, that slut Annie Laurie, Harry. The kind of woman I am,” she whispered, yet she seemed to have forgotten that he was there. He was frightened now by her silence and its sadness, and some kind of strange passionate regret in her tormented eyes and she had this very clean smell with a little touch of perfume on her and her mouth began to tremble as if she were suffering. She was looking down at the back gardens, and he looked out too. In the garden next door were many flowers and a pear tree. Two visiting nuns were there in the
garden. As they moved under the pear tree in the shade, Miss Morris, half angrily, muttered to herself, “Why is it that nuns look so well under a pear tree in the sunlight?”

  “I don’t know,” he said blankly.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You little fool,” she said, turning on him fiercely. “Harry Lane have you deported! He doesn’t expect anybody to take him that seriously. All he wants to do is make a fool of himself. Hasn’t he turned away from everything decent, from common sense, remorse, from love, the pity and pride of love, to make himself nothing with sluts and morons like you? Go on, you fool. He won’t have you deported. People won’t stand any more from him. No more, not even the ruin of a jerk like you. People won’t stand for it, I tell you. Now get out of here. Get out!”

  “Okay, okay, Miss Morris,” he said quickly. “I see you have great readership, great respect,” and backing away from her to the door he was glad to get out.

  On the street he stood looking up and down mopping his head. “The people I’m in with now,” he thought. “Nuns looking well in the sunlight under a pear tree. Christ!” and then as his success with her began to dazzle him he grinned happily, and walked along whistling.

  When he got to Peel he stopped, looking down at Dorfman’s, where people were going in. He wanted to show a little defiance to someone so he loafed down the street and when he saw Ted Ogilvie getting out of a taxi he was delighted.

  “Hi, Ted,” he called waiting with a big friendly grin.

  “Why, you little rat. I heard we had seen the last of you around here,” Ted said sourly.

  “Hell, all you’re doing is believing that crazy guy Lane’s story,” and he started to chuckle. “I don’t have to help him break his neck. He’s doing it himself.”